This is fairy tale for this day and age. It is one your children and grandchildren will tell to theirs long after we all pass on. It is the story of people who lived in a land like no other and the terrible monster that devoured them. Not a monster as normally visualized but one even darker and more sinister. It came as hope and wrapped in the light and people who dreamed and hoped were lured to it and mesmerized by it and eventually destroyed by it.
Now these people lived in the most marvelous land that was ever established. It was a land made up of people from all over the planet and people yearned to come and live there. It was a land of milk and honey, peace and prosperity and it's span was from sea to shining sea. It had golden fields of wheat and all who lived there lived in security and peace and all that was done was for the General Welfare of all that lived there and their future posterity.
Honor, integrity, values, family and religious values were at the very core of that nation. It was fierce in battle, yet kind and merciful. However, as time went by these values became distorted by complacency and wealth. All was well for a long time until some unscrupulous types, with their own agenda and ideology came to power. They came to the people as light but underneath it all they spun a dark and deceiving web.
All the while they promised to do what was right for the general welfare of all the citizens of the land. However slowly but surely with each passing day a little piece of prosperity, freedom and the nation was given away. Piece by piece it was dismantled and spread all over the globe to satisfy their dream, their motives, their lust for power and wealth, their ideology. Yes little was left of this once formidable nation but the shell, the exterior. Yet while on the outside it still resembled what it was under it all the decay had started. Yes much like a cancer, it was there and would only show itself once it was too late.
Now many of the citizens never understood this. Outwardly they still had a piece of the dream but like the story says, inwardly it was all gone. They were clinging to what they were and had and never realized it was an empty shell. Yes many tried to warn them but they were complacent in their beliefs. After all it was too radical, unthinkable to comprehend what these people were saying. These were their leaders, elected by them. They said all the right things. They waved the flag, professed God and country, surely not them? Yet their deeds did not add up to what they professed in any way. Even though the majority did not want something they did it anyway. Even though their treaties harmed the nation, the did them anyway. Even though they took oaths, they were not upheld. The law was blatantly ignored except where it favored them. Excessive financial burdens were placed on people and the average people became excessively burdened by it all. Yes and all the while a little more of the nation was chewed up and discarded. That is except for those who still felt comfortable and had and were secure. They walked through life blind to it all. They just never could comprehend how bad it really was. Oh sure they felt it but not to the extent of many.
Yet the signs and symbols of their work, what they had done and failed to do, the fruit of their labor littered the land all about. The empty homes, the unemployed, the broken families littered every city and state and the byways of this great land. Many in office it was alleged were corrupt and many understood this as truth. Yet they clung to hope that it just could not be so.
So they laughed, ridiculed, ignored the warnings. After all it wasn't they that were impacted so how could any of this be true? Then out of the blue the big bear came from the north. It shook the foundations of belief in many a soul. No it can't be, this is not so. All of a sudden the big bear was causing trouble all over the globe and even at their very shores. Certainly they dare not threaten us? We are the most powerful nation in the world.
However, the people never saw that while they had strategic arms their conventional forces were apathetic, insufficient, worn down, depleted in all aspects. They failed to realize their economy was broke, busted, incapable of expanding or supporting another war effort. They were indeed broke, bankrupt. So much so that those corrupt in office started to pass the risk onto the citizens. Private debts were now made the taxpayers burden. All up and down the line the taxpayers became the bearers of debt and risk that had once belonged to private investors. Yet the people persisted in their ways to support these same types. They never understood just what that meant to them financially. They were literally oblivious to it all.
The one sad day, the day of reckoning came upon them. They woke up to terrible news, the economy was in shambles, the military incapable, their nation in disarray and their leaders had no answers. It was the literal end of their nation as they once knew it. They were quite shocked but they had no options. Their children and their posterity were reduced to servitude. Low wages, no future, no hope. Yes all they once had gone. Yes like the great civilizations of history, gone. Gone because people failed to recognize that which was all about them, "The Coming Storm at the Gate".
Yes and now all they had was this story to pass to their posterity. To tell over and over again to their posterity of a once great nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal and that it is no longer. That, as it had been foretold, if it was ever to fall it would never fall from outside but from within. Yes and fell it did from within, never to be any longer what it was.
It joined those great legends of history such as Camelot and Rome. History to be learned and most likely to be repeated in another time and place. So take heed my child that you too do not fall into the same trap as your parents. Learn the signs and symbols all about you. Trust no man. Check his works in what he does and fails to do, not what he presents externally, or how sweet the talk. Beware of the wolf in sheep's clothing and do not buy the book by its cover. Perhaps, just perhaps you may wind up with a different end?
Written for the record of history that provides the truth. Did this nation wake up or did this nation fall? History will provide the answer.
Robert T. Melaccio Sr. 2008 Copyright ©2008 Robert Melaccio Sr. |
