Author: cheriebell69@hotmail.com

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Impeachment. Again?!

I can’t believe I’m having to live through my third impeachment.  I know Republicans.  Nixon was not impeached.  Well, to an 11-year-old who only wanted to watch TV during the long hot Texas summers of 1973 and ’74, it seemed like he was already impeached.  And, my poor mother the teacher!  Oh how she rued the daily interruptions, two whole summers of monotonous day-long congressional inquiries carried on all three networks.  The whole boring mess left her unable to catch up on her favorite soap operas.  Those were the days.  Bored out of her mind, she often took my brother and me to spend afternoons at the city swimming pool or go to amusement parks.  Mom would read romance novels while catching a glimpse of us every so often.    

Fast forward to the Clinton impeachment of 1998-99, which was brief yet seemed just as long and even more intense with 24-hour news and the internet months before and analyses after.  But the salacious scandal had sex, so no one was bored, maybe a little queasy.

And now for a good year if not longer, the mass media has done nothing but blast the Trump investigations and congressional impeachment hearings ad nauseam.

It’s just too much to bear for a middle-aged American let alone the seniors among us.

Russia, if yer listenin’

I knew when candidate Donald J. Trump asked Russia to hack into the emails of his rival Secretary of State Hillary Clinton … he would be impeached if ever elected U.S. President.  My jaw dropped upon hearing the words spoken at a campaign rally, amplified by microphones and videotaped for posterity by the mass media.  He thought he could run a nation, a democratic country, like he did his business: cut throat competition, finding dirt on competitors, paying off people to stay silent, survival of the fittest, constant firings, loyalty oaths.  All brass and crass.

This is precisely why I think a businessman is not the best candidate for U.S. President.  I seek a candidate who’s actually run a government whether federal, state or city.  I also trust a candidate with a law degree and who has practiced law.  They know more about the law and understand the law and respect the law better than lay people.  Military background is good in this day and age.  But high intelligence and well roundedness is what I ultimately seek in a presidential candidate.  Running a modern nation, by far the strongest in the Free World, is not like running a business.  In fact, communism is more like running a business.  The leaders have ways of dealing with the weakest.  Trust no one. People are for the good of the nation not the nation for the benefit of the people.  In communism and business, the mission is survival of the entity, and the people, the workers, be damned.

Trump and his die-hard supporters appear to be unfazed by the looming impeachment trial.  That is because the Republicans in the U.S. Senate are lockstep behind the president.  Their anti-impeachment blather, however, has been used by Republicans and heard by the American people before, during Watergate.  The media is the enemy of the people.  The media has brainwashed the public against the president.  It’s a witch hunt.  It’s a coup to overturn the previous election.

It all ended when Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment and a public trial.  He had accepted word from the Senate that the majority of his party and the people no longer supported him.  The following election found many Nixon Republicans losing another term, and a lot of Democrats were sent to Washington to get busy doing the nation’s work, a nation of people with human needs.

What goes around comes around

Fast forward to Clinton, who did not resign but instead faced the impeachment trial, allowing himself as Executive to be judged by the co-equally powerful Legislature.  He was slick, though, and in the end was not removed from office over lying about an affair and trying to cover it up during a federal investigation.

And who’s the wiser?  Nixon laid low for a long while, and comedians like Rich Little dropped their impressions of “I’m not a crook” while waving two-handed peace signs (it was actually the V for Victory sign, I would learn decades later) to audience laughter.  Nixon returned to handling global affairs even at the request of President Clinton.  And Clinton left office with high approval ratings, wrote a tome of his life story to explain his motivations and all-too-human short comings, even approved an entire wing of his presidential library to present and explain the scandal and his impeachment.  Even his former lover Monica Lewinsky has come out of hiding from the public after 20 years, now over 40 and claiming she made the mistake of falling in love with her boss, a married man and popular Leader of the Free World, and that she was just too naïve back then to fully understand the consequences and repercussions.

Living history is funny to watch sometimes.  Having lived through near-impeachment and impeachment and the aftermath of both, I look forward to the day when all Americans can be light hearted and rational when discussing the Trump impeachment trial—shortest one in modern history, we are promised.  I have faith that as Americans we will again return to our collective purpose: being one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. 

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How does a marriage of political division work? Knowing what and who’s more important.

Today is my husband’s and my wedding anniversary.  Eighteen years now.  Thank you!  What makes it last?  Love, after all these many years of shared ups and downs, I suppose.  And dogged determination to just hang in there … week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after dec—well, we’re not there yet.  And then there’s our mutual laziness.  Despite arguments and disagreements, we don’t have the energy to actually d-i-v-o-r-c-e.  I suppose we stick together because we’ve grown to respect each other, put up with the other’s faults and flaws.  Each of us is very aware that nobody in this world is perfect.  So we’ve remained married to one another.

Some of you may recall my first Texas Tart blog about my marriage, how my husband and I are as divided politically as our nation.  In fact, I started this blog of political humor and social commentary after the 2016 presidential election.  I figured we would be living in interesting times, and I wanted to write and laugh about it every week or so.  You may wonder how the past three years of political rancor and turmoil have affected our marriage, my husband Mr. Republican and me the bleeding heart liberal Democrat.  Well, let me tell you.  It has been extremely hard … on both of us.  I’d say more on me than him.  I mean, my gal didn’t win the presidency.  But I’ve lived through Republican administrations before yet nuttin’ like this.  The divisiveness has taken an almost evil turn, as if there are political foes chompin’ at the bit to declare all-out civil war.  A civil war between Republicans and Democrats, shootin’ people who don’t believe the way you do?  How crazy would that be?  As we’ve seen during the present administration, there are some crazy people in America, some holding great power and more concerning controlling the money.

From Bush to Obama

When we first married in December 2001, George W. Bush was President, 9/11 was our nation’s tragic sorrow along with psyching up for a long war on the other side of the world, and at home millions of layoffs were taking place.  It was hard times for me and Doo, er, I mean my husband.  We’d been married only a couple months when he was depressed about the economy, wondering how were we gonna manage to pay the rent.  In a tender moment of embrace, I softly mentioned how this kind of thing happens whenever a Republican is in office … and wop!  He didn’t hit me, just firmly reminded me to whom I was talking.  I thought I was trying to comfort my distraught spouse who was down on his luck.  But no, I was scolded for dragging politics, his politics, into bad economic times.  Huh?  Way before I had married, I believed recessions occur during Republican administrations.  Has to do with being tight with the tax money. So my words slipped out while trying to think of an optimistic future (when a Democrat is in charge again).

Ever since when it comes to making this marriage work, I’ve watched my words about a Republican president, not to mention a Republican governor and legislators federal and state, even mayors.  Through the years when it comes to political discussion between us, I still call it like I see it.  He can handle a sardonic tone.  It’s one of the things we have in common, a dry sense of humor, me more on than he, but he’s a great audience.  During the election between Bush and John Kerry, my husband exuberantly left for work on Election Day but not before returning to advise me to “Vote Republican.”  I laughed out the door. Imagine me voting for a Republican president.  I couldn’t wait to press the buttons for Kerry and anyone who would work toward ending those stupid forever wars and restoring faith from the American people instead of calling French fries Freedom fries and scaring everyone with daily color codes to announce the national terrorist threat level.

Well, my guy didn’t win. Nothing I haven’t dealt with and lived through before, four more years of a Republican administration. Then came the John McCain and Barack Obama election. Late that election night after I’d fallen asleep before the final results, my husband walked into the bedroom to announce soberly Obama had won. I was overjoyed because I didn’t think he’d win.  Finally, I thought to myself with a giddy smile, there is a God.  It’s the same thing Republicans say when they win, isn’t it?

