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The earliest memory I have of my Dad is captured in a photograph. An old black-and-white Polaroid snapshot taken by my Mom one afternoon when Dad came home from work. I remember he was trying to hold me still, trying to keep me standing in front of him. But I wanted ‘away.’ I was trying to be near Mom. I didn’t want this man, somehow a stranger to me, holding onto me. I must’ve been 3 years old. Mom was pregnant with my brother. I remember she had a belly. The year was likely 1966. We’d moved into our new suburban house where we would stay together under one roof until 1981.

I’m not sure why I was uncomfortable with my father keeping me still by pressing his hands on my shoulders; he kept instructing me to stand still for the photo, pointing at Mom with the camara. But I wouldn’t do it. Cranky, I guess. Then snap. The photo clearly indicates a little blonde girl trying to break away from her dad, a man with dark hair, a flat top, and dressed in black shoes, black pants and black work shirt. He was a maintenance engineer for a national department store with its Southwest division office located in downtown Dallas.

I think at such a tender age, I no doubt completely bonded with Mom, having the first three years of my life totally indulged as it was just mommy and me (during my awake hours). This other guy, my dad, I didn’t know very well. He was up early, likely kissed my cheek every morning before leaving for work in the city, then arriving back home when I may have been programmed for bedtime. I don’t know. But Mom was a stickler for routines. Dad also had a hobby of working on cars after work, for many hours every night. He built a big garage shop out back. And all that garage time were more hours we didn’t spend together and therefore never bonded in my early childhood.

My father’s eyes

My Dad died in February. Ever since Mom passed a few years ago, he had been on an emotional, physical and more troubling mental decline. He lived to be 89 which is really very old. Yet I thought he could linger to his 90s. His was a long goodbye, four years of his two kids not knowing what was next, the inevitable seeming so very far off. Finally hospice was ordered, and the day they projected Dad’s departure may be in one month, he died that very night.

His death was a blessing. I was at peace with it, his passing. In his last year or so, he often was heard by my brother, his caregiver, praying to God, Jesus actually, to take him NOW. He was ready for the Big Trip and Homecoming in the sky. His last words were of family he saw clear as light: Mommy! Daddy! Clara! Then he slipped away. Clara was his wife of 61 years.

I knew my Dad, an electrician and jack of all trades, would do something spectacular from the Other Side. And sure enough, one night when my Dad was temporarily in a nursing home, all the lights in my apartment came on. I figured Dad had died. It was 1:30 in the morning. I had work in a few hours. I checked the phone for any message of his death. Saw nothing. Texted my brother. But Dad had not died, not yet.

I turned off the light above my bed and tried to go back to sleep, leaving the other lights on. The ceiling light came on again. I pulled the cord to darken my bedroom. Then it came on again. I just pulled the covers over my head to go back to sleep.

I knew this was my father’s doing. And it was a sparkling event. Never to happen again even at the moment of his own peaceful awesome transition.

Funeral arrangements were made. Family and friends contacted. I wasn’t too keen on the obituary photo but knew my Dad and practically everyone we knew, family and friends, would get a kick out of it. It was a picture I shot of my Dad wearing his red MAGA cap. My parents became fans of Donald Trump from the moment he ran for office. They’d watch his speeches and laugh in agreement. Finally someone in high office was speaking their mind—turns out the mind of half the population. Whatever the cap (and Dad had quite a collection of baseball caps he liked to wear every day), his face in the photo depicted the real character before his light grew dim.

Bonded

One thing I realized early was my Dad was not like other fathers seen on TV or in the neighborhood and our greater family. Yet many men and dads seemed to wish they could carry on like mine. We lived in a small three-bedroom house plopped onto a suburban blue-collar neighborhood. My Dad built a garage seemingly as big as the house and far across the backyard. He had a phone installed (probably installed it himself) and every kind of power tool, welding and fixin’ tools known to the 1960s and ’70s. The place was loud. I mean LOUD. All that grinding and banging on steel and ear-splitting riveting, rrrrrrRRRRRRRRR from power tools and car engines. Neighbors called the city on us quite a bit.   

Mom and I were embarrassed … a lot. How we endured the noise, I’ll never know. Yet the men came around, drawn like magnets to Dad’s garage. Looked like they enjoyed flexing their muscles and doing manly work. They went through a motorcycle phase. Dad had an old car he called a jalopy. Once a year he’d rev up the engine, and my brother and me and all the neighborhood kids would sit inside (it had a rumble seat) or hung onto the exterior sides including the spare tire on the back hood. And off we’d go! Laughing all the way, riding around the blocks of our neighborhood. What summer fun! Not a care in the world. No doubt we were dirty and barefoot.

