You are the Country's Biggest Problem

i'm not sure why but people are always asking me "what do you think"? I mean anyone who really knows me knows i'm this weird concoction of contradicting fatalism and optimism so i don't know perhaps i am not the best person to hand such a loaded gun.

this crazy little election & all of it's many Cani-don'ts hasn't helped. I can't, or maybe just won't, tell anyone who to vote for. i don't think change is something you smell on the wind, it's something you can feel - it's something you can't help but see. i'm a historian &, when i do my job right, i speak for the dead, i know where we've been...& at rare moments i see where we are going. in so many ways it seems we are living in such dark times. as we stand on this verge of "something" we have to wonder if it's not that "something better" we are endlessly searching & hopping for.

i am sorry to report but nothing better is on the horizon. sadly the fact is that regardless of who wins in Nov & regardless if we remain a capitalist democracy, or become a socialist democracy or something all together different it will not solve our biggest problem - You. each one of us is that person standing beside the system wrench in hand...about to throw & worse yet there are about 301,139,947 of us. the fact is we are own worst enemies. the system itself has no set values - isn't that why we call it "the Machine" it is only in the human component (of the government, society, economy, and day to day life), that a moral attribute can be found - we are the moral apparatus of the system/machine. quite simply the majority of people use the system but contribute nothing to it. as people we somehow grow up and think we are entitled to a middle class life, & all the trimmings, that our parents spent a life time building for the simple fact we were raised with them, as workers we demand more pay than most of us really deserve, as employers we demand too much time than we are owed, as consumers we demand bargain basement prices for an endless amount of *Must Have* *Random* *Crap* (how much STUFF do we need anyway?) & we never think of how those prices are achieved or what it really costs us & as retailers any amount of profit less than what we expected we report as a "loss" and demand government assistance...the list goes on & at the end of the day we are all supposed to be "Innocent Bystanders" wanting someone else to come and fix it all. the fact is until we start participating in the system & providing/fulfilling its moral element - until we at least start trying to just be good & accountable people who are fair in their business dealings on both sides...people who care about other people...things will not get better, anything else is simply a spot of bubblegum on a pipe about to burst. that's what i think.