It was a joy living through the Obama years.  In my opinion, the guy made very few mistakes.  Then again, I’m a singer in the choir when it comes to my party.  But my husband … he was like everyone else I know: relatives, majority of friends, co-workers.  Sore losers, maybe, but they did not like anything Obama said or did.  But funding perpetual wars was over.  One war ended.  Year after year, slowly but surely, the economy did get better.  Even the unemployment rate dropped remarkably low. And tens of millions of Americans were insured through expanded Medicaid, which opponents facetiously dubbed Obamacare.  Obama was not just popular among the majority of Americans and people the world over, he was a super star.  Among Democrats, he was beloved.  In 2016 that half of the nation who didn’t like President Obama for whatever reason along with Democratic policies got together and turned our country back to whatever they thought it should be.   

Seriously?

The night Donald Trump was elected President, my husband was as happy as I’d ever seen him.  He still is.  His man in Washington is A-OK, and there are a lot of Americans who feel exactly the same way.  Trust me down here in Texas.  I … I try to deal with it best I can.  But, um, it’s soooo hard.  It’s like living in American Bizarro World.  All I can think is this must be how half the country felt during the Obama years.  They thought everything he did was so awful.  We’ve pulled ourselves to the extremes politically when we used to get along. The reason Americans got along throughout all the previous Presidential administrations, save Nixon, was we never took our politics all that seriously, more important than our families and the people we love and respect and have known all our lives.

A politically mixed marriage is nothing new in America.  What are the odds of finding a mate who thinks and believes exactly like you do?  When you find someone who thinks politically opposite, that calls for maturity and emotional strength, of knowing thyself.  It calls for being open minded enough to understand the other’s points, even change your own opinions, and we both have.  There are a lot of issues that can break up a marriage, but ‘he’s a Republican and I’m a Democrat’ would be an awfully silly one.  Marriage betwixt the two can be hard for the self-proclaimed politically passionate (and we have that in common, too), but it’s not impossible.    

A long time ago, I wrote a newspaper column lamenting being one of the few known Democrats in a small Texas town.  I idealized the 1970s when, I thought, it was cool to be liberal.  After reading it, a wise old man dropped by the newspaper office to set me straight. “It has never been cool to be a liberal,” he implored. What did I know? I was just a kid in the ’70s, influenced by TV shows like “MASH” and “Donahue” and movies like “Saturday Night Fever,” hard rock lyrics, keep-the-party-going disco, and the scuzzy branding of major U.S. cities like New York.  Do your own thing was a national motto.  From what I recall, some people took the times and all the freedom too far while the rest never lost their scruples and worked together to improve our world.

When I learned that being liberal is not the comfortable path of conformity with patriotic American clichés; not the road of the masses who believe a universal moral right and wrong with no gray ambiguity found in the human condition; not the group in which everyone looks just like me with not much tolerance for other cultures and religions—that was all I needed to know.  Alone or not, I would be a Democrat for life, even in Texas. I like being the underdog, fighting for the disenfranchised.  A mixed marriage of sorts was bound to be in my future. After all these years, I’ve come to understand my husband’s stance to make American great again, though I disagree with the premise. And I could be wrong, but by now I think he secretly admires my sincerity, no matter how terribly wrong he sees my politics.  

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The 20teens: Decade of unnecessary anger, senseless rage, moronic lies, self pity, amorality, the consummate Age of Rude & Crude

In the year 1989 The Dallas Times Herald ran a feature series retrospective on the 1980s, calling it “The Mean Decade.”  The adjective was attention getting, you see, because those were the revered Reagan Years.  But the faux optimistic veneer of Morning in America was pulled back to reveal the Reagan Revolution of less government assistance and reduced taxes on the wealthy produced: millions more citizens living in poverty, because the poverty income had been lowered; young adults who had to forfeit college, because student loans and grants were severely cut along with the Johnson-era Social Security benefit guaranteeing a child of a deceased parent would get a college education; poor elementary school kids watching their better-off classmates eat lunch every day, because the federal school lunch program was cut; tens of millions of Americans with debilitating mental illness and the mentally challenged were kicked to the curb, because government institutions were defunded, emptied and closed; and lest it be forgot, the AIDS epidemic brought no compassion from our elected leaders who instead echoed moral outrage at millions of sick and dying victims homosexual or not.  The Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War ended yet billions and trillions of U.S. tax dollars were diverted to expand if not bloat the God-Almighty U.S. military industrial complex.

Thank God democracy was restored in the 1990s with the Clinton Years, along with humanity, humility, reason, love—and most impressively trust and faith between the U.S. federal government and the people.  That era is called America’s Last Great Decade because the greater good, benefit and welfare of the American people was put first and foremost. 

The ‘mean’ adjective comes to mind when casting perspective on the times in which we live today and have experienced together during the tumultuous 20teens.  But this decade has been meaner than mean, nastier than nasty, uglier than ugly, more horrific than horrible.  Mean would be a rather tame description of our times compared to all the pain and suffering and ill-logic we the American people have had to endure and ruefully will continue to live through every day: mass shootings; disregard for truth, justice and the American way; contempt for journalism and journalists; indifference and cruelty toward desperate and frightened Latin American families rightfully escaping vicious narco states just for the hope of asylum in the U.S.—where they want nothing more than just to live.

In the beginning, there was light

President Barack Obama, elected in 2008 and inaugurated to the most positive and impressive mass viewing in 2009, was during the 20teens a light, ironic given his skin color.  But compared to his predecessor, he had a clear vision of what America should be.  He also knew all too well what America was and could be.  He walked a tightrope every day trying to work with Republicans, rich white men in suits, mannequins, humorless, pasty faced save one.  Sitting at the round table with America’s first black president, these white legislators never allowed themselves to crack a smile at Obama’s humor and charm.  No, for eight long years they remained sourpussed, bitter, holding their breath, always evading to glance at President Obama whom they obviously perceived as just a monkey in a suit.  They did not fool anyone with intuition.  I know my people.

White legislators from all over the U.S. knew their people, too, their constituents, the white male loud mouths who did not take kindly to a black man in the White House.  The mass anger started then.  Throughout the Obama years, there were federal investigations into several government departments and police agencies across the country caught using racial slurs and passing along if not creating derogatory pictures of President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.  So many investigations of government workers carrying on like this, it could only be the antics of certain white men but a lot of them.

Blacks were angry, too, pushing back when time and again an innocent black male was shot to death by a white police officer, sometimes by several officers in a spray of gunfire.  The shootings were even videoed live by citizens with smart phones.  Still, nothing changed in society despite who the U.S. President was.  So the protests and chants of Black Lives Matter and ultimately the violence and fires began.  Whites don’t like U.S. cities burned in what they term a race riot, and the way was paved for a law-and-order guy to run for President in 2016. 

During President Obama’s two terms in office, he confided with the American people his biggest regret was not being able to stop America’s gun problem, the mass shootings that can only be accomplished by high-powered war rifles not handguns or a huntin’ arm.  He routinely called the families of our war dead, because he could not quickly stop the Iraq war or pull America out of Afghanistan, both conflicts started in the Bush years and cemented in the minds of a generation the term ‘perpetual war.’  Obama also took the time and sympathy to call the families of each person killed in every one of America’s mass shootings during the 20teens.

But the white people’s rage spread, infiltrating our young males who remain the dominant mass shooters.  These are young guys who often kill themselves in the process or want to be killed, who want to die.  They prefer death to their miserable American lives.  They assume everyone else feels the same way.  Well, we don’t.

Dark side of the moon

President Donald Trump really didn’t win the election fair and square.  Because he ran as a Republican, he simply got more states with larger electoral votes to claim the dubious victory.  But his Democrat opponent won the popular vote by a couple million American voters, lest the facts be forgotten.

