ODD ENDS...
Compounding the horrible pedophile history of the Roman Catholic Church is the ongoing and growing revelation about how the Milwaukee archdiocese and other areas of the Church have moved around their cash and assets to avoid losing them to the sex cases rampant through Catholicism and the priests. Almost monthly now we learn about new charges being made against the Church and their clergy. And we must assume that there are many more to come. As with organizations and individuals who hold themsevles up as interpretors and judges of moral behavior, too often these same groups and individuals have their own serious moral flaws.
The Roman Catholic Church is not the only one posing as moral and religious leaders with hidden cracks in their own morality and behavior. Think of the current charlatans trying to give us moral judgments, while hiding their own moral failures. How do these men measure up in your eyes in this regard: Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and the rest of the right-wing moralizers? Oh, how these people love to tell us what is moral, ethical, and righteous! John Edwards adultery was another example of a leader with hidden sins, but at least he didn't pass judgments on others and hold himself up as a saint as multi-divorced Rush and Newt have. Do you know about Karl Rove's marital "fidelity"?
Why do all the so-called experts on economics always choose to ignore this simple fact: in order to grow and have a prosperous economy, we need workers to be paid a decent wage so they can themselves purchase the goods and services offered by employers? That is a basic requirement of a successful capitalist state.
The head injuries especially related to professional football, and the long-lasting effects thereof, were a very long time coming to being realized. How much was hidden by the NFL owners themselves? Have you seen and heard from some of the sad sports legends who are suffering serious after-effects from multiple head trauma? It is very sad. Even now, the NFL has to be pulled kicking and screaming into doing enough to deal with this medical history. Many of the former players, injured of not, are forming alliances to force action to be taken so those most injured can be taken care of and medically serviced.
The way important news is presented on commercial television is getting worse and worse. And in the process we are creating a generation of Americans who are politically, socially, and economically ignorant. And the current state of American politics is an example of this. Greedy capitalists love to have the people in ignorance because it is then easier to take advantage of them and sell them lies and deceptions. American culture is in great danger of slipping back to the 18th and 19th centuries. The rights that were so slow in coming, and so hard-fought to achieve, are being taken away by a greed culture that sees only short-term profits and a philosophy that says, "I've got mine, too bad about you." Women are especially in jeopardy and that is one major reason women are voting for progressives, while male chauvanists choose the right-wing and Republican backward-looking policies.
