ClydeStyle

Tag: American Dream

  • Judges Thomas and Alito are just the tip of the iceberg

    Life constantly proves that we are flawed. As a part of our moral development, we should seek to excel in integrity, goodness, truth, and character, but we have lost our way.

    If we can no longer expect our Supreme Court justices to be honest, how can we expect it in other courts? It seems that there is always a problem when people don’t speak out against injustice. We made that a habit in our country, and it still hinders us today.

    The only thing needed to start a revolution after slavery ended would have been for whites to stand up and acknowledge wrongdoing. If some would have just called it as they saw it because never is it ok to make people property.

    During the Civil Rights movement, our legislative, judicial, and executive branches had a golden opportunity to move our country light years ahead by simply speaking up for what is right! Today, there are horrible police practices that many police, if they were not guilty themselves, could denounce as evil, but they stand silent. Some of the districts that our children are supposed to be educated in are failing. Some of that failure is “teacher failure,” but no one is saying that. Prison conditions in America are deplorable, and very little is being done to change it. Veterans still don’t have all of their promised benefits, but again, we are quiet.

    It’s hard to name an area of interest that isn’t corrupt. Pastors in churches are taking advantage, and some are even getting paid to sell a bad version of hope. And even in the presidency — from Trump to Biden — there are major struggles with integrity and truthfulness.

    Sadly, it seems that we declared independence from the wrong things. Where we should have set ourselves free from lies, laziness, selfishness, and bigotry, we embraced these and would go on to forsake fairness, honor, moral virtue, and serving others. Our freedoms are not for the better but the worse in America. We are free to dishonor our constitution and look out for number one — self!

    There are more justices guilty. We will see more police brutality, bad teachers, and corrupt politicians. And unless there is accountability being enforced, America will implode from within. We won’t have to worry about foreign enemies destroying us. We’re killing ourselves.

  • History and truth need validation

    We live in a time that has the phrase “fake news” circulating through our language. Most of our country looks back at history and tries to cover up the wrong doing because of guilt. In fact, the further back we go the worst it gets. Our country is very divided which was the intent of some. We actually have people who are hoping for another civil war. Because of all these things and more, our history needs to be fact checked and validated.

    The greatest reason for this is so that we don’t repeat the mistakes. It’s always difficult to hold someone accountable in their ignorance. And it’s even more tedious to suffer someone through their wrongdoing. It really becomes taxing on everybody because our ignorance and forgetfulness tends to effect us in great numbers.

    Recently, the Queen of England died. She was on the throne for 70 years and whether she was a figure head or not, that monarch has a ton of innocent blood on it’s hands. Colonization of countries was their specialty and to reign over a place that terrorized countries for a living is not fashionable at all. Their entanglement in South Africa, Jamaica, Barbados and other places was absolutely horrible. But I guess if you live long enough people forget. She lost family members recently because they could no longer endure the racism. But I digress.

    America has a reputation for building weapons on mass destruction, incarcerating it’s citizens and racism. The Bill of Rights and freedoms we have on paper are great until they aren’t. Sure there are worse places you could live but measuring and comparing us based on our resources and what’s actually possible for us to do, we are definitely found lacking.

    This is a perfect place to live if you are wealthy — but that’s only one percent. For the rest of the 99 percent we have varying degrees of contentment and down right bankrupt individuals who are barely keeping their head above water. We have been repeating our past and finding better ways to be convert in our repeats. Our problems are systemic and design to maintain the status quo.

    As a country, we need to figure out exactly what we are trying to do and be honest about it. If we really have a plan to continue to disenfranchise citizens then say that. But based on resources, our country could be a place where everyone thrives.

    We need the correct history so that we can be more tolerant of each other. There are way too many injustices to name here but if we really wanted to correct the problems we have to start with admitting the wrong.

    We need a history check and an honest conversation about what type of country we really want to be.

  • Forever chasing nothing

    Forever chasing nothing

    As a nation, we pride ourselves as being an advanced culture with highly intelligent people and as having the best of everything — pound for pound — the world has to offer. Sadly, I struggle to find anything we do as signficant to mankind.