Trump’s Orwellian inaugural speech maintained rampant crime throughout the country and a Mexican and Latin American overthrow of ‘American culture.’  He also implored the world now bows to the U.S. and will pay trillions owed for unfair trade tariffs.  White Americans perhaps breathed a sigh of relief, a freedom most had never known: the freedom to finally say exactly what they’ve been a-thinking about people of other flesh tones, languages, religions and cultures.  Perhaps they were sick and tired of having to keep it all bottled up, never permitted to share harshly defined resentment toward blacks and Mexicans, even Jews, the tired old story how they’re taking over America and this ain’t my country no more.   Whites have belly ached for centuries about this same fear even while fighting Native Americans for their land.  Slave owners certainly must have thought the same while standing along their neo-Roman porticos to survey their vast plantation fields worked by dozens of African-American slaves young and old from sun up to sundown.  Surely white land owners could see they were the minority even then, so brutal force was necessary to stay in power.

During the 20teens computers were in all schools, businesses and homes and the palm of our hands adult and child.  The internet’s social media allowed platforms where Americans enjoyed free speech more than they ever could have thought possible two decades ago.  Whites were free to say openly how they hate other races, masses of humanity.  Young people were left unsupervised to roam the darkest recesses of the internet—the filthy images, words and bigotry.

Finally we’re coming to a new era of the 2020s.  America ricochets politically from one extreme to the other, liberal to conservative and back again. Like a perpetual bumper car race, we hit the other guy and ram him to the side while individually we once again try to make our way to win the race, whatever that might be in life: job, career, salary, healthcare, housing, money, security, peace, personal happiness.  Americans think they should have everything they want in life. The rest of the world thinks that’s awfully selfish of us, of anyone.

Americans of the 2020s will be not unlike young people in their 20s.  They’ll relish total freedom.  They’ll be a lot more mature than they were in their 20teens.  They’ll learn to watch their words and actions and appreciate consequences.  They’ll start developing a deep concern for humanity, even altruism.  As most will be parents, they’ll see themselves in their children and take the time to censor their own poor behavior, speech and judgement—because no one really wants to turn a loving unprejudiced child into an insensitive bigoted smart ass.  If human history can teach us something about an evolving society through the decades, we learn that each term begins with promise and appreciation but then ends in exhaustion and anger.  In 2020 we have an opportunity to become the Americans we are supposed to be in the world: a kind and generous people who willingly embrace all cultures and all colors for that is our ultimate strength and truly what makes America great. We are freedom loving and peaceful, open minded and diplomatic, abundantly blessed agriculturally, spiritually and intellectually.  We’re the Good Guys, remember.

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From anti-vaxers to anti-doctors, what’s the harm?

I just can’t go there.  I can’t join them yet.  Being an open-minded person, still leaning toward caution than risk, I’m not yet convinced vaccines do more harm than good.  I can’t cross that line of thinking the medical establishment is pulling the wool over our eyes.  Can’t yet join the millions who say they and their family will never be vaccinated against anything ever again.  I ponder yet admire that level of brazen.  These are musings from a political radical—well, maybe in my 30s.  Now I’ve mellowed into a liberal … but medically maybe a moderate.

Who thinks they’re smarter than a doctor?  Nowadays everyone does.  Who needs a licensed educated insured cautious practicing physician to diagnose human ailments and diseases when we have the internet in the palm of our hands?  We can diagnose ourselves silly with research from the worldwide web and of course indulge presumed courses of treatment.

Does this make sense to anybody?  How reckless can people be assuming they know more about anything and everything that goes wrong with the human body than a doctor?  Today millions trust the internet over a doctor.  Even Kramer said so on “Seinfeld” back in the ’90s.  Kramer.  He also said the alternative media is where the real news is.  So there you have it: Do you wanna be a Seinfeld or a Kramer?  I’m still a Seinfeld.

What kind of idiot says medical schools make doctors stupid?

This is actually an internet meme.  As a retired educator, I don’t like it.  First, I question the young guy in the picture, the dude sitting laid back at a table outdoors with that sign which also beckons anyone to ask him why.  We know the millions of dollars it takes just to become a doctor, still the one group with double and triple the required education than other college graduates.  Say what you will, think what you will, but more education makes you smarter not stupid, dumb dumb.

What really bothers me about some guy out there claiming medical school made him stupid is the impact it has on our young people.  They will never forget that meme.  When they come of age to start planning a career path including college, that meme buried in their subconscious will hinder aspiration toward the top of the medical profession.  America already has a hard time getting anyone to seriously pursue the career of physician, simply due to the astronomical medical education cost.

The most important thing for us to remember about anyone who pursues medicine and the admirable path of MD—whether family practitioner, pediatrics, OB/GYN, neurosurgeon (that means brain surgeon) or by far the most lucrative, sports medicine—they all have to be highly intelligent people.  Come on now.  Few of us are born with or develop the inclination to ace chemistry.  So, knock that chip off the shoulder and admit none of us know more than a doctor.  That said, the medical establishment has long been suspect for its sustaining financial bond with the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Who said watching TV makes you stupid?

Ah, now we’ve come to the reason people today think they know more about their bodies and the goings-on within than a doctor.  Slick pharmaceutical TV ads—with fine actors in real-life scenarios as background music touches the heart, ensuring memory recall—cost big pharma a bundle.  More than one generation now believes the ads offer any cure and treatment for an array of conditions—some conditions a lot of people don’t even have.  I’d say most of us don’t have.  That’s hitting the nail on the head.  See, I remember when the pharmaceutical industry was prohibited from advertising prescription meds on TV coast to coast.  Why?  Because people are highly susceptible to hearing repeatedly about headaches, fatigue, mental illness and cancer, so much so that some viewers start to think they have those conditions, too, and then ask their doctors for the specific prescription … before a diagnosis.  Smart doctors know how best to deal with such a patient.  Shady doctors would play along.

The generation of taking a pill or pills to feel better, however, is dying out.  No pun intended.  My generation and younger asks questions first before taking medicine or undergoing treatment just because a doctor says so.  Perhaps we’ve created a generation of pseudo know-it-alls who at this point in medical history just don’t believe a word that comes out of a doctor’s mouth.  But that was not the Baby Boomers’ intention.

Hey, when I’m sick, I’m the first to seek natural healing and aromatherapies, say prayers and positive affirmations while clutching crystals and crosses—anything than take the time out of my job to wait in a doctor’s office with coughing sneezing wheezing sickies, then strip down in the exam room and 30 minutes later tell a doc what’s wrong and then get dressed to head to a pharmacy.  But, my experience time and again is: I always end up doing just that, along with taking natural healers, too.  It’s a vicious cycle getting sick or injured or old and enduring a newly developed chronic pain.  Still, I go to a doctor because sometimes I cannot heal myself, and I get sick of being sick.

Along with pharmaceutical TV ads, people are on to the cost of health insurance.  Remember when we thought something was going to be done about that with each presidential election starting with Bill Clinton?  Then Barack Obama does just that, upends the system.  And there was hell to pay.  Turns out, Americans love their insurance.  That was NEWS TO ME.  The only people who love their insurance are the lucky who work for huge corporations and businesses.  Otherwise, the rest are screwed by premiums and deductibles that the Other Half would consider simply a lie.  The cost of health insurance is no lie.

So now I’d say the Boomers, hippie dippies that they once were and some still are including yours truly, have produced a couple of generations who have taken our natural skepticism of authority and The Man to a whole other level.  It is not just question everyone about everything.  It’s shooting the bird at an educated segment of the population.  In the end, the doctor will see you now.  And if not him or her, then the funeral biz awaits us all.

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Julie

“Please God, please.  Noooooo.  Please—don’t let …”

Julie cried silently to herself, mouthing the words without tears.  She read the testing stick: Pregnant.  She knew her decision would have to be quick.  The sniffers would come around soon enough.  The short round rolling robots perceive DNA and the pregnancy hormone in particular.  “God,” she closed her eyes.  She had hoped for the relief that life as she knew it, as she had planned it, as she foresaw it, would go on.  She wanted no one to know her secret, her mistake.

She confided in Miranda, her college roommate.  “What are you gonna do?”

“I don’t want to have it,” Julie answered somberly.  “I want to finish college.

“I don’t believe I should have to have it.”

