So many contradictions and hypocrisies ..

So many contradictions and hypocrisies ...

Most of these problems are the work of the left.

Stephen Helegsen for American Thinker 

While "two things can be true at the same time", I cannot for the life of me ignore the head-shaking situations that we Americans find ourselves in that seemingly contradict each other.

The first is especially timely: We are able to send a team of four people to the dark side of the moon and then retrieve them in the vastness of the ocean after their trip, yet we cannot seem to look our neighbors in the eyes and talk to them about politics.

Staying with communication, we can message with our smartphones and even by a wristwatch, but we are unable or unwilling to sit down at the same table and speak to each other respectfully and honestly in 'analog' fashion.

We teach our children that God loves us and that He is on our side when we decide to go to war, but millions of people have no problem in keeping Him sequestered from our daily conversation, out of our courtrooms, want Him off our coinage and nowhere near our classrooms.

We can wax on about the tragic deaths of war victims but can somehow justify the aborting of millions of fetuses as simply "the mother's right to choose."

In America, we believe that the safety and security of the individual is paramount, but then we willingly acquit or release those who have been arrested for abusing the rights of others, claiming they just need some rehabilitation and that jail sentences are "extreme and cruel punishment." And when it comes to our protective services like the police, we have no problem in accusing them of being thugs with guns, all bent on accosting innocent citizens.

We can speak of the need to cure poverty, but we ignore its root causes and instead, fund programs that do not lift people out of it.

We support "political rights" abroad but turn our backs on those at home who disagree with the power elite.

We are willing to fund foreign wars but will not provide a living wage for our service members.

We do a pitiful job of educating our children. We do not test their abilities enough nor do we prepare them to enter the "real world" that exists beyond their social media chatrooms.

We read too few books, speak too often in talking points and have forgotten how to write a simple letter in cursive.

We have become a "bubble culture," choosing to reside in ideological bubbles in ghettos with other bubble-bound political kinsmen. We have lost our ability to truly socialize one-on-one and to talk with anyone who does not agree with us.

We are addicted to mediocrity and to a pop culture that prefers the banal and the salacious to the serious.

In short, we who should be reaching for the stars of our own inner selves have become like inert ball bearings in a pinball machine just waiting for the flipper to send us careening towards the next shiny object in the hopes of scoring a few points. And, yes, two things can be true at the same time, but if those two things are equally powerful and in constant opposition to each other, they will eventually cancel each other out.

Maybe, just maybe, it's time for all of us to revisit Lewis Carroll's poem "The walrus and the carpenter" from "Through the looking glass" for some inspiration and guidance: “The time has come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things: Of shoes -- and ships — and sealing-wax — Of cabbages — and kings — And why the sea is boiling hot — And whether pigs have wings.”

And for those who say that that is an exercise in frivolity and a complete waste of time, I would counter by saying that we have nothing to lose in a world full of Jabberwocky already masquerading as serious discourse.

Stephen Helgesen is a retired American diplomat specializing in international trade. He has lived and worked in 30 countries over the course of 25 years under the Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, and G.W. Bush administrations.

Image: Wikimedia Commons, via Picryl // public domain