Try a Little Kindness (Transcript)

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO BOB BARNEY’S 7:11 AM BROADCAST: TRY A LITTLE KINDNESS

One of the things that I’ve noticed in today’s vast busy world is the selfishness that more people seem to have more than ever before.

Hi, this is Bob Barney with the Plain Truth today, and I don’t think it’s just me.

I think when I talk to other people, people agree with this idea, but it just seems in everyday life wherever you go, this is the case. You can go to the grocery store or even when you’re at the gas station or any place you want to go in the fast-food lines or at a restaurant maybe, it just seems that people are more concerned only about themselves more than they are about their fellow man around them.

I think this is relatively new in the scheme of things. I mean, I’m 70, going to be 70 years old. I’m 69 and a half years old.

I can remember as a teenager, for example, there was much more courtesy to other people than there is today.

We see this on the road. We see this in supermarkets and stores, and there may be some reasons for it.

I’m not sure what those reasons are, but I want to examine a few things that I think are causing the callousness of people. One of the things is, there are no two ways about it, is the internet, message boards, TikToks, Facebooks, where people can be impersonal. People can tell off other people because they’re not face to face with those people. People don’t have to make eye contact with those people. Therefore, people can be much more aggressive online than they would be in person. After a while though, maybe the person becomes immune to his selfish behavior. Then when they are in public, and they are in a line somewhere and they have their phone on and they’re talking to somebody on their phone with the speakerphone on at that. The whole restaurant can hear their conversation, and they speak extra loud to make sure everybody can hear it. No one can have a conversation of their own.

It’s just very irritating. And you see it more today than you ever did.

I think the real reason for this is not the internet, though I think the internet, with Facebook, TikTok, and all of these moving parts within the internet have a small degree of causation of why we have such a self-centered world today however, I do think a lot of it is that our leaders in our government are self-centered themselves. It’s whatever they can do to get elected and that’s both parties being guilty of that. But lately, I think we see that more with the Democratic Party, honestly and I think we’ve seen this for a while. I think their chickens are coming home to roost with how people act with each other.

Look at how Democrats run against Republicans, for example.

The first thing they do is they demonize them. They make them subhuman, or they make them Adolf Hitler, as Kamala Harris is trying to do with Donald Trump. So are every other major Democratic person trying to get her elected and drag her over the finish line and win. It’s the leaders of this country themselves that are self-centered. They only care about their own power. They only care about what’s good for them. Therefore, I think that kind of trickles down to the population where more and more people have become self-centered. I also think it’s a generational thing. I think that you see more people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, 80s, 90s, however high you want to go, that seem to have some more care about their fellow man than the younger people of this world. And I think that is a problem.

I believe that most people recognize that problem. Some of that has to do with the way they are brought up, their homelife, and also about what is going on in school. Possibly it also is the fact that in today’s world, we do not have the teachers that we once have had. In fact, I’m pretty sure of that. You don’t have the caring for the kids’ well-being that you used to know. It’s a dog-eat-dog world and every person-for-a-person world.

Mankind is suffering because of it.

The mindset of what can you do for me as a direct result has harmed civilization, Western civilization, and it’s also made people not have a worry or a concern about their neighbor. They don’t have the feelings about their neighbors that they used to have. For example, back maybe 40, 50, or even 100 years ago, when people would rush to the aid of their neighbor when they are in trouble. I am happy to say that we are seeing people rushing to the aid of the people in North Carolina and Tennessee and the people hit by the hurricanes in the Southeast. We saw Americans, the good news of the whole thing is that we saw Americans rushing to help these people, not the government. The government has dragged their feet the whole way. The government goes and rushes to help Ukraine though, but it doesn’t go out of its way to help its own citizens.

So, I think it’s time that we really look at ourselves as a people and we start looking at what is good for ourselves as well as what’s good for our neighbor. That’s a Christian message, after all, that Christ wanted us to understand and implement…to also treat others as we want to be treated ourselves. This requires us to open up a little bit, get our face out of the iPhone, maybe that’s a problem, get our face out of the phone, and start interacting with people and caring about other people…be a kinder, more gentle nation, as George Bush tried to say…even though he wasn’t that himself…to kind of look back to when America was on top of the world and when we were great. This was a time when Americans always would lend a helping hand, and they did not depend on the government for everything.

I think today the biggest problem is that people depend on the federal government for everything.

Even in these disasters, the first thing people say is, where is FEMA? Where is FEMA? Well, civilians are showing up and churches are showing up and independent people are showing up and helping, but you don’t need FEMA when that happens. All you really need from FEMA, and I said this a couple weeks ago, is their money, the government money that they can help down the road, but if you expect FEMA to be leading an action after a crisis, that’s why you’re going to have disappointment, and you’re going to have disappointment after disappointment. 

It’s high time that the American people become the people that they used to be, and be the first at the scene of a tragedy, and not wait for the government to go there, and I think if we do that and we look at things in a positive light, America can be great again as Donald Trump’s trying to make it.

Just sharing my little pet peeve for the day. It’s very short, and I do appreciate any comments anyone may have to share. Please send them along.

Until then, this is Bob Barney with The Plain Truth today, brought to you by theplaintruth.com saying thank you so much for listening. Tune in at noontime and we’ll have another show. Until then, bye-bye.