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To Hell In A Hand Basket

All the signs are there. I can’t stand this new hip hop music, I seem to complain about the government a lot, and a couple weeks ago I had to shave my ears which now grow hair for some reason Yes its clear I’m getting old.
I’m thinking this might be some nostalgic like mental disorder that you get when you reach your mid fifties where you begin to think things used to be better, my parents seemed infected as I recall ,hating rock and roll, and constantly telling us how wonderful things were before the country began“going to hell in a hand basket” (A phrase that I don’t understand to this day) But now I have to admit that things really did seem much better in this country back when I was growing up and I’m not just saying this because I got an AARP magazine in the mail while I was watching old Colombo episode
Consider this 35 years ago in July Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. A month ago the space shuttle limped into an airport somewhere after dark with parts falling off it. And that's only the beginning, it used to be that flying was relatively inexpensive and if not easy at least simple. Now days you spend a couple hours in a terrorist line up to hopscotch across the country for 6 or 7 hours no matter where your headed . All the planes have cut back on things like those little pillows and the number of pretzels in that tiny little bag, and its still cheaper to fly round trip than it is to fly one way.
Then there's the environment which seemed to be making a comeback a few years back they had even cleaned up the Cayahoga River at least to the point where it didn’t catch fire all the time. But these days there’s enough mercury in the fish in our rivers and streams you could use them as thermometers the acceptable arsenic levels in our water are getting higher than a kite on crack, while the clear skies initiative allows for air just dirty enough so you can’t chew it.
The health care system is so complicated and expensive that If I get sick these days I have to put some tire tread marks on my shirt and lay down on the side of the road while my wife calls 911 to report a hit and run . Drug prices are so high senior citizens are hocking the family silverware just to be able to afford medication that they have to smuggle in from canada, and nearly 40 years after a half a million of us were passing joints at woodstock, get caught with a doobie a block from a school these days and you’re headed for the big house, even if it s summertime.
We seem to have given up on conserving energy for some reason so our nations highways are clogged with inefficient tank like hummers and suvs that guzzle gas like late stage alcoholics and then tip over.
Then there is this corporate media thing where since there is no longer a fairness doctrine in broadcasting rich angry conservatives get to tell us what the news is , or isn’t. And television itself seems to have regressed to the point of catering less to art or entertainment but more to the bottom line ,cutting back on things like writing and the acting in favor of broadcasting endless games of poker played by celebrities you never heard of. Or reality shows that are a bit like drunken home movies where people are encouraged to debase themselves for a chance of fame and money. With a few exceptions that mostly seem to be cartoons the whole television landscape has become a mindless wasteland of gong shows... without the gong.
And now we have a president, son of president , so dim he seems to think scientific fact is a kind of left wing theory who says that there is no global warming and we should be teaching a religious version of evolution in school called intelligent design. And now I’m even reading stories about creationists who are saying there were dinosaurs on Noah's ark. Yes in texas of all places someone claims to have found fossilized dinosaur and human tracks that crisscross contemperaniously. I thought at first this was a joke but apparently there is a movement on by creationists to “take back the dinosaurs” These guys are claiming there were dinosaurs romping in the garden of Eden then Noah took a pair on the Ark with him.
I can’t help but wonder how many more species we would have today if those dinos hadn’t eaten half of the other animals on the ark.
. I think there could be a great movie in here somewhere as well, maybe something like” Jurassic Ark .“ Picture a kind of Charlton Heston meets Godzilla. Yeah,I may be getting old but as you can see things really were a lot better when I was young and this country is going to hell in a hand basket.