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 My second favorite scriptural reference is “A spiritual person is a truth seeker.”

 Put those two together and you have a formula for journalistic, political and social integrity that is up to any of the many monumental challenges before us.

 We live in a time where journalists, politicians and social activists who get this formula are rarer than conservative thinkers on a taxpayer-funded college campus; mainstream media staff pool, or formerly taxpayer funded PBS outlet.

 Absent a formula for success, man has a dependable tendency to cheat, shun normal social standards of behavior, and otherwise abandon convictions for opportunism. We hide from that betrayal of responsibility behind a shifty shield of denial, panic, threats  and anger. 

 In cultures that reach this point of dysfunction, a dedication to exploitation becomes contagious. In absence of people of conviction – honest, genuine, committed, loving, and grounded conviction – we start gravitating toward the people with the least convictions.

 If you don’t believe that, take a ride through any inner-city public housing development and see who sets the social standards for that community. It won’t be the guy sitting at the bus top making his way to work. It will be the guy standing at the corner waiting to sell one illegal/deadly substance or another to stupid people.

 When we, as individuals, communities, or countries, abandon the principles of social normalcy, it becomes crucial that we hide our poo-poo. Both from ourselves, and those around us.

 Hidden poo-poo – in any form – is a breeding ground for bad stuff.

 The minute someone suggests there is “nothing to see here,” be assured there is a lot to see here and turning your head won’t remove the problem. 

 Truth does not compost.

 From a personal perspective, the 800-pound poo-poo-covered gorilla hiding in America’s corner is our national debt.

 It’s so bad, that we’ve reached a point where when this subject comes up, eyeballs glaze and brains shrink with the speed that other parts shrink during a cold-water plunge. 

 The numbers are so staggering as to define understanding – and if you can’t understand a problem, you certainly can’t find solutions to that problem. 

 How much debt do we have? Well, $33 trillion in federal debt is a good place to start. Then we have $100 trillion or so in unfunded promised services like Social Security and Medicare. Private debt in the U.S. is at around $70 trillion. 

 Of that last figure, I owe American Express roughly $1,200 spent mostly on, no matter what my wife says, amazing and necessary items from Amazon.

So, how much is a trillion dollars? Well, it would take roughly 500 semi-trucks to haul a trillion dollars in palleted $100 bills. Multiplying our collective debt of roughly $200 trillion and we’re talking about 100,000 semi-trucks full of $100 bills to carry the load.

 See why everyone’s eyes glaze? 

 We’re stuck. Our leaders pay occasional lip service to “reining in our debt and deficit spending,” but no one, from either party, is really doing anything about it. 

 The one positive thing you can say about Republicans is that if the Democrats were in control, and this has been proven time and time again, our debt would be dramatically worse. 

 Up until the ‘70s, it was not uncommon for physicians to diagnose terminal cancer and not tell the patient. In the face of their medical powerlessness, protecting the patient’s state of mind became a substitute mission. That’s precisely what our media, politicians and society as a whole are doing right now on our debt reality. 

 We’ve been so busy lying to each other, ripping one another off, and otherwise gaming our system that no one is willing to be responsible. Even those attempting to try can correctly assume they will be exploited as a predatory opportunity by someone else.

 Case in point – try to be an authentic conservative Republican – there is no such thing as a conservative Democrat – and dare to suggest that we’re bankrupting Social Security and Medicare and must do something about it.

 You can be assured that our donkey party will immediately start kicking you to death by scaring everyone receiving social security or Medicare with your attempt to “shut down their benefits.”

Heck, left-minded Democrats – and that is the only kind of Democrat we have in 21st century American politics – are even jumping up and down about President Trump taking illegal aliens and dead people off the rolls.

I could go on and on with the reasons we’re stuck, but you get it. Now you and I have to figure out what to do about it.

That mission can be summed up simply – get to work getting out of personal debt; learn skills that make you useful to others; embrace healthy and responsible values; and otherwise plan on an unpredictable future.