Monday, January 19, 2009

Compulsory Volunteerism

I'm a bit unsettled by something I keep hearing our Prez-elect make reference to. I realize I ended that sentence poorly, but I just have to make this point and I cannot rearrange it accordingly. He speaks of accountability . . . and everyone is going to work toward . . . whatever. I heard, of all places, Louisiana is asking for volunteer commitments in rebuilding from Katrina. Hello, that was over 3 years ago. An entire town in Kansas was leveled since then and one in Oklahoma after that. New Orleans, if you want your town rebuilt, then build it, the rest of us are busy, too. I've already done my stint in volunteering. I served on umpteen committees and performed chaplain duties without compensation all over a specific little town, and when it came right down to it . . . I was being used and truly making no difference at all. I was merely a token to be used by some well paid official or bureaucrat to obtain funding or eligibility for yet another grant. Our government started paying big bucks for various public departments to have "volunteer chaplains." Why, if more money was coming in, did the chaplains need to be volunteer; and if the chaplains were volunteer, why was more money needed? I think both of those are good questions, but I never did get an answer. Now that over half of the country is ready to do the bidding of the new Prez-elect, what will this country look like? Well he's promised 3 to 4 million jobs in road construction, so I'm guessing a great many folks that have committed no crimes will ultimately look like members of a chain gang. And with health care reform on the way, I'm guessing a vast number of citizens will look like huddled masses in a clinic in a third world country. Then, of course, there are the bureaucrats and grant writers, and I'm guessing they will look like glorified secretaries with a "smart" digital ID badge. What I'm wondering though, is just how does a man identify with a group of people who think they have overcome oppression by seeing "one of their own" elected, when his father, grandfather, and his entire lineage has no memory of slavery or having been owned in this country? How does he continue to manage and manipulate, with four more years to do so, the majority of people that were ready for change? Compulsory volunteerism and accountability with taxation may be change, but it's change from the disgust of capitalism and frustration of elitism; to slavery and bondage.
And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service . . . all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour. Torah of Holy Scripture

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