15-06.15.113 in Book Two: The Fifteenth Year of the Third Millennium of the Common Era

10:40 pm and I am back in my apartment in Omaha. Since yesterday, I racked up a full 600 miles (or about 965 km) and got exactly 3 hours of sleep. According to England’s WIKIPEDIA Geography… 600 miles would be the equivalent of driving the width of England twice.... so I’ve got that going for me.

The Interview was… fairly good, which is more problematic than problem solving. You see… the area the job is in is extremely run down, the community is on a tight shoe string budget and government employees have no job security. Add to that the fact that I’d be getting paid approximately the same amount as when I worked at Best Buy plus the fact that the nearest industry or job opportunities for Wife would be a 45 minute commute away… the job sounds, frankly, shitty. But… I need to start somewhere, right? I need to get my foot in the door, get some experience and work my way up from there. But… it just seems the cons outweigh the pros since we would be moving from Eastern Nebraska to Eastern Iowa… and the move would put us in a worse location, making less money, and demanding more costs. Hopefully… something happens. Either hopefully, I don’t get offered the position or if I’m going to be offered the position… then hopefully somewhere else offers me something as well… because that would make the decision easy. If I get offered this position and have no other offers… the decision becomes much more difficult.

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On my drive, I saw something that I felt was a perfect analogy. The entire time in Eastern Iowa I was driving through torrential rains. Many times the sky was black and the rain was so thick that no windshield wiping could create any visibility. Yet… there were still some drivers that did not (would not) turn on their vehicle’s lights. AND it struck me… this is a perfect example of Herd Immunity. If one or two morons refuse to turn on their lights; they will likely still avoid a fatal collision because the rest of us have our lights on. However, if the majority population decided not to have their lights on; then fatal collisions would happen all the time due to poor visibility. THAT is herd immunity.

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I hadn’t decided if I was going to write this out yet or not but… why not :) I decided to try to get my parents’ perspective on how to solve the issues of this big blue marble we’re on. NOT surprisingly, but not helpfully, my dad (who is old fashioned) said the solution was easy… everyone needed to become a Christian and then Christians needed to start acting like Christians. Now… I understood what he was saying. Really… for the most part… all he was saying is that the current world values power and money before all things; to save the world we need to reignite the values of compassion, forgiveness, selflessness, service, patience, kindness, justice and community. I mean really… that’s what he was saying. But of course, he didn’t like me re-wording it. Because for him… humanity can do nothing without the Lord. That is scriptural. But it is not helpful when dealing with a world of many faiths. And… it became clear that my Dad doesn’t want to live in or acknowledge a world of many faiths. The only way to save this world from its downward spiral is through Christianity and it is a shame other people refuse to see that.

I’m not frustrated, honestly. It makes sense… it is the “1950s were great; if we were more like that, we wouldn’t have these problems”… because it is White Male Privilege (even worse for my Dad since he grew up with money). BUT it does remind me of one of the other great problems we have in the American Political System. The average age of Members of the House is 57; the average age of the Senate is 62. My father is 62. Add that to the fact that the average net worth of Congressional members in 2013 was over $7 million.... it paints a picture. We have a legislative body of old, usually white, usually males, with a lot of money. How in the hell is 81 year old Chuck Grassley who has been a senator for the last 34 years and is worth around $4 million.... how in the hell is he going to know anything about being a broke, jobless 30-something American? And people like that abound in the halls of power… and that is something major.