Where are the Founding Fathers When You Need Them, or God for That Matter?

 I would say if there were any time in my lifetime America needed a sense of Godliness, it would be now.  Systematically our nation, although imbued with the spirit and presence of a Supreme Being, began quietly to suppress the essence of God.  Broadly defined God could be considered acknowledging and caring for our fellow beings. Hellfire and brimstone preachers would have us believe something different, possibly feeling in servitude to God like slavery.  Because God is not physically present on earth, would it not be best to exercise our Godlike tendencies toward our fellow human beings?  Empathy, or one's acknowledgement and understanding of others' hardship, is fundamental to a fulfilled life.  It is difficult to live in a vacuum.  With all of this said, without the presence and spirit of Godliness our lives, we would succumb to what we have now.  The list is long.  Maslow's Hierarchy of needs shows this.  We have to look no further than the first tier of human need to find our problems, and they are grave.  The upper levels of the Maslow pyramid largely still are present in American life, but surprisingly the most basic requirements, those on the bottom are what have become compromised.  How is this possible?  They are breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis, and excretion.  Each and every one of this requirements systematically has been undermined in American life.  It is difficult to argue.  How have we come to this?  While Capitalism as our chosen socioeconomic system comes to mind.  When it is not working is when we suffer.  In retrospect I'm not sure wireless communications and social media were the best choices for the American economy.  Both of these concepts, electromagnetic energy through the air and living through a wireless network via a device, have proven consequently we have neglected the Earth.  We have lost the fundamental connection and relationship with Mother Nature.  In America this is a staid topic, because native Americans who relied upon this symbiotic relationship with the Earth largely were eradicated as North America pushed west toward the Pacific Ocean.  The prioritization of Americans over native Americans, like the enslavement of Africans, will forever be the cloaked albatross of our nation.  We cast native Americans as heathens, and Africans as as substandard species of human life.  Both were mistaken and grievous in consequences.  While we continue to grapple with resulting Civil Rights and reparations, largely we ignore native Americans.  We have tucked them away on reservations and given them the rights to gamble for monetary profit.  There can be no greater disparity of philosophy than this.  A race of people who respected and were able to live off of the land were robbed of their sustenance, herded as cattle, and stricken with vice.  Is this unfortunately not the same scenario as the American public?  While we feign civility in our meager lives addicted to the internet, are we really free?  I think not.  The freedom for which human beings yearn is more spiritual, but it is reliant upon Mother Nature for its roots.  As a nation we have become irresponsible and have a cold shoulder toward Mother Earth.  The consequences of the breech of this relationship have become dire.  It is easier to deny it or simply cover it up by changing history or the perception of truth.  When I am effected by these shortcomings, which now is often, I am angered.  Anger can be an operative emotion.  When I think about the who is responsible, only there is one answer, and the list is long.  During Covid when airline flights in mass were grounded, the hole in the ozone over the South Pole shrunk dramatically.  Carbon emissions are nothing new, but we are quick to dismiss commercial airlines, because we have become reliant upon their novel service.  Most people like to fly.  Because of deregulation in most industries, it is these entities largely that have become responsible for the rapid demise of American life as we once knew it.  They are not required to consider, much less have empathy for American consumers.  They do not nurture us and care for us in a Godlike fashion.  Instead they pollute the environment in which we live and sell us poisoned products.  Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is not rocket science.  Much of life is like a balancing act on a set of scales.  In Fayetteville these scales have tipped to the wrong side for various reasons.  Once such reason could be the economy or Capitalism.  We have a housing shortage, but only because there was concerted effort to remove much low income housing because of its unsightliness.  If we had allowed the trailer parks to remain in Fayetteville, perhaps there would be fewer homeless people on the streets.  Freedom Town Center once was a trailer park.  The effort to provide more housing on a larger scale has resulted in a lopsided decimation of trees.  Trees provide oxygen, shade, and other comforts.  As the scale can swing at certain times of the year, they can produce unhealthy pollen and required maintenance.   I know this first hand, because our family home is host to two large live oak trees in the front yard.  They are far from maintenance free and are guilty of producing byproducts that can problematic for human health, including my own.  It is a necessary relationship.  My anger over selfish business prospects easily is stoked, as I drive through my own neighborhood.  A swath of trees that was a line of demarcation created by the local watershed recently was felled.  It remained there over the years for a reason.  The grade of the property was steep, and the trees provided a natural barrier against traffic noise.  They also provide needed oxygen to breathe.  It would seem the human race needs less and less oxygen to survive, because rapidly we are eliminating the sources and augmenting the offenders, or the polluting industries that burn our oxygen and replace it with deadly carbon emissions.  As I rode my motorcycle around Fayetteville, the effect was noticeable.  Places that had trees were cool and smelled sweet, and urban sprawl including downtown were hot and depleted of oxygen.  They smell like diesel or jet fumes.  Every time a commercial aircraft climbs or descends over our historic neighborhoods, clearly I understand global priorities.  They did not used to do this, creating wake turbulence on the ground for inhabitants and unhealthy almost unbreathable air.  The decimation of two large swaths of trees in Vanstory Hills has lessened the quality of life for its residents.  We are not the only neighborhood.  If one were to ask the inhabitants of Murray Hills in particular about the development of 1 Jura Drive, a large forest of formerly inaccessible trees, the rumble of diesel excavators daily for over two years would not be their choice.  As with the development on North Edgewater Drive, which has been in the works for years, these gaping wounds of red dirt and stark absence of trees is not a pleasant though.  There was no effort whatsoever to retain any of the trees.  They simply were slaughtered to make it easier for the developers to make money.  Thus far we have a half built Disney haunted mansion of a house looming over the entrance to Vanstory Hills.  How long will it take to sell these properties knowing that this house is the example?  Its cost is well over a million dollars.  If it is not difficult enough to find clean air in Fayetteville, our new President has reversed the small gains we have made on the recognition and removal of PFAS from the Cape Fear River Basin.  Further down the list...  The availability of healthy food for the average American is scant.  Contrarily American farms that produce freshly grown crops for local consumption have been bought out by the Farm Bill.  In many cases they are paid NOT to grow fresh food.  "Soylent Green is people!"  On the shelves of our grocery stores is a potpourri of ultra-processed, additive laden, addictive substances that don't qualify as food at all.  Fast food is no different.  The availability of healthy fresh food has become the most dire challenge to people in Fayetteville.  As for sleep and the possibility of restful peaceful slumber, that went out the window when John Snow merged the Chessie System with Seaboard Coastline to form CSX-T.  Invasive freight trains rumble through our communities nonstop producing heat, air pressure, vibration, and now electromagnetic emissions.  Lack of oversight of these offending corporations is the root of this evil.  It may not look like much on paper, but when you have no clean water, no clean air, and no healthy food, human existence will cease.  Is this the goal?  American cleansing.