The State of the Union

I am saddened more and more as each year passes and yet another State of the Union is delivered by an ineffective President at odds with a polarized Congress. I get the idea that I will not be one of the few with little or no desire to hear what the President has to say. Even sadder is the sense I get that we have lost our sense of nationalism as disparate immigrants seem to no longer have the desire to embrace and love this country. We have weakened the national resolve by fighting seeming endless and questionable conflicts. Our blood and treasure have been diverted and our country has suffered. In my humble opinion, the State of the Union should center on getting the horse back in front of the cart and getting our ship of state heading in a unified direction. It may be too late even for that. There are many sayings that reflect on the importance of learning from past mistakes to avoid repeating them. It does not take a scholar to see how profoundly this speaks of this country. I had the opportunity to travel and see countries that got caught up in the same morass as we're in. Places where they were at the forefront in technology, medicine, human rights, the arts; you name it. Visiting some of those places today is like seeing time come to a stop, or at least a crawl. This is not complicated folks. Egos will have to be set aside and openness and honesty will have to prevail. Funding needs to be directed inward to update and improve our infrastructure. No one wants to use an antiquated rail system, depend on an overloaded and aged power grid or travel on dilapidated highways. All that and more should be a source of national shame. We should have had high speed rail in place years ago. When I reflect on the men and women we lost in Vietnam and Southeast Asia and look at the thriving, communist country(s) that is there today, I am left to wonder where that threat to democracy went. Supposedly that is what we were there for. I look at the mid east now and see the same thing. Fallujah has fallen and Al Qaeda is back in control. Need I remind you of the sacrifices made there? Point is, all that funding could have been spent on improvements to this great country. There are many other sources of funds, but I somehow feel that dollars aren't the only answer. I see history repeating its self and have a far more dreary view of the State of the Union.