Author: cheriebell69@hotmail.com

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Texas gave our voter rolls to President Trump? WTH??!!

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 …

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America at the big 250

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 250th 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 250th celebration this year will be reminiscent of our proud year-long celebration in 1976—when America wholeheartedly honored our 200th 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 7th-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.

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Rob Reiner lived the life of his altruistic liberal TV character

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.

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The country music of my youth: yawn

As much as I tried to hide my heritage growing up in the 1970s, my parents made sure I would know the latest country & Western music hits. Country music was the center of our lives, and that was that. In retrospect my parents’ love of progressive country music—electric steel guitar, fiddles, and a shuffle beat, not Bluegrass a’tall—is an endearing legacy, different from my peers whose parents twenty years older listened to our type of denim rock, hard rock and bubble gum pop music.

For as long as I can remember to the day my mother died, country music radio was the audible backdrop in our home and car. My folks enjoyed listening to songs of heartache, romance, sexual longing, downhome recollections, gospel, night life two-steppers, and the occasional Boogie Woogie honky tonker ala Jerry Lee Lewis. All those early Rock n Roll stars somehow ended up playing on country stations rather than rock.

My parents’ love of country music goes back to their roots in rural Oklahoma. I never noticed when my Dad dressed up to go to a restaurant, his shirts were always Western style. My mother’s brothers formed a Western swing band in the 1950s and played nightclubs every weekend in a four-state region spanning from Amarillo. And our summer family reunions were unique with live music: country all day and rock late at night.

Act naturally

Saturday nights were the worst growing up when my parents were set on watching country music TV showdown: beginning in the afternoon with Cowboy Weaver, then Hee Haw, the Wilburn Brothers, Grand Ole Opry and finally Porter Wagoner featuring his beautiful buxom girl singer Dolly Parton. Oh it was a hoot. As I’d pass through the living room, I’d roll my eyes, cringing from the first twangs of the guitar to the lonesome vibrations of the steel and the ridiculously upbeat Orange Blossom Special.

Can’t say I was a fan of any of it.

Yet here lately, from the black-and-white recesses of my preschool mind in the 1960s, I recall the timbre of some legendary country singers: Ray Price, Buck Owens, George Jones. Must’ve heard them from birth. My parents were not just fans of country music but knew a lot about the entertainers themselves. They knew who wrote which song, like Willie Nelson wrote Crazy, Kris Kristofferson wrote For the Good Times, Tom T. Hall wrote Harper Valley PTA. They knew obscure songwriters like David Allen Coe and Lefty Frizzell. They weren’t big fans of Hank Williams, if you can believe it, or Loretta Lynn yet loved Conway Twitty. See how hard it is to get a read on my folks? [I get it now. They really had a lot of taste when it came to country music.]

As the Grand Ole Opry is celebrating 100 years of country music entertainment, starting on radio in 1925 then naturally TV, I thought of the era which marked my knowledge and understanding of this rural genre. American country music is a direct descendent of folk songs passed from generation to generation among British, Scotch & Irish people with a little French, German and Italian—but not much. American country music that was born in Appalachia would never feature the accordion, the most European of musical instruments. The banjo, from West Africa, became a staple folk and then country music instrument over here. Those who picked and strummed it needed to wear picks on the ends of their fingers. The instrument is really loud, best played outdoors. In the early years of country music, an ensemble included string bass and acoustic guitar. Drums were not a historic part of American folk and country music. Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys were the first to include a drum set in their country swing music and at the Grand Ole Opry. The rest is country & Western music history. Country music that was rooted in the South was heard nationwide by the 1940s.

But in my youth, the brand was boring. Nasal tones and twang didn’t do much for my ears. Country had to compete with some mighty fine rock music from The Beatles (who actually covered Buck Owens’ Act Naturally sang by Ringo Star) to Pink Floyd. Then bands like The Eagles and the Allman Brothers brought country rock and blues full circle, paving the way for the refined sound and rock beat of country music today.

The big country hits when I was growing up, however, were quite influential: The Pill, King of the Road, Stand by Your Man, Ode to Billie Joe, A Boy Named Sue, Take This Job and Shove It, Rocky Top, Gentle on My Mind, Rocky Mountain High, Good Hearted Woman, Behind Closed Doors. Everybody, whether country music fan or not, knew these songs. I grew up listening to all that social commentary, tongue-in-cheek humor, Southern gothic tales, and blatant sexual overtones. But the overall message about the country songs from my youth has to do with freedom: having it, wanting it, or living without it.

