Interesting Opinions

Things have been kind of quiet on the "Brad Front" lately.  Unfortunately, it gives me time to ponder, and that, my friends, is never good.  With the new presidential election on the home front, the war still taking place and all of the constant negativity in the media, I cannot help to think how good we really have it.  I mean as Americans, we really have a pretty good deal.

This thought process actually started after seeing a little movie titled, "Rambo".  I know, I know a good number of you reading this are enjoying a good laugh right now.  The movie was riddled with violence, blood and gore, but it was realistic.  Granted, I have been one of the few (well, one of the 80 or 90 million) audience members that enjoy his characters once in a while, but this one was directed brilliantly in my opinion.  Stallone wanted to make a statement with this movie, but understood in order to do that he also needed to stay within the confines of the franchise, so of course John Rambo wins in the end.  (If you haven't seen it I apologize, but I am sure it doesn't come as a shock.)  The movie opens with real footage from Burma where barbarians calling themselves the military, rape and murder their own for sport.  This goes on today.  Right now as you are reading this there could possibly be a village being burned to the ground and women and children with it.  The whole thing erupted emotions of anger, sadness, and helplessness.  Then I think about our lives as Americans and how everywhere I look people are complaining about our life here.  Even worse, I am one of them.

What is so bad?  A country where 70 percent of the families own homes, 95.4 percent are employed.  A place where if your house starts to burn a group of government workers show up and do everything in their power to salvage everything possible.  We live in a place where it is against the law for a hospital not to treat you, even if you cannot pay for it.  In Tampa, I cannot go for 3 miles where there is not a grocery store that I do not see in one isle enough food to feed a third-world village.  The idea, that anyone in this country can express their opinion in public and not get arrested.  These things happen in other countries, I have seen it. 

The media is starting to really piss me off.  There is a lot of good going on in this world and especially here in America and it's not acknowledged.  For every positive story in the newspaper, news website or network news program, there seems to be 15 to 20 negative ones.  Why is that?  Blood and chaos sells.  We like it, we live for it.  Why do people slow down and rubberneck when there is a horrible car crash?  I wonder all the time. Why does anyone want to fill their head with a picture of death?   I cannot figure it out.  When I was younger, I was naive to think people looked over at an accident to see if there was anything they could possibly do to help.  What a wakeup call I had when I moved to DC and accidents were more frequent and wondered what the hell everyone was looking at.  Just curious?  If there is an accident what the hell is everyone trying to see?  The media uses that "chaos curiosity" to sell their product. Look at the ads for the candidates, listen to their speeches are they really focusing on the issues?  You know why they aren't?  Because they are too busy trying to tear each other down.  What is worse, the media is not striving to dig up the positive pieces that each candidate has done, but instead spends countless hours digging up the dirt of the past.  Is just seems ass backwards to me.  Wouldn't it be an interesting election if America was wondering which one of the candidates have done and/or will do the most good instead of which candidate is the lesser evil?

I know I am really ranting, but I am lucky.  I live in a country where I can sit in my house, pay for the internet with a job I have, use the electricity that is directly connected to my home, to power the computer I own and write opinions to rant however and whatever I please.

LOVE, PEACE, HAPPINESS & SUCCESS!!!!

-Brad