Author: cheriebell69@hotmail.com

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African folktale accepts the nature of a politician

A Kwanzaa folktale explains our present political attitude.  The tale based in African folklore is about a very charismatic man who has a way about him.  When he is around, everyone seems to forget their troubles.  He gives off a pleasing vibe.  He is the local politician.  He speaks in such a caring and loving manner.  His eyes are warm, his smile sincere.  He is indeed sincere.  His heart is in the right place, and everyone knows it.  He means well and often does good for everyone.

But like every man, every human, he is flawed.  He does things sometimes that make everyone so mad, they swear they’ll never believe a word he says again or vote for him.  And when he realizes he’s been found out, caught with his hand in the cookie jar so to speak, he cries real tears and feels so ashamed of himself.  He can’t blame anyone for never trusting him again.  He sniffs and walks away with head hung low.  He knows he’s done wrong and nobody wants him around anymore.  He banishes himself.

Months later he returns to the people, and if you can believe it, they’ve forgotten all about why they were mad at him in the first place.  Collectively they feel they were a little too hard on him because seeing him after all this time makes them feel … so very happy.  And because they’ve forgotten the rotten thing and things he’s done—in the past—they’ve forgiven him, too.  The politician smiles beautifully, laughs with the children, politely touches the hands of ladies, hugs the men and talks to everyone with love and care.  He does love everybody.  He just does wrong sometimes.  And that is the moral of the story: Politicians lie and do wrong sometimes.  But if they are good politicians, they also make life better, as their focus in life is the greater good.  That’s the way it is with politicians.  People must accept this character trait and flaw about them.  Don’t put so much faith in anyone especially a politician!  Understand their nature.

The old tale from Africa has much to tell us about American politics and why most Americans do not give a flying rat’s behind if President Donald Trump lies and hides past shady financial dealings.  And the majority of Americans do not care to impeach him, no matter what the Muller report revealed and concluded.  When it comes to President Trump, most Americans just don’t care enough to kick him out of office.  They are perfectly content to wait a couple more years to vote him out if they are so inclined at that particular point in time.  We’ve grown accustomed to waiting out all sorts of corrupt politicians for decades.  This cynicism is why most Americans don’t vote at all.

Mom, apple pie, baseball & apathy

Many modern-day voters remember the long, although titillating, President Bill Clinton impeachment hearings, and a declining number of us still can recall even further back in American history to Watergate and the subsequent resignation of President Richard Nixon.  Both acts of Congress took a couple of years—time we’ll never get back in our American lives.  And during these episodes, government was at a standstill. Nothing else was getting done, like fixing centuries-old infrastructure or coming up with innovative ways to best care for our environment and the lives of future Americans.  Priorities got smeared in political excrement.

Given all our nation’s been through with one presidential scandal after another, most Americans simply have lost their moral outrage over anything the current President has done, continues to do, and most certainly will do.  No skin off the nose, long as folks got jobs and live the good ol’ middle-class life.  Folks don’t really wanna be rich no how.  They don’t wanna be poor neither.

This latest game of Congressional chicken is up to the Democrats now.  They can proceed with yet another drawn-out, heated, politically ruinous impeachment process, a yawn-a-thon captured on live TV every day for a couple of years.  Or we can take a lesson from the ancient and wise African folktale about the true nature of a politician.  We need to ask ourselves exactly what is it we expect or want from this type of person.  Perfection?  Why, haven’t we learned by now nobody’s perfect?  That’s even the Republicans’ motto for President Trump: An imperfect man but perfect for the job.  See?  See how half the country thinks? Do we expect our politicians to lead a moral life?  Don’t make me laugh.  There’s no such thing once a person becomes elected.

Politicians are larger-than-life beings not unlike the ancient Greek and Roman gods or 20th century movie stars.  They are their own grand creation and illusion.  We the little people best wise up and accept the dark side of human nature that is celebrated and given a pass for politicians.  It’s how the powerful arise and lead and through misdeeds, misdemeanors and felonies, somehow get things done that improve life for some or many.  It’s called democracy, and it’s a mess.  What’s the alternative?

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Ancestry.com must continue TV ads about the lives & times of real American families

The dramatic scene is undoubtedly from American history circa 1850.  A young white gentleman, dressed in suit and high collar tied by a large scarf, tells a beautiful young African-American woman, wearing a cotton plantation dress, of his plan for them to run away together.  He begs her to go with him north where they can live together happily in peace and freedom.  The young woman looks kindly and deeply into his eyes yet says nothing.  She is moved by his compassion, his care for her, his love.  Their future is unknown, but the man is anxious to leave immediately, for it’s now or never.  This is their only opportunity.  Does the young couple leave or stay?  Will they be victorious or doomed?  Viewers are not let in on the tale’s ending but are encouraged to seek Ancestry.com to uncover similar hidden family stories, couplings that culminate through the decades and centuries to the people living today.

