We Are Living in Dangerous Times, Part 1

“Come gather ‘round people wherever you roam; and admit that the waters around you have grown; and accept it that soon you’ll be drench to the bone. If your time to you is worth savin’; then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a-changin.

Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen; and keep your eyes wide, the chance won’t come again; and don’t speak too soon for the wheel’s still in spin; and there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’. For the loser now will be later to win; for the times they are a-changin.

Come senators, congressmen please heed the call. Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall; for he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled; there’s a battle outside and it’s ragin’. It will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls, for the times they are a-changin.

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land; and don’t criticize what you can’t understand. Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. Your old road is rapidly aging. Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand, for the times they are a-changin.”

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman, 1941-), American folksinger and songwriter, 2016 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, “The Times They Are a-Changin’ (1964)”

I have with me last Sunday’s newspaper, and in my own phase, I was scanning at some new words and phrases that might give me some entertainment and tickle my thinking. The headline reads: “Karen barrels toward Luzon.” Interesting, but ordinary. But to my discovery, I found out that words in the news – in tri-media – including magazines, newspapers, the radio, television, and even the Internet, are loaded with words that point to one thing: “The dangers of daily living.”

Let’s magnify this matter a bit with some enumerations: “massacre,” “global warming,” “slain,” “war of Christians v. Islam extremists,” “religious war, “sexual crime,” “sexual assault,” “Oplan Tukhang,” “Oplan Galugad,” “public warning and precautions against Zika, smoking, and firecrackers,” “hate crimes,” “road rage,” “cyber-bullying,” “extrajudicial killing,” and “anti-drug war.” Even the cartoon and comics section was not spared. The comic strip Phantom in its first box reads: “The kid has to live under the protection of the Chinese Gang and at its mercy.”

Please don’t get me wrong. Words can and might have two meanings, like for example, words and slogans coined by the government. Like a coin, it has two sides: The negative side and its positive opposite side. Just like myself, there may be a number of you who don’t take each and every news item seriously anymore. But even if we don’t consider the gravity or seriousness of what we hear or read about, we still think of our own safety and that of our family’s.

Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com, in his August 10, 2016 article wrote: “We are living in some pretty dangerous times – and the danger increases by the day.”

(To be continued)