Honorable Things

These days its harder to find the things we can consider honorable. I say things because it isn’t just people that should be honorable, but it also includes entities, such as businesses that should be held to a higher standard of honor. Politics has become something less than honorable, if not downright disrespectful. I’m not sure why anyone would want to subject themselves to such a profession when there isn’t anything you’ll do that will be seen as honorable. Many professions in life that we always had some concept as honorable are constantly berated by the press or are guilty of unspeakable things. Certainly, the majority of people in jobs like teacher, principle, banker, lawyer, dentist, doctor, etc. are free of the scrutiny self-derived from their actions but we are seeing more and more cross the imaginary line civility has drawn, and as the old saying goes about one bad apple, tends to make the entire bushel bad. We have less heroes and we have a generation that loves to speak out but doesn’t want anything to do with correcting it other than maybe by voting. If they voice their opinion on social media, then they feel they have done their part to combat whatever it is they were outspoken on. Having marches and telling people it really hurts your heart to see people take advantage of others for their own gains is not fixing the problem. It is becoming common day for young people to see criminals become leaders. They have a complete understanding of child pornography and inappropriate contact by teachers or those that have influence over the young. They see people taking rights away one law at a time but consistently in doing so without recourse continue to be an example of no good. Our world has become sick, and we are mainstreaming it with our expectations that it will happen daily, and we’ll continue to allow it because it’s easier to look at your phone, have a two second burst of thought and scroll on to find something else of interest. No action taken other than self-indulgence in a silent world of social media, not justice.

I recently read a book written by a woman who had been hired into a job she self-created in her first interview with a well-known social media site. She proceeded to outline how this company over and over again was only concerned with profits and their manipulation of their subscribership and eventually politics and world interaction. I was so sick with the information outlined that I deleted two of the popular sites and deactivated the other. I didn’t delete it yet and only deactivated to allow myself to get used to not looking at it. After Christmas, I will re-activate it to continue to download my four thousand or so pictures. I also decided that my world has become smaller as I advance further into my senior hood and that so many I’m friends with either disappoint me or have lives that just don’t matter to me anymore. It’s not that I don’t care about them, I just don’t need to know every type of coffee they drink or where they go to travel. I’m as guilty as anyone thinking that people care what I have to say, do, or feel. Frankly, my blog itself certainly has that indicated expectation thinking people may care what I have to say. However, that is not why I write blogs posts, the vast majority of reason is simply to free my mind from issues. Why a blog though? Couldn’t I do the same thing just writing it down on paper? The answer is yes, but the added benefit for me as I get older is to exercise my mind, by typing and thinking at a faster pace due to the fact that I can type faster than I can write. As I have seen nothing honorable in social media and their suggestive information and proposed friendships, I choose to walk away and will depend on people to either send me an email, call, or leave me alone to live my life as I see fit.

Is there anything honorable with politicians these days? Christian Nationalism divided hate speech, ideology division not only growing but watching our president act like a petulant child and name call and react with hurtful action when he feels wronged and lately, we saw it simply stem from an ad run during a world series game showing Ronald Reagan speak against tariffs and the use of them, so he cut off trade negotiations and imposed and additional ten percent. This moronic blowhard has the thinnest skin in a job that requires you to have the thickest. This weeks elections were evident of peoples distrust and fed up attitude with this administration and hopefully will be indicative of elections to come in 26’ and 28’. With Trump off the ballot, maybe people will turn out and vote more sensibly and not feel empowered that a crook and a hillbilly Harvard lawyer VP will not be the futures mainstream choice. There is nothing in our daily lives more sickening to our hearts than politics. We wake to see what was posted on Truth Social at two in the morning from the White House toilet. I can’t wait for this to change almost as much as I’d like to lose twenty pounds by Christmas. Both may be impossible.

I don’t remember living in Colorado and hearing about teachers and police officers being arrested for inappropriate behavior with minors. It seems weekly in Texas, and I can think only that as a hugely Red State with leadership under indictment, under investigation, or convicted for their actions and because it is so common to hear, that people must feel empowered to do whatever their evilest of indulgences lead them to do. These are people our youth are looking at as leaders of our community and the ones providing direction, but all it is doing is lowering the standard of honorability, if not throwing honor out the window.  Wearing t-shirts that give honor to a criminal president candidate and idiot VP running mate only solidifies the moronic values and passes them on to our children. These are the same people that react so astonished at the actions of people marching peacefully and speaking out and that these are the people ruining this country. I’ve never seen a more hypocritical state of people as I see from people in Texas. It sickens me because I always wanted to come back to Texas because I thought it was the central focus of good-hearted people. There still may be good in them and maybe they’ll begin to think for themselves again and call out the less than honorable people they elect into positions of influence and pigs will fly as they say.

We need to find honor again. I have coffee daily with my dad, the most honorable person I know. It resets my mind every day to what should be good in my heart and mind. Social media is a scourge on our society, and I simply wish it would go away. If it never existed, maybe we wouldn’t have people that can’t put their phones down while driving and every five minutes checking to see if someone gave them a like so that they get a shot of self-worth merely because someone gave them a thumbs up. Our values have vanished, and we live in a five-minute world of doing the right thing but often for the wrong reasons. I liked it better when I didn’t care what others thought of me. I hope to get back to self-respect and a more focused foot forward to doing the right thing. I don’t know if others consider me to be honorable, but I believe I am. I may be over critical at times and Jen says it’s because I’m becoming a grumpy old man, but if I’m grumpy about things it should mean I care and that these things are causing me to be unhappy not that honor doesn’t exist inside me. Maybe I should work on that perception though, because if that’s what they see, they aren’t seeing the real me and what I want them to think of me if I cared what they thought.