“A great disaster had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God;
that’s why all this has happened.”
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
We’ve recently taken to exploring some of the highways and byways in
this new area of the state that we now call home.
Since I actually spent about 5 years of my life in this area,
nearly some 40 odd years back, a few of these roads are vaguely familiar…
yet many more are not.
There are many more roads…
I think they call that progress.
I call it confusion.
On this side of the state, we are closer to the North Georgia mountains
then we were at our previous home.
And one thing I can say is that the ins and outs to those mountains have all
pretty much remained the same since my youth…paved, yet narrow
and curvy.
So as we traversed our way northward, we were met in all the tiny,
medium and larger towns and cities with the sign of the times…
HELP WANTED…
NOW HIRING.
And many of those signs were offering hiring bonuses.
Factories, restaurants–both fast food and fine dining, gas stations,
convenient stores, medical facilities and even farms…
places both urban and rural were each asking for one thing…
employees.
Why you ask?
Well, firstly, we had a pandemic.
It put a kink in our way of life.
It hit our job force—it hit the way we worked and our ability to
provide services… and it fired a direct hit at our economy.
And so in turn, our national level leadership decided
to offer some quick help by sending out stimulus money
in order to tide folks over.
Tiding over until we could get back to business as usual.
The Big Government with a Big G, was expected to bail us
regular folks out.
Who would pay the rent, the utility bills, the insurance when
businesses were shuttered or our income was cut??
All eyes turned to Washington.
Well, we are now basically thankfully reopened.
We are trying to get back to “normal”—whatever that might now be.
But here’s the thing, folks are not going back to work…
They are not going, in part, because the government money is better than a
pay check–it beats having to go to a job. Home beats work right?
So if that money keeps coming, what would be the impetus to get
folks back to work?
There wouldn’t be one.
Because who cares if an economy tanks…just as long as a Big G
government continues sending free cash.
Oh but wait…if an economy tanks can a Big G government keep sending out
free money??
Well folks like Bernie and AOC and Joe and Kamala seem to think so.
Hummmm…
I think this notion of Big G taking care of its people,
and in turn keeping the people on the hooks for the desires of the Big G,
rings of an insidious past…and in turn,
the need for a small history lesson.
Names like Trotsky, Lenin, Marx, Mao, Ho Chi Minh all come to mind…
men who believed Big G knew what was best for the people.
Level all playing fields.
Work for the whole…no personal gain…no one having more than another.
The people are the ants, the leaders are the ones, like the grasshoppers,
who gather the fruits of the labor.
They have the dachas…and we the people are to fall into place and do
our part.
Big G then becomes the god of the people.
And in turn, a perfect utopia…
Well, if you know your history, which nowadays most folks don’t, well none
of that had a very happy ending…just saying…
“If only it were all so simple!
If only there were evil people somewhere
insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary
only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.
But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of
every human being.
And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
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