Not Your Grandfather’s America
As a young man, I thought grandpa’s confusion was just old age, but I’m starting to understand it was more than that.
When I was a child, I remember leaving the door open at night to get in that extra little breeze that felt and smelt so wonderful on a summer night. Now you would never leave your family so open to our newly unpredictable society. Not only that, but the breezes these days are full of that ever growing unpredictable new society of ours and it’s not so pleasant anymore. When I was a young man, we used to get out and play football, ride bikes, baseball etc.. Now kids are content with doing all of these things inside on playstations and Wiis and drinking softdrinks like no tomorrow. Patriotism was a given, now you hve to explain it to young kids who get told that patriotism is a questionable thing. Instead of teaching that we are the hope of the world, our children in todays America are taught that their parents are the reason for the 9/11 tragedy. That’s right! We were taught about how our grandfathers won freedom for the world during WW2, but our kids hear only how murdering Americans dropped the bomb on the innocent Japanese, ran roughshot over the rest of the world, including the middle east, who now is rightfully paying us back through desperate measures such as terrorism. Yes… I am not even a grandfather yet, but I am seriously confused in this new America of ours.
I have hope for our new president, Barack Obama, but I cringe every time I hear him apologise for what he considers American policy mistakes after 9/11. What is he apologizing for? That we stood up for ourselves after 9/11 and went after our enemies instead of saying, “sorry guys, we didn’t mean to piss you off, here, let us extend you a hand that you may cut off at your leisure.”? I don’t know but, i don’t remember a bunch of American citizens goin out and cutting the heads off of Muslims because they were not Christians, or taking a plane and ramming it into the royal Saudi bank or anything. Seems kind of crazy to even say, but, it is acceptable to some that the oh so desperate terrorist must do these things because of American oppression. That also to me seems to be lacking reason. The new America is different from what I knew as a child. To me it changed that day on 9/11. Mabe it’s just me, but even the atmosphere of daily life has changed. This is a new age of security that also stripps away any privacy you may have once had.
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