8 Weeks to Decide

Today's thoughts on eight (8) weeks to decision 2012:

©Bob Simpson/Chicago

With almost 20,000 homeless children in New York City, which is the highest number since the great depression, and 400,000 school kids cut loose in Chicago today b/c their teachers will not teach, I am deeply concerned about these examples of “at-risk” young people in America.

With per capita-GDP (per worker/gross domestic product) still 1.9% below 2007 levels enjoyed before the recession, and 8 million people out of work but not counted as unemployed, because they stopped looking for work, my concern for our country grows today. People are getting by with less or nothing.

With a new record national debt reaching $16 Trillion last Friday and over 30% of our IOUs held by the Social Security Trust Fund (literally borrowing against our future), it is no wonder the approval rating for our government is only at 30% favorable. Government spending has reached epic proportions, outstripping the revenues it collects and forcing higher deficits. This civic course is unsustainable.

photo by Luis Robayo ©AFP/GettyImages

With military deaths from suicide outweighing combat deaths by a two-to-one ratio this year, and two consecutive years of Pentagon budget cuts over $525 Billion, I am deeply concerned about the quality of life for our most dedicated public servants in uniform.

With the 2012 drought estimated to cost close to $80 Billion in related losses, second only to the 1988 drought, and next to Hurricane Katrina, and USDA rating 50% of the 2012 corn crop "poor" or "very poor;" there are thousands of food producers and farmers with dry ground and crumbling budgets this year. The long-term effects may rival the Dust Bowl era, and we consumers will be hit also.

I don’t know whether these separate problem-sets inter-lock, but there are large sectors of the population that are hurting today like no other time in American history, and as a patriotic citizen I hurt with them in a real way. I too am looking for a better opportunity.

Although I recognize that our history includes many dark chapters and times of uncertainty, today I find no comfort in the past. Today, I feel pain, and I am fearful that many forces of evil are intermeshed within these intractable problems. Sometimes I cannot sleep for worrying.

In my huge city, traffic snarls, crime surges, and the economic recovery is slower than expected. Due to economic pressures, too many families missed a vacation this summer, and there hasn’t been a pay raise in years. The question of “quality of life” weighs heavy on my heart this morning.

Our receptivity to change at this crossroads time in American history has to be significant, and the national election is just eight (8) weeks away. This is a decision-point. Nevertheless, the divide between candidates, worldviews, and political persuasions seems like a massive chasm. The election will swing on those who are currently “undecided,” independent, or never have voted before. These groups seem invisible at this point, but they will decide which direction the country turns.

New Hampshire by ©KALIM SALIBA

Each candidate will try to reach 270 electoral votes on Nov. 6 and the decision comes down to trust, confidence, and one’s outlook on the future. Doesn’t the voting decision relate to the value the administration has added or detracted over this past four (4) year term, the confidence that the leadership and plans exhibited are acceptable this time, and/or whether or not the voter feels like they are confident that they will be better off with one of the candidates as chief executive going forward?

Additionally, both parties have full slates of leaders farther down the ballot up for election in both state and federal legislatures, an important component to governance. Which President would work best with those groups? It is momentous to think about, and there isn't much more time.

I realize there are dozens of issues not mentioned here that resonate with numerous different voting blocs, especially those in the “social” category, like healthcare, abortion, or gay-marriage, but I do not have the space or time to argue those. The point is that I am very concerned with the quality-of-life in our country, and one of the big turning points in our civic life which might affect these problems, is right over the next hill. This is a time of deep contemplation and prayer for the future of our beloved nation, and I hope you share this perspective in your own way and I would invite you to comment herein below.

©Mark H. Pillsbury

How hard is Death... Part 4 of the storm-chaser saga...

And as we stood near the taffrail side by side, my Captain and I, looking at it, hardly discernible already, but still quite close-to on our quarter, he remarked in a meditative tone:

"But for the turn of that wheel just in time there would have been another case of a 'missing' ship."

"Nobody ever comes back from a "missing" ship to tell how hard was the death of the craft, and how sudden and overwhelming the last anguish of her men."

"Nobody can say with what thoughts, with what regrets, with what words on their lips they died. But there is something fine in the sudden passing away of these hearts from the extremity of struggle and stress and tremendous uproar—from the vast, unrestful rage of the surface to the profound peace of the depths, sleeping untroubled since the beginning of ages." [from "The Mirror of the Sea" by Joseph Conrad (Harper & Bros. 1906), page 101]

Decision-making happens along points in time: planning, policies, procedures, precedence, preparation, priorities, programs mean nothing when the urgency of a decision dominates the moment.

With lip service to these systems we hold dear; it is emotion, instinct, intuition, and common sense that often rise up as influencers of whether we move one way or another.

Gathering data like a sponge, comparing it with what has gone before, weighing the costs of one direction with the benefits of another; one cannot know the thinking of decision-makers, we cannot know the games playing in their head.

Assuming that reason, fairness, honesty, objectivity, rational experience, and logic plays into decision-making seems comforting, yet it is no more predictable than the course of a tornado. And if God controls the universe, our galaxy, this solar system and all its inhabitants; then who can know what paths to take?

With momentary inputs we do the best we can, hoping others operate similarly; or even better, actually implement the strategies they worked so hard to devise. Training becomes routine, routine becomes habit, habit roots deep in our brain’s conduits and eventually becomes almost automatic behavior during a regular 12-hour day. This turns into a pretty good life.

Nevertheless, at this crucial point, these junctures seem the same as daily, mundane decisions. For Clay, Rick & Jessica, danger and opportunity meet on a dusty road in Liberty County, Texas. 30-foot high flames roar to life, demanding attention. These young friends peer down the path and discuss quickly what to do next, the heat rising around them. Time, fear, and asphalt roadway limits their ability to operate methodically, with the luxury of balanced discussion. This is a crisis, and the hunters seem now to be the hunted.

(to be continued in Part 5...)

Fiction ripped from the headlines… ©Mark H. Pillsbury (2011)
photo credit, http://vi.sualize.us