Written by Gary Wonning
I remember standing out in my front yard as a child one evening, I was probably about five or six years old.
At the time I lived in southern Indiana and looking towards the east, I saw Washington D.C. going up in flames. I hardly knew what Washington D.C. was, I had heard it was our nation’s capital, but being as young as I was I didn’t realize what the city stood for.
I just knew our government was in trouble and it seemed as if it was a few years after the turn of the 21st century. It seemed to be really troubling times.
This was about 1950, so it seemed really far off, and I pretty much forgot about it.
Several years later, in the late 80s, I had an opportunity to speak with a very knowledgeable and intuitive lady. Someone who should have been famous, but wasn’t.
She gave me the same information about the coming turmoil, repeating what I had heard in my youth.
I listened to what she had said, but it never really registered how bad it could get, we had just survived the protests of the sixties, how much worse could it be?
She said there would be much rioting and discontent, but it would be confined to the major cities and if we stayed out of them we would be fine.
She said the problems would come from the way the majority of our children had been raised after the sixties, the permissiveness and lack of control many parents had over their kids, and the way American society had forgotten what had made us great.
Wisdom lost through the ages, common sense is no longer common.
Soon after that, I went to a motivational seminar, where Zig Ziglar was speaking, he said the same things, I still didn’t heed the warnings.
Most of us were raised in a different world, we were busier than a one-armed monkey at a flea festival. We raised our kids in that world, but somehow things changed and people forgot or didn’t think it was important to remember any more.
This is how most cultures decline and finally disappear, being taken over by a more barbaric society, until they no longer exist.
I took it with a grain of salt and went about my way as many others had done who had heard the same warnings, after all, our parents and grandparents had been saying the same thing for years, the world was going to hell in a handbasket.
Soon it was the turn of the century, and suddenly, the things I had seen and was told about began coming true.
It seemed chaos was everywhere, no self-control or discipline, no respect for the law, or others, profanity, everything that was right was wrong, and everything that was wrong was right.
Bad behavior became condoned and accepted, anyone who disagreed and remembered the values taught them at a younger age, were condemned and ridiculed.
Suddenly changing things back seemed about as difficult as scratching your ear with your elbow.
The world had been turned upside down, and all the problems of the world somehow seemed to be the fault of the United States.
You hear constantly on the media and from some politicians how horrible a place the United States is, how cruel we are to minorities, the disabled, etc.
I found during my travels, this is not the way the average person across the globe feels, that is only media and political rhetoric, designed to sell ads and garner votes by pandering to humanity’s basic trait, fear.
While in the outback of Australia, I got into a conversation with a nineteen-year-old girl from Switzerland, she couldn’t understand why I would travel somewhere besides America, she made the statement that if she lived in America, she would never leave, in her words,”America has everything a person could ever want or need.”
A few days later, we entered the tiny town of Daly Waters in the Northern Territory. They were celebrating the 4th of July, being appreciative of how the yanks saved them from the Japanese during WW2.
I’ve been on an Italian cruise ship with about 4000 passengers and only about 20% Americans, they sang our national anthem and everyone stood up placed their hands over their heart and sang, giving us a two-minute standing ovation when the song was completed.
Most thinking people appreciate and respect what America has done over the last 200 hundred plus years.
America has endured a lot, and I believe it has a manifest destiny. We would have never become a nation or survived without what George Washington would call, Divine Providence and Divine Intervention.
Fighting against impossible odds, he often gave credit to Divine Intervention for his successes.
Adhering to the basic tenets of our country, the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence and the Ten Commandments we have weathered the many storms that have befallen us.
Now we face a new challenge, maybe the most critical challenge in our history.
Before, the threat to our country has come from without, now it comes from within.
Many have forgotten what made us great as a country or no longer seem to think it is important.
They seem to believe they can do and think as they please, without regard to anyone or anything else.
We have lost our way.
As I soon discovered in my travels, everyone worships God in their own way, that is what our founders wanted, we have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.
We have the God-given right to express our religious beliefs in public or anywhere we chose, not to force them on anyone, but to express them as we see fit, as long as it doesn’t harm someone else, and we respect what others feel, and not infringe on their space.
The Maya, Egyptians, and Aborigines of Australia were more in tune with their creator than we are today.
Many of the aborigines still are, even though some of them have become radicalized and developed an entitlement attitude because of what the Australian government has done to try and help them.
All three cultures have regressed, the Egyptians went from calling their leaders, Gods, To Pharaohs, then kings, and now presidents.
The Maya have all but disappeared as a culture, and the aborigines are slowly dying off and trying to adapt, in the process turning to drugs and alcohol.
I see the same thing in the United States, many here are also turning to drugs and alcohol because they no longer have a spiritual foundation to rely on.
We have a drug epidemic stretching from Times Square to the cornfields of Indiana.
