America What Happened?

By Douglas Dickenson

Most of the people leading the United States of America graduated from the best colleges and universities, and you’d think they’d be willing and capable of making wise decisions.

But most of our founding fathers didn’t attend Harvard, Yale or any other institution of higher learning; they made decisions that created the g

• Language: English
• Publisher: Global Summit House
• Release date: Jan 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781645165125

Douglas Dickenson

Born March 8 1939 Flint Michigan Married 61 years Spouse Joan Irwin Four Daughters, nine grandchildren ten great grandchildren 4 years in USMC stationed at El Toro Marine Corp Air Station IBM from 1965 to 1996 (now retired) Served in various positions in Baptist churches for 45 years

Book preview

cover.jpg

America

What Happened?

Doauglas Dickenson

Copyright © Douglas Dickenson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.

ISBN: 978-1-64516-511-8 (Paperback Edition)

ISBN: 978-1-64516-510-1 (Hardcover Edition)

ISBN: 978-1-64516-512-5 (E-book Edition)

Some characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Book Ordering Information

Phone Number: 347-901-4929 or 347-901-4920

Email: [e-mail]

Global Summit House

www.globalsummithouse.com

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: America, another Land of Milk and Honey

Chapter 2: The Roaring 20’s

Chapter 3: The Great Depression

Chapter 4: Lifestyles in the 40’s and 50’s

Chapter 5: The Start of Decline (the 1960’s)

Chapter 6: American values are changing fast (1970’s and beyond)

Chapter 7: America converting to Socialism?

Chapter 8: Moral Decline

Chapter 9: The Blind Leading the Blind

Chapter 10: What’s going to Happen America?

Chapter 11: What can we do?

Citations

America What Happened?

When writing this book, the many problems that exist in our country that should have been addressed by the presidents and congress over many years were not. When they all campaigned for office they talked about the problems and sounded like they were going to do something about them; but after taking office they did nothing and even the talk ended. A recent example is Bush, Clinton and Obama when campaigning for office said Jerusalem should be the capital of the Jews but never made it happen; they wanted the Jewish vote to get elected but not the backlash from other countries; the same is true for our other problems. I’m talking about illegal immigration and our borders, NAFTA and AFTA draining our money and our jobs, term limits, Social Security, taxes and more.

When I say no one has done anything about these, I mean both major political parties going back decades.

It was depressing to see these problems looming even worse in the future with little hope anyone would try to fix them.

Who would have ever thought that a man who had never run for office of any kind would decide to run for the highest office in the country and against Hillary Clinton who was predicted by all of the pollsters to be the next President.

President Trump is addressing many of the issues that all Americans should be concerned about; it is obvious to the casual observer that he wasn’t like the professional politicians but ran for office because he recognized the many problems and wanted to fix them because he cares about our country and the people. He has taken on a job that the establishment does not support; it is an uphill battle with little support from his own party and absolutely no support from the Democrats. Much of what he has corrected came from executive orders. He needs the support of the people getting involved and calling and writing their congressman demanding they start working with the president instead of against him.

Introduction

I was born in 1939 and lived through WW2, Korean War, Vietnam and all the others that followed. My observations and suggestions are not out of a book written for the classroom to indoctrinate the young, but are based on decades of experience. I grew up in Flint Michigan in a blue collar family; my grandfather started to work for Buick in 1914 and my father with Fisher Body in 1928. I became one of a very few white collar workers in my family. My family did not attend church and religion was almost never discussed so my religious beliefs did not come from my upbringing but from observing the history of the world and observing the operation and practices of most of the main line Christian churches. As early as 12 years old I started searching religions trying to find out about God. I attended Baptist, Methodist, Nazarene, Mormon, and The church of latter day saints when God finally revealed himself to me.

Since my family were all blue-collar auto workers, they were all registered Democrats. I started out voting for John F Kennedy but as the Democrat Party started to turn away from the ideas and beliefs of President Kennedy, I moved closer to the Republican Party which also started to change and now consider myself an Independent where I can choose the person running for office based on their beliefs regardless of party affiliation.

I started to work for IBM in 1965; this was the beginning of the computer age and IBM was just starting to ship the 360 computer systems for business use; the personal computer had not been developed yet. It was exciting to be involved in the leading-edge of the boom in technology and our country was prospering.