“You have to have it,” her friend replied.  “You have no choice.  None of us do.  Not anymore.”

Looking through the blinds, Julie was in a daze of fear and panic.  She thought of Romeo, the way he made her feel. She, they were in love.  How was she going to tell him his life was over, too, at least for a year?  That was the sentence for males who impregnated a female but could not afford the baby.  One year in prison.  The sniffers determine paternity.

“This was not supposed to happen,” Julie said. “Why can’t this be my private life, my decision, the way it used to be?”

“You don’t have a lot of time,” Miranda warned.

“You think I don’t know that?!”

“You have maybe a day before …”

“I know, before the sniffers come around,” Julie finished the scenario.

That would be humiliating, chased down by a whining silly round robot or several.  Then everyone would know.  And that was the point.

“This should be private.  Why should my parents know?  I’m an adult.”

“Well, they pay for your college,” Miranda reminded, then apologized as she hugged her friend.

———————————————————————————————————

They heard a knock on the door.  It was Romeo.  Miranda opened the door, cautiously scanning left and right then quickly pulled him inside the campus apartment.  “What’s going on?” he asked playfully.  Miranda looked away while walking into the other room.

Julie looked at him and took a breath.  “I’m pregnant.”

She wiped tears from her eyes.

“Oh … that’s … that’s not what I expected to hear,” he replied awkwardly.  “How …”

She chuckled behind tears, “You know.”

They stood silent before Romeo approached Julie, embracing her tenderly, enveloping her, breathing in her sorrow, entering into her shame.  “Look,” he whispered, “we can leave, go to California.  It’s legal there.  No questions asked.”

“How are we going to suddenly leave in the middle of college?  Those sniffer hounds probably already know.”

“Let’s go right now.”

“I need to think.”

“You’re not thinking of keeping it?” Romeo asked.  “You know how we’ll be treated.  We’ll be locked up until the baby is born.

“I don’t want that,” he commanded.  “We don’t deserve that.  No one does, especially young people with our whole lives ahead.  We shouldn’t have to be parents until we want.”

Sometimes, Julie thought, Romeo spoke with such passion, like he was a born leader and could take charge and protect her and everyone who felt powerless to fight the system.  Julie realized why she fell in love with him.  It wasn’t just chemistry and attraction.  She admired and respected his entire being.  In her mind and heart, they would marry.

But she didn’t want to marry yet and not for being pregnant.  Maybe in a few years.  She wanted that time for Romeo, too.  They could be parents later when they could afford it, when they wanted to bring a new life into this world.

And now pregnancy could change their lives but not before placing them in separate facilities for a year.  She knew the law.  Pregnant girls could marry or move into a mandatory facility until the baby was born.  She could keep it only if she could afford it.  The community would place her in a job.  The fathers of unplanned pregnancies got a tougher sentence if they could not afford to provide for the expectant mother and the unborn baby: one year in jail.  It was punishment because males know better.  “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”  Youth of their generation saw the signs everywhere since junior high.

———————————————————————————————————

“We’ll marry,” Romeo proposed.

“No, it won’t work.  We have no money to keep a baby.  Maybe when we graduate and are able to get jobs.  But not now,” Julie said, starting to weep.

Romeo looked through the blinds, knowing the sniffers would eventually roll around the corner, detecting.  The couple had little time to think or plan.

“How about your parents?  Can’t they help us?” he asked.

Julie shook her head in fear.  “My parents can never know this!

“They would not understand.”

“What?  A couple in love?”  Romeo said tenderly, stroking her hair.  “They know about that.”

“My parents cannot know this,” she asserted, end of subject.

“Our parents were lucky living young when your life was your business not the government’s,” Romeo said, sarcastic and envious thinking of the freedom.

President Roberts, the first woman president, ran on a platform of abolishing abortion and punishing both the mother and father of pregnancies if they could not afford it, even stiffer penalties if they tried to induce miscarriage or abortion.  Parents, family, friends, churches and social organizations could come to a couple’s aid by providing funds to pay for health care as well as the baby’s first year of life.  But anyone caught participating in an abortion, for any reason, any age female, would be punished and imprisoned.

“Look, I know someone who knows how to get you some pills,” Romeo said quietly, adding slowly and softly, “that would induce miscarriage.”

“You mean an abortion?” Julie said flatly, quoting the government’s policy.

“Miscarriage.  Whatever.  It used to be routine in the U.S. before the law changed,” Romeo said.

“Those were the days,” Julie said, cracking a smile.

Thinking about the option, to swallow some pills until she cramped and bled, she asked, “How will we get away with that?”

“There’s a solvent that comes with it.  No one would know.”

“I’d know.”

“You sound like you want to stay pregnant and …”

“Have a baby?” Julie said.  “We haven’t called it a baby yet, like we’re supposed to.”

“It would be easier to just marry,” Romeo told her.  “No one cares if you’re pregnant and have to.”

Julie sat down on the sofa, finally the weight of the world off her shoulders.  “I don’t want to have a baby now,” she decided.

“Get the pills.”

———————————————————————————————————

California broke away from the U.S. due to the Roberts’ law, seeing it as unjust and inhumane.  Julie researched online the small nation by the sea, studying the demographics, realizing the impossibility to remain a peaceful small North American nation due to overcrowding and every kind of earthly battle from floods to fire to daily earthquakes.  She didn’t want to leave Texas or America.  She thought of Canada; it was legal there, too.  But … the sniffers are everywhere across the U.S., roaming freely, more so at night, their tiny gears whizzing at a high pitch … only females could hear.

“The land of fruits and nuts,” she said to herself with a laugh, remembering something she heard about California from old TV characters a couple generations ago.

California had high unemployment due to a large migration of ex-patriots.  The cost of living was out of this world.  And money was the root of her problem as well as for Romeo.  “Wouldn’t it be nice,” she began to sing an old song by a California band.

The sniffers could not be heard.  They hadn’t picked up on Julie yet.

An hour later Romeo tapped on the back window.  Julie lifted the window as he pulled himself in.  The apartments were not closely monitored like the dorms.  College kids had more freedom … to make mistakes.

“This is all you need,” he said.

“I thought love was all you need,” Julie quipped mindlessly, reading the instructions.

She popped open the bottle and hesitated.

“The sniffers!  I hear them,” she said.

They scratched at the door like a pack of wild dogs, intent on seizing their prey.

“You!” Julie said as Miranda appeared from the bedroom.  “You told?”

“Hey, it’s the law.  I had to,” she said with a steady tone.  “Besides, the reward money will pay my final year.”

“Let’s go out the back,” Romeo said, grabbing Julie, still clasping the pill bottle.

“No,” she said, standing silent, gazing through Romeo helplessly.  “It’s over.”

———————————————————————————————————

The walls were blue with white clouds.  She thought she’d died and was sailing above the world.  She closed her eyes and gave the final push cued by the doctor.  The baby was born, a girl with loud lungs, the picture of health.  Julie smiled, happy to be a part of this miracle of life.  The baby was briskly taken to another room.  Julie was confused but understood her baby would be sold to a loving couple who could afford her.  The government would make sure of that.

“Julie, down,” the matron said, instructing the young woman to be still as she was wheeled back into her cell.

She received twenty years for attempting an abortion.  Romeo received ten years for providing the illegal pills to Julie.  They could finish college in prison and even earn other degrees.  For good behavior, their sentences could be reduced to a third of time served.

———————————————————————————————————

“Dear Julie, I love you and want to marry you.  Let’s marry behind bars.  There is no one else for me, just you!  Please say you will.  I know the baby was born.  What was it?  Did you see it?  How are you coping?  In my dreams we are together and I feel your embrace and I am so happy.  Please hold me in your dreams!  Write me soon.  Your Romeo”

Julie read over the letter with no expression.  Prison left her little time to sleep let alone dream.  She was exhausted but had many chores to do, her punishment for years to come.  The walls and floor of her cell were gray cement.  The matrons were hefty and strong.  Their voices were all she heard.  Inmates were not allowed to talk.  Julie hadn’t heard her own voice for months.  She had been nesting alone in a baby room for nine months.  Her sole focus was on the new life growing inside her.  That was her commandment and duty.