Green Green Grass of Home

Talk about a country talker that traveled. It was recorded in the ’60s by Tom Jones, Porter Wagoner and Jerry Lee Lewis. The song, sad as a country song ever written, is about a man who returns to his hometown and sees the most important people in his life who’ve all gathered to greet him. Then he awakes in prison and remembers his fate as a condemned man. The people coming to greet him will be at his funeral and burial. The grass is not just green but ‘green green.’ Why is that? Perhaps in the country, the vast terrain as far as the eye can see is green and lush especially during the spring and early summer.

Years ago as a little girl riding in the back seat as Dad drove us away from the city suburbs and traffic every holiday to visit his folks in quiet Oklahoma, the song would play on the radio. It was a huge hit. Always upon entering Dad’s small country town where he grew up, he’d slow down the car to a roll, looking left and right, taking in the sights and changes if any, then pull into his parents’ simple wooden house at the end of a dirt road. In the ’60s there was still an outhouse behind it. He’d once again hug his aging parents, bring them some new appliance, like a stove, washing machine, clothes dryer or fridge, one year a pot-belly stove. He’d install them and make sure they worked properly then sit on the porch with his brothers, shoot the breeze, inhale familiar fresh country air, and later take in the sunshine while walking around the property to spot anything that needed fixing or improvement.

Through the years as I would be introduced to family funerals, music played a comforting role in the ceremonies—marking the departed relative’s final sentiments. As a kid of country music, I knew Green Green Grass of Home would be the perfect song for my Dad when he leaves this world and mine. Country music, after all, expresses the most heartbreaking and meaningful moments of our lives.

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Free to be … and to live anywhere, as God intended

This is what I think, have always thought: that any human being can live anywhere he or she wants on God’s green earth.

Seems perfectly logical.

What’s the problem?

Everyone in the world will want to move to the USA?

Are you crazy?

Do you not keep up with the news of nonstop gun violence let alone our violent pop culture seen & heard by everyone in the world? Who wants to live in a nation of more guns than people and with our current president (for another three very long and hard years) and policies that shoot the middle finger at the poor and disenfranchised? And now with a $100,000 immigrant fee?

And don’t blame President Biden for allowing an unsubstantiated figure of ten million immigrants to pour into the southern border for the past four years. Biden is the one who as VP to President Obama came up with the illegal immigrant policy that culminated in undocumented immigrants forced onto planes flying back to South and Central America practically on a daily basis. For two terms, Obama removed more illegal immigrants from the U.S. than did his predecessors combined.

I saw the “60 Minutes” report on a phone app showing all the gaps along the southern border and the nonstop mass of humanity from around the world just walking right into the USA every minute of the day and night. That during the Biden administration.

That was wrong, and border agents were there doing their job. The federal government should have helped the landowners maintain their property on the border. For decades nothing was ever done because: BUSINESSES NEED CHEAP LABOR. And in this country, business is the name of the game. Everybody knows this, and American families benefited from the arrangement with low prices for food and stuff.

Not anymore.

For as long as I can remember, the way the U.S. handled illegal immigration was by arresting undocumented immigrants and bringing them before an immigration judge, but first forcing the alleged illegal immigrant to stay removed from society and placed in a sort of jail: adults, children, whoever. Then after a year or so, the jailed immigrant would get to plea in immigration court. This was a federal process, and it took years.

More importantly and to the heart of the illegal immigration issue, prior to Trump II the U.S. followed one international rule: human rights. Yes, the U.S. government was world renowned for bestowing upon all humans, U.S. citizen or not, certain inalienable rights.

Not anymore.

How green was my country

Now ICE is scaring major U.S. cities with unnecessary violent raids that are reminiscent of Nazi Germany. Undocumented immigrants are picked up, roughed up, and thrown into vans and driven away—with their families kept in the dark as to their whereabouts. Supposedly alleged violent gang members are sent overseas to God-knows where. And we’re just now learning that these people, not all gang members, were tortured in these prisons … because as illegal immigrants in the U.S., they have no rights. But even legal immigrants are being rounded up and dumped elsewhere. Some of the forcibly removed undocumented immigrants have lived and worked in this country for 20 years.

Americans have remained very naïve when it comes to business and the way it’s conducted in this country. Illegal immigration has been a ‘problem issue’ for decades with very little done to fix it. In the 1990s, making all employees prove their citizenship or legal immigration status was required to hold any job in the U.S. What happened? That process should have done away with the illegal immigration pipeline. But it didn’t. Remember the app and humanity trekking into our country.

The business of America is business, a former early 20th century president once mused. American business wants government out of their business. Everyone, all of us, were to look the other way when it came to illegal immigrants as long as they were working. We knew cheap labor is the way of life for our food. We knew immigrants, especially those who just wanted a job and to not live in fear as they did in their previous narco states, accept low wages—and Americans would never work for low wages.

