Ten Years After

Today {March 10} would have been my Dad's 86th birthday.


I often wonder what he would think about the world as it is nowadays.  Hell, just in the last ten years since his passing virtually every aspect has changed.  In February of 2002, we were just getting ready to flex our military muscles in the Mid East.  9/11 was only 5 months previous, and there was retribution to be meted out.  The economy was in decent shape - unemployment was about 5.4%; interest rates were low; gasoline was under $2 a gallon.  The "Dot-Com boom" was having a smaller second helping - Google was an up-and-coming novelty; MySpace was brand new; and YouTube was beginning both a digital video revolution, and increased demand for higher-speed basic internet service.


20 mpg {or less} SUV's were all the rage, the bigger the better.  Laptops were coming right along, and a 40-meg RAM on a PC was pretty high-powered stuff.  Cell phones were just starting to morph into mini-PC's; the iPod was a year or two away.  Politics was pretty much business-as-usual, with the debate centered mainly on protecting Social Security, and improving educational options for those who wanted something more than the Public School option.  Fannie May / Freddie Mac, the wildly spendthrift 110th Congress, Barry Hussein Obummer, huge bailouts and "stimulus," the rise of MoveOn.Org and the Tea Party were all still in the near future.


There was little talk of Government handouts; "entitlements" were still a miniscule part of our annual national budget.  The national debt was still quite manageable, just barely in the low billion-level.  And there was a good deal of optimism in the air - we expected to win the "War on Terror" in short order; we thought our exports were heading into boom times; the economy was growing well; and we had a decent amount of respect on the international stage.  The changes to all of this began around 2004 with the collapse of the second Dot-com "bubble," and the first real spike in oil prices as the Mid East situation slowly ground into stagnation.  The Election cycle of that year was a harbinger of things to come - 2004 was the year of "Swift boating," and all manner of yellow-journalism, spearheaded by none other than Dan Blather - er, Rather of CBS, and his manufactured "Bush draft-dodging" documents.


Little did we know that much, much worse was to come; or that the Left would not only vault to power again, but would also wreak much havoc that hadn't been seen since the 1920's and '30's.  TARP, the demise of GM's Pontiac Motor Division, the Freddie/Fannie debacle, $100+ for a barrel of oil, double-digit unemployment, an economy literally choking to death under ceaseless regulations.  All this, and a lot more being spun to death and deliberately mis-reported {if not ignored altogether} by a suddenly "empowered" Media who gleefully abandoned principles and objectivity across the board.  2012 doesn't remotely resemble 2002, no matter how you look at it.  It's not a simple case of "time marches on, change is inevitable."


No, my dear old Dad would be utterly dumbfounded by the nasty spirit that permeates the air today.  On the one side you have the Lefty "entitlement" crowd, eager to steal from those who have, and bring this country down in general; and on the other side you have those of us Conservative types who are actively trying to restore prosperity, decorum and order to a badly-damaged national psyche.  A Herculean task to be sure - but not an impossible one.  The jury is still out on whether some of the damage done already is irreparable, but one can always hope.  The Right will  still be dogged every step of the way by the Media, but Media credibility is sinking fast thanks to their own lack of principles, or even simple self-discipline.


It'll be a challenging future, no doubt.  I'll meet it head-on of course, but I do miss not having Dad around to talk to.  He could have been a great comfort many times just in the last five years alone.  But his memory is still alive and well within me, and always will be.  He'd shake his head at many things today, and get a kick out of a few others - just like I do now.  Now that my Mom has joined him in the Afterlife, it's up to my brother and me to carry the family forward, as carefully as possible.  Hopefully we'll do as good a job as my Dad did with us.


Happy Birthday, Dad.  
I Love you and miss you terribly.


More shortly.............