My "crazy cousin" Bill when asked where he thought he was going in life would respond, "to hell if I don't get a transfer." To my knowledge his behavior wouldn't have warranted such a fate but apparently he felt the need to change his ways, and did, he got his "transfer."
Similarly, if I were asked where I think our country is headed, I'd have to respond "to ruin, if we don't make a transfer." This feeling is shared by many people in this country, they feel a desperate need to make changes to get our country on the right path. Our desperation is fueled by political gridlock in our nations' capital which is merely a reflection of the divergent beliefs that Americans have about the best direction for our country and how to achieve it.
One view sees a future with strong government controls over almost every facet of our lives, another view sees our very existence being threatened by the loss of freedoms, and of course there's middle view that is generally less emotional and tends to weigh both sides of an issue. Those in the middle don't get the headlines and notoriety of the extremist. Take the issue of secure borders. Most everybody is in favor of it.
But for various reasons we've made little progress, certainly not enough in securing our borders. And as sure as "God made little green apples" if we don't fix the illegal immigration and border problems as a nation we are "going straight to hell in a hand basket." Sounds a little extreme, but it's true. The costs of dealing with this problem are astronomical and the domino effect of not solving it are so complicated and potentially devastating that it could overshadow all of our other problems.
If we don't get a handle on our borders it won't matter in 10 years what else we've accomplished; not health care reform, not the war against terrorists, not illegal drugs, not nuclear proliferation or our financial crisis because the border problem will and does exacerbate all of these problems.
It's not much of a stretch to imagine cities on our southern border coming under the total control of groups controlled by drug money, even the ceding of portions of our southern lands and cities to a foreign government that is totally controlled by drug cartels.
But because of special interests that want politicians to be heroes to their particular constituency; and because we have a need for the hard working people who come to this country to work and often want to stay, legally or not, we reach stalemate at warp speed when ever there is an attempt to actually solve the border problem. Whenever this comes front and center many people become very emotional on both sides of the issue and we end up throwing up our hands and hoping that it will go away.
There is another culprit in this melodrama and that is the people who buy the illegal drugs which are so much a part of the problem. If it were only about finding a solution to accommodate workers and employers a resolution could be found much easier. But when you throw in the billions of dollars worth of drugs being moved, the power of the drug lords, and their power to corrupt governments, you have a much more dangerous situation almost impervious to penetration.
This begs the question. "who are all those people who use illegal drugs and what can be done to effect their impact, voluntarily or not, on this problem?" Some 20 million Americans use illegal drugs, which generates hundreds of billions of dollars for the drug cartels. Drug users must be held more accountable for their part in this complicated problem.
The border problem is not an easy one to solve, otherwise we'd have done so decades ago. It is however, one that must be solved and hard decisions must be made. We may not like the short term consequences but we'd like the future scenario a lot less. We need a collective "transfer" to get on the right path to save our country.
If we refuse to act responsibly by making the hard decisions it will be of little comfort to know that the only thing we lead the world in is being the entertainment capital of the world, our leadership in all other categories is up for grabs or already gone.
Reynolds lives in Pleasant View.
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