Americans have never liked nor accepted their tax dollars paying for the healthcare and welfare of the poor, more so for those living in this country illegally.

Put the blame where this American mess belongs: on business.

Fixing the ‘immigration problem’ that has perplexed mostly our nation’s millionaire leaders and legislators for generations includes temporary work visas – because our crops have to be picked … by hand. Produce doesn’t last but a few days. And that’s just one of the cheap labor for necessary work. For now the U.S. is treating undocumented immigrants like Germany treated the Jews during the Holocaust: making it very uncomfortable to stay and live in this country. Surely they got the message. The only ones who haven’t are American citizens who think food just appears on the table and restaurants along with all the other stuff in the stores.

In all the pretend furor and debate, Americans have forgotten our own ancestry which is more than likely from abroad than right here. We have been a nation of immigrants. We used to be proud of that, our collective history. People who move here legal or not are not subhuman. They want what America had held dear, our norms in life, namely freedom to pursue our own personal happiness. They have proven to be willing to do the dirty work Americans will not do and accept wages Americans will not accept all while living in the harshest neighborhoods while trying to learn another language as soon as humanly possible. For the time being, Americans have chosen to hurt rather than to help immigrants who are here illegally for simple and complex reasons. It’s too bad … for everyone. Especially business. You better believe it.

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Missed the march blues

So I missed the second nationwide No Kings march to protest not only President Donald J. Trump’s directives but his entire administration and the authoritarian style in which our government is going. Lately I’ve been under the weather and figured I needed the rest this weekend especially with rain projected. But also there was a conflict with an online seminar I signed up for a few months ago on dreams. The irony is not lost on me, you know among my side, the collective if not Jungian ‘dream’ state we now live in of a better nation—the original United States of America that supported free speech, free press and freedom of and freedom from religion.

As for missing the No Kings protest Saturday, I have participated in a number of peaceful protests for years: supporting women’s reproductive rights (which were taken away), against the first Trump administration (and he somehow got re-elected), and for some reasonable semblance of gun control (and still in this country mass shootings occur faster than our brains can comprehend). So there is a bit of “What’s the point?” And the realization that I’m on the losing side. Which I’ve always been (voting for Carter my first election at 18 and every Democrat since). I don’t mind the Democrats losing favor at this point in history … because it’s the right side.

But our former internationally respected rational and loving nation has changed into a hateful, spiteful, vindictive little snot on the planet.

I’m not the only American ashamed of what the U.S. has become. We’re just not the majority. And the ones who are, I don’t know what to make of them; yet they’re almost everybody I know. But they’ve never been free thinkers or supporters of individualism. It’s because they always wanted to force the whole population to be just like them. They never wanted to be left the hell alone like me and tens of millions of other people, all fellow Americans.

Their silence is deafening

The first time Trump ran for U.S. president, on the Republican ticket, the party was split: half saying no way, half all in. The Democrats were the same with Hillary Clinton as the presidential nominee. But the parties chose Trump and Clinton in 2016. He won … because a lot of Democrats hated Hillary and/or her husband President Bill Clinton and so voted for Trump. She still won the popular vote but didn’t win the election.

During Trump’s first term, a few Republicans in Congress bravely countered and questioned his every move. Not anymore. They are lockstep with every measure:

wacky nonmedically-trained anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of our national health policies;

a professional wrestling businesswoman head of the soon-to-be obliterated U.S. Department of Education;

a dubious head of our military, now renamed the U.S. Department of War;

a novice prosecuting Attorney General indicting enemies of Trump, himself a convicted felon;

and every one of the president’s appointments looking like they came straight out of Central Casting.

Fears of damage to American democracy came true with Trump loyalty oaths demanded for the mass media’s government reporters who cover the White House (all obliged or quit) and the Department of War (many refused).

The National Guard called in to patrol ‘democrat’ cities like D.C., Portland and Chicago? We’re fine with this? The Guard isn’t. No catastrophes for which they are well trained.

U.S. universities—the GOAT the world over—were financially threatened by billions of dollars in government funds if they didn’t sign off on Trump’s demands, one of which was to control student protests on campus. MIT refused. Harvard eventually fought back.

Trump’s mandate that national museums remove exhibits and items that do not show white Americans in a favorable light? With our well-known centuries of bigotry, prejudice, misogynism and racism? Who does he think he’s kidding? The future?

Every county in the U.S. requested to give the Trump administration their voter rolls? Why? So all who vote in the Democratic primaries—their voter cards stamped as proof—will be hassled in future elections not unlike Florida in the 2000 Bush/Gore debacle?

