By Keith C. Milne
When I was a young boy, the world and everything in it seemed magical to me. Everything I learned about made me want to know about even more. I tried very hard to read adult college books when I was six years old because I had enough vocabulary to understand quite a bit of what I read, but unfortunately still couldn’t quite grasp the overall concept being explained or any of the uncovered and more abstract details of the information, but it sure was fun trying! My father and grandparents seemed to notice this and I remember receiving my first slide rule for my sixth birthday. I know, it sounds ultra geeky, but I loved learning and reading and making things with Lincoln Logs, my Erector Set, and the world’s first Legos when they debuted. Everything seemed so interesting and fascinating to me, and that part of me, that enjoys learning new things or how things work still exists.
Part of that learning would often cause me to bump up against the more esoteric and less definable phenomenon in the universe that is very difficult to explain comprehensibly, when much of what is being explained cannot be proven using the scientific method and, therefore, requires belief without any proof. Specifically, religions and their doctrines, ghosts and goblins and spirits that manifest visually (supposedly), as well as a multitude of other things that are always hard to wrap our minds around, such as how fast light travels, or the concept of staying young while our loved ones grow old and pass away, while we travel at faster than the speed of light. Nevertheless, I found all of it fascinating and interesting and loved the way science could prove and disprove ideas.
Growing up as a Baby Boomer I was fortunate to be exposed to so much for the very first time in my life! All of the incredible achievements decade by decade, some good, some fantastic, and some absolutely toxic for the human race, shaped my reality and made me take on certain perspectives that only living through the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, 2000’s, and all the way out to now, 2023 could have allowed for.
Aging has opened my eyes a lot more and I now realize how lucky I have been to live as long as I have, and how fortunate I have been to have witnessed and participated in life, here in America, for that entire time, and to still be here to continue witnessing how mankind proceeds into the future. But It’s getting incredibly hard to bear witness to what is going on these days in my beloved country!
America seems to be slowly, but surely, heading towards a future that will be even harder to come back from if all of us aren’t more careful about how we proceed from here on out. Too many social things need correcting! As a nation we are very divided and weak from being unable to function as a unified whole for a long time now. We would not be ready for a planned attack against us by foreign enemies, and if not corrected, this will allow us to become ripe for the picking by a foreign power.
We are so distracted with one another right now internally, that we would be hard pressed see it coming because we’ll be too busy mopping up the blood and mess from our own infighting right here in our own country. If you live long enough, you’ll eventually see and hear about things happening that you thought you never would see happen in a million years!
The America of my youth is LONG GONE. I really hate to say that. I really do! The kids these days will never know just how great life can be WITHOUT TECHNOLOGY IN IT AT ALL. I used to think that the more technology there was, the easier and better our lives would be. What I have personally experienced is that we have more ways than ever to communicate, but many of us are now communicating with one another less than ever before.
I thought life going forward would be more like the Jetsons and, by now, we’d have solved world hunger and all other problems. HA! Not even close! As a matter of fact, technology has empowered the wealthy to keep tabs on the masses so they can squash the inevitable rise up against what is happening right now! At the very least, for all of the advantages technology has afforded us, there are just as many ways it has detracted from the promise of lots of free time (while the robot does all the work), while simultaneously making our lives far more complex and far less private than ever. But we are all suckers for that shiny new gizmo. One by one they get all of us on board with lifestyle choices that are bad for us, then offer a solution for a monthly subscription!
Nowadays we’re all so worried that we are going to be the only one without that shiny new gadget, or a nice SUV, or have a ton of followers or fans on some social media platform, that we are collectively doing all of the things I used to see Americans fearing would happen if done on a massive global scale! Everyone used to be so concerned about having to give up any personal information at all, but now everyone with a smartphone is letting the world know where they are at any given time just by having one on them. Pair that with location services being turned on on that device, and now “they” know how fast you’re driving, and where you are within 20 feet.