After the birth she would begin paying her debt to society.  She scrubbed toilets, mopped floors, painted the warden’s office, sewed pillows in the factory, attended college classes and studied.  The female inmates, from girls to teens to women of child-bearing years, all serving time for attempted miscarriage or abortion, received their meals alone in their cells.  They were not to congregate or communicate with each other.  Their punishment had to be severe. The ladies must feel the scorn of society.  And the younger generation needed to know how stiff the punishment for abortion would be.  “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”  The slogan was on a government poster with a couple kissing in a heated embrace.  The picture seen across the nation was captivating, a romantic moment.  How did the government think that picture would instill abstinence, Julie wondered.

In the imposed silence, Julie sometimes could think to herself.  She didn’t think of Romeo anymore.  She grew to despise him.  She had to kill their love.  Everyone she knew would know her crime.  She never spoke to her parents though they often came to see her in prison.  She thought of the millions of strangers who did not care about her and whether or not she got pregnant and wanted an abortion.  Then again, just as many felt her life was their business only when she was pregnant and sought to terminate.  To them, science proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that human life—physical and spiritual—begins at conception.

Whatever Julie believed did not matter.  In the back of her mind, she heard a woman’s self-assured commentary from another era: “You don’t have to have a baby if you don’t want.  Your body is your business.”  The tears stung now.  She cried for her mistake, for unintended pregnancy, for the new law changing abortion to a crime of murder, for the loss of privacy, for never knowing the baby she had to have.

She envied women of the old days when they took to the streets to make abortion legal once upon a time.  They held their signs high: Abortion on demand!  Mothers, daughters, grandmothers all marching together.  Abortion was illegal then, too. They were so brave, she thought.  They marched for a reason.  What was it, Julie wondered.

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Don’t you hate it when slim people call fat people fat?

The one challenge I may not win in this lifetime is the battle of the bulge.  I am one of the 40 percent of Americans deemed overweight or obese.  Like my fellow fatties, I’ve had a lifelong love affair with food—I, like they, don’t eat to live but live to eat.  The only time I remember being lithe, thin without a care in the world, oblivious to how I looked but very much aware of the joie de vivre, was … second grade.  But the following summer, nature played a cruel trick on me as I morphed into a totally different body.  Teachers did not recognize me.  I had been short the previous year but grew to second tallest girl in class [I ended up a short woman], gained at least 20 pounds more than my Brady Bunch peers, and had to wear a bra.  Everybody started calling me fat: family, friends, strangers, teachers, doctors.  What must that have done to my 8-year-old psyche?

I kept a brave front like I didn’t care, but that emotional wound never healed.  I became self deprecating, first to make fun of myself before anyone else had a chance.  I suffer from fat mentality.  It’s a real thing.  Like every fat person, I eat when depressed, angry, happy, sad, lonely, socializing, mourning, and celebrating.  Doesn’t everybody?

When our peers manage to grow older while keeping weight off, we who are fat adults aren’t fooling anyone.  We gotta problem, and everybody who sees us knows it.  Obviously we eat more, a lot more, and exercise less, a lot less if at all, than the nonfat people.  Doctors have been telling us the key to weight loss is eat less and exercise more.  Oscar-winning Texas actor Matthew McConaughey gave a great bit of advice to his remarkable weight loss playing an AIDS victim: Don’t eat.  He actually stopped eating, and the weight just melted off.  Who am I kidding?  I can’t not eat.  I’ll pass out.  Besides, food tastes so good.  Remember that slogan to help us girls lose weight in the ’70s: Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels?  I’ll never know the comparison.

Fat people know all about dieting; it works sort of, takes a very long time, and then our old habits and natural inclination are welcomed back into our lives like a dear loving friend with whom we had unkindly kicked to the curb.  Oh how we personify our relationship with food.  Obesity is at the root an emotional problem first and a physical or metabolic challenge second.

So when comedian Bill Maher recently sermonized, as he tends to do at the end of his weekly HBO show “Real Time,” about America’s fat problem, he was preaching to me, reaching my guilty soul.  I’m a fellow Democrat, and Bill and I see eye to eye on practically everything—he more cynical, I more optimistic, yet the same politics.  When he presented the sobering statistic that every year 40,000 Americans die of gunshot wounds while 300,000 of us die from obesity, he got me.  Must get back to seriously dieting again and exercising.  Must make myself think before any morsel of food enters my mouth.  I get this way every once in awhile: join a gym and am faithful to exercise and diet.  Then I go through slumps, mostly due to loss of income.  The gym membership has been the first to go in 30 years of experienced job loss or salary reductions.  But to get Maher off my back, I once again joined a health club.  It’s new and ten minutes away, so I have no excuse.  I mulled it over for a year, dreading it but wanting and needing it simultaneously.  That’s how we fat folks roll.

Carry that weight

I never liked exercising when I was a kid.  I didn’t like breathing in cold air and pushing my heart rate and body which easily tired.  I preferred lounging indoors all summer and after school watching TV or listening to radio or records.  I was a plump child of the ’70s.  My peers were active and enjoyed playing outdoors.  The 99 percent of them were slim and appeared to be having the time of their lives.  I was envious watching on the sidelines, self conscious of fat legs; everyone told me I had fat legs.  And the bra thing meant I’d never be a runner.  That’s what I always dreamed of being: an elegant runner.  But it wasn’t meant to be.  Walking by boys at school, I’d hear “Boom, boom” or “Flop, flop.”  I’d rather no one see me try to exercise.

The first time I got serious about joining a gym, a women’s gym, and giving it everything I had, I was 21.  I ate hardly anything: a half sandwich for lunch with an apple, a spoon of vegetables and a quarter serving of the main dish with a salad, no sweets just fruit except on Friday nights I allowed myself one diet fudge Popsicle.  Even I was surprised at my will power.  It took three months, exercising three days a week including sitting in the sauna afterwards.  But some weight came off.  I was so proud of myself.  I was a size smaller, weight lost mostly in the chest, heh heh.  I weighed 120 pounds.  When I told everyone I’d lost 13 pounds, they looked at me like they couldn’t see a difference, like I still had a long way to go.  No congratulations for my effort either.  I felt good and healthy and the right size but continued to try to break 120, exercising more, eating less.  Then job loss, no more health club exercising, and succumbing to all the temptations of chips and sweets.  I gained what I lost and then some.

Back then the physician charts allowed a short woman to weigh no more than 100 pounds, maybe as much as 107. I weighed 102 in 4th grade. Through the decades, I noticed in the exam rooms the weight charts have changed and now permit a higher range, even allowing for body sizes based on a specific measurement between the two bones of the elbow.  I am right between small and average.  Sometimes I weighed within the guidelines, sometimes not, OK mostly not.

What I didn’t know through all those decades of adult dieting and gymning with alternate nights to Jane Fonda videos was as we grow older, say 40 and 50, the weight is really hard to lose—I’d say impossible.  My doctor says extremely hard.  So now I find myself in a losing battle.  We’re supposed to eat a third less than we did in our 20s and 30s.  Oh now they tell us.  I never heard that before in my life.  And we’re supposed to exercise even more, like every single day for an hour.  Where do we find the time?  So a couple of years ago in yet another attempt at physical fitness, I turned to exercising in the morning, first thing, arising at 4 a.m.  Did I lose weight?  No.  But I didn’t gain any either.  And I felt better, like I had accomplished something.  Losing weight—and God knows I need to—is not the goal as much as keeping active and maintaining muscle.  The Silver Sneaker Club could be in my future except they exercise at 10 a.m. on weekdays when I’m working.