Dozens of polling places closed across the U.S. meaning long, long lines for any citizen who wants to cast a ballot? Yes, the plan is to wear down citizens, to make them give up and forget about voting—like Trump himself before he got political and ran for president.

And as only Trump can do, one media outlet after another was sued into his submission. Trump got the FCC to pull Jimmy Kimmel off the air, though after much outrage by the nation’s fearless political comedians was later returned. Lately it appears “Southpark” went too far in constantly making fun of this president as its season was quietly cut short without explanation.

Listen. Not a single Republican, elected or private citizen, has said one word against Trump in all these outrageous affronts to the U.S. constitution which still enshrines free speech. Universities cannot be trusted with research and findings that lead to cures and healthier lives, the greater good, if government funding in the billions is cut off. Employees at the Centers for Disease Control know their agency is now considered a sham to the American people, not to be trusted at this point in time.

There’s the God-only-knows numbers of brown-skinned people allegedly undocumented while working in the U.S. who were and continue to be rounded up and flown to jails overseas or in South America—never to be heard from again. If the U.S. is still a nation of laws, every human has the right to due process. And all those ‘disappeared’ by the Trump administration are humans. Sorry. Our country is either for or against human rights. It doesn’t matter if Republicans see undocumented workers as subhuman.

There’s the Trumpian effort to retract U.S. citizenship from people born here. How is that gonna work out? Won’t we all be illegal at some point?

And then there’s all the laid off D.C. workers. Americans were lied to by this administration which maintained these layoffs were necessary to balance the budget. Echoes of Reaganomics. A number of those fired were rehired because lots of work has to be done when dealing with 325 million people in this country. Government can never be run like a business.

We still have federal employees working without pay. We have air traffic controllers not going to work because they’re not getting paid. Because we’re in another government shutdown.

And now Trump calls for firing Democrats, employees who are registered Democrats. How is this possibly legal?

What kind of nation does exactly these things? A banana latte republic? A laughingstock because of inept leadership?

And where are the Arthur Millers who’ll stand up to this strain of poisonous politics specifically against Democrats, as opposed to communists in the ’50s, who’ll say to our know-nothing, fat-headed, ham-fisted, cut-off-their-nose-to-spite-their-face federal officials: I do not recognize your authority over me? Let me remind you that Democrats are still half the country, like it or not.

About the only good thing Democrats have going for them is their numbers, perhaps 120 million, not a minority like Jews in 1930s’ Germany or communists and alleged and presumed communists in 1950s’ show biz America or a few dozen kid-accused ‘witches’ in 17th century Salem, Massachusetts.

Not sure if we need any more protest marches given the results. The protests are being laughed at by the very people, our friends and family and neighbors, who are in charge of our nation. But the rest of the world supports protests against what appears to be a burgeoning authoritarian regime. Only the world’s dictators support Trump. After all, he’s using their playbook to achieve and maintain absolute power even beyond his own lifetime.

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To all Karens: We need to get over ourselves

Oh my God!! I just learned I’m a Karen! And I have Southpark to thank for this enlightening although socially painful realization.

The bawdy animated comedy show’s clip features a white father in his study, calling in his adolescent daughter, closing the door, and asking her point blank: Why does everyone call me a Karen? Deadpan, the girl blinks and tells him don’t worry about it. But … he really wants to know. So the kid explains the expression came from the internet and refers to white privilege (meaning white people have nothing in life to complain about and get all the breaks) and specifically white women—who are educated, with career, car, McMansion, kids in good schools, coiffed hair, acrylic nails, health club, summer and winter vacations, stocked pantries, able to pay their bills and live a little—get real irate when someone (whose life will never come close to equating their own overly-blessed existence) ‘comes across as’ DISRESPECTING them, well, us.

Ohhhhh.

How many times have I gone on and on about a person or people being so disrespectful toward ME? I sound like my mother who also was put out when feeling disrespected by her children or a clerk or worker (of lower wages and no ability to ever afford college or to work her way up to better pay and better life and who also is a person of color).

OK. IDK.

I guess because a woman is white and the person she thinks is disrespectful toward her is a person of color or ethnic minority, and perhaps also learning English, that deep-seated bigotry is the cause of what just may be only a personality clash (although in appearance seems between the advantaged and the disadvantaged).

And what exactly are men (white, educated, good life) called who rant and rave about being disrespected? Rodney Daingerfield? The comedian went far in show biz with his famous line: I tell ya, I get no respect. And then came wild applause (because everyone knows exactly what he’s talking about). I guess we can keep calling men who bellow about being disrespected bastards. We always have.

