I would like to spend my days talking about airplanes, being a pilot, piloting airplanes, using ForeFlight on my iPad as my Electronic Flight Bag, the wonders of Apple, life in Chicago, and the enjoyment of my existence. These are things I strive to talk about, but there’s so much going on in the world I feel like I can’t be silent about important topics.
People following my Twitter feed (the one I abandoned and then fired up again) must think I am nuts. One moment I’m tweeting about my favorite airplane, the next moment I’m sharing a photo from “Star Trek: Voyager”, and then I start going on about the current state of politics in the United States.
There’s just so much crap going on these days and anyone with a higher IQ than the speed limit (which is apparently, yet shockingly, not enough people in today’s society) can see that we are a nation in crisis. To pretend it’s not happening feels unpatriotic. To gloss over all the stuff happening with the Trump Administration and think everything is fine is like sipping a tea on a veranda that is engulfed in blames.
Things are not fine. The guy in the Oval Office thinks he’s a dictator. His children are making wads of money from foreign interests that run contrary to the beliefs of the United States. Facebook has decided to let politicians say whatever the hell they want in ads, regardless of the truthfulness of the content. The CEO of Twitter is more concerned with looking “hip” in his homeless hat than controlling what’s going on with the platform that has run completely off the rails. Children are in cages, farmers are losing money left and right, and the Trump Administration is doing its best to divide the country, instill mistrust in anything to do with the media or governmental process, and make as much as possible for its own self-interests.
This is not what The United States of America is about.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are belching up as many candidates as possible with the apparent theory, “hey, a shitstorm of a primary worked for the GOP in 2016, maybe we should give it a try!” and only God knows why we would want Bernie or Biden as President when they don’t even know where they are half the time.
It’s like too many people have just given up.
We need to end career politicians. Now. Senator Susan Collins of Maine? Get her out of there. Marco Rubio? Ted Cruz? Please, get them out of there.
Don’t even get me started with Mitch McConnell.
Look, we can fix this. It’s going to take decades and it’s going to take a lot of hard work from all of us that Pledge Allegiance to the Flag, but we can do it. We need to work together, talk rationally, and listen intently. Yeah, I get hysterical and emotional and quite frankly I need to knock it off, and so does everyone else.
So talking about things I love? I’d love to. But I want to do my part to make sure we still have a sane society where we can still talk about the things we love.