Dad liked going to the races, not the sophisticated drag races but the ones featuring sprint cars, clunky with four huge bars between the roof and the body, precariously going in circles and Crazy 8 formations on a dirt and tar pavement with bits often hitting us spectators. It was dirty and LOUD. Mom and I didn’t like it at all. You couldn’t talk. Dad and his buddies placed bets on top of their beer coolers.

Dad drank in those days, faithful to Coors. I remember learning to pronounce Schlitz, too. And Chevrolet. Dad seemed to like those trucks. We had a Winnebago and two Blazers, one burnt orange, one mellow yellow. Dad went through cars almost on a weekly basis. I never knew what he’d drive home in, usually the window rolled down and waving at me to make sure I saw his ‘new’ car. My favorite was a yellow Mustang circa 1965. He drove a Charger for a while. That was a cool sports car. And he ended up with a red Corvette Stingray circa 1968, helping out a co-worker who couldn’t afford it after his divorce. One time as a little kid, I was playing in one of his cars; he had them parked all around our house which was on a corner lot. I was playing at the steering wheel and moved the gear shift. The car jumped forward and rolled down the street at a sharp incline. I was going nonstop, about to ram into a house. But fortunately Dad and one of his buddies saw what was happening, came a-runnin’ and stopped the car before it went past the stop sign. Not sure if I got a whipping, but I eventually learned that no fun was going to come to me playing in or around Dad’s garage. My brother, however, had a totally different childhood because he grew up in that noisy greasy garage.

One time the city code enforcement officer came by and talked to Mom. Dad was somewhere else: probably at an estate sale whereby he’d buy out the home and pack all the loot in back of his truck, and we’d go through it all looking for anything we might like to keep, or he was trading cars, maybe bringing one back to repair for pay. He particularly liked to do body work. But the code officer pointed out an engine Dad and his buddies hoisted from a car and hung precariously on a tall steel tripod, the engine wrapped in chains and somehow hanging high above the garage driveway. The code officer tried to impress upon our family the absolute danger of this situation. If it weren’t removed soon, we’d be fined—well, Dad would be.

The city code office had a problem with Dad building a car port for Mom. Other neighbors wanted to build one, too, and this had to be approved by the city. Dad was fighting mad; after all, he paid his taxes, and a car port wasn’t hurting anybody. Yet the city felt it unsightly, all these front driveways with carports. Dad got so mad about being questioned and criticized over this that he got the damn carport approved—and tacked the permit to the front of one of the carport posts facing the street, even covering the paper notice with clear rain-resistant plastic. My Dad everyone.

Dad was raised in the country at a time prior to posh city codes. He didn’t see anything wrong with maintaining his shop—seriously the envy of many a man (whose wives would never allow them to build such a monstrosity)—the way he wanted with cars and car parts all around, not bothering nobody.

Well, the sound was too loud and shouldn’t have been allowed in a residential neighborhood. Then there was the drinking that went on especially over the weekends. If you remember the ’70s, you were there.

Born again

Then in 1975, Dad changed. Spiritually. He got religion. He stopped drinking cold turkey. I remember at 12 thinking he’ll go back to the way I knew him, had him all figured out: beer and cars, cars and beer. But he stuck it out. Fifty years. The people who knew him back when were amazed.

My Dad became a better man, a better father, and no doubt a better husband. He lived life more inside our house than out in the garage. All that sudden togetherness was uncomfortable for me at first. I guess I was used to growing up in a one-parent home. But soon I would learn his sense of humor. He could be really funny in his observations of life and people. He also was generous, never stingy. He always gave money to homeless people. He raised a lot of money for the church walk-a-thons. He tithed faithfully and on top of that presented offerings and donations. Cleaned up his life considerably. Even the garage was quiet, the pull-down door closed more than open.

Still, he’d repair cars and appliances, another unsightly characteristic of our backyard, right next to the trampoline. Neighbors from all around would ask if they could jump on our trampoline a spell. Why sure.

My Dad was not the sophisticated ‘dancer’ type (though he could play guitar and of course had a big electric one). He never smoked (except cigars once a year or so). He owned assorted guns but didn’t hunt. He never called family meetings or came across as the master of the house. In stature, he was petite, proud of the Amazon woman he married.

There aren’t a lot of men like my Dad–salt of the earth. They were the classic car generation, the Elvis generation, original rock-a-billies, watchers of TV Westerns. This same generation was dead serious about the Bible and though they could make fun in a Scotch-Irish tradition of religious nonsense and silliness, they believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and that humans will be punished in eternal hellfire if they don’t watch their ways.

They don’t trust government yet support our troops in times of war. They are full of contradictions—and perhaps that’s the greatest lesson of my Dad’s era, dubbed the Silent Generation—too young for World War II and the Korean War, too old for Vietnam and hippie ideology.

