The scripture above pretty well sums up local and national governance today.

We are guilty of allowing an organized anarchistic minority to bamboozle a disorganized mainstream majority into electing bad trees, thornbushes and briars to public office.

Unattended weeds will take over the very best of gardens.

Here’s a few ways how —

(1) The average age of the Founding Fathers was 44. Including males, females and a diversity of colors, today’s U.S. senators average out at 64. So much for the antagonistic myth of the “old white men” who created our American Dream. That shift is important because older people in elected office are notoriously guilty of something that would appall the Founding Fathers – thinking about tomorrow’s election instead of tomorrow’s children. ‘Kick the can down the road’ is a perfected leadership skill among a majority of today’s politicians.

(2) We live in a time where elected officials are enthralled with the nice over the necessary. Locally, this results in an obsession with special interests, borrowed money, ballparks and social agendas over public service. Ask the people trapped each day in the 20-plus-year, Democrat-delayed interstate upgrade between Asheville and Hendersonville. Ask the 50,000 people who recently lost water for a week. Ask the people who’ve been robbed, beaten and otherwise criminally impacted because our police department has been eviscerated. Ask our all-women, all-liberal mayor and Asheville City Council members why they demoralizingly indulged BLM, Antifa and other rioters in Asheville while condemning our police. Thereby betraying city government’s number one job – public safety.

3) We continue to ignore China to our rapidly expanding danger. At every level — technology, organization, reason, military expansion, manufacturing, resource development, maturity and aggression — they are eating our lunch. While we’ve been pretending to police the world while simultaneously ignoring our own borders, shortsightedly fighting empty wars, and spending tomorrow’s military dollars on dead-end traps like Iraq and Afghanistan, they’re committed to their long game and our demise.

4) There is a dangerous script being sold like medicine to the young, poor, foolish, lost and otherwise vulnerable — that an attitude of entitlement, anger and victimization is a smart, justified personal and cultural landing place. Nothing could be further from the truth. You can’t be entitled, angry and a victim — and stand as an equal — at the same time. Predators sell this false notion to advance their own power agenda.

5) As a culture, we have grown increasingly confused on the difference between talking, pretending, motion and emotion versus a dedication to truth and productive action. That confusion ensures a hard landing.

6) Wokeism, cancel culture and the BLM movement are about nothing more than despotism, Marxism and authoritarianism with a different title and make-up. Each are rooted in the same tired power-tripping tyrannies of centuries past and produce the same loss of freedom, peace and realism.

7) A society debasing its social policies through an equation of rights and freedoms without matching responsibilities and accountabilities is doomed to fail. In no place is this corrupt program exposed more surely than through our out-of-control debt addictions. Self-serving leadership and those voting for them have bankrupted America.

8) In the on-going battle between liberty and security, history tells us most people chose the latter. The betrayal of the rule of law by America’s governing elite affirms this surrender.

9) Any society that exchanges the natural prosperity of a merit-based economy for artificial entitlements used to seduce or enable voters, the powerful and special interests is sowing the seeds of its on destruction. Welcome to the 21st century.

10) G. Michael Hopf’s post-apocalyptic novel “Those Who Remain,” tenders a profound quote — “Hard times produce hard men. Hard men produce good times. Good times produce soft men. Soft men produce hard times.” That thinking applies to men and women equally. We have arrived at Stage 4 of this circular process.

What to do?

Wisdom finds us concentrating more on what we can control than on what we can’t. The latter drains our hope and energy. The former uplifts and inspires. Not everything about our future is in our hands, but enough of it is to keep us busy, fulfilled and distracted from the nuttiness.

Debt is about “their” power – not yours. The more one lives on credit, the more vulnerable one is to the whims of creditors. For a flag on the importance of getting out of debt, note that most credit cards are charging an average annual interest rate of 25 percent. It used to be called loan sharking.

Work hard to get out of debt and, thus, into your own powers.

Ponder how in an emergency you might feed and protect your loved ones. Plan and prepare for such. It hopefully will never happen, but similar to traditional forms of insurance, preparation will bring peace of mind.

Look up. As the darkness of our world accelerates, having a solid spiritual foundation will take on greater importance.