An editorial by John Estridge
Well, it is a New Year.
And with this change from 2021 to 2022, the start of my 65th year on the planet, I have decided to bring my blog back to life.
After the special prosecutor decided to not bring charges against Brookville Town Council President Curtis Ward and BTC Member Chuck Campbell, I stopped writing on the blog.
I wish I could say the time off has calmed my spirit regarding writing about what is going on in government at every level at this point in this history. It has not. I remain very concerned about America when compared to the America as we once knew it.
It is funny, My Long Suffering Wife Ruth and I were watching “Yellowstone” Sunday night – we are very disappointed in this season – when the judge, no less, over a tumbler apiece of what looked like good Scotch or Bourbon, said what Ruth and I have been talking about for some time:
“I hate to think about the America, the world, we are leaving for our grandchildren.”
Kevin Costner’s character replied that in 100 years there would be grass growing on our streets and weeds growing on our roofs or vice versa. Ruth and I looked at each other at that point and said to each other that is exactly how we feel.
And an aside here, but really it is not because it fits the theme of this: on Yellowstone I root for people who are bad by any definition of the word, but they seem to be not as evil as the rest of the world they inhabit. And I hate to place too much substance upon a television series, unless it is I Love Lucy, Lost in Space and Seinfeld, but I think it says a lot about our world today, because I believe that is the reality of our world at this time, the beginning of 2022. We have to choose the lesser evil when talking about our planet, because it seems good men and women are either extinct, without a backbone, afraid of ridicule or all of the above.
One of the things I have enjoyed the most out of stepping away from the blog, from journalism – I was in it for 34 years straight before stepping away – is not even thinking about governmental entity meetings. A dear fellow journalist once told me way back in the 1990s, the time we spent in meetings was time we would never get back. And what he said is more correct today than when he said it back then.
It seems there is not a man or woman within our governmental mechanism from town council members to the president of the U.S. who act upon what is right, what is morally and ethically correct. They trample on what most know would be right, what is morally and ethically correct and ignore their hearts – if they have any – and they ignore them for either personal gain or what they delude themselves to believe is for “the greater good.”
They justify their actions by saying: “We need a grant so let’s ignore what is going on in our county, in our neighborhood, and forget about our morality, our ethics, and get that grant.”
And what will the grant do? Or any grant at this moment? It probably will not improve the life of the average person that much, if at all. One thing those local politicians and their bureaucratic minions really seem to forget is grants are our tax money also. There are truly no free lunches.
But I digress as old men often do.
At every level of government we are faced with disappointment in the people we elected to represent us. It really hit me here, because really how much control do we have over the state legislature? And the federal government is so removed from my reality it seems like it is further away from me than the rovers on Mars.
But the elected officials here, we know personally. We can talk to them. We have known them. And yet, they disappoint. They do not speak about what is correct, what they know is right because instead of representing the good people who are left, they represent those bureaucratic minions and those people who take actions to benefit themselves and benefit their buds.
I am not saying all of our local elected officials are trying to benefit themselves while in office, but not having the courage to speak out, to take action, enables those among us who care nothing about the people they represent and only about themselves and their very evil buddies.
This is a long way around what I intended to say in this:
The blog is coming back, but I really think – at this point – it will just be for information only. People who have written to me, called me, stopped me and talked to me have said they miss it because I spoke the truth, and I gave out needed information.
So, that is what the reincarnation of the blog will be – at least at first – a place for information. At this point, I cannot see myself going back to governmental meetings because I cannot stand the disappointment I feel when I see people I thought were good people with moral fiber just sit there, the shells of themselves, and by their muteness and inaction allow the evil to spread among us.
