A totally unforeseen effect of my semi-rural Alaskan relocation has slowly been growing and festering within my existence. While I now understand I recognized the beginnings of this ‘effect’ upon my psyche a couple years back only in the last six to nine months has the fallout become so very clear. In conjunction with my growing recognition of this situation has come a slowly simmering anger at its intrusion into my otherwise calm and serene existence. And I suspect my anger will only increase if I allow this to continue unchecked; in this sense I’m hoping that just writing about this situation may prove cathartic.

Because living in semi-rural Alaska does leave one somewhat remote and hence out of touch with world events and current history I developed methods of ‘keeping up’ mainly via internet news sites and satellite TV. But herein were the seeds of my current dissatisfaction; as I tried to stay ‘up to date’ regarding local, federal and world happenings I began to notice a definite increase in my stress levels. At first I assumed I was just showing the signs of age in that I was becoming curmudgeonly based on being set in my ways but with time I began to realize there was more going on. Indeed, I was just beginning to react negatively to so much of what I read about and saw happening across the planet. Sadly this has continued to grow and chafe at my sensibilities until it reached its current level.

Why shouldn’t I be fed up? I played by ‘the rules’ all my life; I paid my taxes, generally stayed out of trouble, broke very few laws, worked as steadily as I could and saved money for my retirement. In doing so I forced myself to work for companies I came to abhor and in darker moments would refer to myself as a ‘corporate whore’. I attempted to climb company ladders in search of more responsibilities along with more money; when I couldn’t make this happen within some firm I would seek out and start another job. From the time I graduated college in 1978 until I settled here in 2013 I relocated 14 times which figures down to a move once every two and a half years and pretty much insures one will lack any ‘roots’. I recognize these were, for the most part, my choices and I am willing to live with the consequences.

But while sacrificing so much to follow the American Dream I did not expect that once I reached that point in my life when I could supposedly reap the benefits the game’s rules had shifted. Obamacare was thrust upon the population with virtually no opportunity to really review and understand what it involved. It canceled my existing medical policy at the end of 2014. And my choices were Draconian at best; my original policy cost me $510/month but the cheapest I could locate in Alaska during November and December of 2014 would run $860/month for the same insurance. Because I was unwilling to pay that differential I decided to go without medical coverage until October of 2015 when I could start receiving my social security pay outs which would cover the increased costs. Fine, I made a decision to take this path. When I fell and severely fractured my left radius and ulna in March of 2015 and ultimately ended up spending almost $48,000 for orthopedic surgery and all the associated I understood I had made a decision to gamble and failed. So be it; I believe in accepting responsibilities for one’s actions. But to this day I cannot escape the fact that I wouldn’t have been in the position of having to make such a decision if the rules hadn’t been changed. So I must ask again; why shouldn’t I be fed up?

The more I read – I’ve given up on video newscasts as all are biased in some direction and unabashedly pushing their own agendas – the more frustrated I have become. Our once proud and strong country’s soul has been sacrificed on the dystopian altar of ‘political correctness’. While I eschew the nonsense sweeping colleges regarding censoring literature if it contains anything someone might find offensive and rewriting history if it is at all controversial I also see the roots of said ‘nonsense’ in the political correctness wave which really started back in the late 80’s. What a surprise we raised a generation terrified of offending anyone or anything; if I lived like that I’d need a ‘safe space’ on a regular basis as well! Of course one might wonder why all this censorship is acceptable in the first place but then one would have to be able to think critically and have a sense of history; our higher education system has worked diligently to insure these abilities are not taught to the masses. Once again; why shouldn’t I be fed up?

Truth no longer has any merit and for this we can largely thank the deviants we’ve allowed to hijack our political and legal systems. Everyone has seen some politician suddenly take a stand wildly divergent from something they stood for in the past yet they will deny it even when there is video tape of them saying or doing it. And we can thank the morally bankrupt lawyers for allowing spin (“I did not have sexual relations with that woman..!”) and falsifications (‘the attack on our Libyan embassy was the result of an anti-Muslim movie just released’) to become acceptable in courts or in explaining their client’s aberrant behavior. But wait..! Ultimately ‘we the people’ have somehow embraced the concept of unaccountability; if some CEO or politician bald-face lies to the public as a group we’re okay with not holding them accountable..?!? When Obama said ‘you can keep your current doctor’ during the Obamacare debacle and then we discovered this was known to be false even before he publicly claimed this to be the case why didn’t we rise up and demand accountability? Because we’ve swallowed the whole ‘everyone makes mistakes’ line of reasoning, which is completely true, but in so doing we’ve taken it to a new low. Sure, we are all human and we do make mistakes but the vital foundation to this concept we’ve discarded are the need for us to take responsibility for our actions and learn from our errors. Given this why shouldn’t I be fed up?

Sadly I could continue this litany for days but I believe I’ve made my points. As a world we’re awash in this ill-conceived and downright dangerous concept of political correctness, as a country we’ve lost the ability to think critically, to remember and learn from our history and to separate right from wrong. This does not bode well for our collective futures. As a race humans have so very much in common; why, then, is it so hard to find even just a few of these commonalities in today’s world? Could it be there are a multitude of power bases that do not want this to happen because polarized, divided people are more easily controlled and manipulated? Some will say this is just paranoid conspiracy drivel and I most certainly cannot count this interpretation out but I’m also not convinced it can be so easily dismissed. In fact, I could make a case that I’m just an aging American who cannot keep up with all the ongoing changes and feels threatened by the ‘New World Order’. But herein lies something important that is largely missing from so many of our perceptions; at least I’m willing to think critically about what is happening around me, to compare the lessons of history to our present situations and to wonder at the causes and solutions. Yes, it can be frustrating and it does take time and effort but given the current desperate times this seems like the only intelligent effort one can make. Because in a world gone barmy with ISIS openly killing ‘infidels’, with ‘social justice’ running roughshod over the Constitution and individual’s rights, with major world powers sizing up a weakened America and taking actions to benefit themselves we cannot afford to get our next steps wrong. Or maybe these are just the railings of an elderly man bewildered by all the change surrounding him. Regardless…why shouldn’t I be fed up?