    Now this is not a bash America blog! I used to say I love America but like many I could not tell you why. It was my only frame of reference so I loved what I knew. I assumed that people in government were looking out for the little man — looking out as defined as making laws and provisions for the little man to grow and develop into something more, not throw him a bone and keep him dumb.

    There was a study done in the 90s with 21k people across 7 nations to test there literacy. The study covered more than 30 tasks over a 45 minute span. The test takers were between the ages of 16 to 25 and the specific items on the test dealt with reading comprehension, following directions, reading maps, completing job applications etc. — things you would need to function and thrive in every day life. The results were astonishing (see table below). There were level grades from 1 to 5 where a 4 or 5 was pretty high functioning and of course a 1 was struggling. Sweden’s population of that age group were the brightest with more than 40 percent functioning at the highest levels. Only 18 percent of Americans at that age range preformed as well as the Swedes.

    What does that mean you ask? Well other than the obvious, it seems that the study has also proven that higher functioning was related to higher wages. When France talks about job creation and the US talks about it, those are two totally different conversations. France is only talking about a living wage where you can take care of a family with a modest living. In the US, we say a job is a job — better than not having one.

    Today we are in a literacy crisis. No one should be surprised about this but I don’t think we understand the effects.

     

    • More than 30 million adults in the United States cannot read, write, or complete basic math above a third-grade level. —  Proliteracy
    • Children whose parents have low literacy levels have a 72 percent chance of being at the lowest reading levels themselves. These children are more likely to get poor grades, display behavioral problems, have high absentee rates, repeat school years, or drop out. — National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
    • 75 percent of state prison inmates did not complete high school or can be classified as low literate. — Rand Report: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education
    • Low literacy is said to be connected to over $230 billion a year in health care costs because almost half of Americans cannot read well enough to comprehend health information, incurring higher costs. — American Journal of Public Health

    Our problem: Politics. We constantly elect people who can not relate to the problems of the average American and they could care less about those problems. It doesn’t even matter what political party you belong to — both parties have failed the little man.

    It seems that we have disfellowshipped the word demand because we don’t demand anything — nothing of ourselves and nothing from those who rule the world. So we sit and take it — you live your life paycheck to paycheck and die in a sea of debt. In our country they tell you that you have the right to pursue happiness, they just forgot to tell you it was nearly impossible to catch.

  • The parable of the lines: part 2

    Parables are always wonderful stories. Jesus Christ is the master teacher and he told them far better than any man. This little parable of the lines gives us great insight to the condition of America.

    There is a condition in our country that creates a permanent underclass. We have generations of people living on government assistance and this is never what FDR intended when his administrator looked for a way to provide temporary help for families in need. Families were quite different during that time.

    There were many jobs to be had and they required little or no skill. A person back then could graduate from high school and secure a good enough living to sustain a family. Somewhere along the way we got greedy and began to get paid more for doing less. This sense of entitlement is what led to the first and second lines.

    Struggle has become a way of life for so many in our country that it seems most don’t mind residing in the first two lines.  The second line at least tried to work out a plan and purpose for their lives, but their efforts were met with rules that were against them and a lack of real opportunity. The largest part of that opportunity comes because despite America being culturally diverse, the people doing the hiring are not interested in creating a staff that is culturally diverse.

    What we have then and now is the hiring managers and the gatekeepers of the majority of our jobs hire those people who they feel most comfortable hiring – which is normally a person of the same race. That wouldn’t be a problem if the gatekeepers and hiring managers were already diversified. Now this does not make them all racists. It means that this trend has helped to create this permanent underclass. Still many companies are just now hiring their first black this or their first Hispanic that. And I’m talking about the real jobs, not the minimum wage gigs or the middle management positions. I’m talking about the six figure jobs.

    The third line is basically your middle class and this group is just trying to prove that the American Dream does exist. It’s the group that doesn’t like everything that is going on, but because their scenarios are not as bad as others, they grin and bear it. The interesting part is that more of this class is beginning to understand how the fourth line got to be the way it is.

    The fourth line cheated, benefited from old money and/or knew someone that showed them the way. It’s sad, but true.

    This parable really is about change and the real need we have in America to change. This is one of a thousand scenarios that could describe this trend. We are in trouble. If we stay the course, we won’t make it. We need to wake up and be heard. What are you prepared to do?