a:10:{i:0;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"10";s:4:"slug";s:23:"contact-the-island-news";s:4:"name";s:23:"Contact The Island News";s:4:"type";s:8:"fieldset";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:1:"0";s:5:"value";s:0:"";}i:1;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"14";s:4:"slug";s:4:"name";s:4:"name";s:4:"Name";s:4:"type";s:4:"text";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:1:"0";s:5:"value";s:14:"H. Kirk Rainer";}i:2;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"15";s:4:"slug";s:13:"business-name";s:4:"name";s:13:"Business Name";s:4:"type";s:4:"text";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:1:"0";s:5:"value";s:0:"";}i:3;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"16";s:4:"slug";s:7:"address";s:4:"name";s:7:"Address";s:4:"type";s:7:"address";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:1:"0";s:5:"value";s:24:"United States of America";}i:4;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"17";s:4:"slug";s:5:"phone";s:4:"name";s:5:"Phone";s:4:"type";s:5:"phone";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:1:"0";s:5:"value";s:10:"9043003128";}i:5;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"18";s:4:"slug";s:5:"email";s:4:"name";s:5:"Email";s:4:"type";s:5:"email";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:1:"0";s:5:"value";s:21:"hkirkrainer@gmail.com";}i:6;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"19";s:4:"slug";s:15:"how-can-we-help";s:4:"name";s:16:"How can we help?";s:4:"type";s:8:"textarea";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:1:"0";s:5:"value";s:6845:"Age to Age, Either on or off the Bus, or under the Bus, what Values?

The commonly spoken derogative, “Thrown under the bus,” is widely understood to mean betrayal, usually of a “friend” and commonly for selfish reasons or personal gain. 
 
Flashing back to the 1960s was yet another “bus” metaphor, perhaps originating from Ken Kesey’s psychedelic-painted bus that ventured on a transnational tour in 1964, credited with or for the “merry pranksters” who ventured to from California to New York for the Broadway showing of Kesey’s breakthrough book made into the play, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo&#039;s Nest”.   So came the saying, “You&#039;re either on the bus or off the bus.” to emphasize the fact that if (or as) a prankster wandered-off during a stop, they were off the bus for the balance of the trip.   

My craziest days aboard a bus were far less fantastical or famous than Kesey’s bus, “Further”, but most memorable was the daily run between Laurel Bay and Robert Smalls, 1973-1975, with antics that finally brought the high-school bus driver to his breaking point—if there ever was one—when several ninth graders finally went too far.   To think back now, I believe they were decidedly off the bus from that day forward, but not before leaping from the emergency exit while the bus still in motion.   And while this seemed to stop at least half “the problem”, local pranksters (less two) continued their merry way for as long as the bus rolled.      
  
Far less dramatic was the day the bus broke down and several of us, scheduled to leave the school that morning for a field trip to Fort Sumter, decided to see it through by hitching a ride with a Marine whose back seat wreaked of cat mess—of which he repeatedly apologized, to include the story behind the stink.   I seem to remember a reprimand the following day  for that one though our intention was good, a rare opportunity for an on-spot history lesson on how The Civil War apparently began.  

Flashing decades ahead brings me to another spot though, just as then, learning of civil events or experiences that divide and sometimes conquer, but never really decides an outcome. And as it seems often to occur, conflict leads largely to loss and costs amid all the glory and grandstanding as a prelude—anything to justify a cause that, after the effects, are anything but just.  But how can we expect everyone to get along when, as said so succinctly by Marshall McLuhan, “I don’t necessarily agree with everything that I say.”   How folks (do) get along and more, work together, is always a matter of mystery but is finally vital for family community, and society—as anything less is uncivilized, right? 

History does mark troubled times of division and disparity whatever the reasons behind it, the causes for it, and consequence and results that either enable healing and hope or create a hell scape of hostility, a hailstorm of hate, that may loom and linger as a storm of the century.   Growing-up in Beaufort during the days of the public school system’s integration, I experienced some of this…on scale as never before or since, both on and off the bus, perhaps seeing some thrown under the bus from time to time, but remembering persons and places, figures and faces, that drew hard lines between and among the races.  

But again Marshall McLuhan, “Once you see the boundaries of your environment, they are no longer the boundaries of your environment,” and thus the need to “see the boundaries” beyond Boundary Street, and to understand that we’re all human and that the best we can do, with all our faults and foibles, is embrace our common humanity—however or whomever prefer it differently, divisions and disparity that, impossible as it might seem, can conjure-up these storms and bring yet other adverse effects, even civil war.  
   
Beginning with a quote by Arnold Toynbee, “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder,” an interview with Patrick Buchanan about his book, Suicide of a Superpower published in 2011, expands on this concept of another civil war; and there, at the introduction, he begins to tally the contemporary loss and costs, beginning with the nation’s declining birth rate and continuing with other statistics—not the least of which is a loss of values, the costs as priceless.   

From Suicide of a Superpower comes the term “Balkanization”,  not to infer an apartheid but rather a dispersion, more division, and much disparity of values across our population as a social problem that goes unaddressed in the public forum:  the values of yesteryears that stood to strengthen our communities are simply discounted and dismissed, unworthy for any analysis let alone appreciation—such values as, well, devalued.  

Buchanan writes: “When the faith dies, the culture dies, the civilization dies, the people die.”  What is a relatively free society without social strength?  
Sure, we each are subject to our opinion about values, on values, and of the value, but what might be more commonly shared among us today is that some values are critical in our personal, spiritual, and social lives.  And once more from Buchanan, Suicide of a Superpower.   
&quot;This is not the country we grew up in. This is a different country... given where America is headed morally and culturally.&quot;
 
And continuing, 

&quot;There has been a precipitous decline in the character of our people. We are not the people our parents were. We are not even the people we used to be.&quot;

And while I do not hold to the superficiality of “Take America Back” or “Make America Great Again,” I do believe we owe it ourselves and to those whom we earnestly care for or about, to be persons with not just an opinion of values but more, a cause to carry on these values and to hide them in our hearts no matter whether we’re on or off the bus, thrown under the bus, or looking further for a better bus to come—no matter whether we remain or are torn asunder  by stressors on the increase, intensifying, from the marshes to the piedmont and beyond.     

As a postscript and perhaps specific to this book and chapter (and not that sent to The Island News), is more to consider among the earlier cited Arnold Toynbee, a British historian who died in 1975, who wrote. 
&quot;Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.&quot; 
To understand that this was observed and written at or before my craziness on the bus amid that local band of pranksters; that those times then were telling of where we were, what we had become and where we were going on scale, anecdotally estimated at around an 85% chance of occurrence, outcome.";}i:7;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"11";s:4:"slug";s:12:"verification";s:4:"name";s:12:"Verification";s:4:"type";s:12:"verification";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:1:"0";s:5:"value";s:0:"";}i:8;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"12";s:4:"slug";s:27:"please-enter-any-two-digits";s:4:"name";s:27:"Please enter any two digits";s:4:"type";s:6:"secret";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:2:"11";s:5:"value";s:2:"12";}i:9;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"13";s:4:"slug";s:6:"submit";s:4:"name";s:6:"Submit";s:4:"type";s:6:"submit";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:2:"11";s:5:"value";s:0:"";}}