Well, thank you “Southpark.” Now my goal in life is to never again go on about being disrespected by someone at the grocery store, gas station, government office, medical facility, other drivers on the road—whomever, wherever. Won’t hear a peep outta me.

Sigh.

Sigh.

(Fingernails galloping on the counter.)

It’s just that …. Nooooo, I said I’d never again talk about people being disrespectful toward me or ponder why I am not respected.

What color is your …

My problem with striving toward never being called a Karen again is that … well if you must know, respect is very important to me. I learned this about myself at age 29 during one of my unemployment stints. Besides applying for jobs all around—whether qualified, over qualified or not qualified at all—I thought career books might provide practical direction. But those kind of books amounted to psychoanalyzing yourself, to get to your core values. After taking a number of surveys (Karen that I am, I used to love taking surveys to find out more about ME), and matching weighted inquiries to precise questions, I discovered that the most important outcome I want from a job (or life) is not so much big salary but … respect: the feeling of ME being respected by my peers and everyone else. Wanna know the second most important value I want from the work I do (according to my young adult self)? It was helping people. See, I’m not all that bad for a Karen. Maybe the name should be Karena for those who sincerely care about and want to help solve the world’s problems.

I haven’t thought about those career guidance books since the ’90s. It just so happens that the career paths I chose have never been respected by the masses and now come with a lot of disdain: newspaper reporter and public school teacher.

So, it’s me, not them. I’m a glutton for punishment, I guess. Ooops, sounding too much a Karen again. I just assume Karens are self-pitying whinny white gals. Gosh, I hate myself already.

And being a Karen at my age is pretty pathetic. But I get it, kids. [That’s how to tell if you’re an old woman Karen, calling everybody younger than you ‘kids’ like I do all the time. To others it’s condescending.]  

So white women who are politically Left and Democrats, went to college (on government loans, grants and work-study like I had to), somehow always had a car (thanks Dad and others), never stopped applying for the jobs I wanted, sometimes getting interviews, rarely getting the job, lived in satisfactory housing (most in serious crime zones), managed to keep up appearances while overeating, traveling on occasion, donating to good causes, raising dogs as children—we are the Karens of America, Karena, if you don’t mind, for those whose hearts are in the right place.

Karens, from how I understood the insult pre “Southpark,” were white women who are educated and middle class or socioeconomically higher and Democrats but are overly afraid and anxious when some dubious incident comes along, involving a Black man, for example. The Karen I heard about was frightened over a Black guy while she was walking a dog or something. Some kinda strange encounter. She pressed charges. He turned out to be kind and decent and not criminally interested in her.

But hey, in speaking for all women, let me say our gender has a long history of being brutalized by men in general. It happens every single day. And we are raised to realize we can be attacked just for being women, and to always be on guard. To be suspicious first upon any encounter. The men in our Karen lives tell us to carry a handgun or some kind of protection. Because you never know when it comes to meeting up with a stranger.

I don’t know if every uptight white educated middle-upper class woman should be referred to as a Karen. The deep-seated racism, bigotry and prejudices and knee-jerk over reactions are what make a woman a Karen. Same for white men who overreact due to racism when dealing with a person of color, like the “Southpark” father must have been caught doing.

For my small part, I am just going to forget about other people’s disrespect real or imagined toward little old me. I learned a long time ago, a lot of people will never respect you no matter what you do and how you look. So you gotta respect yourself, be able to live with yourself, and to hell with what other people think about you (even if at first glance, you seem to fit the latest societal put down).

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The infamy we created (& have learned to live with)

Been a long time since the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities. Perhaps the macabre aftermath, captured in solemn black and white images, is lost to 21st century Americans.

But the most devastating 20th century explosion on Earth during war time—the deafening silence; the obliteration of cities, buildings, houses, schools, hospitals, parks, pets and plants; the instant evaporation of tens of thousands of human beings; the unnatural reconfigured invisible yet present air and water molecules linked to future cancer deaths in and around emasculated terrain on our shared planet; and the emotional annihilation of warmongering by the entire human race immediately after two lightning quick moments—is why, my dears, the U.S. did away with the confrontational title of a Department of War and consolidated all military branches into the U.S. Department of Defense—done so to try to comfort everybody the world over left to comprehend and ever so cautiously carry on in the dawn of the Nuclear Age.

See … we needed God, if at all possible, (if He even listens to us anymore) to forgive us our collective United States of America sin. And at that time, we never ever wanted to use a nuclear bomb again. And therefore we swallowed our sorrow and carried on as the World Leader to ensure no other nation on Earth would dare make the same mistake, repeat the same sin, bear the unbearable reality of living with ourselves for creating and causing the epitome of mass human death and destruction. Because … it was a sin (and is now our karma). Surely there were other ways to end a war.

