It’s Any Wonder Ancients Hated Prophets

It seems only yesterday the sage Editor-Publisher F. Mervyn Kent of the Cape May County Gazette (it was where the Press of Atlantic City offices are located, 1 S. Main St., Court House) imparted a bit of prophecy that, at the time seemed, well, pie in the sky at best. The scariest part of Kent’s prophecy seems to have the likelihood of happening.
That man, whom I respected almost as a second father, was used to telling the truth and nothing but. He had a keen insight of things and people in and around this county as well as the rest of the nation. “Al, I’m not going to live to see it, but you might,” he said. “Someday, the money is going to run out, and there won’t be anything left to pay for welfare. Then, you’re going to see a shooting revolution.”
See what I meant about pie in the sky? That was spoken in the early 1970s. Kent and his wife, Alice, were killed in a fire that consumed their Cold Spring home in early December 1975.
As months passed into years, and years into decades, I kept recalling that prophetic editor’s words, spoken will all the truth he was known to possess. Today, it almost seems we may be approaching that precipice.
What would happen if, blip, like turning out the lights, the news from Washington, D.C. was announced by a solemn Chief Executive, “My fellow Americans, as of midnight tonight, all welfare payments will stop. No more unemployment benefits or food stamps will be issued. Why? I hate to tell you this, but we just flat out don’t have the money to pay for any of those programs any longer. Good night and God bless America!”
How long would it take the concept to register that no longer would the U.S. Government be sending out checks? Any money to support one’s self or his or her family would have to come from within, not without. Would Kent’s words, uttered four decades ago, come to fruition?
Certainly, no one wants to see bloodshed, but the fact remains, when people begin to perceive there is no real hope for tomorrow, they have been known to take very drastic action.
We have become so ingrained with the notion of being a welfare state that the prospect that someday, all good things must come to an end, is a foreign as having to learn Arabic as our national language.
Before the great giveaways of government, what did poor people do? Many took menial jobs, but what’s wrong with that? No job is unimportant if it provides a service to some segment of society. There is nothing wrong with collecting trash, pumping septic tanks, doing yard work or taking in clothes to wash and iron.
I read news articles that focus on the government trying to come up with a way to create jobs. Man, does that ever sound righteous. Here is our Uncle Sam, caring so much for our lives and families that he actually cares enough to go out and create jobs for us. What a guy!
Wait, who is going to foot the bill? Won’t that person be us?
Since when did it become the duty of government to carve out jobs for us? Isn’t what normally what private industry did before regulations began so meddlesome that many companies simply shut their gates?
There was an interesting letter to the editor of the Press of Atlantic City recently by a chap who had owned a business, and who wanted to expand that operation. At virtually every turn, he was met with government regulations that, had he opted to follow, would have ballooned the cost of his planned expansion. So, instead of growing a thriving firm and likely hiring more people, he threw up his hands and closed the operation. That was but one minute cog in a very big national machine. How many others are similarly affected by government regulations?
It’s almost spiritual to hear legislators tell us that those government-funded (ha! that means us) projects on roads and bridges will swell into the local economy as workers buy sandwiches and cars and stuff like that. In textbook theory, that may be true, but, I’d like to see how much economic benefit the Route 52 Causeway project, linking Ocean City and Somers Point has filtered down to the average Cape May County working family and helped them earn more money. When government largess funds dredging of sand onto barrier islands, we are used to hearing it said how much those dollars would return in tourist dollars, on which many in this county depend. What is the direct benefit to a couple in Lower Township with two children in school trying to exist on minimum wage jobs?
Reporter Jack Fichter, elsewhere in today’s Opinion section, tells of his fleeting experience of Southern living. You may find interesting some of his insights into life in the Peach Tree State, but aside from that, he mentioned something rather telling about us Northerners. From what he saw of the folks in the mountainous region of Georgia were a people who were tough and self reliant, a people who could fix things themselves as well as being knowledgeable in how to hunt and fish. That’s a lost art here, but a generation or two ago, many Cape May County residents were skilled in the fine arts of the outdoor life. When fall arrived, that meant hunting season was just around the corner, and deer, ducks, geese and other small game were taken. Fall also meant cooler weather and striper season, when huge striped bass could be taken from nearby waters.
There were even well tended gardens that families treasured for the produce that ripened on their own land. Much of it was canned for the coming winter.
We have lost most of that skill, as Fichter notes. When the bottom falls, if we had larder in the pantry, and relied on ourselves, the aspect of government would grow dimmer.
I hope I don’t see Kent’s words come true, but how would you be prepared to face the future if government tossed its checkbook into the fire, and you had to live by your own wits? What would YOU do?