Op Ed: 'Deja Vu' For YOU, Too? Deep Array of Desperate Situations Reflects Non-Developments Too Familiar

(SEASIDE, Ore.) - Long ago I learned never to look back but simply to jam down foot and keep driving...! Worked fine when I had first license, in Maine, in early 30s...and I must disclose since it soon became professional habit in all I've undertaken ever since.

That may locate me deep within an undesirable wheeler-dealer category when car-contained, but for any job "in the media" and within communications at any level in all of this past half-century and more, it has been the Rule of The Day for most of us so entrapped.

Entrapped ? Why do you suppose we put up with calamitous conditions-now-encountered and growing stress-and-strain at every level? Fewer and worser "colleagues" in journalism? More and worser personal-pundits pounding away at pure (and impure) aggravated opinions? Bloggers logging and bogging and belittling all?

With worldwide situation coverage become commonplace and heavier demands every day on all who would be "responsible citizen" via seeing, hearing ?

With many more than ever before thinking about "what all of it means" --to echo an 80-year-old multi-grandmom I know...

Modern technology outruns us all, in every venue and within every vision, and is now remorselessly, irresistibly, automatically and without precedent creating a new world --with its own peculiar and unforgiving, unmistakable and universal impacts on every part of our lives, loves and aspirations.

Ask your favorite news-person (see ...used to be "news-man" ! --and we're better-at-it via change) and you will hear perhaps slight variations in tone and tempo --but the basic truths will remain as defined-above.

What you get will be the essence of wisdom developed from day-to-day contact with the worst-and-the-best, which is what newspaper and other media mentors and managers manage meaningfully into print-and-screen for all the rest of us --every day, far into the night, and now in every conceivable size and shape and capacity of digital capture-and-show device?

"Devilish variety already and becoming defining delivery far too rapidly", sayeth one print-vet. "It's already too-much when the phone starts to run porn!"

"Wisdom" it is, contained in all those small-but-potent packets of information we must contend with daily (and sometimes hour-by-hour ) just to keep two feet firmly planted under the rest of us... right?

How about Eisenhower and Carter, then; and now Obama vs Gopsters-assorted and "debabble/debates"? That do it, too?

Then there's Reagan and all the realities since: Tax/slashes, dereg. of de-Wall St. and big banks and corporate control of money supply AND Congress..."deja vu" from what perverting politicians always do??? Must be something more there for you...

But take it all --good with bad, worse with less, and more with Democrats --and America is still tall-in-saddle, hand-on-lariat, .45 Colt holstered...surviving and serving and learning and growing, making more with less than whole rest-of-world.

Even with politicians returning from biggest Armed Forces in world with plush pension and plunging perilously into political serial hypocrisy via patronizing us-all with propaganda for personal political plans --that's deja vu, too !!

The signals from Seaside, albeit mixed and reflecting colossal mess-ups, still ring clear and ready for more-to-come for staunch Americans in 2012.

Best wishes in this New Year for all of you...and if you receive signal from my "next assignment" --that'll surely be The Big Story of The Year !!

At 21, Henry Clay Ruark was Aroostook Editor for the Bangor, Maine DAILY NEWS, covering the upper 1/4 of the state. In the ‘40s, he was Staff Correspondent, then New England Wires Editor at United Press-Boston; later Editor for the Burlington, Vermont 3-daily group owned by Wm. Loeb, later notorious at Manchester, New Hampshire UNION LEADER for attacks on Democratic Presidential candidates.

Hank returned to Oregon to complete M. Ed. degree at OSU, went on to Indiana University for Ed.D. (abd) and special other course-work; was selected as first Information Director for NAVA in Washington, D.C.; helped write sections of NDEA, first Act to supply math, science, foreign language consultants to state depts. of education; joined Oregon Dept. of Education, where he served as NDEA administrator/Learning Media Consultant for ten years.

He joined Dr. Amo DeBernardis at PCC, helping establish, extend programs, facilities, Oregon/national public relations; moved to Chicago as Editor/Publisher of oldest educational-AV journal, reformed as AV GUIDE Magazine; then established and operated Learning Media Associates as general communications consultant group. Due to wife’s illness, he returned to Oregon in 1981, semi-retired, and has continued writing intermittently ever since, joining S-N in 2004. His Op Eds now total over 650 written since then.