Right now, and for the last few years, I have seen social media go wild over topics that are not the real problems that face this country. All the while, real problems face us that are being ignored. Is this by chance, or by design.
This week, everyone is either mourning woman’s loss of a government given right to murder their unborn children, or they are celebrating the loss of a man’s right to have sexual relations and not take any responsibility for their actions. We also have had major discussions on women’s rights, black lives matter, racism, gun control, going green, student loan forgiveness and LGBTQ with emphasis on the T. These are all easy subjects to get people excited and divided about, easy to build illogical memes on both sides, but they are not the real problems that need to be solved.
So what are some of the real problems. Let’s start with a mental health crisis. It seems apparent to me we have more mental health problems now than we did two generations ago. The percentage of our young adult population who have had mental health crisis issues has been growing steadily. We need to find a solution to this, or violence, poverty, homelessness and crime will all increase as a result. This is a difficult problem to solve, because often it requires admitting that our actions have caused it, and that we must change if we are going to reduce it. We are too busy passing the blame to scape goats rather than trying to find the real causes, probably because we do not want to undo whatever change has led to this problem. However, all we have to do is look at the effects of the mental health crisis we created during Vietnam to get an idea how this much larger crisis will affect our communities. We have been seeing the effects over the last decade, and it is not pretty.
A second problem is the financial system, and balancing wealth between workers and company owners/shareholders. The costs of everything is going up. Probably more important, it is becoming increasingly difficult for small businesses to form a successful business plan. Instead, more and more of us are becoming dependent on large companies and billionaires to create the jobs that allow us to bring in a decent living. A dependence that will soon give them a lot more power to decide how much that decent living will be. At the same time, we look to tax the rich very heavily, which will only end up with much fewer jobs, as other ways to invest their money will be more tempting. This is another problem that is very hard to properly solve, but one we desperately need to address before it is too late.
Along the lines of inflation, the costs of our medical system is insane. We pay more for health care than almost any other country, but are not near the top in benefiting from that investment. Doctors and nurses who came to the field to help others out, are being burned out by a system that is more money driven than care driven. The Affordable Care Act was supposed to help, but in reality, it has just made care less affordable and less effective. Another difficult problem to solve, but one that must be solved.
There are many other major problems. Social security solvency, housing affordability, education affordability, climate issues, violent crimes including senseless mass murder, and resource scarcity are all problems that need real and actionable solutions.
While many of the discussed problems are disguised as solutions to the real problems, that is not the intent. The intent is not to solve any real problems. The intent is to keep us divided, so that these real problems can be pushed off. Because the real problems are not black and white. There are no easy solutions. Memes do not work with real problems. Even your average citizen will see through those memes. Compromise is required, and with that, one group doesn’t win and the other group lose. Most likely the solutions will be lose/lose. And that does not get voters supporting you.
We need leaders willing to tackle these real problems, not politicians whose sole goal is position preservation or promotion. But as long as our system favors politics over leadership, we will continue down the same path. I pray that we will find a solution, but everyday we seem to get more divided and farther away from any real solutions.