I work with a really good person who was my supervisor, who, when faced with a difficult situation, would gather the facts, then face them with the statement: "It is what it is." Whatever the fallout or changes that would be necessitated by the facts, no matter how ugly, would have to be faced head on, no hiding or dressing the pig, as it were. It is what it is.
It is time, in our country, to call things as they are.
Our former president was a law-breaker and drug user before he was elected. How he got so many people to not only ignore, but to actively deny a fact is beyond comprehension. When I was in Washington, DC in the late 1980s, when Geo. H. W. Bush was president, it was common knowledge that George Jr., as he was called then, was "holding court" in town at any of many late night joints, and that cocaine was certainly involved. Secret Service was aware, as were the First Family. He had his driver's license revoked for driving under the influence, a conviction no other candidate has on record. How could this not have been germane?
Today, many, many politicians are yelling about this and that, but then demand that no one peak into their own records or make them accountable for their own personal actions, such as being the beneficiaries of Medicare payments, while at the same time proclaiming they have no use for the system and want it removed. Many politicians seek to send troops to fight in the Forever War, but a quick look into their own history shows no military service, or, if they are old enough, enlistment in their state National Guard, which at the time was a legal method of avoiding the draft (G.W. used it as well to avoid service in Viet Nam). Often there were long waiting lists to join up, so strings had to be pulled. As soon as the war was over and their term was up, most of these weekend warriors hung up their reluctant part-time spurs.
It is what it is.
There are good people that try to do what they think is best for the nation, and those people work tirelessly to that end. John McCain is one such person, never shying away from informed, reasoned discourse, but also refusing to engage in the uninformed senseless personal assassination of another honorable man's character that his political party attempted to engage in. Unlike G.W., John McCain sat in the cockpit of an A-4 on the forward catapult of the USS Forrestal when that ship caught on fire, one of the errant missiles from that conflagration striking the very plane he was in. The next week, he continued his missions from another carrier, and was shot down, to spend the rest of the war in a POW camp being tortured.
Men like him are hopelessly outnumbered, however, by hypocrites whose soul aim is to improve their own personal financial position in life, even at the cost of the nation as a whole. It seems the Entitlement Culture has reached its zenith, enclosing even the very pinnacle of government itself these days. Our elected officials seem to feel they have a right to wealth, power, benefits that the rest of us as normal citizens are denied. This entitlement phenomenon was one of the drivers behind the French Revolution, and all its horror and bloodshed. I would think, in a modern world and an enlightened democracy, we could retake our government from the elite without have to resort to that.
Crow
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