What is the lesson for me, then? After all, Dad’s generation saw the most impressive societal change ever in this nation, one before my time. He never talked about it, but when Civil Rights became law of the land in 1964, Dad was part of taking down the White Only and Colored Only signs at restrooms and water fountains at that major department store. He and the other building maintenance crews had to ensure all restrooms and fountains were fully operable. Perhaps new facilities were installed, some of the ways to make people forget about the racially segregated past.

I’m thinking any lessons from my Dad would be along the lines of personal freedom. That seemed to be the most important thing to him—the only way to live.

The best you got in your U.S. Senate campaign against Democrat rival James Talarico is: he eats vegetables and is queer (Texan for gay)? Man, how long ago in the way-back machine are you still living? No 21^st century Texan, especially young voters with all their tats and piercings and in-your-face defiance, gives a rat’s behind about anyone being vegetarian or gay. Well, I may have to take that last part back. As a lifelong Texan myself (and that’s another claim you can’t make, Paxton), maybe a lotta Texans are still anti-gay as much as they are anti-vegetarian. But for my little Texas self, I haven’t eaten pork or beef since, like, 1988. And I see your point; I am a liberal Democrat, suspect among my own people. Oh, for years living in small-town Texas, I used to get strange looks when ordering a vegetable pizza (“You don’t want no meat on it?” No, I don’t, I kindly replied as to not make waves or draw attention to myself. And then afterwards the cooks would come out to meet me, saying they’d never made a vegetable pizza or meatless spaghetti sauce before. They were seeking my approval that the food tasted good, and it did.) For years at the Dairy Queen, I’d order the BLT without the bacon. I love a vegetable sandwich. You should try it.

As a teacher in the city, I realized a number of students, perhaps 20 percent or more per school, opted for the salad instead of the sandwich or hot-meat meal offered for lunch in the cafeterias. So, times and people, especially young people, have changed. And these are kids from poor families growing up right here in Texas. In the classroom, a few of the athletes and pro-ball wannabes refused sugary energy drinks, calling them ‘nasty’ and saying they’d never put that stuff in their bodies. Times have changed, or don’t you know?

As for the ugly insinuation Talarico (a former teacher and ecumenical minister) is homosexual, I’m sorry to say that could win you some voters in Texas. But in case you and your ilk are unaware, gays and lesbians have the right to marry each other—the implication being from a federal viewpoint, homosexuals are considered human beings with all the rights and privileges permitted in this country—no matter what Texas thinks.

And that ridiculous caricature of you drawn up in a strong muscular manly football body against an effeminate Talarico donning a Cowboys’ cheerleader outfit, bruh-ther. That will no doubt get you some more male voters whose Tex-Mex machismo and self-perception of harboring a physically fit body are to the rest of us grand delusions. Women know what it takes to maintain a hard bod, and well, who has the time? We’d rather have men who CARE about women, understand their need for affordable daycare, paid time off and businesss support for family emergencies like caring for our elderly parents and children, and affordable housing. Hey, these can’t be issues of only Texas women.

You got a point taking a page from the elect Trump playbook: Always depict yourself as Mr. Man whether posting your grinning mug, as your buddy Trump has, as a fighter pilot, the pope or Jesus Christ Himself. I mean, Jesus Christ, even you can’t believe your own propaganda.

The audacity. The vulgarity. The comical nonsense. The total bullshi+.

Get real

State Representative Talarico’s platform focuses on the economy, public education and fair taxation whereby billionaires pay a portion of their income equal to instead of way, way less than the rest of us. This compares with your election promises of MAGA MAGA MAGA, voter IDs, and as Texas Attorney General social media lawsuits. Talarico has countered your pitiful dirty campaign measures by reminding voters of your real-life scandals, Texas impeachment, and winner of the Bum Steer Award by Texas Monthly.

I guess as usual this election will be divided between the educated and the uneducated. And that is not to say white collar and blue collar, college degreed and high school graduate, beer drinkers and wine sippers, gun nuts and hippies, wrestling fans and pickleballers, Baptists and Episcopalians. But we have been sharply divided … since the election of Barack Obama. And that political and social fissure was about race and deep-seated bigotry that modern Texans assumed was buried in the 1960s. But no. We were wrong. Our neighbors, colleagues, families, spouses, and media all deeply divided perhaps never to reason together again.

But the Paxton-Talarico election is, ho hum, a couple of white men vying to represent the great state of Texas in the U.S. Senate. Both are of good age to serve. Both have government experience as elected officials at the state level.

The only difference I can see is one side slinging cowpies while the other side tries to take the higher ground, those who want progress and those who want to drag Texas back to the long-gone 20^th century. All the other states think things don’t change much in Texas. Our backwoodsness is legendary along with our unwavering stubbornness even when faced with substantiated new knowledge and facts. And there’s an entire political party banking on Texas being just Texas, county-by-county practically blood Red, once again this time around.

