A Look at the Last Four Decades by Jay Goodman

In my last few chapters, I have talked about what has taken place in America over the last thirty to forty years. I have asked myself many times what has happened that’s changed people so much since I was young. When you look at history from ancient times, things got better as time went on, not just how people lived, but how they thought and acted. Naturally times change, history has shown us this, it has played out in every history book ever written with society evolving into a more productive world. Life doesn’t move backwards, it moves forward. If we take a look at the United States of America from the very start up until the 1960’s, we left countries that had been established for thousands of years behind. The things we have done and created astonish the world.

Let’s take a look at some, we created the car, the plane, the jet, the rocket, we put the first man on the moon and we went to two World Wars against overwhelming odds and won. We built this country into something so wonderful that people left their home countries and flocked here by the boat loads to chase the American Dream. America showed the entire world what freedom truly was. People from Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Spain arrived here and quickly wrote home telling their family how wonderful this country was and would send money home as soon as they could so their family members could buy a ticket on a ship to join them. It’s amazing to see how far America has come, the inventions and technology created here by Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison, not only revolutionized this country, but the entire world.

By the 1960’s, America had built our armed forces into such a powerful force that places like Russia and China knew better than to try anything with us. The whole world looked at us with admiration and awe. Everyone here took great pride in being an American and it showed across the country. As a little boy, I remember riding my bike through the streets of Cincinnati, everyone had an American Flag in front of their home. What’s crazy is, this country wasn’t even two hundred years old at the time. Most of our accomplishments took place in less than one hundred years. I have explained this because I wanted to show how much things have changed over the last thirty or forty years. I could write an entire book on all that America has done and accomplished, but back to my original question, how could the people today be so much different than these people I have just written about? I am not looking at myself as if I’m better, I don’t believe for a minute that it’s my way and everyone else is less than me. After all I am writing this from a Federal Prison. All I am saying is how could things have changed so much? While I am aware that I am in prison, I am also aware that how I think is way different than most people around me. My thinking, my morals, my ethics and my discipline is way beyond the younger generations that are around me. The youth, or I should say the men from the last thirty to forty years, have lost all touch with reality, and as I have pointed out in my last few chapters, it began in the 1960’s.

The drugs, the divorce rate, lack of education, lack of discipline, has without a doubt been the start. The young people have been allowed to do pretty much whatever they wanted. Without family unity, these kids were never taught morals or discipline, no dad around teaching these children how to mind and a mom drunk or blown out of their minds on drugs, kids have grown up on TV or rap music. The young men today have idolized this gangster rap shit, fantasizing about being what they listen to, because they’ve had no structure in their lives, they’ve fallen prey to the lyrics of what these idiots rap about. Another thing that happened during these years, the generation of laziness. When I was a kid, it was very uncommon to see fat people, fat people were usually someone up in age, like in their 60’s. It was a rarity to ever see a young fat person, I cannot ever remember seeing an obese kid in my school, but over the last thirty to forty years fat people have popped up faster than a pan of popcorn. Why? Because these kids grew up with no structure or discipline. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, they were known as couch potatoes. They just sit on the couch, watching TV from morning till night and the craziest shit has happened over the years, society tells young kids, “It’s alright honey, not everyone has to look like a model.” What the freaking hell does a model have to do with it? I have seen on talk shows where they tell young people it’s alright to be fat, but in all actuality it’s not alright to be fat and it is terrible to be obese. The truth is being overweight taxes our bodies. It’s hard on your joints, hips, back, knees, you’re more prone to get diabetes, heart disease, have a heart attack, a stroke and die at a much younger age. Society today thinks we shouldn’t be hard on people. My question is, what are we going to do, let the people we love and care for just die? Because there is no nice way to tell someone, “Hey you are eating yourself to death.” The truth is the truth and that’s what people need to hear.

There’s another thing that’s happened through the years, everyone believes it’s not right to hurt people’s feelings. In the past it wasn’t known as trying to hurt someone’s feelings, it was known as trying to be honest and caring enough to not let this person kill themselves, but the people of today believe we should pamper each other like we are children. I guess what I am trying to say is, people make excuses for everything that someone does wrong. We’ve become a country of specialists, there are news stations and other shows I have seen that introduce someone as “This is a counselor or doctor and they specialize in drug abuse, eating disorders, gambling, sex addiction, depression. Or my child won’t mind, I don’t like my life.” I mean where did all these fucking idiots come from? How did all these people get so messed up over the last thirty to forty years? Drugs, divorce, the complete loss of family unity, lack of education and this gangster rap shit, has all been the start of where America is now. All of this together has polluted the young people over the years.

To look at men today is like watching someone who is a young kid that is lost on what they want to do in life. They truly have no idea because they’ve never given it serious thought. Men in their 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s have no idea what they want to do with their lives, it’s absolutely crazy! I’ve even asked people in prison through the years, “What are you going to do when you get out?” Almost none of them have a clear idea because of what’s happened with the new generation of young men, they’ve never allowed themselves to think nor been taught to think. They have lived their entire lives acting on their emotions. In the first chapter I wrote, how could things be so different and as I have explained what I believe has been the problem. I must also say a lot of the problems I see in here is because most people in here function on their emotions instead of thought.

In my next chapter, I’m going to talk about a few other things that have changed the last four decades of men and women in our country. Not all of it has to do with what I’ve written about so far, because even our schools and government are to blame.