The day of the expanding man

Bill Maher blames America’s fat epidemic on junk food.  We who are fat eat too much of it when we shouldn’t eat any.  So we can be hard on ourselves about what we eat, how much, and why we’re eating it.  Maher proposed bringing back fat shaming, theorizing that’s how he got a grip on alcoholism or drinking too much.  Yeah well.  Overeating is not alcoholism or drug addiction in only one way: We’re not out of our minds and blacking out while overindulging in ice cream or chips or candy or pizza.  Or … are we?  Oh my God, overeating is exactly the same as being an alcoholic or drug addict!  We’re food junkies!!  We got an addiction we just can’t lick, a monkey on the back, a crutch we try to hide.  Damnit, the world knows our addiction with just one look: We’re fat.  We can’t hide our secret through mint breath and cologne, long sleeves and black clothes.

Maybe … being fat is some kind of gift from God.  Everyone knows our problem, our big fat problem with food and stuff.  Most adults know what it’s like to be overweight and to diet.  Half of Americans manage to stay at a healthy weight, so why not we who are heavy?  Maybe Maher is right about being fat shamed.  But all those years ago in childhood, being called fat, fatty or fats didn’t stop me one bit from eating too much of the wrong things.  I consumed even more candy, chips and soft drinks—tastes so good.  I just wanted to be left alone and didn’t want anybody scolding me about what to eat and not eat or say how pretty I’d be if I’d just lose weight.  Today when I look at pictures of myself back then, I don’t see a fat girl at all.  I see a kid who was perfectly healthy, even well adjusted considering.  That’s because I’m used to seeing kids today, many of whom are morbidly obese, and seeing the same as adults and even actors doing well in this day and age.  Americans are just ‘letting themselves go,’ to paraphrase my mother when she talked about people who gained too much weight and didn’t care anymore.

The way Americans are going to get a grip on our deadly obesity epidemic is going to take every single one of us helping each other.  First, our restaurants can serve half orders of everything.  Short people like me don’t need a full size of anything.  Our junk food industry—and it is a multi-multi-billion-dollar business—could change the way they overly mass produce.  I never bought their ‘it’s about choice’ theory so they keep stocking fresh snack cakes and cookies 24/7 in grocery and convenience stores nationwide.  Sure we who are fat need to practice self control and less overindulgence when it comes to the food we eat.  But shouldn’t something we all know is junk food be illegal?  Like cigarettes, junk food will decline, and Americans will be healthier.

Our freedoms come with consequences.  We’ve learned it with free speech when hate speech is allowed, religion with every weird group allowed to worship as they choose, and now all the foodstuffs we’re allowed to eat.  Narcotics are illegal or regulated, but alcohol is legal.  We all know people who consume either or both and do or don’t have a problem.  Some are addicts, but most are not.  Being free to eat whatever we want when we want is killing us as obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.  All of us who are fat need help from others and not just ourselves.  A revealing book I read was Eat This, Not That, where I learned a big salad meal at a restaurant has 1,200 calories while a sandwich has half or less.  All the things I have been eating to try not to gain weight turn out to be the most fattening: salads, flatbread, wraps.  How can this be?!  It makes no sense, but one reason some of us are fat is we know nothing about food—the thing we love most in the world.

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What’s black and white and red all over?

What were they thinking—our white American ancestors who bought and traded African slaves starting 400 years ago?  That has always been the silent question throughout the 20th century, louder with each passing decade, crossing into the 21st century to the historically significant anniversary year of 2019.  And the same ‘what were they thinking?’ question will surely be asked by future Americans 200 years from now about our indulgences, attitudes, prejudices, tolerance, action and apathy—perhaps on the subject of caring for our planet and all living creatures.  Future Americans will not understand our proud dusty cowboy mentality of yesteryear when good men took care of their own, even to the detriment of all others.

The reason our white American ancestors got involved in the slave trade is because Western European man believed his culture, religion, art, music, food, dance, architecture, agriculture, fashions, customs and traditions were the highest achievements ever produced in the world, the epitome of sophistication, most certainly ordained by God Himself.  Those who ventured from Europe to explore other nations returned convinced the Western way of life was the best.  No other culture in the world ever produced the refined music of Bach or Mozart, the perfect art of Rembrandt, the magnificent sculpture of Michelangelo, or the genius of da Vinci.  Most of all, the Bible itself through the words of Jesus Christ charged Christians to go out into the world and save the human masses, baptizing each one into Christianity, saving their souls from eternal damnation.       

Self assured God was on their side, our white ancestors seized land across the Atlantic, far away from where they belonged way up north, land they knew in their own terms ‘belonged’ to other people, another race.  Through purchase, trade and deals and eventually broken promises, lies and battles to the bloody death, this is the story of America.  There is no denying our brutal and unjust history.  While these cultural battles were ongoing, early Americans brought over thousands of Africans, crushing their primitive culture like they did the natives of this land renamed America.

The descendants of Western Europe who peopled American colonies were thinking this: people with dark skin were sub human and were created to perform labor like building roads, neo Roman buildings and ornate plantation homes; growing crops; butchering; cooking; cleaning; sewing; wet nursing—you name it.  The Bible clearly states some are slaves and some are masters.  This was the rationale of 18th century white Americans especially if they had money.

The races lived close together, however, interacting daily for decades, lifelong, each knowing their place.  Surely they saw humanity in each other regardless of skin color.  They both bled red blood, would bruise if hit or slapped.  They had the same human needs of food, water, shelter, clothing, companionship, sex.  They both reproduced.

Whites were dominant, blacks submissive.  There are documented cases of slave owners at the time of their death setting their slaves free and of slaves going to court to legally challenge their enslavement and insist upon their freedom.  Sometimes slaves were granted freedom by a judge.  It didn’t take long for northern American cities to consider slavery an abomination.  The South took to the issue with great complexity.  The United States was divided by progressive and antiquated cultures.  The only solution became the Civil War, when all our war dead were Americans.  Even President Lincoln considered sending African Americans back to Africa, anything to save the Union.  But African Americans were not Africans, more white culturally and in every other way than tribal Africans.  The ways of their ancestors were lost and forgotten as their new way of life was accepted even if enslaved.

African American slaves were clever.  See, they always knew they really weren’t slaves.  No one is.  They were free like God made all humans.  There were the Underground Railroad, abolitionists, clever field hollers and work songs like “Follow the Drinking Gourd” and “Get on Board” that were code on how to escape, and patchwork quilts carefully crafted with scenes and symbols showing the way to freedom.  They also were a people who kept their family history in great detail, teaching it orally to their children.  They adopted the Bible and Christianity, attending their separate churches, and through the Gospel foresaw change culminating in their freedom not in the afterlife but here on earth.

Slavery in America was long ago, another time and another era that we just don’t and can’t understand.  But the civil rights movement was not long ago.  In many ways after the Civil War, blacks were treated worse than they were as slaves.  Many families had to leave the South, only to be met with prejudices and bigotry by northern whites, too.  World wars and military action in Korea and Vietnam had a lot to do with ushering in civil rights as the military began to integrate white and black troops.  It’s been a long struggle for African Americans toward personal and collective freedom and then acknowledged human rights by American society still dominated by the culture of white privilege.

More than likely America is now in the age of the last white hope as one more man plays president for awhile, mostly to overturn laws and policies enacted by his predecessor who was the first African-American president.  In coming to terms with American history, the painful truth is the intentional and pervasive cruelty of white people toward other people, all the other people on the planet.  The excuse is the absolute certitude of Western man who once roamed the earth and sea and believed all to be in his domain—like God surveying His creation.  So why Americans of certain European heritage would enslave Africans a few centuries ago is perfectly clear today to us, their descendents. They believed they were gods.