The Epstein sex scandal, which culminated in his jailhouse suicide, leaves a lot behind. And I’m speaking of dozens if not hundreds of women who, as much younger teens, made a deal with the devil. For good pay, all they had to do was endure sexual humiliation. And Epstein, a former teacher who somehow became a very wealthy man with his own private island, was dead-on when spotting a new girl already broken by daddies and moms’ boyfriends who couldn’t keep their hands off innocent virgins growing up in the same household.

It’s a disgusting story and yet so very, very old—and the story continues in homes across the U.S. despite laws with prison sentences and public awareness that means all of us are now involved if we have even the slightest clue that sex trafficking may be ongoing even in the swankiest residences of Florida.

Nobody’s Girl is the number one book in Great Britain. Undoubtedly would make a great movie—as everyone knows, sex sells. It is most unfortunate that the memoir’s author, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, is no longer alive to talk firsthand about her experience with Epstein and his now imprisoned accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. The couple took in Virginia, a teen waif who months earlier had been brutally raped and choked repeatedly by a stranger and afterwards was sitting alone, beaten and bleeding, on the streets of Florida close to Epstein’s walled off mansion residence. It was at this lowest moment a man of similar interests, wealth and power as Epstein, plucked her from the sewer and groomed her. She was a diamond in the rough: pretty little thing, sparkling eyes, slender, long blonde hair, the makings of a model and actress—and one other quality pedophiles crave: the look of innocence despite being sexually molested over and over by men who are their father figures if not straight-up natural daddies.

When Virginia was around 8, her father took to bathing her every night. She was, of course, uncomfortable with the new arrangement at his insistence. But both of her parents drank and became different or indifferent people when drunk. She was just a kid. What could she do? She never yelled or told anybody about what was going on. Soon he was in her bed, having sex with her, comparing her to her mother. And the story gets even uglier …

A couple years later, her father traded her to a male friend. Virginia took routine sexual abuse not in stride but in acceptance. See, she learned that every male’s interest in her would be for sex—always and forever. She acted out with boys in her school as she entered puberty. She started drinking and using drugs. A couple of older boys raped her in their car. Schools didn’t know what to do with this wild child.

And finally she started speaking out, telling everyone in the family what her dad did to her. But no one believed her. Her father beat her up for being mouthy. He didn’t want her anymore anyway. Her parents divorced. Her mother must have known what was going on in their cracker box house. But she never saved her daughter.

Virginia learned she was all alone in the world. No one loved her. On the streets as a teen, she didn’t have time to wonder why. She was in survival mode. No time for pity. As an older teen, she got a job at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and soon got trapped in the Epstein lifestyle of nude and semi-nude girls romping around a mansion featuring nude photographs and paintings on every wall every room and hall. Epstein knew what he was doing.

Virginia, however, knew she was special to Epstein and Maxwell. They wanted her to have their baby. She traveled with the wealthy jet-setting couple all over the world. All that luxury and exotic locales was mind spinning to a basic country girl from smalltown Florida. And all she had to do was ‘massage’ Epstein on occasion. (But it wasn’t just massage.)

As she matured, she thought of ways to escape. But she was deathly afraid of the couple. She knew their connections, had to sexually satisfy dozens of their rich male friends and associates. There were sex parties all the time, attended by the world’s richest and most powerful men. She named specifically former Prince Andrew. As for the many others, she details their positions in finance, politics, movies and media but without their names.

Finally, one day when she had a moment alone overseas, as Epstein and Maxwell totally trusted her, she left them for good. She married abruptly. It was love at first sight for the couple. She lived with his family in Australia. There she recuperated physically and emotionally.

Virginia’s story turns from a filthy nightmare to a fairy princess tale complete with three beautiful children and a nice home. As her children grew, she sincerely wanted her parents back in her life. Her husband did not and at one point lowered the boom when their beautiful little girl was alone with her father for a few hours. She confided in her husband every detail of her life when they met, in case he had regrets about falling in love with her, about loving her the way a husband should love his wife.

Luck and life changed instantly

Naturally, Virginia needed a lot of psychotherapy. She was innately depressed, taking assorted meds to deal with having been sexually abused by her father and then trafficked for years. And her depression—perhaps always part of her genetics and then amplified by childhood sexual abuse which directly led to her rueful choices in getting involved with Epstein and Maxwell—would break her in the end. The story is she and her husband fought a lot, verbally and physically. She had medical issues and addictions to pain killers. Her personality changed from outspoken Epstein victim (she founded the nonprofit SOAR to help girls who’ve been sexually trafficked) to someone her husband and kids didn’t recognize. Then one day, she ended her life.

The story of Virginia Roberts Giuffre is sadly American: where poverty, alcoholism and a dislove by parents who are supposed to protect their children especially from sex meets wealth and opulence where ironically sex is the price.

This is a common story because parents don’t always love their children first and foremost. And if you still think that childhood sexual abuse in the home is rare, remember that the statistic is not one in four girls but one in three who have experienced sexual molestation almost always by someone they presume is a father figure—an adult man they trust with their lives.

