He Who Controls the Food...

...controls the future. Looking at this in terms of where we are seeing armed violence, political instability and war-the common thread is food or lack of it. I've been rereading Orwell's "1984" and the comments that did not alarm me twenty years ago now disturb me greatly. Consider these broad quotes from that book-"Ignorance is Strength" and "War is Peace." In the first, we are confronted with the idea that it is better not to know than to know. Think of the people we seeing Jaywalking on Leno or the characters in the movie "Idiocracy." There are wide ranges of people in our culture who not only do not know the basic precepts of our culture, but they do not care that they do not know. They don't understand the acquisition and maintenance of freedom, but would rather seek out common, lowbrow comforts. Look at how the writing in sitcoms, movies, even animated shows has sunk to lower and lower parameters. We are celebrating stupidity and ignorance at every corner. The case could be made that the recent election results were more a referendum on rejecting reality and demanding that illusions replace them. Is this not similar to Orwell's constant changing of history, literature, songs and games to fit the current paradigm? And when you consider the muting of our freedom of speech by the voices of the poorly labeled "liberals" are we not fairly close to thoughtcrime being charged? As for the "War is Peace" quote-think on the industrial complex. The change in our economy has much to do with the dissolution of the military as consumers as anything else. There are military vehicles that are only built by GM. What happens to those vehicles, who will make them, when GM goes away? And on a larger scale, what happens in the vacuum of development if America allows defense research to stagnate and die while other nations continue to develop new technologies?

The increasing encroachment of government on our freedoms is frightening not because of its scope, but because of the complacency we are seeing in much of the population. I have likened this before to a lobster being slowly placed in a pot of water and not realizing how dangerous this was until he was cooked. If ever there was a slippery slope to socialism, this presidency is it. The only way to change that is to vote in rational, conservative statemen and women at the local, state and federal levels. We are already seeing come to fruition billions in debt that may never be served by our children and grandchildren. We are buying selfish time for this generation and foisting it off on our children. Perhaps all those DINK's can do that without any qualms, but for those of us who have kids, we don't want to see them live in poverty so that spoiled Boomers can spend their retirements playing golf. And keep in mind, I speak as someone on the tail end of the Boomer generation, and I will probably NEVER be able to retire.