My Year in Review

My Year in Review
Al Ritter

As with the rest of my life, I have no regrets about the year 2011. I am fortunate enough to be in the fifth year of my retirement, and fortunate enough to have so many readers and friends to share opinions with. This year I have watched my grandson grow from a baby to a little man, and I can’t wait to see him this week. My son has settled into a job that I think he truly loves, and from what he tells me his employer loves the work he does.

I have to admit that this year has been very difficult for me to write articles on politics. This is my sixth year writing on politics. I have written over 1400 articles on issues of the day and been read by over 100,000 people around the world. This internet thing is pretty cool huh? Besides America, my articles are most read by people in the Netherlands, followed by Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom. As some of you know I used to write for the Examiner. I enjoyed my largest readership in that relationship of over 30,000 monthly but also suffered the worst censorship. I cut ties with the Examiner last year and have never looked back.

I know that corruption has always followed politics as the draw of power and money have always corrupted people of good initial intentions, but these last three years have been especially brutal. We have seen that ideology has taken a front seat to the life of two border agents. We have seen the willingness of this administration to willfully lie and to secure legislation to legally lie to the very people who not only elect them, but pay them. When was the last time you willfully lied to your boss, then sought permission to do so in the future?

I have sat on the sidelines and watched while our government has made the same exact mistakes that administrations have made in just my life, which I see as extremely disturbing. We have seen an administration try to rewrite historical facts to claim that successful things in the past were unsuccessful and vice versa.

Each day under this administration scares me more than the last. Every day sees a little more of our freedom erode. I am even finding that my fears are becoming more irrational. For instance, I am very reluctant to secure a new primary care doctor for fear of having my health records flying around the internet, and yet here I am on Facebook……….lol…….seems sort of irrational in that light doesn’t it? There is far more information about me circulating on Facebook than could possibly be circulating by my health records.

Admittedly I have become paranoid, as I’m sure lots of my conservative friends have, how could we not be? It doesn’t take much of a history of past lies to feel that you are being lied to, and even less time to confirm it. Paranoia sets in shortly after and quickly expands. I am seriously scared for my country; I think 4 more years of this administration would put us on a path of no return to the ideas and policies of our forefathers.

Most of my readers have noticed the articles and opinions from my group of writers on the decline, and I think that this collective disgust and paranoia is part of the reason. We won’t give up but the horror we all see on a daily basis has an effect on how we write.