She titled her book Nobody’s Girl because nobody loved her. She was expected to love herself, have self respect; any smart girl knows to never have sex for money. To a child victim of sexual abuse, that is all she knows: She has a home and food, basic needs met, as long as she endures sex from her father. Considering how very sophisticated we, and unfortunately now even kids, are regarding childhood sexual abuse, we have not accepted how these young girls who grow into women feel by our society: They feel unseen, unheard, unloved—as if they don’t exist, as if they are pieces of trash.

They’re not. Never were. It’s an adult problem.

Have you heard the one about the humorless U.S. president denying the prestigious national Mark Twain Prize for American Humor to long-time political comedian Bill Maher?

Yes, President dictator Trump has made clear Maher will never receive the American humorist award. Because, just because. Actually, these two men have butted heads for a very long time, particularly in court when Trump sued Maher for repeatedly joking the billionaire celebrity’s father was an orangutan (no doubt because of the animal’s orange hue). But the real reason Maher ‘went there’ over and over again about Trump’s dubious lineage was because of Trump’s insistence that President Barack Obama was not born on American soil and therefore could never ever be U.S. President. Obama was born in Hawaii, a U.S. state since 1959, in 1961. But Trump and tens of millions of his followers vehemently disputed Obama’s birthright to run for the presidency.

On his political comedy show Real Time, Maher has routinely poked fun at Trump for a plethora of oddball and goofball comments and actions along with illogical plans and crazy-ass policies. And the Maher studio audience and Friday night TV fans laugh off the comedic musings—because we’re all, like, thinking the same thing.

As humorless as the floor

This paraphrased comment is how legendary actress Lauren Bacall described her date with the greatest singer Frank Sinatra. Humor in a man was of extreme importance, if not a sexual turn on, to the beautiful and lovely Bacall, by then widow of movie icon Humphrey Bogart. “Have you taken a good look at the floor lately?” Bacall quipped in an interview about how the date with Sinatra went. Now that’s American humor.  

Since 1998 The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize committee has selected comedians whose life work represents the best in American humor—a brand unique the world over … because of our right to free speech … and our melting pot history. The first recipient was Richard Pryor. Others include: Jonathan Winters, Carl Reiner, Whoopie Goldberg, Bob Newhart, Lily Tomlin, Lorne Michaels, Steve Martin, Neil Simon, Billy Crystal, George Carlin, Bill Cosby, Carol Burnett, Dave Letterman, Dave Chappelle and Jon Stewart among others.

These comedians of notable esteem were chosen for their influence on our society as a whole, not unlike our National Treasure the writer and quick wit Mark Twain. Twain was the 19^th century American writer whose observations remain relevant, still leaving fellow Americans chuckling to the deadpan delivery of truth, such as:

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything;

Man is the only animal that blushes or needs to;

A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory;

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, then success is sure;

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education;

Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience;

Travel is fatal to prejudice;

Be good, or you will become lonesome;

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read;

Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it;

I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

God created war so that Americans would learn geography.

Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government when it deserves it.

What surefire wit and wordcraft!

The BIG problem today is Trump has made himself the supreme director of the Kennedy Center, even distastefully renaming it in his honor. But Trump cannot relate to American humor. He is a celebrity not because of talent but because of his presumed billions, his arrogance and a publicity team. As Trump bellows “fake news” about Maher receiving the Mark Twain honor, as usual the American people are left wondering what’s going on now. We should be used to living in a banana republic given the bumbling Trump regime.

Leaders of Trump’s ilk share many traits, but perhaps the most important one is lack of humor. Trump wouldn’t know a funny joke if it slapped him on the face. The other trait of a dictator is being a sorehead when made fun of. In the olden days, and no doubt going on today in idiocracies around the world, the leader would shout “Off with his head!” And the ‘court jester’ would be summarily dragged to the gallows.

Well, this is America, buddy, and we can say whatever the hell we want about anyone and anything, anytime, anywhere. Just like our fat-mouthed, crude, crass, cruel, off-putting current president. And humor, satire and parody remain protected speech. Thank God.

Wait a minute. I’ve been very, very busy lately. But during my busy-ness, the president demanded every state submit to him our voter rolls. And the great state of Texas was more than happy to summarily oblige. No questions asked.

Am I the only one who’s suspicious about this request? Why would Donald J. Trump, a convicted felon, need all the nation’s voter rolls? What information is he hoping to find? Besides my name, signature, address, perhaps Social Security number, precinct, and oh yes, my party affiliation when I vote in the primaries?

I knew it! There is nothing more important than for our newly installed banana republic to know every detail about its citizens. A lot can be learned from an American once you know her party affiliation. When it comes to prospective friendships, it is often a deal breaker—come on now, whether republican or democrat.  

