The Times They Are Achanging (Lyrics by Bob Dylan)

The times they are achanging! I grew up listening to Bob Dylan, Ritchie Havens, Peter, Paul and Mary, Styx, Kansas and a whole lot of musicians playing on their acoustic guitars in coffee houses. I also listened to John F. Kennedy, LBJ, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. I even tried drinking some "Billy" beer once.

In my young life, television was still in its' infancy. I mean we only had three channels to choose from, CBS, NBC and ABC. That was it. Our generation got its' point of view from a black and white television with news anchors that everyone listened to because there were no other choices, or a black and white newspaper whose political affiliations were well known by all. We watched the Kent State massacre on a black and white TV. We watched the Watts riots and all the lies from Nixon on a black and white TV. Actually, around 1972, my neighbor's family got a big, huge color television built into a console cabinet. My father did get a color TV, albeit, a smaller one, around 1975. It was really something to be able to watch those three channels in color.

Now, we have the option of hundreds of channels on satellite or on cable TV. The problems are different but the basic tenets of the problems we had in the 1960's and early 1970's are no different. The more we change, the more we stay the same! The patterns associated with the problems facing the country during my young years are the same patterns we see today. The faces have changed but the problems still remain. There are different names for party loyalists that people associate themselves with today-i.e. Progressives and Conservatives, instead of Democrats and Republicans, because a Progressive can be either Republican or Democrat, like John McCain, a Republican and the Blue Dog Democrats who vote on more of a moderate or centrist ticket, especially on items like defense and some Blue Dog Democrats have even come out against the Health Care Bill. America has touted the fact that we are a democratic nation, or a nation whose politics are based on a democracy, but we still only have two parties. It helps to know if the people are Progressives or Conservatives. But, in a true democracy, all the different types of people should be represented. Israel has come closest, I think, to what a true democracy should look like. They have around 18 different parties that represent everyone from conservative, orthodox religious people to the parties representing the Arab voters who live in Israel as citizens.

The problems we are facing now, not just as a nation, but worldwide, will transcend political affiliations. There are people in the world today, just as there were earlier in history, who actually want to kill and wipe out whole blocs of civilization just because they are of a different religion or faith. Whole swaths of the Middle East could soon be under the direction of a Caliphate, that is not as far-fetched as some people may think and Great Britain could actually fall under that direction with their failed experiment in multi-culturalism.

The times they are achanging and if we are going to survive as a country, we have to do, as a country what any household would do if faced with similar financial problems. We are going to have to tighten the financial belts, cut unnecessary spending, and find ways to bring in more money for the coffers (in order to pay down the debt, if that is even possible due to the staggering amount of debt). America is going to have to pick itself up, dust itself off and start doing what Americans have always done better than any other country in history-start making things that will benefit society as a whole. I remember that we used to call the students who wore pocket protectors and carried around $400.00 calculators, "Sweats", while the rest of us took History, English and Bible courses. Now those same "Sweats" who know how to get the square root of a number, are changing the way we communicate with each other; they are involved in some of the most far-reaching scientific experiments the world has ever seen, including the transportation of molecules from one location to another. How far off is it going to be before we actually use the phrase, "Beam me up!"

Mankind has always had the opportunity to annihilate themselves, or create a world in which we all try to make things a little better during our lifetimes. Not everyone will make a million dollars; nor will we all come up with the next "Facebook"; but, all of us can help our neighbors, or our family, or our friends when they need a helping hand to do something, even if it is a small something. That small action is what I mean by making this a better world. By choosing to do something all on your own that is a good thing, you can create waves in the pond of life and your small contribution may help someone you don't even know find a way to cure cancer, or make a car that doesn't need gasoline that can go further than 60-80 miles; or maybe just put a smile on the face of someone who was crying; that is the kind of world I want to live in! Not one in which one section of the population wants to wipe out and kill another section just because they may have different ideas about how to live their lives. There is a chance we may kill each other off for some stupid reason, or even by mis-communication, but if there is a chance for the individual to make a contribution, no matter how small it may seem that makes this world a place in which laughter is still heard in a hundred years, than we will be on the right track.