It doesn’t matter if you are an Independent, Republican or Democrat you must know our country is in terrible shape and what’s worse, our politicians and most of the media do not let us know how bad it is; they certainly offer little in the way of solutions and whatever solutions they do offer I can’t believe will fix anything. If the politicians keep procrastinating, the problems will overwhelm us. We can’t just blame the politicians because we elect them and set back and allow them to make bad decisions and never get involved to reverse them until the damage is done. It is my hope that my book will help you to understand the problems we face with some ideas of what it will take to get us back on the right track. Keep in mind we have waited so long, the solutions will not be easy, but if we continue to keep our head buried in the sand, the solutions will be even worse.

Humpty-Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall;

All the king’s horses and all

The King’s men,

Couldn’t put Humpty-Dumpty

Together again.

As a very young child I learned such rhymes as, Mary Mary quite contrary, little Bo peep, little Jack Horner, Jack and Jill, Mary had a little lamb, and many more. To a child they were just cute little rhymes and nothing more, but in reality, many of them were political in nature. Mary Mary quite contrary referred to Mary 1 of England who was called Bloody Mary for her persecuting and murdering many Protestants. Jack and Jill were about King Louis XVl who was beheaded and Queen Marie Antoinette who came tumbling after.

Humpty-Dumpty was a cannon mounted on top of the ST. Mary’s at the wall church in Colchester England. During a siege of the church during the English Civil War in 1648, the tower was hit and the cannon Humpty-Dumpty fell to the ground. The King’s men on horses tried to retrieve the cannon to no avail

Humpty-Dumpty appeared in a Mother Goose story book in 1902 as a riddle with the answer being an egg It’s obvious we can make Humpty-Dumpty anything we want it to represent. To me it represents a fall that the results are difficult if not impossible to fix.

I see Humpty-Dumpty as America! We have been sitting high up on the wall since God blessed us with a land of milk and honey for the gentiles. We have had our ups and downs over the years just as the Jews did in the land of Canaan, but finally God grew weary of their sin and rebellion. It’s true that God loves us; (us being the gentiles), but it’s also true that his anger can easily match his love.

I believe the people in the United States, just like the Jews (the chosen people) have become so sinful and rebellious, that we are about to reach a time with God where he removes his helping hand and out fate will be the same as the Jews, or even worse? I’m not picking on the Jews, just using their plight as described in the Old Testament to compare to ours to show that when all is said and done, there isn’t really any basic difference between peoples.

Are we about to fall off our perch and break apart just like Humpty-Dumpty in the children’s nursery rhyme? Remember, the entire King’s horses and all the King’s men; but we don’t have a King; perhaps, all the President’s Senators and all the President’s Congressmen couldn’t put America together again. Did I forget their advisors?

The Jews were given a land of milk and honey by God because they were the chosen people of the time; they weren’t perfect as no one is, but compared to the other people in the world at that time; they were the best. For those of us that are familiar with the Old Testament, we know they fell away from God and he removed his hand from the twelve tribes of Israel. Life deteriorated and their enemies defeated them. The Israelites would repent and God would restore them to grace and power. Every time they turned their back on God who had blessed their lives greatly; their punishment would get worse. God decided, (to what I believe is mankind’s last chance); to give his son Jesus as a sacrifice; so that all that would believe in him, repent of their sins, and follow him would be indwelled with the Holy Spirit, and capable of living a righteous life; he then left us without excuse!

Israel for the most part, rejected Jesus as the Messiah mentioned in their Old Testament In spite of his teachings and the many miracles he performed. Since they were occupied by the Romans, they may have convinced themselves that the Messiah would free them and restore Israel to power and influence it once had enjoyed. It was about 35 years following the crucifixion that the Jews rose up against the Romans and were easily defeated. The Romans burned their temple to the ground. About 70 years later they again attempted to defeat the Romans and this time they were banned from Jerusalem and from worshiping their God.

Over the centuries, the Jews are driven out of many countries in Europe; they were blamed for every disaster from the plague to worldwide depression; this was the Diaspora of the once great nation. For almost 1800 years, the Jews no longer had a country. Following WWII, when it was reported that several million Jews had been killed in the holocaust; the allies decided to give the Jews a homeland which is where they reside today. The Jews have really never known peace following the crucifixion of Jesus, even to this day as they are surrounded by nations that hate them and would like to destroy them completely. I wonder if the Jews that don’t believe that Jesus was the messiah as written in the book of Danial some 500 years before Christ; how can they explain that 2000 years later and there is no Messiah? Perhaps they were mistaken and need to rethink their position.