I grew up during the Watergate era, and the one thing I got out of that national political scandal was: Republicans will do ANYTHING to win elections including felony crimes and cheating. And the flip side, republicans think democrats are screwing them over, too. And American history does reveal some cheating here and there in communities and major cities through the centuries. But the aftermath of Watergate was new laws to stop tinkering with ballot boxes and voter rolls and the National Democratic Party headquarters.

For one thing, employees of every state’s Department of State pop in on vote day to silently observe and monitor randomly chosen polling sites. Then after voting ends around 7 p.m., both political party chairs in every single community across the vast U.S. stand in the county clerk’s office every election day and for every type of election—right there where the locked ballot boxes from community polls are turned in and then processed through machines and/or hand counted if sometimes necessary. The media is in the room, too—something most Americans don’t know including the president.

Yes, election night at the county clerk’s office is a fun time of pizza and barbecue, sodas and snacks and hour by hour posted results. This American fun can go on into the wee hours of the morning, but modern machines have reduced the time quite a bit. The point is: COUNTING VOTES IS IN PUBLIC AND NOT IN THE DARK BASEMENT OFFICE OF THE “X FILES.”

So why does Trump need our voter rolls?

The word is to stop rampant voter fraud.

Brah hah hah hah hah tee hee hee!

Republicans are so obsessed with alleged widespread voter fraud (they do this every election whether they win or lose) that they think dead people vote as well as people who are not U.S. citizens.

And sure enough, they find like one or two or a few people who voted when legally they shouldn’t have—and when the smoke clears, more often than not, it’s an honest mistake by the voter more than a highly organized plot to overthrow the government (which is by now already overthrown).

So voter fraud is not the real reason Trump wants to check over every single voter roll in the USA. That’s a lotta rolls with tiny-printed info. In reality, the president doesn’t have what it takes to read through tens of thousands of voter rolls. A lotta people on the voter rolls didn’t even vote. They don’t have to.

But it smells. The very idea a U.S. president wants to hand-check voter rolls, gladly offered him by Red states like his biggest buddy Texas, poses a conflict, to say the least. At the county level, voter registration cards are issued but not before verification of the applicant. You cannot vote in an election if you are not a bona fide U.S. citizen. And immigrants, by the way, who become U.S. citizens can join the voting process. As for dead people voting, well, that’s the stuff of science fiction. It has never been proven that dead people vote. I’m sure they have better things to do in the hereafter than to cast ballots for or against Trump.

The current president is hip to manipulating emotions. Not unlike Fox News and other entertainment-more-than-legitimate-news sources. The internet is a good 90-95 percent fake news than real. Doesn’t everyone the world over know this by now? It’s proven to stir humanity into a tizzy—and keep us that a-way.

Well, there’s nothing I can do about the president checking over my voter information. Yes, I’m a U.S. citizen. Yes, I’m an active voter. No, I’m not dead. Yes, my county knows my address and every year sends me an updated voter card sometimes with new precinct numbers so I can check my community’s representatives.

But in the silence between elections, I wonder what kind of people feel the need to thoroughly check out every single American citizen when it comes to their political affiliation—the way they vote. I find it … silly … unnecessary … and purposefully intimidating. Just waiting for the other shoe to drop …

Get ready America for a year of red, white and blue celebration! Our country is 250 years old!! Woo woo! Yeah, baby!! USA! USA! USA!

What? Everybody’s not brimming with excitement and planning elaborate celebrations state by state, city by city, community by community?! Surely there will be artistic contests for the best visual capturing America celebrating its 250^th year of existence. Come on, we survived a civil war and all kinds of social protests that culminated in progressive laws and fairness for everyone, finally—all of it making our country truly great.

I was hoping our big 250^th celebration this year will be reminiscent of our proud year-long celebration in 1976—when America wholeheartedly honored our 200^th birthday. There were brief history segments every day and night on TV proudly told by famous actors and celebrities, called “Bicentennial Minutes.” At the same time, our nation’s more shameful and embarrassing historic tales were made fun of on a new late night comedy show called Saturday Night Live. There were lots of parades with people dressed in red, white and blue. The flag was on everything: jeans, denim jackets, bikinis, beach towels, blouses, halter tops, T-shirts, caps, bedding, purses, wallets, barns, billboards, trashcans, fire hydrants. Some communities were more into the Bicentennial celebration than others. And we had an impressive president whose main purpose was to oversee the country as we pulled away from war mentality to an era of calm and peace—man’s natural state. Jimmy Carter was our Bicentennial President.

From the wacky mind of a teen poet

I was proud to have been a part of America’s Bicentennial celebration in 1976. Our community held a Cultural Arts contest with the theme ‘It’s About Time for a Bicentennial.’ Categories included art, photography, poetry and creative writing. No digital or video categories in those days. Being inclined to write and also seeing myself as a natural rhyming poet, I quickly penned a poem and uncreatively titled my piece the same as the contest theme:  

It’s About Time (for a Bicentennial!)