This is now our reality even though so many people like to say how adamant they are about government intrusion into their lives, they spend all of their waking hours on a smartphone everywhere they go. They shop with their device, they pay with their device, they text with their device, they “Face time,” take endless pictures (often going into a cloud account), watch television and movies on it, email on it, and even use it in sexual ways with others for anonymous sex. Ever really pause to consider just how much “THEY” know about you? Not that anyone would really care about knowing most any of us, THEY know a shocking amount about all of us now!
This is the meat of my point: we are all voluntarily becoming what we used to fear and are giving up our personal data and privacy constantly in the name of self-amusement and perceived convenience. This is something I thought would never happen in a million years! Instead, this is what I thought would happen when/if we were ever taken over by a communist authoritarian country like Russia or China. I never saw this one coming at first. Once I saw what smart phones could do (Thanks Apple) I knew things would change hugely, but I couldn’t be sure of all the ways they would, and could never have predicted just how fast it would all happen.
Before the advent of all the technology that we now have in our lives, someone would have to be arrested to become known by anyone or be put on a police watch list or similar. Barring any of that, someone might come across your name in birth records, but beyond a name and address, not much more could be ascertained about anyone in particular. Now you can do a google search on anyone and get a shocking amount of information about them, and a lot of it is free! They will be able to find out your political affiliations, you arrest records if any, your phone number, your associates, your family relatives, prior addresses, and there might be pictures culled from someone’s Facebook page, or even more that someone might want to forget or has already forgotten. For someone who lives on Facebook and has a public account, your whole life is an open book for anyone wanting to take a look. It is unreal to me how many people post every little aspect of their lives on Facebook, yearning for attention and accolades from all who will give them what they crave.
I was convinced growing up that as time moved forward, everything would get better because I had the mistaken impression that mankind was a progressive race and would always move in the direction of better, improved, fairer, more inclusive, and in the direction of solving all of the old and the new problems as they came into fruition. I never dreamed in a million years that we would let greed cloud our vision and our judgement for so long that we would damage our planet Earth, and in some ways, have done so permanently.
During my early life, I saw plastics take off and become a part of virtually everything made, especially Chinese goods. Now I’m witnessing how we are burying ourselves in plastic. We now have six global trash gyres in the world that are comprised mostly of different types of plastic. All the plastic ever made in the world is still in the world. Yes, 100% of the plastic made in the world since day one is still here on earth somewhere and in some form. It’s so pervasive that nearly all of us now have micro-plastic particles (PFAS/PFOS) in our bloodstream!
I am equally shocked by the depletion of the ozone layer, global warming from excess CO2/Methane and other gases, and really shocked by how many people are now questioning science, and facts, and the truth about so many things!
I also find it shocking how many crazy, deranged people there are that would believe almost any crazy, idiotic conspiracy theory or just plain made up ideas about how things work, and then choose to believe in them rather than actually trusting what has already been arrived at scientifically and is a known fact, verified and verifiable by using the scientific method. I never thought I would see this happen in a million years!
I never thought I would see Americans losing their rights, or a day when our country became so politicized and divided that the United States Supreme Court would TAKE AWAY RIGHTS a former court had granted women half a century ago, which is what they did by overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022! The PERCEIVED good recognized and promoted by a small minority of people is more than being offset by the multitude of unforeseen health and other consequences that are cropping up like a flush of mushrooms because none of the effort to get it overturned included the planning needed to offset these horrible consequences for women all over our country or provide them with any type of contingency whatsoever for a multitude of situational possibilities that have, and will continue to crop up.
I never dreamed that someday mass shootings would become commonplace, and I absolutely never imagined that I would be informed by a congress woman from Colorado, Lauren Boebert, that America owns 46% of all the guns IN THE WORLD, and then have her decry seconds later that the percentage needs to be a lot higher! I never dreamed that there would be between 600-700 mass shootings per year for the last three years here in the U.S., and that despite these staggering and shocking numbers, we still have so many people that continue to think and promote the idea that more guns are better, and that more guns will somehow result in fewer deaths.
Just the opposite has proven to be the truth for the last sixty years, and we are the only nation on Earth with this particular problem, and also the only country on the planet that has so many guns in our country available to be owned! I never thought I would ever learn of a six-year old elementary school kid bringing a 9 mm pistol to school to shoot his teacher with, and then actually doing just that! Not in a million years! Not ever!
