Having lived to what was once known as "a great age," I find myself dealing with what I hadn't seen coming. It wasn't there when I was born, and it wasn't there when I came home from the great war more than a half century ago.
This being an election year, I'm as puzzled as any about what can be done to change where we are to where we would like to be. Of a certainty, it can't be back.
I suspect I'm not alone. Those who find themselves to be, in the vernacular of their younger observers, "behind the times'' are likely to be in agreement.
I certainly regarded my father as being there when he was passing through the years leading to those I'm now exploring.
During my earliest years, I was taught obedience to authority, my responsibilities relating to my faith (Catholic) and respect for those of other faiths. Self-dependence needed no special emphasis for those of limited means. That included most of us. Freed from consideration of education beyond high school, we used what we had to make a living without great expectations. The resulting war and the G.I. Bill changed those for millions of us, so I'm not knocking big government here.
There were yawning caverns of societal needs and economic deprivation before the war. Disconnects were everywhere about, and in our darkest hours, governmental aid became essential to survival. The challenging radio voice of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933 lifted us past despair to a time of reliance on federal intervention. It was the borning of the complexities of governance we have come to take for granted today. It didn't happen overnight. Step by step, year by year, election by election and through the initiatives of both parties, we have become subject to a tangled webbings of regulatory authority over seemingly everything.
So have the needs for higher education to deal with competitive realities long since expanded beyond those of what my generation found essential to making a living.
We struggle with the dictums of both parties, but we live with the dictates of regulatory authority engaged to produce the regulations related to enforcement of the law.
Good times shroud resulting unrest. Hard times lay them bare, and these, for millions of us, are hard times.
That's the central reality of this presidential election year, but there is another, and that is the all-embracing role of government in our lives. It gave birth to the tea party. It is evident in the not-so-surprising rise in the popularity of Ron Paul who would put the too-fat governmental genie back in the bottle, the take-no-prisoners candidacy of Newt Gingrich, the seemingly born-again campaign of Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney's embracing reach to the centers of both parties and unaligned independents.
I have no idea as to outcome — that among the Republican hopefuls or that of the election to follow, but it is obvious that the complexities with which we live will survive.
• • •
Bill Plante is former executive editor of Essex County Newspapers. His email address is plantejr@comcast.net.
Daisy Sizzles in Sexy Swimwear
Officers Use Deadly Force on Mountain Lion in Santa Monica
Lea Michele Shows Major Skin
8 Hurt in Oklahoma Shooting After NBA Playoff
Why Cee Lo Thinks 'The Voice' is So Popular
Burlesque New Orleans
Mike Posner Talks Sneakers: Bamboozle 2012
Howard Stern Makes Kid Cry on AGT
Neighbor Feud Results in Dog Poop in Mailbox
Tiger's Ex-Wife Bares Her Bod
VIDEO | Zoo Chimp Charges Children
Child locked in washing machine after father put him there
Incubus On Working With Odd Future: Bamboozle 2012
'PLL' First Look Clip!
Fired for being 'too hot'
Ashley Olsen is a Bikini Babe
'Part of Me' Details 'Bumpy' Marriage, Says Katy
Music downloader owes nearly $700K in fines
Kardashian Sisters Pose in Lingerie
Raw Video: Man Saved After Niagara Falls Plunge
