Veterans Day has just passed. We don't have a president, and I look forward to our future with a great deal of angst. Every year at Memorial Day, Independence Day and Veterans Day, we extol the virtues of our country and the brave men throughout our history who have given their lives for it.
Today though my heart is breaking when I think of all those men who died and the suffering and sacrifice of all their families, and for what? Nothing. "The land of the free and the home of the brave?" How can we call ourselves free when we pay nearly 60 cents of every dollar we make in tax in one form or another, when the government can steal our land and revoke our rights. How can we call ourselves brave when we hide behind the flag and don't make one single sacrifice to do what is right.
"I pledge allegiance to the flag, of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands?" A lie. The people of this country are by and large selfish and mean. They'll lie and cheat and step on others to get ahead. They'll steal and sue and swindle for their own gain without a thought of others. "One nation under God?" Not likely. We have no God in this country. We kicked him out of school, we excluded him from government, removed him from our lives or tried to mold him in the image of ourselves. And then replaced him with money and self-gratification. "Indivisible?" We are divided, one against another, each man seeking only his own.
"With liberty and justice for all?" What a joke. There is no liberty except that which you can afford to buy and no justice, when the rich get away with murder and the poor go to jail.
We have become so perverse as a country, it is no wonder people bomb us abroad and scoff at us and call our democracy "a joke."
We have sunk so low as to call evil good and good evil. A country so wretched that we call the murder of an innocent child "a choice" while on the other hand defending the life of someone so evil that he would kill you for the change in your pocket.
We embrace adultery, fornication and homosexuality, calling only pedophiles perverse, become outraged at animal cruelty and stand idly by while human beings suffer in poverty and disease, even in our own country.
A country so selfish they would vote for a lying cheating baby killing, land grubbing, tax happy, spend thrift like "Evil Gore" just because unemployment is down.
Personally, I hold out little hope for us. Next patriotic holiday, instead of waving the flag and beating our chests, we should hang our heads in shame for all the peoples' lives that we have wasted and the opportunities that we have squandered.
As a country, we have no friends other than those that we have bought. We are rotting from the inside out and all I can do is watch it fall down around me.
WILLIAM KELLY JONES
Gardnerville
