TuesdayPalooza

   Following yesterday's Netflix questions was the news that *gasp* Anthony Weiner DID send a photo of his junk over Twitter. That revelation sends me in a racing mine cart Indiana Jones style down a tattery track of "What's wrong with these people?!".

   I almost wrote a piece for ViewsHound this past weekend titled "This ain't your granddaddy's America", but I bailed on it at the last second because I got more involved in swimming and playing video games. Basically, living an 8-year-old's summer dream life. But today my thoughts go back to that statement, "This ain't your granddaddy's America".

   I guess if your granddad is in his 20's right now, it could be your granddad's America, but that would be a really unnatural situation, and I don't think it's prevalent to anyone who might read this. My granddad was 87 years old when he did back in September, and in the last year or so of his life, I made it my goal to spend as much time with him as I could, knowing that it's rare for people to make to 90 these days.

   One of the many things I learned from him is that our nation and our world are different than they were in the 40's when he was my age. That's obviously not news to anyone, and it shouldn't be unless you've been living in a shell off of the coast of Iceland. But still, the fact is that we are really, seemingly, in the worst financial, moral, and prestige state that our country has been in since possibly the 70's, and even now, our situation is much much worse than even it was then.

   I remember in 11th grade history, we learned that the Spanish-American war was the single event that spring-boarded America into the super-power that we still are today. It was the bombing (later, we found out it was an accident on board) of the U.S.S. Maine in Spanish-owned Cuba that started the war, and a few hours and one heart attack later, we whipped the Spanish and sent them home cowing before us.

   The days that followed were prosperous, and we hear about the 20's being great, and though there was complete economic disaster in the 30's-40's, the decades that followed are widely considered to be some of the best in America's history.

   But what I really wanted to think about today was the difference in leadership between now and then. I admit and even proclaim that the media then is not what it is now, and things went on that we don't know about. And no, the technology was not the same as it is now. But could it be that there were more honest, upright men in the past?

   Will the Afghanistan/Iraq wars be the things that are remembered as the events that began the slow, sinking process in America? Or will the current generation of politicians be gone soon, and will a new generation, younger and tired of the corruption, step up and take charge in the next 10-20 years? These are the questions that I think we need to evaluate. Or I could be completely wrong about everything and I should go back to staking out my mailbox for the Netflix thief.