I never thought I would ever see schools spending so much time on teaching kids how to be nice. Instead of that, how about teaching them how to be nice, while also teaching them to recognize and deal truthfully about what is happening in the real world. How prepared are these kids for the real world when they graduate? NOT! They are graduating sheep! The ones that aren’t are crazy as hell and will become the next set of gruesome FBI violent crime statistics. All sheep, ripe and ready for shaping into corporate dweebs, for being taken advantage of by people with guns and street smarts, and naive about how the world really works.
You want the kids to be kind and nice and tolerant, but isn’t it sick irony that to receive such training in how to be a better human, they all have to go through metal detectors in order to get to their respective classrooms? Bit of some mixed signals going on, isn’t there? Be kind to the shooters who come into the school too???? It’s sad that there are so many bad elements in the world, and no one but us can change it for the better. However, in the meantime, kids need to be better prepared for the real world as it is today, not trained to be good citizens of some future imagined mirage of an idealized existence for humanity.
Learning to be nice and tolerant of others is extremely valuable, but how about incorporating martial arts classes into their day, instead of having them running around a track or shooting hoop? How about teaching them how to invest money in stocks, how to do options trades, start a business, or simply balance a checkbook? How about teaching them gun laws and gun safety? How about teaching them by answering their questions that might come up after watching a segment of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC or after watching an icky propaganda and embellishment filled segment of Tucker Carlson on Fox?
While I’m on the subject of kids and school, I never thought I’d see the day when cursive handwriting was no longer being taught! Are you kidding me!? Yes, I’m (happily) typing right now, but at least I can WRITE a letter that looks great, and I can do it twice as fast as just printing words, because I was taught cursive writing in school, just like my parents and grandparents were. I can hear a few saying “So what?!?, who cares!” Well, you certainly will when the power goes out!
If we go to war with anyone like China or ourselves in another civil war, or fail to get our collective act together you can bet your future that, unless you are grid independent all by yourself with solar and batteries, the power will be going out far more often than not! All of that aside, the fact that cursive writing is no longer being taught is just another example of how all of you, and all future generations are becoming increasingly deskilled.
Knowing less in general or knowing less about how to do things is going to make your lives harder and more expensive. It’s a dangerous thing. It leads to you not having choices and being stuck and being controlled.
I never thought I would ever see virtually everything we buy sporting “Made in China” somewhere on it. I clearly remember while working during the 1980’s having to watch all of the steel factories in the northeast, the textile mills in the south, and our entire electronics industry and know how all go to China, and Mexico! I remember being at work at a mandatory meeting for everyone during that time period and having to listen to the superintendent tell us that we had better step up our game and work harder, and that it would be in our best interest to show up late a lot less or “don’t bother showing up at all!” He went on by adding, “If you thing I’m kidding, I’m not! Right now there are at least 100 people who would gladly take your job right out at the front gate!” In theory, it was the 1980’s and what he said was absolutely true!
The 1980’s was an employers’ market, just the way Reagan intended, and letting all of corporate America close their collective doors in order to pay less for manufacturing things, while stashing huge sums away in Swiss banks, and offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying taxes–man, that did HUGE DAMAGE to our country!
All of that steel making and textile and electronics manufacturing left the U.S. and went almost all to China just so American corporations could make even more profit by taking advantage of China’s cheap labor market. Now, WE are the ones playing catch up and are having to fire up our industries again. None of that can be done easily, quickly, or inexpensively. Another short-sighted GOP blunder! And republicans used to worship, and still largely do worship, Ronald Reagan! It’s not unlike them now worshipping Donald Trump! Whichever leader seems to do the most damage to the everyday American worker is the one that the republicans like to hold up high and tout as their leader. If you are anything but really wealthy, you are a total and utter idiot to EVER vote republican. It’s voting against yourself and other just like you. They are not like us. They are everything that is wrong with our once formerly great nation.