In an area where the Friday night entertainment was a basketball game, now several people wind up in the hospital from a drug overdose. It happens weekly.
It doesn’t even make the news anymore, it’s not uncommon for the emts to run out of narcon.
Earlier this year, the morgue in Dayton Ohio ran out of room, an airline pilot for a major airline overdosed with his wife while their young child watched.
The list goes on and on, there seems to be no end to it.
The bad behavior, lack of respect, a sense of entitlement, profanity, and people sit at home watching mindless TV while ignoring their churches, social, fraternal and civic organizations.
In spite of it all, I still believe there are many good people out there, I think the majority of Americans still have their heads on straight, their voices get silenced and their cause doesn’t get good TV ratings or sell ads in your local paper.
Many are worried, they see what is going on and feel as helpless as a cow in quicksand.
Over the last several years, America has been fundamentally changed, because of negative influences from many politicians and the media, we have forgotten where we came from and what America once stood for.
But we really can’t blame anyone but ourselves, we could not have been fundamentally transformed if we hadn’t let it happen.
We stood by silently as our country was changed from within, no one or not many even said a word, and few noticed.
Some thought it was wonderful, thinking the world has changed and we need to just go along with the flow.
Many no longer adhere to the Wisdom of Our Ancestors, that knowledge that was once passed down from generation to generation, from time immemorial.
The very things we got so tired of hearing and we swore to never repeat to our descendants, we never wanted to sound like our parents, how wrong we were.
This is how great cultures rise and fall, they become great through their deeds and beliefs, they then reach a pinnacle and begin enjoying the fruits of their labor, allowing decadence to overcome their common sense, becoming a victim of and falling to their own success.
They forget about God and become focused on their own self-importance, until they once again fall into subjugation and poverty, completing the cycle, waiting for someone to save them while forgetting no one will save them if they don’t save themselves.
They forget the spirit of self-sufficiency and self-reliance that enabled them to become successful.
It came upon us slowly, most never even noticed, the stark reality came back to me just a few days ago when a high school friend I hadn’t seen in years remarked that he had noticed it several years ago.
He joined to Air Force out of high school, after he was discharged military service, when at one time it was an honor to serve in the military, and rightfully so, having military experience opened many employment doors and opportunities, he found it hard to get a job in the post Vietnam era if you had served in the military, and once they found you had been to Vietnam, the door closed permanently.
For many, this was the final straw, after having valiantly served and being spit on when coming home, they could now not find a job, our country did a great disservice.
Having finally found employment in the DC area, he began to notice the same people who had lead all the protests in the 60s were now getting high positions in the federal government.
And so it goes today, where once, a military background provided good training, respect, and many essential job skills, they are now looked upon as a detriment, and those in our nation’s government are the very ones who not only then, but now continue to try and bring down our nation.
Today, many have it all wrong, they continuously work to bring down a great nation who has done so much for so many. They continuously look for the negatives brought on by their own personal bad attitudes and a chip on their shoulders.
Many are so mad they could swallow a horned toad backward, but they have no idea what they are mad about.
If you ask them what they are protesting, they can’t tell you. They are just protesting.
Many are looking for personal gain and wealth, siding with those of like mind with an attitude they will somehow rule the world or change things for the better. Little do they realize, that if they form the world and our nation into what they deem a perfect world, they will be the first ones to be killed, and if they live, the world will not be what they had envisioned.
We all know how to fix this, regardless of what we have been told by the media and the left, this is still the greatest nation to have existed on the planet. Americans are still great caring people. Most of us still have a remembrance of the common sense and core values we grew up with, those values taught to us by our parents and elders.
Those values that are despised by those in the media and extremist groups.
If you have forgotten, all you need to do to remember is to read the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and the writings of our founding fathers.
Then look deep inside you, past all the things you have been lead to believe by others, look into your heart and you find your answer as to what you need to do,
All knowledge comes from within.
The future is now, it’s your decision as to how this all turns out.
Remember in 1960, Nikita Khrushchev stood before the UN, took off his shoe and beat it on the podium as he stated, ” your grandchildren will be raised as a communist. “
Gary has been a writer/photographer for over thirty years. Specializing in nature and landscape photography, as well as studying native cultures.
His travels have taken him to most of the United States, as well as Australia, Belize, Egypt and the Canary Islands.
He has studied the Mayan culture of Central America as well as the aborigines of
Australia. Photography has given him the opportunity to observe life in various parts of the world.
He has published several books about his adventures.
For more information, please consult his website,www.journeysthrulife.com.
Your comments are welcome
, looking east and seeing our nation’s capital in flames.
had a free ticket to the white house because of her husband, her views and last but not least because she was a woman.
, Egypt and the Canary Islands.
, Belize, Egypt and the Canary Islands.
Thinking Between the Lines 