August 2025

8/18/24 9:27pm

As long as life seems to continue in a somewhat “normal” manner, then people will continue to believe things are normal.

Everyday, people still go to work, kids go to school and parishioners still attend churches. Banks are still open, the post office delivers mail, and our electricity and natural gas are still on. Gasoline is still coming out of pumps, the grocery stores still have food. The hospitals are still taking patients, and the drug stores are still filling prescriptions.
Police are still patrolling the streets, firemen responding to fires. Everything is still somewhat normal.

But…little signs are starting to creep in, that our current normal will soon be a thing of the past.

People’s attitudes are different. There’s more selfishness than selflessness. Education is on the wane. Almost every state is providing less funding for schools now than before 2008. Wage growth is stagnant. Even though unemployment is below 4%, wages are lower than before 2008. Why? Companies simply don’t….want…to give raises. There’s no longer a middle class, there’s workers and there’s owners.
Jobs are there, but you may have to work two.

Religion is on the decline. The percentage of money given by religious organizations to the needy is down about 50% since 1990.

Most telling is the almost eery 50/50 division of cultural and political attitudes. Most distressing is the “our side vs your side” mentality, with little to no room for discussion or compromise. The notion that people with different beliefs cannot even have a civil discussion is unbelievable. Yet, when I read comments on some posts, many days I see statements that go beyond anything I have seen in anger, threats of violence, dirty and profane language….vulgarity beyond belief. Things that you surely think would be taboo. Yet they are not.

So, things are not normal….even though they may seem that they are. I have no answers for how to steer the ship back towards a more even keel. I wish I did.