If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you…
–from “If” by Rudyard Kipling

    I never figured it would be this way. I thought when the country did melt down, that it would happen in a few days. Instead, it is hundreds of little fires seeming to burn as separate landscapes. On the southwest, there is a border fire that everyone is ignoring. It carries disease and workers that want jobs. I’m not sure any are available.
    I thought the VA might have some answers, but their jobs turned out to be paper entries designed to mask their own cancers. I really think our boys and girls in uniform and our veterans that used to wear them deserve much better. The thoughts I have today were considered patriotic back in the day. I don’t think that is true today. I think taxpayers deserve to be told the truth. I think Homeland Security should be on our side. I don’t see the problem as Edward Snowden leaking secrets. I see it as the NSA keeping data files on way too many of us with way too much data seeking, telling them everything from where I shop to what kind of toothpaste I use.
    There is always some background noise coming from government. I used to be able to ignore it, even tune it out. Now it seems different. We lose Iraq in a week. I can take that. I get interested when the IRS steals from us. Then watch as their lawyers take the fifth. Then they lose the evidence. They say it just vanished because they followed normal procedures. And the IRS Commissioner, the guy at the top that is paid to keep everyone straight, says he is not apologizing for anything. He is smug. Maybe you would be too if you had already paid out over $100K in political donations to the party in power.
    And the people who dared try to organize a voting group, their names have been put out to dry. OSHA and the IRS are already on this one. The letter is in the mail. You are being audited or inspected. The EPA will also be calling. No, I never thought it would play out this way.
    Forget the fed printing money that isn’t there. The Administration giving up land, entire countries that we just sacrificed the lives of 5000 brave Americans. I got my memo today. The fear impulse came in the middle of the night. To paraphrase, it just said “Finch, don’t worry about the country burning down, or the new procedures we are inputting at the IRS, just do your job.
    “Tell those workers you coach, those private employees who actually pay taxes and purchase homes, pay for overpriced healthcare plans and obey our laws, tell them how to work safe and efficient. Tell them how to lift correctly and how to read the latest SDS so they will stay safe, healthy and productive. And by the way, tell them not to worry about us. We can handle the government work.”
    To my customers, to all you private workers, I want you to be extra careful this summer. I want you to consider and weigh, as I have, that there are people who need us. Somewhere and at some point in the last few years, we have entered a “Brave New World”. I hate it. And thanks you Mr. Kipling, I needed your “If” to be part of my summer reading list. If you haven’t read it, check it out.