American Strength

Given the job-description, there is very little Americans, organized or singly, cannot perform. The generation that won the good fight in World War II has paid testimony to the "can-do" history of striving against the odds against them, wherever on the globe they fought. Take a division of marines or a task force operating with air support and we can win wars any time, anywhere. Stresses afflict troops kept too-long deployed or sent to a front line without proper support. At home, we work harder and dream our special dreams -- when work is available. We gripe about taxes and a "Mickey-Mouse" government, but we involuntarily stiffen our spines and make the preparation for rendering a salute when our flag goes by. Our ingenuity and our force of optimistic attitude of hoping have defined what has truly been described as the American character.

We are beset indeed by forces beyond our control. Multinational corporations out-source American jobs because foreigners work more cheaply, and a family head is out of income, far beyond his control. His government offers unemployment insurance and a chance of "re-training, but will never chide or work with the corporate greedy ones to worry less about improving the bottom line and more about job security. Until this recent decade, or two, this has been a hallmark attitude, to which we ought to return without the chaos sometimes practiced by unions.

Speculators and their ilk bring the cost of a barrel of oil to unheard of levels, unrelated to the classic reasons of supply and demand. We citizens have lost confidence in our leaders in congress and the Bush administration because they offer old and untried "solutions" which offer little more than empty promises of ridding us of our "dependence on imported oil." One wonders why we don't pay official attention to the solid comments of T. Boone Pickens, the oil billionaire from Texas, who has other ideas for energy production beyond fossil fuels. That tough old bird ought to be appointed "energy czar," and bidden to help us save ourselves.

We wonder at the blather and the media analysis and hype as daily fare for the next hundred days. Which of the two candidates will persuade us to let them take the helm and provide power to the individuals who may use it to achieve the better life here in America?