I never thought I’d see medical science get to the point where many cancers are now being cured outright or the patient’s life is prolonged by a large margin! This is amazing! The one thing I didn’t think I would see though is the proliferation of people now wanting to become someone else because it’s possible! I’m glad that medicine can improve lives in many ways. I just haven’t adjusted yet, to the speed with which gender identity or sexual choices would become so prevalent and somewhat dominant and “in-your-face” during the current time period. I haven’t adjusted to being served by people who are obviously transitioning to another identity in some way at the grocery store or in a restaurant. It seems surreal to me in many ways.
I never thought I’d see the proliferation of mental health becoming such a crisis in our country, although considering what I’ve written so far, it’s amazing to me that I haven’t lost my mind yet seeing how different and dangerous the world has become since the days of my own youth. Despite the big push towards getting help for mental illness and stress and unhappiness, we are a collective mess in that arena too. The big push to fix everyone with the prescription of the day, for the illness or DSM diagnosis of the decade is a joke! Half the population is on anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, or anti-psychotic medications! What does that tell you about the way our culture has become?! Now it’s not uncommon to see advertisements on television for medications to treat or mask or prevent tremors caused by taking anti-depressants! Taking pills to thwart the side-affects of other pills!
I never thought I’d see the day when a freshly elected Congress would come into power and then declare that they were prepared and planning to hold economic stability hostage over raising the debt ceiling, which is the good faith and promise of the United States of America to pay any and all obligations to all who they are owed!
I have seen this before, but not at the level it is now and how it is currently being handled. The part that boils my blood the most regarding this, is that the former fat loudmouth still calling himself president gave the super wealthy the biggest tax cut in history, bragged about it publicly when he did it, and ran the national debt up to it’s highest level in history by doing so, and now the GOP wants to tackle that huge debt by cutting, what else, Social Security and Medicare programs!!!! Let’s force old folks into an early grave or put them out on the street so the super wealthy can play space cowboys and build super yachts the size of sideways skyscrapers.
I never in a million years thought I would ever see ordinary people in America being treated like common criminals and having to subject themselves to being scanned by x-rays at airports, or a President of the United States who is so obviously a felon getting away with everything under the sun that is illegal and allowed to still be holding golf tournaments for the Saudi’s, while running his fat mouth all the time about what a raw deal he’s always getting at the hands of the unfair media. He is the biggest loser and one of the most evil people I have ever seen rise to that level in my life! I never thought I would ever see a president who acts like he does, or understand how a common thug like him could have risen to that level in our country. What a joke he is! He has done so much damage to our country, and that is so disappointing that we allowed all of this to happen!
I never thought I would ever see the price of a car be more than what my parents paid for their first home. Not only have I seen that and lived that dream, but I recently paid as much to have my bathroom tub upgraded to a beautiful walk-in shower, which my wife and I love, but the cost was as much as I paid for my 2005 Toyota Corolla brand new! On top of that, I was recently looking for a really nice trip to take with my wife now that we are both retired, and came across cruises for $28,000/person, exotic getaway island rentals for $125,000 for a week, and couples spa retreats starting at $12,000/person for a week for the ultimate pampering experience.
On what planet do they think we live on? Glimpses of different universes are all around us all the time now. The rich vs. poor universe, the black vs. white universe, the democrat vs. republican universe, the educated vs. the uneducated universe. Lots of divisions that don’t really gel too well anymore, if they ever did. These divisions aren’t tame annoyances anymore either. Instead, they are deep as canyons and becoming more volatile all the time.
I’m amazed that I can continue (seemingly forever) thinking of one thing after another that now define the reality that I live inside the United States that I never dreamed I would ever see in my life, or see in a million years if I could actually live that long.
I’m very concerned for the future of America and our democracy, and I wish I had the answers to fix all of what ails our country and the world nowadays. Unfortunately, I don’t. But what I know can help is for all of us to go back to the basics that I knew and grew up with in a very different America from the one we all live in now. Simply being consistently honest, telling the truth, doing the right things, learning to look at the other person’s perspective more often than not, and enacting MUCH STRICTER GUN LAWS and environmental control laws would be a fantastic start. Doing so would significantly reduce the amount of weapons on our streets, and would collectively go a long way towards improving the quality of our lives as both American and global citizens.