SHAPE UP AMERICA!

I wrote the following after landing at O’Hare in Chicago after a flight from Ankara, Turkey in June, 2014.  It is pertinent now in light of recent dialogue about the poor condition of the infrastructure (including airports) in our country.  Unfortunately, the “young people in slovenly dress sprawled in walkway areas”, would most likely be originally Bernie supporters, and now Hillary supporters.  Not to paint all millennials with the same brush, but so many young people these days expect entitlements without working for them, as if these entitlements just appeared out of thin air.  Free college, $15/hr minimum wage, forgiveness of college debts, jobs appearing out of nowhere or from government largesse – and on and on.   Written in June, 2014 “As many of you know from my Facebook posts, I just returned from where I have been have travelling in Turkey for several weeks. It was great trip. I primarily went to see the antiquities that are replete in Turkey. I found much more. I expected a somewhat backward, laid back Moslem country. What I found is a proud, dynamic, vigorous secular country of “can do” people. Does that remind one of something? Maybe like our own USA in the first half of the 20th century? I did not see any Turks looking for a handout, or for unearned “entitlements”. I saw people actively working - at whatever level, from trash pickup, to service workers, to the professional classes. In Antalya we were surprised to hear a garbage truck playing Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” while the men worked. The workers waved in happy, non-contrived, fashion. Long flight airports are always challenging. The airline carriers on my international flights (Germany/Turkey) were efficient, on time, with good service. Airports were clean and well appointed. I came into the USA via O’Hare in Chicago. I thought that I was in a third world country in the ‘60’s. Young people in slovenly dress sprawled in walkway areas, eating, drinking, etc. “Chaotic” does not even begin to describe the scene. I love the USA and I am saddened when I see lack of responsibility and selfishness erode the principles that made our country the greatest in the world. It really brings it home when I see a country like Turkey exhibiting the values that made our country great, while we Americans don’t seem to give a damn. Can we not instill some pride in our bearing? In our work ethic? In our identity as Americans in this greatest country on earth? I realize that using specific incidents to postulate conclusions is not intellectually fair, but these comments are a culmination of observations over a period of time. A trip like this to a foreign country is a juncture which allows highlighting our seeming erosion of values. SHAPE UP AMERICA! Starting in Washington.” I have been to East Europe, Turkey, China and Spain in the last three years.  All but China have deteriorated and have become prone to almost daily violence due primarily the actions of the the Daesh caliphate and to the migration crisis from the Middle East and Africa.  China’s technocratic rulers plot a separate course for their 1,400,000,000 people and represent another form of long term threat.  But the Western “Democracies”, including our own country, are hurting from too much micro management, too much political correctness, too much talk, and not enough action.  Some of our leaders will not even name Islamic Terrorism by name. And the reactions are not pretty to see, either.  Euroskeptic parties from both right and left are gaining strength in Europe.  Hungary and Poland are already virtually Neo-Fascist in nature.  Brexit is a reality.  Donald Trump is running a populist campaign along similar lines of dissatisfaction and will probably win the U.S. presidency.  The consensus of over 820+ million people in the U.S. and E.U. is that we cannot continue to tolerate the violence which claims innocent lives nearly every day, and which is inspired primarily by Islamic radicals.  We cannot continue to talk about it in “politically correct” terms, and to claim, as the current U.S. administration does, that “there is no problem, the crime rates are down”.  The people in the western world, not just “Larry the Cable Guy types”, but a broad range of people across all social and intellectual lines, are demanding change, and a return to actual government, not the lip service, corruption, dishonesty and political correctness that we’ve seen in recent times. A return to stronger governments and nationalism, while soothing to the dissatisfied mind, obviously can be dangerous.  Chants of “demagoguery, Fascism, racism” are already bandied about by the biased U.S. media.  Thankfully the checks and balances embedded in our U.S. system should allay abuses from any one segment of government.  Hopefully our European friends will react in a similar responsible fashion. The civilized world needs to defeat the corrosive Islamic radicalism (Daesh or ISIS), which threatens to push the world back to the 7th century.  We need to come to grips with governments where nuclear weapons are incipient, that try to keep their populations in the 11th century.  We also need to find realistic and humanitarian solutions for the world’s migration and immigration problems.  We need to somehow accommodate the millions of human refugees that have resulted from recent military and social disruptions. All of the above requires action.  Not talk, not political correctness.  Intelligent, pragmatic, decisive action.