There always had been … before the bomb.

Peace on earth

Sound too much like a peacenik, do I? President Trump, according to his admirers, claims to be one, too. Hates all war, we’re told by those who know him. Yet our history is as soon as WWII ended, we gallivanted all over the world to stop the spread of communism: Korea, Cuba, Indochina, Central and South America, Eastern Europe. We had to think of ourselves as the Good Guys, the God-fearing righteous people compared to our arch Cold War enemy the communists, thought to be godless subhumans devoid of souls. But it is the U.S. which remains the only nation to have dropped the bomb so far.

A quick online check of what was left after our atomic bombs exploded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki would reveal the grotesque images seen by all who read magazines and newspapers in 1945: melted faces and other body parts, missing fingers, clothing tattooed into human flesh, survivors screaming in agony, the unimaginable yet real horror they alone … felt. And the radiation sickness that lasted months and longer. Perhaps the lucky ones were the 240,000 Japanese who after our bombs exploded their cities to smithereens were ‘evaporated,’ their bodies and lives instantly wiped off the face of the earth.

We alone were (and still are) responsible for launching that living nightmare.  

So ashamed were Americans at that time, a long 80 years ago.

But … all is fair in love and war.

And the World War in the Pacific needed to end. The story goes that a few countries including Germany were secretly working to create the first atomic bomb. The U.S. military had been testing tiny versions out in Nowhere, New Mexico, watched live by a number of GIs who in their later years would die from direct exposure to the aftermath of this precise and peculiar bomb.

Post war, we as Americans lived in our private twilight zones. Some became anti-war pacifists, society drop-outs, artists, Beatniks, teachers, do-gooders, Peace Corps volunteers, reefer smokers, heroin addicts. A few became devout atheists, even famous authors and newsmen. It must have been hard for some adults living in the early Nuclear Age to deal with the hypocrisy of our Christian nation killing so many people not just with the bombs’ explosion but for generations to come with diseases in any new life that tries to enter our planet at Ground Zero. Clearly the death toll by the atomic bombs was overkill.

Yet back home and most impressively, the great majority of Americans carried on: attending college and trade school on the GI Bill, marrying and creating the Baby Boom, owning homes quickly built for suburban life with parks, community swimming pools, backyard cookouts, Christmas gifts, and of course cars. It is a tribute, that era of post-war America, to all who sacrificed to fight in a world gone mad. Those who served our country deserved to live in peace and security for the rest of their lives.

However, with the passing of time, the great healer we are told, the horror inflicted by our atomic bombs in a country on the other side of the world became … incomprehensible. And in learning to not think about it ever again, we have forgotten what we were and still are today: capable of mass death and destruction and equally capable of never mentioning it again.

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End of the great American experiment

She always wanted to live in California … but not like this. Weather is, more often than not, picture perfect with the sea on one side and mountains on the other—ideal for the vast fruited fields where she now works as slave labor. The fresh smell of grass and earth always lifted her spirit as long as she could remember, going back to riding backseat with the car windows down in late fall or early spring heading home from visiting relatives in the country.

Field work is hard on the body, mind numbing and then dehumanizing. At first she cried, having lost everything except her heartbeat. She was healthy, so she was put to work. She thought of breaking free but knew she’d be shot. She decided biding her time was the only way until her health gives out.

She works in solitude, the only sounds beside nature are from a loudspeaker when AI permits her at nightfall to return to her hut for rest until the morning alarm an hour before daybreak.

All her life, she had had a big mouth. Not diplomatic, her mother would say as a character flaw and warning. She had grown accustomed to saying whatever was on her mind because she was American, an old American, not like the new Americans who took over the country with little bloodshed. The new Americans had the guns and the bullets. Old Americans like her didn’t believe in owning a gun not even for protection let alone a political regime change like the coup.

Free speech used to be a right in old America. So did the human rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When the regime took over, American rights were removed one by one. The first batch dealt with women: no right to abortion, only the right to procreate, no college education, no career, no bank account, no home ownership, no living alone, no being single, no dating. The former rights were removed almost silently and with relatively little protest by most Americans–but she protested. Public protests, only in the largest metropolitan centers, drew scant numbers in comparison with the nation’s majority who fully supported the regime and its many changes.

Anyone who protested was marked as a traitor to the country. America was no longer the Land of the Free. Late one night, her apartment was raided. She was dragged out of bed in the dark, gagged, eyes taped shut, head stuffed in sackcloth, arms yanked behind, wrists and ankles zipped together, guns felt at her head and heart. She was removed and thrown into a van with others. She could feel their bodies. When the doors slammed shut, everyone fiercely tried to get out of their bonds. But it was impossible.

