CONFLICT

AS A SOCIETY, conflict has us in the process of fracturing along every conceivable line. The wheels are not so quietly coming off. It's been a great run but the end is around the corner. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not a "Chicken Little" kind of guy. I'm a realist. What was it he said? "You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows." Well it's howling! Are they slaughtering each other like chickens in certain darker parts of your city while they're all living high off the hog in the lighter parts? That's classic, world wide conflict. What about downtown? It's getting hard to tell if the bums are preying on people with money or visa versa. Have you seen that new game show where the they hook the husband up to a lie detector and ask him if he'd cheat on his wife if he thought he could get away with it? He is forced to answer with the wife sitting there looking! They both win money if he tells the truth and lose if he lies. They're in a "damned if they do/damned if they don't" situation and the audience loves it! How's that for conflict? It almost has a predatory flavor to it.

THERE'S ANOTHER MORE silent form of conflict. The kind inside. The kind that comes upon you in the night. It's the difference between you when you're being looked at and you when you're alone. The true measure of character is what you do when you think no one's looking. It's the inner conflict your boss feels when he's at work playing the professional and then finds himself cruising the streets on the other side of town looking for a whore. It's the inner conflict mother's get when they sit their children in front of the television rather than read them a story because they're physically tired from working to pay the daycare bill. You're trying to be who you are while the world around you is trying to mill you like wheat. It's when what reflects back at you when you're with other people disturbs you and you wonder what it all means. It's a feeling of impending danger in your gut telling you this is only the start . You're instincts are alerting you that you are the malignant intruder in your life. That your way of understanding is the true enemy.

THE VIOLENCE HAS percolated down into our societal DNA altering our Republic's identity. A Frankenstien monster walks among us. Generations of conflict has introduced division to our culture. We have arrived at the season of reaping the fruit of what we have sown. The national monkey has climbed up the pole and is now showing it's ass. The hoof beats of destruction are bearing down on us as we whistle through the graveyard of huberus to proud to embrace our personal challenges. We stagger through the darkness having robbed ourselves of our national, moral compass. We shouldn't be surprised. The fatal flaw, even from the origin, when the organic documents of our society were being crafted, has been in our failure to embrace the ideals upon which this Republic was founded. In the end - we will mourn the fact that we had it made but for our inability to look into our brother's and sister's eyes and see the image of God reflected back at at us. Instead, we couldn't resist the temptation to sell each other out for the short end money. Peace and Love - Citizen 1