When I wrote this book four years ago, Donald Trump had not decided to run for president now that he is president, and is addressing some of the major issues in my book, I felt a need to provide an update as things are starting to look up There actually may be hope for the United States. Could there be a light at the end of the tunnel?

Chapter 1

America, another Land of Milk and Honey

America enters the scene in a land; that, I believe is a land of milk and honey provided by God for the Christians. Oh, if you’re not a Christian, don’t worry, you still get to reap the benefits. It’s not that there weren’t Christians in Europe, but the practice of Christianity was not what it should be. Many of our early immigrants were escaping religious persecution in Europe. This was the opportunity to establish a Judeo-Christian country that provided religious freedom. We were the example to the world in the way we lived our lives. We were the most respected, feared, admired and successful country on the earth.

Our ancestors came to a new world that was wild and unsettled. Many died from disease and starvation but in spite of the hardships, a nation started to form; a nation that would be different from any nation on earth.

We take for granted where we are today; how far we have come in such a relatively short time when you consider that European countries had existed for many centuries when we were just beginning.

Europe was already well established when we decided to break away from European control and influence and start over; while rejecting many of their ways. The United States was just getting started but it was not long before we passed them by. Some would consider this bragging but it’s not; just a fact that is obvious to the whole world.

President Theodore Roosevelt once told a reporter The world will never love us, they may respect us, they might one day fear us, but they will never love us, for we have too much audacity. The dictionary describes audacity as, brazen, insolent. I believe we are what Roosevelt described and that’s part of why we were so driven that success quickly followed.

I have always believed the two main reasons America became such a unique and unusual country is; first, the immigrants that would come to such an undeveloped land and leave everything they knew, country, family and friends, had to be quite unique themselves. I do not compare these to the illegal immigrants crossing our borders as they are coming to an established country to make more money.

The second reason for our success is we were able to keep the best ideas and traditions of the various nations while rejecting their worse. This was only possible because we were not a country of one nationality, but a melting pot of the world. The result was a society different from the rest of the world.

Perhaps the best example of this difference between America and most of the established countries was our ultimate approach to religious freedom. Most countries had one or two main religions and in some cases a person would be persecuted if they failed to endorse the state religion

As I said, it is human nature to take for granted what we have, and how we got there. When you look at our accomplishments in just 242 years, it’s really quite amazing! We are a leader in medicine, inventions, technology and space travel just to name a few. No other nation on earth has ever reached the lever of achievement of America, and it was all accomplished by a melting pot of peoples from every country in the world.

Because of how our forefathers founded our country combined with the kind of people that immigrated here looking for a better life, we enjoy an exceptional standard of living; not only do we have one of the largest per capita incomes, but our cost of living is much lower than Europe’s.

One of the main reasons Europe has such a high cost of living is Taxes. Most of the European countries operate under socialism, which has the goal of giving everyone the same standard of living. This would be accomplished by income redistribution, or, take from those that have and give to those who do not. Now financial equality has never actually been accomplished in any country; what I see is the entire middle class living at a level below America’s lower class while the privileged upper class still exists, and the government makes most decisions instead of the people and free enterprise...

A good example of the government making decisions to control your life is in France, they buy gasoline at the same price as in the United States but the government doesn’t want people to drive so they place a tax that accounts for about 57 percent of the cost of gas while in our country, the total tax both federal and state average just 11 percent. At the current time, gas in the United States is about $2.57 a gallon while in Europe it averages about $7.84 and they are protesting in the streets over the cost but the people put socialist in power so from my perspective they are protesting against themselves.

Speaking of taxes; Finland in Europe has a 20% value added tax which means if they buy a $40.000 auto, they pay $8.000 tax. We know a couple that fly to the United States, buy the same car and ship it home and they save thousands; so that’s exactly what they do.

Are you aware that a value added tax was one of the options being considered by the Obama administration to help pay off the debt? A value added tax on top of Federal income tax and State income tax and sales tax and property tax and gasoline tax and luxury tax and on and on go the ways government has to take your money and lower your standard of living.

Do you remember reading about how our forefathers threw the tea in the Boston harbor to protest, taxation