Monday, November 28, 2016

Credit Card Nation


When our children were little, Sir Knight coined a phrase he called "Credit Card Parenting".  Basically, he said that we could either discipline and train our children when they were young or we could pay for our lack of parenting later, with interest.  We knew, that although it was "easy to love folly in a child", that folly would become a consuming fire of destruction if left unchecked.  What was "cute" in somebody who was 2 was ugly and destructive in someone who was 22.  We didn't want to suffer the consequences of credit card parenting or make society pay the price, with accrued interest, of our permissive parenting.  And so we disciplined our children, doing our best to "train up a child in the way they should go".  And so far our plan has worked.  Although our children are not perfect, they are productive members of society, contributing to the well-being of our family and our community.  The are consistently part of the solution rather than being part of the problem.

To my great dismay, I have come to realize that we are a Credit Card Nation.  This once great Nation has become what our forefathers fought to abolish.  We have allowed the few to rule the many and encouraged tyranny (bullying) in all levels of society.  Just as a tyrannical toddler rules the household, our tyrannical minorities are ruling our country.  We are no longer allowed to live according to our conscience, rather our thoughts and actions are policed by the intolerant few.  Just as we have all seen permissive parents terrorized by tantrum throwing toddlers, we are now witness to a country being terrorized by angry malcontents and still, we indulge.

For years we have allowed our citizens to be bullied and done nothing.  We have allowed tantrum throwing children to rule our house and we wonder why we have a world out of control.  Our balance is now due - with interest.

Not only have we allowed our own citizens to run herd on us, we have also allowed our neighbors to manipulate our indulgence.  And the interest is multiplying.

When our children were small, we lived in a neighborhood, directly across from a culdesac.  Although we only had a couple of acres, we had horses, chickens and a milk cow, along with a large garden, huge yard and the all-important trampoline.  Right across the road, at the head of the culdesac, lived a family with 6 children.  The family was unconventional - a little rough around the edges, and the children were the epitome of free-range.  It was not uncommon for the kids to show up on our doorstep asking for paper and pencils for school, bread for sandwiches or money for lunch.  They regularly went into our barn, opened our grain bin and fed our milk cow until she bloated.  They would fill their pockets with change Maid Elizabeth had saved and swear up and down it was theirs. 

Sir Knight and I took action.  We didn't want to ban the children from coming to our home, but we also didn't want them harming our livestock or influencing our children.  So we made rules.  And enforced them.  We told them they were not allowed in the barn, without Sir Knight or I present.  We didn't let them come over whenever they wanted, rather we made a standing date for a certain time and day of the week.  We never allowed the kids into the bedrooms or any other room unattended.  Instead, the kids and I played board games with them or baked cookies (which they took home to their family).  We raked leaves, worked in the garden or did whatever needed to be done, with the extra kids in tow - always with constant supervision.  Rather than allow the neighbor kids to harm our property and influences our children, we embraced them, within the confines of carefully outlined and enforced rules.  Because we were the parents in our home, we parented not only our children, but the neighborhood children when they were in our home.  Basically, it was our house, our rules.  End of story.  Rather than allowing our neighbor children to terrorize our family, we parented them and paid the debt - no interest accrued.

Now the credit card crisis has hit our shores.  We have welcomed our neighbors into our homes, with no rules or supervision and we are reaping the consequences.  Rather than creating and enforcing rules to incorporate our neighbors into our family, we have allowed them full access to our homes and they have repaid us by bombing our cities, shooting our people and demanding that our society conform to theirs.  We are paying for being a credit card nation with our culture and our lives.  And it will continue until we pay our debt and take back our home.  We have to again proclaim, our house, our rules.

Our nation is at the breaking point.  Our debt is killing us.  Our interest has compounded.  We truly are a Credit Card Nation.

7 comments:

  1. Sad but true, and when we try to set up some rules, we are called xenophobic racists by the bullies.

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  2. Our infected areas are now gangrenous. It is triage time. We need to amputate them starting with Washington DC. Or we can continue kicking the can down the road foolishly believing that 1 Samuel 8 King Trump will cure gangrene.
    Montana Guy

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  3. No credit carddebt anymore. No credit cards.
    A mortgage and that's all....I am almost 69 and my hubby
    of 34 years died in mid July. He was younger than me.
    So, there will never be credit card anything in this home.
    Love from NC

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  4. Not going to change. Bad times breed strong people. Strong people make good times. Good times make weak people. Weak people make bad times.

    We're weak. We are ripe to be taken over by a more aggressive culture. This is the way of human history.

    As for our own bullies at home... I think back to when I was a child, and I wonder if a little less authoritarian enforcement of a very narrow definition of "normal" might not have done something to mitigate all of this now. They are bullies to be sure, demanding that their point of view be the only point of view...

    ...but they are only serving back what they and their parents and grandparents were shown. Jesus didn't tell us we have to approve of everything our neighbors do. He did, however, tell us we are supposed to love them. I saw a lot of mentally ill people, minority people, single parents, and LGBTQ-whatever folks who were not treated lovingly (loving treatment-- "I think you are going to burn in Hell if you don't change your ways, but you are a fellow human being and I am going to treat you like one anyway") when I was a child and a young woman.

    Playing "stink-nigger" with the dark-skinned kinky-haired foster child isn't loving treatment. Neither is turning a blind eye to the kids doing it in the middle of gym class.

    Refusing the transaction and throwing pennies at a child who goes to the store with Food Stamps to buy a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread (she's on Food Stamps and getting sent to the store because her single mother is in bed dying of cancer) isn't loving treatment. My mother chose to leave my father; it was a bad choice and she paid for it with her life. Wasn't that enough??

    Firebombing a homosexual couple's house, killing their dog, and spray-painting Leviticus 20:13 on their driveway isn't loving behavior.

    Harassing a good man's children and grandchildren because he struggled with PTSD, OCD, and a few other anxiety disorders (most likely from having grown up under the American eugenics program and going to extreme measures to hide high-functioning autism) isn't loving behavior.

    Those are just things I have seen happen to me or people within my family's circle of friends, things that made me angry enough to become a social justice warrior until I realized that they were just as autocratic and repressive as the things they claimed to be fighting.

    Our country is going to burn. There is no way around that now. But some of us will survive, and I still have hope we will be able to build something better out of the ashes.

    Peace, and be blessed.

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  5. So please tell us how you are doing during this cold weather,just curious.

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  6. Oh man, I had a little girl like that growing up. Her mom left her with her grandparents to raise and if you let her in the house, she would take everything. My mom caught her trying to make it out the door with all of our Barbie clothes, including the ones my mom made for us. The little girl swore up and down they were hers.

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    Non chexsystems banks in New Mexico

    ReplyDelete