It’s my birthday this month. I was born in the fifties. I was a kid in the sixties when President John F. Kennedy was shot dead. The news wasn’t good. In the same decade I also witnessed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. as well as presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. I lived in L.A., thus that particular incident was close to home. Other news items I witnessed were the Watts Riots in South L.A. and others like it in cities across the nation. I witnessed the Vietnam War protests, and the Hippie movement: “Make Love not War!” I also saw our astronauts walk on the face of the moon.
Then came the seventies, the Disco Decade; there was Watergate and the resigning of President Richard M. Nixon from office, in disgrace. During my youth, I remember older folks (many who were as old as I am now), forty, fifty, sixty year-olds, worrying about where this nation was heading. As far as they were concerned, the nation was going to pot, literally speaking as well as figuratively speaking. The seventies witnessed the first oil embargo, sky rocketing gas prices, lines of cars at the gas pumps, “No Gas” signs at local gas stations, and out of control inflation. Yes, way back in the seventies we were already talking about the need to find alternative and renewable energy sources and the need to make more efficient cars with better gas mileage. Even back then I remember thinking that the U.S. auto makers were missing the point, even as better-made less-expensive foreign-cars started making inroads in the U.S. auto market—with funny sounding Japanese names like Honda, Nissan, and Toyota.
In my lifetime, I have seen us engage in wars that we really should have avoided and have seen us topple foreign governments we should have left intact, and support foreign governments we should have abandoned. And then I have seen us bewildered when we get a backlash such as when the U.S. embassy was attacked in Tehran at the end of the seventies and Americans taken hostage. My guess is that most Americans still don’t know why the Iranians were so mad at the U.S. at the time. We are ignorant of our own geo-political history in that area. Speaking of history, do we remember when the then USSR invaded Afghanistan? It didn’t go so well. Does anyone remember that? Apparently we don’t learn much from history or we simply ignore it altogether.
I have seen greed run rampant at the expense of the average Joe on the street; for example, I have seen industry plunder lakes, rivers, hills and valleys, leaving behind a toxic wasteland for taxpayers to clean up after them. I have seen huge mega-companies become too big for their own good and grow arrogant, overly self-assured and confident, and then suddenly disappear. In my humble opinion, the U.S. Auto companies should have done thirty years ago what they are finally just now beginning to do—reinventing themselves, re-tooling, re-envisioning, seeking to become cutting edge and relevant again. As I see it, our banks and the banking industry should do the same. They seem to also have become arrogant, overly self-assured and self-interested. They too need to wake-up and realize that, like the U.S. Auto industry, they can’t continue to stay on the path that they’ve been on. Good banking is not just about making money at the expense of the little guy, it is about serving the economy and its people.
So, my experience teaches me that one must learn to respect a people’s conscience, their faith convictions, their social values, and their sense of justice and fair-play. Government must monitor, protect, and sustain a just and level playing field for all. It must see that a varied and diverse people under its rule must enjoy the same protections so as to have equal opportunity and to experience the same justice in a court of law. In short, it must see to it that a popular but unjust majority voice does not get its way at the expense of a small but just minority voice or, on the other hand, that a small economic powerful minority voice does not unfairly dominate and quench the rights of an economic weaker but popular majority voice.
The decisions that our leaders make will affect us for generations to come. Thus, it is not merely a question of who wins the majority vote. It is a question of what is good, what’s right and/or best for the nation as a whole. It cannot and should not merely be a question of who has the money, but how that money is made, spent, collected, distributed, and accounted for. It is a question of truth, justice, and integrity. This is always the case. But can our leaders see the forest for the trees? Can they make decisions beyond political expediency and do what is right and good simply because it is right and good for all, for the nation, for humanity? Or do special interest groups have them in their pocket—money, greed, and power?
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