A hundred years older and deeper in debt

Ted Folkert

June 8, 2014 – one hundred years after the start of the war that never ends.

Today we recognize the 100th anniversary of the murder of Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian-Hungarian empire, and his wife Sophie, by Gavrilo Princip, a 19 year old Serbian, in the streets of Sarajevo.

What do we call this – the shot heard round the world?

What did it start – the war to end all wars? Not hardly.

What was the result to our planet – senseless evaporation of the precious resources that this planet provides us, enabling humans to live here and survive? Sad, but true.

This reminds me of the song that Tennessee Ernie Ford wrote and Johnnie Cash and Frankie Lane others sang to us – “Sixteen Tons” – “Another day older and deeper in debt, Saint Peter don’t you call me cause I can’t go …”. David Basse could sing that one too.

Now we are 100 years older,deeper in debt and we have consumed and still consume massive quantities of the earth’s precious resources to manufactures and consume war equipment and material – day after miserable day and year after miserable year.

And it continues to grow as more and more countries find it necessary to arm and kill in order to make each other behave. And what do we accomplish – control of human behavior? Not hardly. There are more armed conflicts going around this planet at any given time you can count or be aware of. And it never gets better, only worse. The result for the planet the massive consumption of limited resources for warfare, resources essential for the survival of human habitation, buy simultaneously, in their use, the destruction of the climate and food sources essential to sustain life on earth.

What have we learned? – Apparently, not much. We still arm and shoot, maim and kill each and every day and each and every year, for territory, for power, for religious beliefs, for resources, for pride, for nothing – “doing God’s work with a sword”, as they say.

You and I can’t change it. We can’t convince the people of the planet to stop killing each other. We can’t convince the people of the world to discontinue the senseless destruction of our limited resources and destruction of the climate and food supplies of the planet for power or territory or religious dominance.

But we can start by electing better leaders here in this country – leaders who want to lead instead of piling up massive fortunes for themselves and commanding power over others. We call ourselves the leader of the free world. It is time we started leading. Leading the movement for the survival of the planet to sustain human habitation, not leading to possess the strongest military and the ability to destroy everyone on earth with our massive weaponry. We simply cannot keep others from killing each other, but we can lead by example, we can start to change the reasoning behind warfare, we can start by convincing others that we have an end in sight – the end of the planet that will support human life, a sight we do not cherish and one we all need to address before it is too late.

Think about it!

Convince someone today to help us elect better leaders. Please!

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