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This is what we know:

American society has become more violent, and more tolerant of violence, after every war starting with the Civil War;

Mass shootings in America have become a daily occurrence;

Most mass shooters have been young white men or teen-agers, very few of other races or mentally ill;

The majority of people with mental illness are not violent;

Every year in America, 40,000 people are killed by firearms: 60 percent are suicides, the rest are accidents, murder, crime and police shootings;

America had few mass shootings after the federal assault weapons ban in 1994 until Congress lifted the ban in 2004;

America has as many guns as people;

A third of Americans own all the guns;

Most Americans don’t want a gun;

By now most Americans agree some kind of gun control is warranted;

The National Rifle Association is in financial ruin and faces lawsuits by parents whose children were killed in mass shootings created by high-power assault rifles;

Since Columbine, high school shootings have become commonplace in America;

Studies of mass shooters report they were not thinking of their next step after the shooting or even the day after: They acted on impulse though their mission was somewhat planned; they have low self esteem, are extremely angry, and are determined to go out in a blaze of glory; surviving shooters expected police to kill them in action; they knew they were doing wrong;

The adolescent brain produces a phase of audacity, a time of senseless death-defying deeds without fully realizing consequence; the brain’s frontal lobe, that controls impulse and memory, is not fully developed until the mid 20s and for some the mid 30s;

America’s number one criminal gang is the Aryan Brotherhood and other white supremacists groups whose numbers have grown worldwide due to internet camaraderie;

Parents, family and friends of young men who commit mass murder by a high-power assault rifle knew something was wrong long before the killing spree.  They knew he was angry through shooting off his mouth.  They knew he liked guns and knew how to shoot them.  They knew he was more often alone than with buddies or girlfriends.  They knew he wasn’t particularly religious or spiritually inclined.  They knew he hated large groups of people: gays, blacks, Jews, Muslims, Mexicans—and women but kept that mostly to himself.  They knew the unthinkable could happen … but didn’t take the thought seriously.  And when these mass shootings occur by the same type of young male, they have nothing to say to the American people.

That is the reason this keeps happening.

By now lots of studies have been done on the shooters who’ve lived to tell about their mass carnage.  They are not mentally ill psychopaths, though maybe sociopaths or antisocial.  They also did not expect to live after their shooting rampage.  Some first killed their parents and family before heading off to a public place with the intention to shoot as many people as possible.  Mass shooters have not been necessarily influenced by playing violent video games or watching violent movies.  Seems the only things they had in common were being white, male, young with access to high-powered firearms—and no empathy.

How do we teach empathy nowadays?  How could one or two generations grow up without knowing to be human is to live and let live?  Are young people confused by perpetual wars?  Perhaps.  Is our government to blame or our elected officials, our nation’s politicians of suits, wealth and bluster?  Definitely.  What about our hypocritical society and mass media that makes money off of violent art imitating violence in life?  Yes, they are partly to blame for desensitizing all of us and young minds in particular.  But from where does the absolute certainty come among some young males that nothing matters, life is meaningless, the future is hopeless, death is preferable, mass murder is the only answer because everyone else is to blame for their angst and misery that in reality is only in their minds?

Where does family fit into all of this?  Kids are raised with years of influence, their worldviews cemented by age 3.  Are parents unaware of their growing boys, the daily changes, the emotional needs they pass off as babyish during adolescence when they start to recoil from a father’s embrace or a mother’s caress?

This is the heart of the matter, indeed the reason for mass shootings by young white males.  We never hear from the parents of males who took to firearms to create a few seconds of hell on earth, witnessing humans scream, run, fall, bleed, struggle and die.  In a decade or so, these boys-turned-men will tell us in rational articulate terms what motivated their carnage.  They may weep while sharing their individual back stories: home lives without unconditional love, teachers too impatient, boredom with the confines and routine of school, family and friends too busy to sense and uncover their perpetual sorrow seemingly hidden during the difficulties of adolescence.  They’ll blame their families for not stopping them; elusive and uncaring parents who worked too many hours and did not indulge them as children and teens to ensure they were kept on the right track intellectually, emotionally and spiritually through church, school, sports and activities spent together; for leaving them alone and letting them develop and explore dark thoughts and deeds; for not loving them enough.

The future men, former young mass shooters, will be right.  They are in a way not responsible for their actions.  Have adults forgotten how impressionable teen-agers are, how everything in their minds is seen as black or white, wrong or right, good or bad, and no amount of arguing can change them?

They will be right about their family’s influence or lack thereof: the laughter at racist jokes; the casual use of the n word or c word, b word or w word without serious scolding by other adults; downplaying the importance of education while blaming teachers for low grades; the allure of violence in our society with no discussion about art, fiction and entertainment; the seething anger over the cost of living, unemployment and perpetual struggle to make ends meet; and then blaming women and every other minority for the inability to find a way to co-exist and make peace with changing times—culminating in an ignorant, enraged and joyless existence.  It takes a family to create a miserable little snot.

For further reading:

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/16/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/

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Insurance: Love it or hate it, we all gotta have it

All the Democrat contenders for the 2020 U.S. presidency are making a big deal about insurance: one side demanding universal coverage for every American and even people living here illegally, the other side still critical of Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act. Well I’ve been involved in this debate for a few decades now and have concluded that our federal government and most states are not about to allow every and any body to be covered by public healthcare.  It’s not like we’re talking guns here.  Nope, this is a totally different, yet somehow related, debate.  The America I know has always said “No way, Jose” when it comes to universal healthcare.

The Dems are barking up the wrong tree on the already dead, no pun intended, issue of expanding Medicare/Medicaid coverage so all Americans can opt in if they want or need.  Americans have a long proud history of pulling up their bootstraps and making their own way, providing for their own and no one else—except for some charitable contributions, tithes and offerings, and big-hearted giving come Christmas time. That’s the America I know.  But along life’s journey, I learned people who don’t look like me don’t have an American history of fending for themselves let alone taking care of their own.  Whether it is bad luck at finding a good job with benefits or … well, that’s pretty much been their misfortune all along.  There are tens of millions of Americans who have never had and never will have luck at landing a good job with paid healthcare, white or darker but let’s face it mostly people with brown and black skin.  A good education and Affirmative Action evened the odds for millions but not all, white and people of color.  And it’s bothered me my entire adult life: Why is America the only modern nation that does not consider healthcare a right and not a privilege, unlike our thinking about a driver’s license, which somehow is related?

Blessed insurance

I voted for Bill Clinton for one reason: universal healthcare.  He was gonna make it happen.  He was so naïve, and so was I.  Shortly after taking office, he assigned his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to study and propose a universal healthcare system for America.  She held round table discussions with doctors, hospital administrators, insurance and pharmaceutical reps, and also American consumers.  The bottom line: none of the money makers (healthcare, insurance and pharms) would take a financial reduction so that affordable healthcare could work for everyone.  Being American means we support anyone for making as much money as possible.  But it is interesting to know that healthcare providers around the world, including Canada, do not earn anywhere near their colleagues in the USA.  So the Clintons dropped the subject.  They had other fish to fry, but they gave universal healthcare a good solid try.  Besides, the Republicans always were fond of saying America has the best healthcare money can buy.

That makes no sense.

Universal healthcare was placed on the back burner for awhile until Congress took it up once more. The Democrats came up with a plan to cover all Americans. The Republicans came up with a counter proposal with strict mandates like no coverage for pre-existing conditions and other restrictions seemingly at the time rather mean spirited if not spiteful. But then as President, Barack Obama simply took the Republican plan to debate and maybe pass in Congress. It was a brilliant political strategy. The Republicans had already proclaimed they would never work or pass any legislation proposed by President Obama, even their own counter universal healthcare proposal. President Obama took the issue up to the U.S. Supreme Court which passed on the question of mandatory insurance whereby every American of a certain age and income would have to be insured. It was the only way the Republican healthcare counter could work. And Obamacare became the law of the land.

I still do not know anyone who has ‘Obamacare,’ but it is tens of millions of Americans. A few friends who work for small businesses, however, told me the cost was even higher than their regular insurance. Many Americans disagreed with the mandate to get health insurance or be fined, and that issue alone had a lot to do with Donald J. Trump winning the White House. President Trump did get that part overturned, so we’re back to Americans not having to have health insurance if they don’t want or can’t afford it.

