Innocence Lost, Gone Forever..

It is an increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult endeav­or to talk about hon­esty, integri­ty, ser­vice, hon­or, and char­ac­ter when peo­ple are focused on self and sur­vival.
In this age of “me”, in which wrong is cel­e­brat­ed and right berat­ed, break­ing through the noise becomes inher­ent­ly more dif­fi­cult.
How do we build a soci­ety on graft, cor­rup­tion, dis­hon­esty, and theft?
How do we turn around a nation’s psy­che to a place of major­i­ty con­sen­sus that hon­esty integri­ty and ser­vice are ele­ments of virtue and that acts of cor­rup­tion are degen­er­a­tive vices?
The break­down in our social order and the resul­tant blood­shed and may­hem are stark reminders of this degeneration. 

In this the tech­no­log­i­cal age putting a cop on every cor­ner or bet­ter yet on every doorstep guar­an­tees noth­ing. Crimes are being com­mit­ted with the click of a mouse, from lot­to ‑scam­ming, to sex traf­fick­ing, from gun sales to under­age inter­net porn and every­thing in between.
A long list of crimes is being com­mit­ted with­out the prac­ti­tion­ers show­ing them­selves.
When the nation on a whole cel­e­brates the release from prison of con­vict­ed felons and those whose jobs it is to put them away are treat­ed as pari­ahs who do we expect the young­sters to emu­late?
When the peo­ple who put their lives in dan­ger to remove the bad guys from the streets are treat­ed worse than the bad guys why are we aghast that many of them choose to become the bad guys, after all, we are all human beings? 

How do we achieve that bet­ter coun­try where peace and tran­quil­i­ty is the norm?
How do we cre­ate a soci­ety where cit­i­zens can go about the busi­ness of their lives and their chil­dren can grow up to be all they can be?
“The glo­ry of jus­tice and the majesty of law are cre­at­ed not just by the Constitution — nor by the courts — nor by the offi­cers of the law — nor by the lawyers — but by the men and women who con­sti­tute our soci­ety — who are the pro­tec­tors of the law as they are them­selves pro­tect­ed by the law”. [Robert Kennedy]
In a nation that is becom­ing increas­ing­ly cor­rupt, where we can­not even agree on truth, where wrong is laud­ed and doing right is ridiculed where do we begin the turn­around?
It seems to be that the pub­lic bod­ies which are sup­posed to be set­ting exam­ples for the nation to fol­low are them­selves cesspools of lies, mis­in­for­ma­tion, cor­rup­tion, and graft.
Government agen­cies are indi­vid­ual fief­doms of polit­i­cal resis­tance to new admin­is­tra­tions, essen­tial­ly nul­li­fy­ing the will of vot­ers. Entrenched tech­nocrats and career bureau­crats lie, cheat and dis­tort facts all toward the ful­fill­ment of their own agendas. 

There is an inher­ent tragedy in all of this sor­ry mix which makes rem­e­dy­ing our soci­ety that much more dif­fi­cult.
It is that the voic­es which speak the truth, the ones who know what we need to do to stop the mad­ness has been silenced.
Some have been silenced by death oth­ers are too afraid of being bul­lied or even killed, so they remain silent. Even as the minor­i­ty tells them that walk­ing over the cliff is good for them.
Too deeply entrenched are the ten­ta­cles of cor­rup­tion, and dis­hon­esty that the mere men­tion of those vices attracts an imme­di­ate back­lash from the beneficiaries.

We know we have a prob­lem when as a soci­ety we seek to prof­it from the demise of our fel­low man rather than seek ways to stop the wan­ton destruc­tion.
We have become so des­per­ate for mate­r­i­al trap­pings and the instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion derived from ‘things,” we have become dis­in­ter­est­ed par­tic­i­pants in our col­lec­tive demise.