Some of you may wonder why I haven’t fallen in with the crowd and changed my profile picture to blue, white and red… aka… The French flag. Plain and simple… Its not about France. Its about a group of militant radicals that are getting away with murder… Literally.
I am not a violent person. I worked long and hard to learn to control my temper. This doesn’t mean that I am devoid of emotion or that I don’t have an opinion on things like terrorist bombings. I just choose to not add unnecessary fury to the matters at hand.
Here is my opinion on the state of things in our nation and throughout the world. If you don’t agree…. Cool! That’s the whole idea behind the country in which we live. You can have your opinion. I can have mine. We all live happily ever after.
Human beings have become buried in their own self-absorption. It all started with this thing I like to call “The Politically Correctness Movement.” Some folks think political correctness started in recent years. I believe it has been in existence for a long time. It has just finally caught traction because people have become so self-absorbed.
I see it all the time. We get so bogged down in not hurting other’s feelings by stating something that’s off-color, that we forget an important fact of life. More knowledge is gained from the bumps and bruises in life, than from the days when all is well with the world. If we don’t fail… We never realize what we are doing isn’t correct. This is why history is destined to repeat itself.
We are so busy making money, that we forget how to make a living. Our children are being taught family lessons by the school systems. This is where I think a lot of the growing “softness” has started to take hold. Children no longer learn that its ok to fail. Moreover, they don’t learn how to handle failure.
While I don’t support bullying, there is something to be said from learning how to deal with a bully. The problem I see today, is that, instead of blaming the person doing the bullying, We blame the victim. They “asked” for it. Or we blame the facility for allowing it. How about teaching kids how to deal with it. Bullying has been around forever. You aren’t going to stop it. It is crazy to think you can.
Families don’t spend quality time together like they used to. Parents are too busy with all the things we’ve deemed to be important these days.
Where is the discipline that used to happen at home? We’ve spared the staff and spoiled the child. Now, we have a generation of young adults who think they are entitled. They helicopter, to coin a term I hate, around their children to protect the from the evil doers. The lessons the children need to be able to protect themselves fall by the wayside.
Ever wonder why we hear of so many school shooting these days? We have become so tolerant of not wanting to hurt someone’s feelings, that we don’t have the ability to cope with our own issues. We’ve become more concerned about a red cup at an over-priced coffee chain, than about children going hungry in our own streets.
I know… You’re sitting there thinking… “How the HELL does this apply to the situation in France?!”
The same political correctness attitudes, I noted above, have slipped into the wars and conflicts since Vietnam. We’ve developed precision munitions and targeting systems to avoid harming civilian lives near our targets. We have become so focused on limiting collateral damage, that we’ve created the perfect hiding place for these terror groups to setup shop. Hide in the midst of the general public.
Governments don’t want to deal with the publicity of civilian casualties. This amounts to the general public not wanting to step up against these hostile forces. Militant groups set up shop in plain sight. They bring their weapons in and out without question. They train individuals, in known locations, without fear of the neighbors speaking out.
We need to get off our high and mighty stools and return to the days where cities were carpet bombed. Maybe then, countries wouldn’t be so willing to harbor militant groups. When innocent lives are put back on-the-line, people’s tolerance will begin to disappear. Our decades of cold war era political wars have to stop. We need to stop these countries from allowing militants to hide amongst their people. The lesson’s need to be taught and learned… sometimes… the hard way.
I know this is a narrow view. I hear the news reports that the intelligence community has been monitoring this group or knew about this or that, yet the group is still out there operating. I’m not saying we should level a country or repeat Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Just send a message… A clear message.
My thoughts…
~Curtis.