America Died From a Delusion…

Here we go again! America is running true to form, fixing some other country’s business for ’em just as we always do. We mean well but will wind up in the wrong as usual.

When some nation wants us to help ’em out, they use the same old “gag” that we should exert our “Moral Leadership: and, like a yap, we believe it when as a matter of truth, no nations wants any other nation exerting “Moral Leadership” over ’em, even if they had one.

If we ever pass out as a great nation we ought to put on our tombstone: “America died from a delusion that she had Moral Leadership”

 — Will Rogers June 22, 1931 —

I am ashamed to admit that it has been a while since I used one of my hero’s quotes here on RJ’s Corner. Shame on me, Will’s words are what helps keep me centered during today’s version of turmoil. It has been eighty-four years since Will said these words and they are as true today as they were then.

No country, or even individual for that matter, wants someone to give them moral leadership. To even insinuate  that you want it is to admit that you don’t have enough of your own and for us Americans that is an almost impossible thing to say. We Americans are a pompous and egotistical bunch so we fall for this logic too easily. We like to think that somehow when God passed out morality we got a double, no a triple, dose of it.

Can you imagine if for instance Britain came over here to provide us with some “Moral Leadership” in the area of providing universal healthcare to our citizens?  Or worse yet to show help us get our murder rate to the extremely low levels of their’s?  I will be one to admit that we certainly could use their “Moral Leadership” in these areas but I am absolutely certain that their offer would be quickly and adamantly rejected.

What “Moral Leadership” means today is that countries want us to give them some of our weapons to more easily kill their enemies. It means that they want us to pump trillions of bucks into their country to do something they don’t have the will to do on their own.

Now don’t get me wrong here, I am not saying that we don’t do some good in the world but as Will said almost a hundred years ago we far too often just get it flat-out wrong.  We stick our noses in where it doesn’t belong…

Thanks again Will for keeping me focused….

The Less You Know….

“I am kind of like a politician. The less I know about anything, the more I can say about it.” – Will Rogers, 12 June 1928

I’m kind of like a politician myself Will. One of my favorite quotes is “You don’t have to know what you are saying as long as you say it with authority”. That should be the mantra for most of those politicians inside the beltway. Too many of those yahoos like to strut around like they are experts on everything but in reality they let the lobbyists with the biggest purse tell them what to say and believe.

Its time we started sending some “real” people to that totally fake city… 🙂

Wanting a Gun….

“They want Peace, but they want a Gun to help get it with.” – Will Rogers, 9 February 1930

Yeah Will, nothing has changed much in this area since your day.  About the only thing different is that we have MUCH bigger guns now. It goes back to the old quote “If all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail”. I love this country but I simply can’t begin to understand its obsession with guns…..

About The Invaders…

“Somebody would have found America though, even if he [Christopher Columbus] hadn’t, for you couldn’t hardly get around without running into it. Why they didn’t find it sooner is more than I will ever know. . . Being an Indian, I don’t mind telling you personally I am sorry he ever found it. The discovery has been of no material benefit to us, outside of losing all the land.” – Will Rogers, 1 August 1926

I have enough “Indian” in my heritage to understand where Will is coming from here. I wonder what this country would be like now if Columbus had not accidentally bumped into it so many years ago? But also as Will said here someone was bound to have found the new world if he hadn’t.

I know Europe’s history is full of conquests and overthrow but for the most part the people invaded usually, at least in the end, managed to keep hold of their land. Since native-Americans believed that the land could not be owned but only rented they were naive enough to think that they too could keep hold of it. Instead all of therm were rounded up and put on the least wanted patch of ground now called Oklahoma.

To the victor belongs the spoils as they say, for us native Americans that seems especially true…

Canada and the Volstead Act…According to Will…

Arrived in the Canada capital today. More sentiment here to be annexed by Mexico than by America. They know us too well. If we get any nation to join us it will have to be some stranger. We only have one reason for wanting Canada and a modification of the Volstead Act will eliminate it. Waiting instructions.

Will Rogers — 11 October 1926.

When we took our extended visit to eastern Canada a few years ago I kind of got the same feeling that Will did almost 100 years ago. Canada is happy to have put off the invasion by the U.S. in 1812. They see all our problems with guns, drugs, booze in Will’s day and healthcare issues today and rejoice that they pretty much solved all those things years ago. When we told some there how much we pay for our health insurance, even with Medicare, they were shocked.

Now don’t get me wrong, except maybe for the french speaking part 🙂 they treated us Americans with friendly grace and cordiality.  Especially those taking our tourist dollars. If I couldn’t be an American even with all our solvable yet unsolved problems, I would want to be a Canadian. Where we are hyper about so much they seem to be calm and that is a nice state to be in.

We Cuss The Lawmakers….

“Well, we cuss the lawmakers . . . but I notice we’re always perfectly willin’ to share in any of the sums of money that they might distribute.” – Will Rogers, 7 April 1935

Being that we are coming up on an important election day in America I thought I would ramp up some of my feelings about politics here. I know for most, including me, this is a gutter issue in our country. We simply disdain those who we have currently chosen to represent us at the national level.

But as Will says in this quote. We seem to have disdain for all those other politicians but ours are OK as long as they get us more than our rightful share of the money they might distribute. By almost every poll taken in the last ten years we simply can’t stomach the goings-on in Washington but we seem to have no idea how to change that condition.

The first step in that  process is to accept that we are in denial when it comes to those we personally choose. In order to break the gridlock and dysfunction within the DC beltway means that we have to send a clear message to those folks. Attacking this problem around the edges has simply not had much of an effect. We send our local representative back to do the same thing over and over again and somehow expect a different result. How utterly stupid is that?

The only way things will change is to vote those currently in office out until they finally get the message. Yeah I know that might mean voting for someone who you don’t agree with on some or even many issues but you must hold your nose and do it anyway. I don’t think it would take more than a couple of total replacement for the candidates to get the message.

There is some light at the end of the tunnel in some of our current elections. It seems that an independent is leading the Kansas race. Kansas has never had a senator from a different part for over sixty years I think but that just might change this time around. If our friends in Kansas can do it surely the rest of us can also??