O' Brave New World

[Vanessa Vasquez]

Perhaps Shakespeare was a prophet after all. Maybe he saw our day and that vision lead him to proclaim:"O wonder!How many goodly creatures are there here!How beauteous mankind is!O brave new world!That has such people in't!" -- The Tempest, Act V, Scene I.If so, he was of course being ironic, and if he wasn't, there is no doubt that Aldous Huxley was when using this passage in his prophetic book "Brave New World". What is our problem people? What made this nation the greatest nation to ever grace this planet is the fact that here, in America you were free to succeed and free to fail. You knew if you took a risk it could pay out or it could cost you dearly. With those 2 elements in play you were able to weigh every risk, evaluate every decision and act according to your own ability and will.But not any more. Now, everyone is a winner. Everyone gets a trophy at the end of the soccer season. Everyone wins and there are no losers (well except for those super-rich people, but they can afford it anyway). I've talked about this before, but what has really set me off today was this picture I found:

This is Mary Ann Herrera standing out in front of "her home" in San Antonio. I put "her home" in quotes because it's not her home. It's the bank's home, not hers. It's not hers because she couldn't afford it. Now I don't know what the particular issue is. Maybe she just lost her job on the same day that her husband died or something, but I'm going to use her to represent the millions of people of who bought a home they could not afford and are now belly-aching that it's being taken away from them.Knowing the bank was about to kick her out she had her brother paint the words "Help!!" and "Foreclosure!!" on her home in the hope of getting assistance. This is absolutely ridiculous to me. Who are you asking help from? Who should pay for your problems? Who are you to get help? What makes you so d*mn special?I'm sure I don't know.A recent poll said that over 60% of Americans believe it is the responsibility of the government to provide food and shelter and healthcare for it's citizens. This is crazy. It doesn't say that anywhere in the constitution and more importantly people use to not want help. Where is our pride? What has become of us?Perhaps Rudyard Kipling said it best in his poem The Gods of the Copybook Headings when he said, "And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins /When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins ..."Just to show how screwed up things are, right now I am not eligible for any assistance, even under the new "stimulus plan". But if I were to not pay my house payment for the next 3 months (giving me an extra $3300 to spend on whatever) and got a notice that they were going to foreclose, and if during that 3 month period I racked up $80,000 in credit card debt thus making my debt-to-income ratio just such, then the government would swoop in and save the day, lowering my principle owed on my house, dropping my interest rate, and my monthly payments would be about where they are today, but with $83,000 worth of free stuff. WTF?This is just madness and I'm sick of it. People - stand up and take personal responsibility for your own actions and decisions. , but things have changed and it's now or never. We're losing the "Shining City on the hill", we're losing our freedom, and nobody is taking it from us. We're begging, in big letters painted on the side of our homes, to have them taken away from us. And my greatest fear of all is that if it continues, I'll get caught up in the tidal wave; I'll get eaten up by the beast and will find myself one day begging just like this lady in San Antonio. I really want to be a better person than that. I truly do.