John Richcreek
By John Richcreek
Guest columnist
We must agree and accept that a plague is rampaging across this planet toward another “dark ages” when in 476 the Roman Empire collapsed by lack of culture and didn’t recover until around 800 with the Italian Renaissance.
Human brains were not allowed to think during those years, and culture was reduced to chanting in ceremonies led by various assumed leaders garbed with robes and crowns performing anti-thought ritualistic acts.
Of course, here in the U.S.A., we are leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the world as this plague dominates our political system. The actions of representatives we vote into office often bear little or no resemblance to their responsibility to act in accord with our aims.
Washington, D.C., must be a highly contagious area for this disease is rampant in all branches of the federal government — the executive branch, Supreme Court and Congress. State and local governments also suffer from this same malaise.
Several areas of the continental U.S.A. also are highly infected but are mostly concentrated among the East and West coasts and major cities, such as Chicago. Amazingly, the disease has skipped small communities located in the middle and most of the western states where common sense still exists — to some extent.
In the pioneering days of our nation up to and including those of Abraham Lincoln, voters assumed and guarded their voting responsibilities with zest, and participation was always nearly 100%. Today, the voting rate is at a very dismal percentage despite the easily available polling sites, free transportation often provided by various civic clubs and mail-in ballots for handicapped or elderly voters.
One major cause for this alarming decline is the destruction of the ballot’s worth by granting children the right to vote while medical science has long proven that adulthood, the age of reason, begins when the brain is fully developed and responsible actions performed is not achieved until the age of 21 at least or later if you include politicians and congressmen.
Faced with this conundrum, the adult voter rightly feels their ballot is most likely canceled by the vote from, male or female, a child or a freeloading bum, or a senility confused oldster and therefore meaningless.
Some of this voter apathy can be overcome by restoring the voter age to 21 (or higher for the “Z” generation), limit the adult voter to taxpaying citizens to fix the freeloading adult bum problems. All such measures will of course require congressional actions, from the same group that caused the problems in the first place so we can kiss any cure goodbye. In fact, today’s congresses would most likely lower the voting age to puberty and give the bums tax-free guaranteed income.
Written in stone are histories of a culture failed by bad parenting and the following is such a story.
Mom: “Isn’t he cute? He dressed himself as a king. I’m going to show him off to the neighborhood. What are you going to do this month?”
Dad: “Well, I’ve got a new stone coming, and I don’t want it messed up like that last one where the workers carved a lion with a human face and set my pyramid schedule back another three months, like when you added another six rooms to your list. In addition to the new stone arriving, I’ve another 20,000 crew arriving to replace those who just seem to disappear as the project progressed. From the staff to the lowly peons, you just can’t get good help anymore. It seems I have to supervise 24/7, but I’m planning to be back in two months.”
When Dad returned, he asked, “What did the neighbors say about our young son’s ability to dress himself as a king?”
Mom: “They all praised and applauded our King Tut Tut.”
Dad: “That’s great, and to save the chiseling work and time, I’ll shorten our family name to just King Tut, and with all his little keepsakes, he will have to have his own room in our new pyramid.”
John Richcreek is a resident of Seymour.