The drive was very long over a period of a few days. No breaks or food or water. The driver’s windows must have been down because she could smell the transition from city to rural land and sometimes feel a faint breeze and smell rain then the ocean.

It seemed so long ago, but life as she knew it was destroyed in one month. Now she gets back to work. Any defiance is not tolerated. Gunshots echo across the terrain every day. She wants to live or survive. How long will this godless America last, she wonders silently in her mind.

Experiment in democracy

She was educated, what the former president-now-demagogue calls over educated, meaning useless. Educators were first to replace all removed undocumented workers across the former U.S., reportedly 20 million people. She felt fortunate not to have been sent to work in a slaughterhouse. Everyone in New America was born here and could prove it. Her home state of Texas quickly fell in line, if not in love, with the regime that banned protests against the new government. It was just as well that she was taken from everything she once claimed: career, home, car, spiritual books, knickknacks and photographs only meaningful to her. Texas had grown unbearably hot by weather and politics—too extreme to the right of a once semi-balanced government, when both sides knew how to compromise. In recent years, she could count on one hand friends and family who shared her pure democratic American views, the ones enshrined in the original Constitution dating back to the 18th century. That precious fragile document and all copies were destroyed as the regime’s supporters—two hundred million Americans—celebrated.

That day of celebration, viewed live on devices and old TVs, was a gathering of the ignorant, she thought. Probably said it out loud. The movement was part of the original coup from 2021 when opponents of the former newly elected U.S. president barged into the capitol and took over the legislative chambers, fully prepared to hang any enemy who interfered as they created a new government.

The transition was almost silent across the nation. For decades Americans bellyached about voting, how much trouble it was, not knowing what to do as modernization changed voting machines. So the new regime took away thousands of polling places across the nation and did away with mail-in ballots. Most Americans, those of the TV age, made clear they didn’t vote anymore anyway, didn’t see the point, wished for one charismatic leader—someone who would say what they wanted to say and felt just like they did: put out with what they called ‘woke’ thinking and attitudes and views that were deemed ‘politically incorrect.’ And what they wanted to say and what they always thought was white people, and particularly white males, were getting the short end of the stick. Their hot shot leader told them what they wanted to hear, what they had been thinking all along. Their problems were with affirmative action, women’s rights, civil rights, immigrant rights, and then gay rights. They thought they were being passed over one too many times. Their paychecks were shrinking, their opportunities gone, as women and racial and ethnic minorities were given a leg up in job consideration and even college admission.

The new regime would fix all that.

Cities were under martial law, so crime was virtually a thing of the past. And everyone, really a small percent of the former Americans, who did not believe in the eternal leader were removed. Other leaders who spoke against the new leader were silenced one way or another; one way was their mysterious deaths, always in secret, like being thrown from the 40th-floor balcony or more sinister like being poisoned. No court or media existed to challenge the regime. Even the few tech leaders, who maintained most of the money on the planet, were more than happy to oblige the new American regime.

So human rights were a thing of the past in new America and history rewritten—another aspect the regime whitewashed: museums, history books, historical documentaries, and even the internet. Few new Americans were granted access to the internet.

The vast majority of new Americans were just fine with how the regime and perpetual leader changed things. Slave labor fixed a lot of problems with supply and demand. Allegiance was hardly worth fighting against. And the most important followers were the youth. They never knew another time of total freedom: a 250-year era of everyone in America living, thinking and believing the way each wanted—exchanging ideas, lifestyles, and philosophies in striving toward what the Ancients termed the Good Life.

The lesson in governing humanity is ancient yet never learned or understood by modern Americans. Freedom isn’t free, though these very words were on their car bumpers. All people are created equal. Knowledge is power. Ignorance is bliss. Government power should be balanced and checked by three equal branches: executive, legislative and judicial. No one political party should remain in power forever. The political pendulum swings left and right and never rests in the middle—and this is because societies evolve as people change often for the better. Absolute power corrupts. And always, always, suppressed people with nothing to lose will rise up and overthrow a mad king.

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Crying time again: Mass layoffs spreading soon

Here they come: the mass layoffs, starting in D.C. then rippling down economically to more job losses all around until eventually impacting every community, urban and rural, in the U.S. For whatever reason—government bloat, gloat or goad—the current administration feels the need to layoff lotsa government workers. What we’ve seen so far is a lotta reinstating former employees and/or positions.

What’s obvious to the rest of us is: Our government doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing.

