My Leaders' Infidelities

Dissatisfaction, sadness and despair are not reasons to become unfaithful. I read these words in a Nora Roberts book. She is an author I really love and admire, but I am not so sure that this statement is a true one. She was speaking about a marriage and about how a father had used these reasons to break his marriage vows to bed another woman. In the mouth of her character, the child-now-grown surviver of such a marriage, why not just end the relationship? Break it clean instead of cheating, lying, tolerating and just existing.

I think about my government, the leaders of that government, both the ones out front and the ones behind the scenes, and wonder as a child of this country, how long they will keep living with their infidelity? A long time ago, these leaders became disenchanted with the rules and mores of our country. They saw that they were not able to accomplish their goals and dreams if they had to be bound by those rules.

They put in place secret societies that promised to protect their members from exposure in the event a member's lawbreaking became public. They called these societies important names like the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service and the National Security Agency. But, they were just secret societies, formed by a group of cheating husbands to lie for each other in case of need. They could not let the country know that they had abandoned their promise to defend the Constitution so they could make deals with organized crime and criminal businessmen.

The leaders said to themselves, we need to keep our plans secret, we cannot let the public know because they will not understand. We cannot let our allies and especially our enemies know our plans.

By saying this our leaders abandoned the idea of a free and open society. They walked away from a nation of law and stepped on the trust of their people. Another Nora character says, “People have their reasons for the damnedest things in my experience.”

Before a national leader can even be sworn into office, he or she is let in on some of the secrets of the secret societies and is expected to acknowledge a continued allegiance to them. A congress member is sworn to secrecy and may not expose the crimes of past and present leaders. The President is expected to continue the policy of keeping quiet and even approving of new crimes. All the cabinet officers are pledged to allegiance to the societies and not to the flag.

This is not right! We as a people have been violated. Our leaders regularly sneak out to screw around. If one of them should develop a conscience in some area of their actions, that leader is blackmailed and pressured into going along with the societies hidden party politics, and not with the way of open argument and discourse. These secret groups have grown in power with each election since World War One. They decide who will lead and where we will be lead. Banks and companies run by members are now too big to fail. Health care and even minimum financial safety nets are gutted even though the vast majority of the people in open election demanded otherwise.

I fear the people of my country, like the betrayed wife who has long known of her husband's infidelities put up with them and him in the hopes of somehow saving her marriage, have finally come to their senses. Now, we discover whether the divorce will be amicable or hate-filled.    

Let's Flip the societal Clock

The age of consent is too high.  In European and North American cultures of the 20th and 21st centuries, marriages are contracted at age 20 or older. This is an absolutely ridiculous situation caused by the aberration of great wars. In Europe many men were destroyed by the two world wars. Surviving females with children posed a severe threat to the economies of their countries. Legislation was enacted to treat the symptom, single mothers, and not the disease, war. The most common laws restricted the marriage age in an upward fashion by raising the age of consent.  In North America, the Civil War resulted in the same kinds of laws being passed at even earlier dates.
Raising the marriage ages for both men and women did lead to an apparent reduction in single and unwed mothers. Unfortunately the reduction was short lived and most likely the result of an increasing balance of the sexes between and after these major conflicts. Still we are stuck with elevated legal marriage ages.
I said that this situation is ridiculous and here are my reasons.
Both males and females show almost no signs of infertility in their teenage years. Children born to parents, when both are teenagers, show few if any birth defects. But in both females and males there is a marked increase in infertility after the late teens. There have been many studies correlating the age of the parents with the number of birth defects. In every study, the number of birth defects rises significantly in each decade after the late teens. Men, in fact,  will contribute greater numbers of defective sperm and resultant birth defects in their children for each year they age past their teens. Their children will have lower intelligence, more mental illness, retardation and autism. A fertile old man is definitely a danger to society. Younger fathers and mothers are much more beneficial.
Children from the age of twelve show  responsible and mature behavior in societies that grant them adult legal rights. Societies that raise the age of adult legal status experience increased juvenal deliquency and antisocial behaviors in young adults and more problems with older adult social participation.  Many studies have been done that indicate the truth of these statements, although there  is no consensus of why.  It should be obvious that lowering the age of adult responsibility is beneficial to society.
Most education programs in the USA, I am not able to comment on European programs, demonstrate reduced participation by the students during the teenage years. All sorts of explanations are given for the high dropout rates and lowered achievement scores and each generation of teachers has been tasked with improving the curriculum. It is very likely that behaviorally and mentally capable students are negatively affected by being treated as irresponsible children. They simply stop relating to controlling teachers and a repressive environment.
With just these three acknowledgments, I suggest that we as a society give adult rights to twelve year olds with the right to marry. I further suggest that all adults over the age of 25 be required to use condoms and other birth control methods in every sexual encounter.

 

First Sargent of the Marine Corps about DADT Repeal

 At a base in South Korea, Sgt. Major Barrett told Marines 

 “Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution is pretty simple,”  “It says, ‘Raise an army.’ It says absolutely nothing about race, color, creed, sexual orientation.

“You all joined for a reason: to serve,” he continued. “To protect our nation, right?”

“Yes, sergeant major,” Marines replied.

“How dare we, then, exclude a group of people who want to do the same thing you do right now, something that is honorable and noble?” Sgt. Maj. Barrett continued, raising his voice just a notch. “Right?”

Sgt. Maj. Barrett then described conversations with U.K. troops, who saw a similar ban lifted a decade ago, with little disruption. And to drive the point home, he produced a pocket copy of the Constitution.

“Get over it,” he said. “We’re magnificent, we’re going to continue to be. … Let’s just move on, treat everybody with firmness, fairness, dignity, compassion and respect. Let’s be Marines.”