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You Can't Always Get What You Want

By Horace Coleman

--- and some times (like now) might not get what you need either!!

The right run-off-at-the-mouth reverend in Florida who wanted to burn Qurans on the anniversary of 9/11 showed that all religious fanatics – regardless of religion – have something in common. He didn't burn any holy books but some like minded loonies did – like the Kansas boobs who like to go to the funerals of troops KIA in Iraq or Afghanistan and say the departed deserved it because the military has gays in it.

When the going gets weird, the weird get weirder, evidently.

What was the media's excuse? Did a slow news day make the Quran burning story go viral? Pack mentality? Who didn't know that some religious fanatics are violent? Or, that some not too tightly wrapped people might not take kindly to having their holy books burned and act up?

The NPR program Morning Edition ran stories on September 16, 2010 about housing foreclosures hitting the highest level since the banking crisis started three years ago and illegal drug usage hitting a ten year high. The local NPR affiliate station I listen to gave stats about national drug usage. Meth use: Up more than 60%. Ecstasy use: Up more than 50%. Marijuana use: Up 9%. There was a slight drop in cocaine usage, though (too expensive for some?).

Many people are under extra pressure these days. Foreclosures, job losses, sky rocketing higher education costs, finding a job after graduation (high school or college), keeping a job, more expensive medical care, putting off your retirement, delaying an oil change, minor surgery or a tune-up, etc. As a calypso song says, "Time tough!"

Check your local news and you might see a story like this: A man doesn't like the way his wife cooked his eggs so he kills her. Then he visits some neighbors and kills them before returning home to shotgun himself. Could something else have been on his mind? Misplaced aggression (like some nation we know)? Or, despair?

There's been another "natural" disaster in California. A natural gas transport pipeline breaks and erupts flames. The automatic shut-off valves don't work. A neighborhood, and some people in it, burn. Fires in Colorado burn thousands of acres. The Tea Party gives the GOP fits. Reggie Bush gives his Heisman Trophy back.

Banks fail, the housing bubble bursts, the stock market dropped like a hot rock through 401K plans, union membership declined, Harley-Davidson union members signed a contract with management that allows the hiring of temporary workers so the plant won't leave and they can keep their jobs – for now. A few dots like that make a nasty pattern.

Ever wonder how it is that as crime in the streets goes down – supposedly – crime in the suites goes on without remorse? Evidently, nothing is really excessive if it makes an excessive profit.

There's another slap to the national ego as Newsweek magazine runs a story saying the US is not only not Number One – or even second rate – but actually 11th of the 100 best countries to live in. Of course that's their opinion. Though prices, the poverty rate and the trade deficit did go up last month.

We need to calm down, see, think clearly and act positively while considering long term effects before we act. And, grow up. Not to worry; we can always trash a mosque and set our minds at ease – for a moment – while the nation's hangover lasts a while longer.

Or, the country can straighten (sober) up and fly right. We're still the world's number one arms dealer. You betcha!! And, you're personally not in Afghanistan or Iraq. Yeah, things could be worse. And, the primary reasons things are as they are is us. So "us" will have to clean up our own mess.

As Shakespeare put it "Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves if we are underlings."

Horace Coleman was an Air Force air traffic controller/intercept director in Vietnam (1967-68).