When you sit outside of America and look inward at the happenings around the country. You see a pattern that encompasses the whole country and all that it touches. I call it the pinball machine syndrome…
I realize that many newer generations never had the pleasure of living the ancient era of Pinball machines everywhere. You found pinball machines in just about any establishment…. (https://www.theverge.com/2013/1/16/3793274/stern-inside-one-of-the-last-pinball-factories-in-the-world)
As the jukebox, the pinball machine was found everywhere. I had a jukebox in my restaurants and pinball machines in several of these to boot. I had one restaurant that had forty such machines and in its time they were serious money makers…
Something fascinating about that steel ball ricocheting all over the place and it was a true art as you kept the machine bordered on tilting and not tilting. But as with all machines they seemed to whoop your ass at the last moment. For sometimes they kept putting more balls in play and chaos ensued…
I see the US as one huge pinball machine:
The bumpers are smoking from returning the ball and the flippers are flapping as fast as we can work them. I ask myself, “How long before we blink and the ball slips by?”
It is one thing to keep the play within the borders of the US and watch the ball bounce from bumper to bumper. Sometimes you can get the ball to bounce between certain bumpers forever it seems. Using the perfect body language as you pushed the machine to the point of tilting. Then other times the ball went down a hole and popped up where you least expected it. I developed my pinball skills when in high school and I worked at a bowling alley. They had about six machines as I remember and after work we would all, including management try to be the pinball wizard….this was way before Pacman and Mario Brothers… (Pinball was around in the 1930’s…)
The problem is:
There are too many players, too many bottomless surprise holes and too much tilting and or called nudging, going on. I also call this the Napoleon and Hitler syndrome. Too many players are trying to get a piece of the pie and the pie is almost gone…
I’m not a ball in a pinball machine. I know what I want. – Emile Hirsch
We need to get out of the pinball machine mode:
Or better yet try to get back to the simple mechanical pinball machine.It would help us to understand the world better….just my opinion. Find a machine and then think about the USA and its comparisons…
McCain and Saakashvili; large and in charge in Ukraine…
You wonder who really is running the U.S., because it sure is not our president and it makes me claim once again, “The USA is run by thousands and thousands of wannabe Hitlers and Napoleons!”
WtR