It’s about time

while we’re all at war.

It’s about time

to help the poor.

It’s about time,

and it’s very essential.

It’s about time for a bicentennial.

It’s about time

now that half the world is starving.

It’s about time

to get SOMETHING started!

It’s about time,

and it’s very essential.

It’s about time for a bicentennial.

It’s about time

for people to start thinking.

It’s about time

to make your brain stop blinking.

It’s about time,

and it’s very essential.

You know, it REALLY is about time for a bicentennial!

Nice to spot my burgeoning sarcastic humor and tendency to exaggerate, not to mention overuse of exclamation points. I don’t know how or why this poem by a 7^th-grader kept winning the 1976 Cultural Arts Contest about the bicentennial. But my youthful impressions won first place by grade, school and then district. I thought my poem wasn’t all that great. Yet adults judged it worth admiring—as if there were some truths though awkwardly written by a kid.

At the time, America was very tired and angry and hurt after the Vietnam War and all the distrust of our government that came with it often about the long war. Wounds were healing, emotional wounds—the kind you pay a shrink to guide you through … to simply survive. As the 1970s continued, America did lose its way. I understood the reason. As a nation, we wanted to be left the hell alone.

Which brings us to America in 2026

Turned out our rejuvenated pride in America during the Bicentennial was soon forgotten, and the big chill of economic recession, energy crises, family splits, discos and cocaine and liberal mores left all of us feeling like we needed a strong leader. Our nation wanted a father figure, and we got him in Ronald Reagan who would turn America or Americans around and give us something of which to be proud. His campaign slogan was: Make America Great Again. He likened our country to a ‘shining city on a hill.’ He showed off to the world our American lifestyle, the one he knew as a Hollywood actor and governor of California: big houses, nice neighborhoods, swimming pools, kids riding bikes carefree, young people attending college for bright futures, families at dinner time eating together, and of course everyone standing with heads bowed in prayer at church on Sundays.

This was the perfect vision of America by Americans themselves. Again, this façade was comically contrasted every week on Saturday Night Live. The mass media and comedians never let those who listened forget that nothing was being done to help the poor, people fleeing narco states and terrorist nations, many Americans working two or more jobs to make ends meet, the deadly AIDS crisis, white flight, public schools that ironically were left segregated by the wealthy who could flee and the poor remaining. The 1980s would be described in an investigative series in The Dallas Times Herald as “The Mean Decade.” Trickle-down economics of which Reagan touted did not work for most Americans. It just made the rich richer and the poor poorer.

In the decades since, our country elected diverse leaders: an oil businessman/CIA director and VP, a pro-business Democrat, the son of a former president, our first Black president, a billionaire Democrat-turned-Independent-turned Republican, a liberal Democrat, and then again the billionaire who’s now leading our 250-year-old nation. The back and forth between conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats is maybe due more to economics than a voter’s personal governing taste.

But we always elect the leaders we deserve. And again, millions of Americans feel our country has lost its way. We cut international programs and funding that helped with good will (extremely necessary in the world today) and saved millions of lives. We took a chainsaw to our own federal government programs and cut tens of thousands of jobs which will lead to many more business and job loss. We slapped tariffs on a lot of goods with the extra cost paid by Americans. We’ve stopped vaccines in our country and elsewhere in the world. We’ve placed the military on our city streets and permitted deadly raids by immigration agents to clear out anyone suspected of living and working in this country illegally. We’ve created prisons overseas where the alleged illegal immigrants are being abused daily with no plans for court dates and judges. We’ve rattled our sabre, talked trash and goaded leaders around the world to the brink of war. We elected a convicted felon to the U.S. Presidency.

Could it be that America in 1976 was more civilized and better off than Americans feel our country is now 50 years later? Americans enjoy high tech but fear AI. We feel safer than we did in 1976, or do we? We enjoy working from home if possible. Fewer young people drive cars. More senior citizens cannot afford to retire. We have mass shootings in our schools that would have been unthinkable in 1976. And we can’t deny how fat our citizens have become compared to Americans in 1976. Just look at the reruns of ’70s shows. Perhaps our compulsive eating is related to mass insecurity about life in the U.S.—coupled with restaurants and junk food increasing portion size.

Yet in 1976 despite national anger about the direction of our country, there was an optimism which no doubt blossomed from the flower children of the 1960s. Hippies and like-minded straights constantly protested, for years, the Vietnam War and the draft; and joined with others for civil rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights and gay rights. And all those rights that eventually came into law made our nation the greatest on Earth. Let us reflect on our nation at 250 years—still young compared with most countries—and the direction we the people want our country to go. Let us remember our new nation was intended in the first place to be free of tyranny and ensure justice for every single person. And bring those ideals to all of us in the USA today.

