Frequent contributor Jim Peters sent along this thoughtful essay:

I do not believe that I have ever been more concerned about the fate of our country than I am right now. I just finished particpating in a Donald Trump designed poll which showed that the flashy, and person who will do anything to stay publicized, Donald Trump is leading President Obama in the poll. President Obama is doing a good job. He is following closely another president’s lead in eradicating us from certain depression in this country by using deficit spending. Is he spending too much? Well, that’s a definite in Libya, a place we should have nothing to do with. But, overall, he is following closely John Maynard Keynes’ book about funding WWII.

People are angry, and, contrary to the old days, they are not ashamed or restricted in their showing it. I recently ran into a police officer who started unabashedly yelling at me after stopping me for a traffic infraction I believe did not happen. I am taking it to court. Even the police in Lowell seem to be out of sorts. In forty years, I have not received one ticket outside of this city. No Chelmsford ticket, no Billerica ticket, no speeding ticket, no State Trooper ticket. I do business in all of those towns, no ticket. But in one year, in Lowell only, I have received four tickets in the past year and one half. One of my friends put it succinctly when she said that it sounded like the Lowell Police Department was in a hurry to create revenue. I am fighting, and successfully fought, those tickets. But one officer pulled me over while I was in my wife’s car and started yelling at me because I was in my “former” wife’s car. I did not know what he was yelling at me about, I never realized that I had a former wife. I have been married to the same woman since I was twenty-one years old. That, my friends, is thirty five years.

All-in-all, it has been one hell of a year. Forget the tickets, this is the year I overextended myself in my business dealings, this is the year I got sick with an illness no one wants to have, this is the year I found out just how serious being in a deep recession can be. Congress deregulated the banks even more and carried their prescriptions for righteousness to the Credit Card industry. Therefore, my credit cards became fair targets for everyone in the industry. Chase Manhattan took over all of my credit card accounts and made it a practice to call on a different one everyday. Which is strange, because I tty to keep them current.

In the city, I wrote that Mr. Lynch needed more imagination. I have since eaten my words. Anyone who can keep the city running in these economic times has some imagination, let me tell you! I just hope he stays for awhile and continues to keep the city going.

People driving have no patience anymore. I took a quick turn onto a side street, and I admit I did not use my blinker, but the car behind me was a good distance away. Traveling down the road, I heard someone in that car shout an obscenity about using your blinker. I was probably a block down the street by then. Other people yell about their president, their senators, and their congresswoman. They yell. They don’t discuss. Anyone running for office is immediately a crook. Whatever happened to the values of the early Kennedy administration? “We just have to exploit his charm and social grace,” Larry O’Brien said of Kennedy. Instead, people became so scared of his liberal ideas that someone killed him. We did not exploit him, we watched as he was murdered.

Which brings me back to Obama. Why are we so afraid of this man? He has done nothing but do his best to make America a good place to live. Sure, he is wrong about alot of issues. Simply put, illegal aliens are illegal. He does not say that they are not illegal, he rightly points out that their children are legal under our current laws. So we attack him, the messenger. If we want to change the illegal in immigration, it is going to take all of us to do it. And we are going to have to turn our backs as immigration officers separate legal citizens, children, from their illegal parents. Families being torn apart. Our ancestors would not have stood for it, but we will because, by God, we are right! Maybe, just maybe,we are not right.

But Obama does his best and even his prior president, George Bush, will not attack him, which makes George Bush an extraordinary person, in my book. I believe he is the reason we are in the fix we are in, but he is, as a man, exemplary.

So, what am I rambling about? Well, the Japanese had Tsunami warnings etched in stone in high likelihood areas for the past 600 years. Some were apparently near the spot where the nuclear plants we built. The Haitians, Chileans, New Orleaneans, and others are still lacking much of their basic necessities. People do not make it to church if the weather is poor, or if it is too nice. Our parents made it to church, but we seem to have outgrown it. We do, however, complain if the “In God We Trust” is made smaller on a new dollar coin.

It is time that we take the responsibility for our actions and quit blaming the past generations, or those in positions of power. It is time to quit listening to those who would tear our country down in order to build themselves up. It is time to grow up, I guess. And if those tickets are my fault, it is my responsibility to pay them and continue on. For, in continuing on, we will find ourselves in all of the wonderful places the poets wrote about. We will find the road less taken. That will be our road, once again. And it is heavenly.
Jim Peters