HAPPY DAYS PAID FORWARD WITH LITTLE WHITE LIES

My happy days were like any other baby boomer happy days.

Like every other six year old at the time I watched enough TV to notice important people.

One thing they all had in common: They were all old men.

Then this guy showed up.

Things went from, “look, there’s Grandpa and Grandma” in the news of the day, to someone who looked like our dads.

I wasn’t a news hawk in 1960, I was a six year old, but things looked a lot better all of a sudden.

My dad could be President of the United States? My mom could stand by his side as First Lady?

Yes they could. So could anyone else’s mom and dad.

You didn’t have to be a five star general saving the free world from the clutches of evil, you could be a PT boat skipper.

You didn’t have to be a seventy year old with more experience guiding world events than anyone in history, you could be the new kid on the block with big plans.

Those were happy days indeed.

 

Fast Forward To Other Seventy Year Olds

By the time I made seventy I hadn’t ruled the world, guided world events, or gone to the moon.

What I did do was work with veterans, learn the tools of history, and raise a family.

I’ve never run for office, but I’ve attended meetings at the local library held by my representative to Washington.

Never been to an industrial military complex, but I dated a girl whose father invented better firing systems for tank cannons.

The closest I came to government was a tour of the Capitol by one of my representative’s interns.

So you could say I’ve been in the neighborhood.

What you can’t say?

For all of the good we think people in politics do, their main job is raising enough money to get elected and stay elected.

Work the phones, do the speeches, and find the deep pockets needed to put forward an agenda you can live with.

 

When you look at elected officials on TV and wonder why they look so weird, it’s not the camera.

It’s people undone by making personal commitments to their work, the sort of commitments that include, “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep my job.”

They do whatever it takes, leave their pound of flesh, and exit the stage.

The next time you see them it’s a different look.

Shitty people doing shitty things who end up looking like shit should be no surprise.

 

The Problem With People

We like to think we’re loyal, trustworthy, and helpful, and when we fall short we fall apart, the end of happy days.

That’s when you hear, “that’s not who I am,” when the question of “who do you think you are” comes up.

Things get defensive, but nothing like questioning the military industrial complex kind of defensive.

People get touchy on topics too close to home, like blood money.

Nations as a whole get a little testy when someone suggests the most important product they provide the world are new and better killing machines.

Other nations take cover when their neighbors can afford the latest and they can’t.

What are the little white lies rolled out to cover the expense?

“We are investing in peace.”

To all those who have lost loved ones in armed conflict: the rest of us will never know the hollow feeling left behind, the voices never heard again, the smile only they had.

The fallen never age, the families work to heal, and the rest of us are left with the memory of strangers following orders and giving their lives.

It’s a long time passing.