Michael Stivic—the fictional hippie college student who marries into the Bunker family in the revolutionary blunt 1970s’ TV sitcom “All in the Family”—and the actor who portrayed him, Hollywood royalty and respected filmmaker Rob Reiner, seemed one and the same. Reiner was a lifelong unabashed liberal Democrat, carrying on the presumed future of do-gooder social worker Michael Stivic. In the TV show, Stivic always argued against the ignorant racist and bigot Archie Bunker, his father-in-law. Just a kid back then watching the “Family” every week, I assumed Stivic was right to counter blatant racist and prejudiced opinions as well as offensive rantings by Bunker. And I’m sure all these decades later, the irony was not lost on Reiner that all along, Stivic was living off Bunker’s blue-collar manual labor earnings.

Today watching “All in the Family” is a visual time capsule into the 1970s and a hotly divided America: centered on Vietnam War angst then worries about the economy, pollution, the future, and then breaking away from racial segregation, sexism, and later ageism which impacted Bunker, at 50, who had to take on a second job driving a cab to make ends meet.

Back then young Americans really felt the way Stivic did while the older generation still shared the outdated views of Archie. The nation ended up progressing socially probably because of this single show as we got to see and hear real-life family arguments about how many white people viewed the broiling political and fast-changing times—often with fights ending by Archie’s all-loving wife, Edith, tying the family back together with a bow of common sense. To paraphrase one of her classical gravelly-voiced scoldings to Archie: “God’s God, and you ain’t!”

Homosexuality came up in an earlier episode when Archie assumes Michael’s friend is gay because he doesn’t meet the masculine standard. Then Mike finds out that a former football player buddy of Archie’s is gay. The tall strapping athlete sits tall and manly at a table chatting with Archie at their neighborhood bar. The subject of the athlete’s confirmed bachelor status comes up as Archie pries. But his friend responds: “Tell me, Arch, in all the years you’ve known me, have I ever once mentioned a woman?” Archie shrugs, saying bachelors are private people. “Exactly,” the man replies with a smile.

As Archie softens through the ’70s, so does Mike. He never believes for one minute that Archie’s right to put down minorities while maintaining the white culture is supreme. But he starts to understand Archie and his generation. An episode not featuring Mike explains a lot about Archie when his brother comes to town. His younger brother was the family favorite, the one who was sent to college, the one who didn’t have to quit school and go to work during the Depression to support the family like Archie and so many young teens had to do. And then the same young men served in World War II. The brother talks to Archie about why their parents favored the younger son and not Archie, the hard worker who always provided for his family. The younger brother turns out to be an alcoholic who’s lost his wife, kids and home. He tells Archie it dawned on him why their parents favored him over the hard-working brother: They were just crazy.

Mike’s character is actually an orphan in childhood who is raised by his uncle, a contemporary of Archie. So in a sense, Archie and Mike had something in common: having to make their way best they could without their parents’ guidance … and love.

Boomer-rang

Reiner started as an actor in the 1960s, usually playing big guys who were tough but with a soft heart, guys who were judged by their size instead of what’s inside their hearts. His role on the “Family” was intended to counter—in volume and fury—Archie’s defense of the white man, that white men are getting the short end of the stick in order to give minorities and women a leg up.

And how could all that Archie spouted about during the very liberal 1970s—that a woman’s place is in the home, men are the providers and rulers of their families, white men are smarter than every other ethnic and racial group, couples should marry instead of live together, ‘queers’ are immoral, great comedy has slapstick, the only God is white and Christian and so is the USA, and English is the only language in the U.S.—make sense to tens of millions of Americans who now more than ever believe exactly the same way? Back in the ’70s, we called such beliefs ignorant, racist, prejudiced, misogynist, sexist, closed minded, and against common decency. In “All in the Family” the debate seemed between the educated and the uneducated. But there were many Americans who were changing their views and opening their minds due to just living life itself.

A lot can be said about what is known of Reiner and his son who struggled with addiction and mental illness. No doubt Reiner helped his son in every way possible. That is the generation of Reiner/Stivic: altruistic, understanding of drug use and abuse, compassionate with the mentally ill, maintaining an open mind to various therapies. All you need is love. Love is all you need.

And critics of Liberals like Reiner/Stivic (and me) would quickly point the finger and say, “See?!” The Liberal way of dealing with problems like drug addiction simply does not work. And they would be hypocrites. Everyone knows addiction lands in every home, every family, every race, every religion, every socioeconomic status, rich and poor.

No doubt like every parent of a child with addiction and coupled with mental illness—or maybe stemming from it—Reiner deeply loved his son … but couldn’t save him. Reiner stayed true to himself, a worldview molded long ago by a barrage of conflicting forces political, societal and generational. Like Stivic, Reiner ultimately strived toward love whatever the cost.