Silwatcher2

No comments on this essay please, haha posted this essay thing for someone to view, not as part of my profile “If the Western Democracies stand together…their influence for furthering those principles will be immense…If however they become divided or falter in their duty…then indeed catastrophe may overwhelm us all.” (Winston Churchill) These potentially hopeful words have proven ominously prophetic in our own time. When America entered the war in Iraq against the wishes of the United Nations, it divided the UN and dashed the hopes of nations in need of peace and security. Since that time, catastrophe has come ever closer to our country and our world. Rather than uniting to fight the genocide in Africa or the dangers of global warming, America is stuck in a quagmire, debating gay rights and stem cell research while our entire way of life is threatened. The United Nation’s stated purpose is to spread democracy in the world, yet in our own time China has shown intents of retaining communist characteristics, Pakistan has gone directly from democracy to dictatorship, and our own president has willingly set aside constitutional rights. Overshadowing all this are multiple disasters that threaten all modern ways of life, including global warming and disappearing resources. While it is easy to put the blame on America and have an anti-American attitude, one must consider the impact America’s actions will have on the world as a whole. With global warming at the top of the list, our world is faced with several disasters that could change or even remove our future as a species. In the case of global warming, as the ice caps melt and pressure increases to reduce carbon emissions, what are we doing? We are seeking ways to exploit Arctic resources in ways that will support carbon emission based businesses. In short, we are frying our planet to a crisp while simultaneously undermining democracy and the American way of life. Add to this America’s incredible economic debt, the increasing pace and stress of day to day life, and the decreasing amount of sleep our children are receiving, and the only way to describe our situation is one hell of a mess. At this point, some people who have realized these things might have a defeatist attitude and say to heck with everything, enjoying what they can while they can and throwing away the future. This is ludicrously foolish because we cannot know what difference we can make or how much time we have. All of us are part of this mess, and we are all to blame, but at the same time we all have a chance to get our heads on straight and figure out our priorities. Our only weakness is that our methods and priorities have been misguided and varied, with little comprehension of the severity of our present situation. One can easily look at all these problems and say our future’s going to hell in a hand-basket without caring, yet it is quite another thing to die young and healthy from overheating in the summer, to hear that your own president has suspended your rights and declared himself a dictator, or to have someone traumatize and torture you because an attorney general believes it to be acceptable. What has gotten America, and the world as a whole, into this mess? Perhaps an appropriate comparison would be the story of the tortoise and the hare. In its heyday, our country was a superpower with its future in relatively capable hands. America has become accustomed to being the best and the ultimate ideal, and for a time it had a right to do so. Our history, however, has led to extreme arrogance on our part, and foolishness on the part of our politicians. Increased communication has also had a hand in this. We can now easily communicate instantly with people halfway around the world, but this ease of communication has had its price. With so many opinions and ideas and views coming at us from so many places, we hardly know what to believe or who to follow. Because of this, our political views have been misguided, and we have elected politicians we might not have elected if we’d fully understood their policies. These misguided political views, combined with nationalist arrogance, have resulted in the election of incompetent government officials with selfish political agendas.