Where the Sidewalk Ends

Down through history, there have been countless acts of quiet courage - acts requiring a most difficult moral choice and the willful avoidance of taking the easy way out- of which we can hope to learn only in the next life. Our ignorance does not diminish their significance or the admiration we owe those who performed the acts. Sometimes, years after the fact, we gain a glimpse of such selfless deeds.

During the second world war, the Allied leaders demanded unconditional surrender. This policy resulted in many thousands of needless deaths on both sides. Many of their own military leaders and advisers counselled against such a policy, but the civilian leaders weren't the ones bleeding. They knew only vindictive hatred of the enemy.

This is especially regrettable as there was from 1942 on, a secret movement among many of Germany's military commanders to seek surrender and eliminate Hitler if the allies' demands were less than 'unconditional'. 

Both Roosevelt and Churchill refused to even acknowledge such  an underground movement existed and refused to allow American and British intelligence to contact or acknowledge such a movement.

Over 7000 German men and women involved with this effort were butchered by the Gestapo between 1942-1945, usually hung by piano wire and left to die a slow, painful death or shot summarily without an opportunity to bid farewell to loved ones.

One, Claus von Stauffenberg ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claus_von_Stauffenberg )  is known to many thanks to his portrayal by Tom Cruise in the movie Valkyrie. 

His motivation can be summed up in the last recorded words of a fellow conspirator who eluded the hangman's noose with a bullet to the brain.

"A man's moral worth is established only at the point where he is prepared to give his life for his convictions."  General Henning von Tresckow

I was reminded of such quiet acts of courage the other night while watching a great "B" movie and classic film noire, Where the Sidewalk Ends http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_the_Sidewalk_Ends
The protagonist , played by Dana Andrews, is faced with a difficult moral choice at the end of the movie. While not deadly in its implications, the situation presents a choice between, on the one hand, being acknowledged  a hero and winning the girl , and on the other, admitting to accidentally killing someone and going to prison and possibly losing the girl.

Today, his choice would be a simple one for our corrupt society to make, and his final action would generate guffaws from the ignorant among us.

Yet there was a time when such quiet acts of courage were not laughed at except by the evil ones, but applauded by everyday, morally aware people. I'd like to think there are enough such morally upright people left in our country. Perhaps the next election cycle will reveal whether we - us once great Americans - still have the stuff of greatness about us, the willingness to perform quiet acts of courage and choose the morally correct way, regardless of what sacrifice it entails.

We are where the sidewalk ends and beyond the curb yawns the great abyss, where lie all the collapsed great civilizations of the past moldering in moral decay.

Do we have the will...the energy...the moral courage to make that great leap of faith and avoid the abyss?

Going to Hell in a Handcart

I have always enjoyed viewing The Garden of Earthly Delights, a painting by the 15th century artist Hieronymous Bosch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus_Bosch.  The good Bosch was actually Dutch and an astute student of human nature and all the depravity contained therein. He was able to portray the results of Original sin along with that sin's offspring, the Seven Deadly sins. The human comedy rolls along on its way to perdition  while we eat, drink and make merry, when we aren't awestruck and stupefied with mouths agape over the latest escapade of some moronic bimbo or a politician caught texting lewd photos of himself to underage women or a very disturbed mother on trial for killing her child...and all the while our culture crumbles in immoral decay and our country drowns in selfish debt and our soldiers die so that Muslim terrorists may someday control foreign lands awash with tent dwellers and black gold.
It would all be terribly funny if it wasn't so just plain terrible.

On top of everything else, we are driven to the abyss by forces mostly unknown to most people. Instead of reporting on all the inanities of the world around us, the entertainments we crave to keep us mentally dulled and oblivious of  the truth, the so called investigative media should focus on the evil that lurches about the globe and its effort to control mankind and in so doing send us into the abyss. Our 'leaders' are anything but. We should be focused on their leaders.
How many of you out there in fantasy land have heard of the Bilderberger group? http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-mainmenu-26/europe-mainmenu-35/7841-awareness-of-bilderberg-cabal-explodes-in-2011 Check it out.
I am afraid we are all too busy exploring the various facets of Original sin's progeny to have time to recognize, much less fight off, the forces of evil that assail us.

Things We Take For Granted

I was sitting outside enjoying the 105 degree heat index, wiping sweat off the back of my neck  and  humming the Lovin' Spoonful's old ditty Summer in the City, you know, Hot time, summer in the city, back of my neck gettin' dirty and gritty...

I had enough and went back inside where my A/C labored to maintain a frigid 70. So much for toughing it. Not like the good old days.

Growing up in the Bronx of the '50s without air conditioning was no big deal. What you never had, you don't miss. Open the windows for a rare breeze ( and some not so rare water bugs ) or turn on a fan if you had one. Wake up in sweat soaked pajamas and take a shower. No big deal. I was nearly thirty before I had a home with air conditioning and ever since would go into a vegetative state if it broke down when needed.  The same with the car. Had one for nearly fourteen years before getting one with A/C. Until then it was roll the windows down and make believe the breeze wasn't steaming. No big deal. Then the car has A/C and if it goes up during the dog days of August I'd run off the road with heat prostration.

The things we never noticed proves ignorance is bliss.

As far as the things we take for granted until they are gone...

The way things are going in our country and the world around us, we will soon be missing the things we take for granted on a much more serious level. Such as liberty.

What with airport invasive security (and government suggestions that such invasive searches be required at train and bus stations) and phone chips that track people and 'security' cameras all over and the government's plans to require all new cars to have a black box to track your gas use and locations and government entities now telling people what they can and cannot eat... well, before you know it we will be implanted with brain chips to control our behavior and probably blow our heads off when we do something big brother doesn't like.

We have been blessed in this country to have something the majority of the human race never had, personal liberty. We have taken it for granted at out own peril. The Bantus in Swaziland and the peasants in Hunan province and the tent dwellers in the Middle East wouldn't know what I'm talking about and don't miss what they never had, but we will.

And perhaps sooner rather than later.