Cutting government fat was supposed to be more about the elected officials: the ones who stay in Congress for decades, don’t do much, enjoy a life of luxury thanks to schmoozing with Big Money, and voting themselves raises as well as the best health care taxpayer money can buy them.

But for the little people, to those I can relate, I’m referring to the masses who have been laid off because I’ve been there, more than once, more than twice, more than three times. Geez, sounds like I’m a lazy good-for-nothing worker, huh? Well, I know I’m not. I just have an idealistic and simply illogical passion for careers that society doesn’t care much about. So when the budget needs to be chopped, I sometimes am sent packing. Maintaining a gypsy spirit is a good ideal when it comes to American employment, by the way.

Through the decades of my working years and occasional job loss (starting as a clerk at The Dallas Times Herald in 1991), I’ve become less neurotic and more practical about job loss real and imagined. When I was just starting out as a career woman (feminist term from the 1970s to which I would aspire), the mother of a young colleague always looked through the job listings of the Sunday newspapers, before internet and smart phones. She was a long-time nurse, already in the medical field assured way back then to be the leading industry of the 21st century. Why would she spend any time reading the want ads, I asked. She advised me to always be checking out the job ads. Got it. Ear to the ground … just in case.  

Here’s what to do when laid off

DON’T BLAME YOURSELF. That’s what they want you to do. They want you to feel worthless, even suicidal. The truth is: THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU. Businesses will drop you in a snap yet expect sincere loyalty 8-hours a day/40-hours a week from their employees. Ironic, idn’t it?

They want you to rack your brain over every single word you said, vocal inflection, lifted brow, frown line, sigh, 5-minute lunch break, personality clash, and the appearance of giving the boss a hard time. But it’s not your fault more than likely. Sure, admin is supposed to get rid of the lazy folks first when mass layoffs are ordered. But I’ve noticed time and again that the very employees whom I know to be on the lazy side (frequently absent, fast and loose with the timecards, not too sharp, underproductive, overly diplomatic) are never laid off. I have noticed, however, the graying hair of those of us who end up standing in the lines at job fairs. Coincidence? I think not.

IF NEED BE, LIVE WITH FAMILY. Given the high cost of living and the unemployment compensation for job loss, it’s never enough to cover mortgage, rent, utilities, bills, groceries and gas. But maybe family and friends will let you crash for a while. As for your own family of kids and pets, everyone may have to split up if worse comes to worst. Think of it as very temporary because you’re off into cyberspace constantly seeking a new job or assorted jobs. This is the era of the gig economy.

CAST A WIDE NET: D.C. is not the only city to live in. The Mid Atlantic isn’t the only region to live in. The U.S. is not the only country to work in. That’s right, our federal government is opening the doors to kick scientists and doctors all over the planet. Might as well consider other countries. I’ll guarantee you one thing: Other countries will be more gracious. They’ll be lucky to have us, er, you.

KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE PRIZE. The job’s the thing. Think big, dream BIG, like we did after high school. Remember how easy it was to consider our fantasy careers, when we were so young and untouched by life’s unfair and overwhelming cruelties? Yes! So, for me, that would have been wanting to move to L.A. and go into show biz! At age 18, however, I had way too low self esteem, not to mention the practical need of money or family living in California, to seriously move myself (with a few clothes, stereo, records and toiletries) to the show biz capital of the world.

Hey, the wonderful thing about living in the Internet Age is we can re-address some old big job dreams—even create jobs online and certainly go after many jobs posted on job search sites. It appears to be a smorgasbord of … opportunities! There’s a place for YOU somewhere.

What doesn’t make sense about mass government employee layoffs (coupled with firing the labor secretary due to woefully small job creation numbers) is the residual impact. If every dollar spent rolls over seven times, benefiting seven additional businesses, wouldn’t the opposite be true? Wouldn’t every job cut reduce revenue for seven businesses like grocery stores, clothing stores, furniture shops, restaurants, dry cleaners, gas stations? Just wondering.

In the 1990s, the Clinton administration brilliantly handled taking care of our country’s unemployed due to industry shutdowns. He created a federal fund to instantly help 40 of the most economically depressed communities in the U.S. Each community had to build its economy in three ways: create new small businesses, provide incentives to lure industries, and reboot tourism. Individuals who were unemployed and living in these economically depressed areas got to use grants and loans to finish their GEDs; take courses in HACV or welding and other practical job skills; or create their own small business, even operating them in their homes.

The Clinton way to fix economic problems turned out to be a Very Good Idea, certainly worthwhile and practical. But given our current administration and its ham-fisted pompous asinine manner to ‘cut the federal budget,’ any semblance of intelligent compassion is out—and suffering in all forms, from occupational to emotional, is in.