As our world becomes more corrupt, complicated and seemingly hopeless, we need to use our minds to seek hope from those who have proven, beyond shadow of doubt, that good can triumph.
I saw an image today that struck me as being quite profound. I called it " white privilege. " Perhaps it should have been pioneer spirit and that, is something that new " migrants" seem to lack these days.
It made me wonder how our countries have travelled so far from reality that we are now expected to believe in this myth that we are thinking ourselves superior?
The countries that gave us birth were apparently founded on so called "white privilege". Our ancestors arrived in our nations with wealth of knowledge. That is true. The knowledge of hard earned skills and generations of hard learned lessons.
In Australia, they could build homes and use what raw materials were available. It might have been bark or stone or timber but they used their knowledge to great advantage. After all, it was their " white privilege " that set them apart. They came as convicts, exiled from their mother country and they turned their disadvantage into advantage. Later, they came as free people and founded a nation of hope.
The " white privilege" was on display in the kauri fields of New Zealand. They lived in the cold, the mud and the endless slog of building a life for themselves and their families.
Such " privilege." After 6 months at sea, escaping the dictatorial British government, they sought refuge in the land that could offer them hope. They were refugees. And they came to offer their " white privilege " of skills and knowledge.
In America, the " white privilege" was off the scale. They reaped the bounty of a country that gave them happiness and joy.
They landed on America's fair shores and gave their skills and knowledge. They built homes and wanted nothing more than a future founded on a new life.
As time went by, the " White privilege " grew and grew.
But along came the ( what I call ) the carpet bagger. He who only sought gain for himself. And that carpet bagger has never left us.
He now inhabits our parliaments and governments. He ( or she ) seeks reward only for himself.
He does not care about the environment or the planet or the people: he only cares about his bank balance.
And when the carpet bagger arrived, decency in government left the building.
Suddenly, money became the most important thing. Not ethics. Not decency. It was the carpetbag full of money.
During the Great Depression and Dust bowl era, the " White Privilege " was at alarming levels. Yes, that is sarcasm for those of you who are too woke to know that my description is sarcastic.
In fact, the " white privilege was at its heights. They starved, they suffered and they felt the pangs of hunger just as much as their darker brethren.
However, I suspect that God is colour blind.
When the horror of the Dust Bowl came, people lost their homes, livelihoods, and, in many cases, their will to live.
Did that young man ( who I am told was from West Virginia - 1938 ) grow into a bare knuckle fighter? A carpet bagger? A good husband? Who knows.
I like to hope that he became a good man.
What I do know is that he had a look of defiance and determination in his eyes and I hope that it was put to good use.
But, back to the Carpet bagger. Who came to create wealth and did not care what price was paid in his pursuit of money.
He was the investor farmer who sought profit over good farm management and destroyed the very industry that he had come to exploit. He did not care about the land. Only the profits.
Not the real farmers, you understand. They were the victims.
" White privilege " had suddenly become about class - not colour.
Profit over productivity and short term win over long term gain.
Franklin D Roosevelt, In his fireside chat of September 6, 1936, said this about the drought:
I saw drought devastation in nine states.
I talked with families who had lost their wheat crop, lost their corn crop, lost their livestock, lost the water in their well, lost their garden and come through to the end of the summer without one dollar of cash resources, facing a winter without feed or food—facing a planting season without seed to put in the ground.
I shall never forget the fields of wheat so blasted by heat that they cannot be harvested. I shall never forget field after field of corn stunted, earless and stripped of leaves, for what the sun left the grasshoppers took. I saw brown pastures which would not keep a cow on fifty acres.
" In the drought area people are not afraid to use new methods to meet changes in Nature, and to correct mistakes of the past. If overgrazing has injured range lands, they are willing to reduce the grazing. If certain wheat lands should be returned to pasture they are willing to cooperate. If trees should be planted as windbreaks or to stop erosion they will work with us. If terracing or summer fallowing or crop rotation is called for, they will carry them out. They stand ready to fit, and not to fight, the ways of Nature."
President Roosevelt’s efforts to help rural Americans pay their mortgages so they wouldn’t lose their farms, plant trees to break the fierce winds, teach them new techniques to preserve their soil and conserve their water were all part of his vision for a fair and just America. One where the government helped people who needed help the most. While FDR is often credited with bringing the United States out of the Great Depression and leading the Allies to victory in World War II, his role as a great environmental champion is sometimes overlooked.
So what has happened around the world?
Environmental activism has taken over.
All around the world. the lessons of the dustbowl are being ignored.
No dams, no burn offs, no water.
No logic, no commonsense.
Suddenly, it is racist and somehow wrong to prevent the horrors of yesteryear coming back to repeat itself.
Franklin D Roosevelt was a President who saw a problem and came up with a solution.
Today, we have leaders who seek to stop solutions and create problems.
Today, they focus on the White and the " privilege " and not the Pioneer or the Spirit. Can we please get back to having the guts and determination to work and stop leaning on the shovel and start digging the bloody hole.
