WHERE ARE THE ADULTS?

by Ruth A. Sheets

Paying attention to the news lately has been a trial .  We hear/see how this group has attacked that group and performed atrocities that are nearly unspeakable, but of course, they speak them. 

The commentators try to analyze the cause of the attack and the reasons involve religion, language, land, power,  or  some other of the usual excuses.  I think they are wrong.

Children are coming across the border, desparate for safety and a real childhood and they are often met by screaming people who cannot summon sympathy let alone empathy for their plight .

Lying seems to be the order of the day in politics, especially on the side of conservatism, as if truth will bring down severe punishment from on high.  But, in God’s name, the ends justify the means.

What do these events have in common? Absence of adults. There are clearly grown-up people involved, but somehow, they didn’t mature into adults. Their childish dialectic, self-centered  thinking, keeps them from making good judgments. They have not learned to value the lives of anyone different from themselves.

And, there is no adult present to say “NO!!” In fact, the would-be adults have been absorbed by the childish insanity and often eagerly participate.  Perhaps hoping they will gain power when they pick up the pieces.

These child actors in the various scenarios are mostly male, but the females often stand by nodding and smiling, rooting on the bad boys, just like high school teens.

Would-be adults make massive weapons and sell or give them to the children and are shocked to see what they do with them.  But, of course, it is all about money for the sellers.  It’s free enterprise, you know.  We just sell them.  We can’t control what they do with them.

Sadly, we can’t expect the United States to assume the adult role in the world because we have too many of our own children in Congress, the judiciary, and other places of power.  They are proud of their limited knowledge, but want to foist their beliefs on everyone else, and like out-of-control kids, try to rule the house, assuming their own superior intelligence, talent, and love of country. 

Their petulant sulkiness makes them impossible to work with, so very very little gets done.  Many are enamored with guns and war, especially since they and theirs will not have to participate.  It’s a game.   

What do we do?  Well, we adults can start by withdrawing our support for the children.  We go to the polls and vote out the children who are not mature enough to serve, you know, the ones who deny reality, who dare anyone to teach them anything..

We need to stop preaching jihad and other forms of hatred.  Speaking a different language, worshiiping a different diety, having a different color skin  do not make a person worthy of death, well, except, perhaps to grown-up children.

 

Then, serious penalties should be applied to corporations who sell to the children:  insurgents, terrorists, religious extreemists, and the rest of the kids.  We adults need to fund and apply education about how to behave in a civilized world.  The “children” need to be incorporated into communities of adults who can care for them and help them grow up. 

We need to put more women in charge, since it is they who often mourn most when they see the death and destruction caused by out-of-control children.  They can often come up with workable solutions too.

It’s time for the reasonable adults to step out of hiding and assert their proper role.  They must  find ways to put the children in a safe place until they grow up,