Not very reassuring

Each American has a story about insurance coverage or lack thereof.  When I was in my 20s, my first job provided solid insurance.  It took a lot out of my paycheck, but another one of our American sayings about health insurance is you need it ‘just in case,’ meaning the big auto crash or cancer.  So I paid.  I made $6 an hour, and health insurance took a hunk of my paycheck.  Did I mention I hardly ever used it or didn’t need to at the time, thank God?

Then something new in healthcare crept into my large 900-employee workplace: HMO.  The deal was take it or stay with the triple-increased regular insurance.  I took the HMO because I was young and needed insurance ‘just in case.’  I also chose the HMO because it was very affordable: $5 co-pays in those days, $5 prescriptions, too, and no deductibles.  But operating like Wal-mart, the HMO soon became the only option as co-pays and prescriptions increased: $7, $10, $15, $20.  I remember the 30-somethings with kids did not like the plan at all: having to choose doctors from a list instead of keeping their usual family physicians, no coverage for pre-existing conditions, cheaper quality like equipment for insulin and generic prescriptions.  But I likened the HMO to college when we saw whoever’s at the quack shack.  They’re medical professionals after all.  The HMO worked for me, single career gal.  Yet each year, the rates increased and the plan became more restrictive in coverage.  Everyone was suspicious.

Then our employer went belly up, and none of us had any insurance to complain about anymore.  In between jobs, my parents were kind to help pay for prescriptions.  This is a very American face of life.  My next job paid $900 a month, of which $200 went for insurance.  Some months later, I finally got a professional job but at a small company in a small town.  The annual deductible for health insurance was, wait for it: $2,500.  It was 1992, and Bill Clinton soon was elected President.  When I told my father my deductible was $2,500, he said, “You’re lying.”  See, he always worked in the big city and for major corporations.  His insurance, though always increasing in rates, was quite manageable.  Small towns and small businesses are screwed when it comes to health insurance premiums.

Nevertheless, I continued paying for insurance that I hardly used, thank God, and of course never reaching that deductible.  I was indeed paying for others, not unlike universal healthcare.  A few years later, I worked for a slightly larger company but in a corporation so insurance was a bit better.  My deductible was $1,500.  I’d never reach that figure each year either.  I guess in America we should be openly thanking God for the blessing of never having to use our insurance.  Has it come to that?

Eventually I returned to the big city with a big employer.  I was a public school teacher, and the insurance was sweet.  I opted for paying a bit more per paycheck for a $500 deductible.  I could even use it for chiropractic care.  I easily paid the deductible in the first few months each year after enrollment.  It was a great ride for a few years until the option was gone.  I’d pay not only more per paycheck, but the deductible would increase annually: $750; $1,000; $1,200; $1,500; $1,750.  Then the school district switched to another major insurance company, and I lost all my doctors, some I’d seen for years.  I thought of the 30-somethings I had worked with in 1990.  Suddenly I felt their loss.  It was a loss of control.  I had bonded with doctors who knew me and my health.  So I had to set my mind back to ‘college’ mode when I saw whatever doctor.

This is my personal insurance story so far as an American. I can add that in recent years I was without insurance, and thank God nothing too serious happened.  Besides, I could always pay by credit card.  Has being American come to this: healthcare on credit?  Yes, it has for 99 percent of us.  Some of my teacher colleagues, whose employee insurance was paid by the school district, could not afford the family option to cover their children, a monthly cost in the low thousands of dollars.  They had to choose between a roof over their heads or health insurance for their kids.  Has living and working in America come to this?  Yes, it has, and it’s been this a-way for decades.     

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A social media platform where millions can say whatever they want! What could go wrong?

It’s more like: Let everyone in America copy anything off the internet and post it on their Facebook page.  What could go wrong?  How about everything?  Facebook coupled with the still Wild West internet to the consummation of the ‘free to say whatever pops into our minds good or bad’ era.  Because everyone says online whatever they want, as a nation and a people we are more divided, angry, anxious, suspicious, distrusting, extreme, and more gullible to any and all conspiracies floating around in cyberspace.

Facebook’s all-out effort to censor hate speech from the vast recesses of its social media pages is lost on me.  They are not doing a good job, if they are doing anything at all other than having meetings about all the derogatory phrases and verbal intentions out there, weighing equally criticisms against men and women and cultural slights.

Every day I spot more than one racist, sexist, bigoted, angry comment against: Latin Americans seeking asylum and their children, blacks with or without deep American ancestral roots, Muslims, ‘libtards,’ and more recently elected congresswomen of any race or non Christian faith.  Now, granted eight years of nonstop racial slurs were abundantly posted on Facebook throughout President Barack Obama’s terms in office.  But I thought it would decrease exponentially with the election of yet another rich white man to the U.S. presidency.  Nope.  It’s as if Americans who relish free speech as hate speech were just warming up on social media prior to 2016.

Facebook, recently fined billions of dollars for lax efforts to protect users’ privacy—interestingly, tied to the 2016 election—can’t possibly censor its website.  It is a massive politically charged machine, reaching billions of people the world over—practically every human being on the planet living right now.  And Americans have the right to free speech and thought, so there.

Something about allowing people to freely and openly speak hate against everyone on the planet who is not white and Christian and recognizes the white male of the human species as God on earth is … frightening.

Paved with good intentions

Facebook was such a beautiful concept … so very long ago.  It’s as if it’s been part of America for decades, yet it’s still a relatively new phenomenon in the span of modern times.  Through Facebook and the internet, America has changed because Americans have changed.  Facebook’s downfall was allowing users to post anything off the internet—any insulting image, rough language, comedic political or culturally bigoted statement, and outlandish unfounded claim.  In playing loose with American constitutional rights of free speech and press, a Beast has been created not unlike Frankenstein’s monster.  A giant dead body was jolted to life by electricity, and our society now lives in its shadow, proceeding with dismay and caution.

Tech experts recommend breaking up Facebook like the ‘Baby Bells,’ following the 1982 court mandate against the phone company’s monopoly.  Facebook is gargantuan because of its billions of users who rely on it for social contacts and business.  On the other hand, more people tore their lives off Facebook after federal investigations concluded the Russian government meddled in our U.S. elections specifically through the internet, social media and Facebook prominently. We put our lives on Facebook and for some also our opinions.  We sparred politely and crudely for years.  And now we know, thanks to Facebook, we can agree that no one can say or write or post a thing to change another’s worldview.  The issues are so controversial and our opinions so deeply ingrained we can feel them.

Thanks Facebook.  Thanks internet.  Thanks U.S. Constitution.  How we gonna live with all this freedom?

Facebook, the genie, cannot squeeze itself back into the bottle, to the days of unexpressed views perceived by the ruling society as nasty, mean and evil and by just as many as logical, the truth and just plain right under God’s heaven.

Any future change on Facebook is up to us.  If Americans have learned anything from Facebook, it’s the fact that uncensored thoughts and feelings against massive groups of humanity—races, sexes, religions, creeds, colors and sexuality—spread like wildfire.  And they destroy like fire, too, and cannot be easily contained.  Prejudices that once were thought best kept to oneself, which were left pent up only because of social standards and a subtle code of ethics and common decency, have boiled and seethed for decades.  They’ve always been part of America, the nation that guarantees its people at birth and when naturalized total freedom especially to think whatever we want.

Facebook is a mirror, a reflection of each and every one of us on it and reading it, revealing to millions of others what collectively Americans think and how we act, what we really are inside.  Even if the social media giant disbands or ends its business reign, nothing will change … not for the millions who remain the objects of bigotry, ridicule, racism and sexism from the human venom contained in a single hateful thought, spoken and heard, written and read by many like-minded, allowed to infect another and another.  The seeds of hate have always been abundant, blowing in the wind until landing on soil and taking firm root all over God’s green earth.