The seconds-long TV ad depicted a beautiful moment of truth between an American man and woman, a golden opportunity for them to escape a harsh reality in history when two people of different social ranks—and races—ought not be together during their lifetime.  Watching the brief scene, I didn’t see anything upsetting or racist or evil.  I saw a certain historic truth in the history of some American families.  I was captivated by the bravery and compassion and presumed romantic love of a young man.

But this television commercial raised the ire of so many politically-correct Americans that it was pulled from the airwaves, never to be seen again.  Why?  According to Ancestry.com, the ad upset and angered too many Americans.  Detractors had a lot of questions about the couple.  They wanted to know if the woman were the man’s slave, if he were taking her not of her free will but for sinister motives, and then there’s the undertone of a romantic coupling of two races way back when.

Come on, Americans!  This is the 21st century.  We just lived to see a U.S. president who was racially black and white.  Nowadays it is common to watch commercials featuring couples of various ethnicities, races and sexualities.  Modern America is not shocking.  But the past, even a couple centuries ago, still stings.  When digging into American family roots, we cannot judge our ancestors.  We ought to expect interesting and intriguing revelations that open our minds to the good, the bad and the ugly—for our entwined past is indeed a Western.

What was then was then

Investigating our deeply twisted American roots is bound to present mind-blowing truths and painful revelations.  But it’s not like 20th century Americans haven’t watched soap operas or are naive to a Southern Gothic tale where the unspeakable comes to light.  In fact, our collective TV and movie watching over the past century is probably the number one reason our society became more tolerant, present-day political polarization aside.  We think nothing of watching a show about two gay guys, a talk show hosted by a lesbian or a black woman, or a kiss between two people of different races.  In the early days of TV, all of those shows would have been banned in the South and some nationwide by a host of network sponsors, the good folks who brought us gelatin dessert, cigarettes and dish washing powder.

Americans can deal with fiction, like watching the epic Gone with the Wind or the North and South TV miniseries.  But viewing a clip of real history from one’s family in 19th century America—the way we all know it was—and the reality of a mixed marriage or the slave era smacks too close to home and heart.  That’s because given the point in time of human history, the era was not that long ago.  To this day wounds remain buried in the American soul.  The pain for some is felt in the mind, emotions and the genes.  In his PBS series Finding Your Roots, historian and ancestral researcher Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. pointed out that practically all descendants of African-American slaves have European DNA.  How could it be?  The truth should set us free.  Yet the reality of history has the power to hurt and anger descendants far removed in time but able to feel the anguish or shame of their ancestors.

Let Ancestry.com air the poignant nonfiction account of a scene in American history some two hundred years ago.  Let the database company preserving historical records create a series of ads spotlighting our American past, featuring the many prejudices and injustices found in substantiated accounts: a young woman hung for witchcraft, an African-American child taken away from her family, a Native American forced to walk the Trail of Tears, a filthy child working in a factory, a poor immigrant confused by the rude cacophony of a city street, a man refusing to tell the government his political affiliation or beliefs, a young man arrested on Gay Street …  You will discover—beneath some of America’s ugliest moments; the misjudgments of our ancestors; the racial, ethnic and sexual suppression; the outright sins of our fathers—lives intersecting in times of turmoil, and that despite their pain and their sorrow, their only hope was a better place and time for Americans living in the future. 

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What is it about Trump that reminds us of Reagan?

I remember Ronald Reagan’s presidency.  I remember turning 18 in time to vote in my first presidential election and not expecting him to win.  That’s because I loved President Jimmy Carter, thought he could do no wrong.  It was then I realized I was politically and socially unaware—shucks, young and naïve.  So I grew up, graduated high school, headed off to college where for the next eight years I watched the news every morning and night.

I could not believe how Americans adored President Reagan.  His shoe-black hair should have been the first sign something was amiss.  At the time, Reagan was the oldest man to be elected U.S. president.  He grew older with each passing year, yet always appearing rugged, robust, affable, dapper, distinguished with never a gray hair.

So when Donald Trump became the oldest person to be elected U.S. President (age wise Hillary Clinton would have shared the same distinction), I knew I had to watch him like a hawk—because I loved President Barack Obama like I loved Carter.  They were and still are endearing to the hearts of, I’d say, half the nation … let’s face it, most of the world.  Besides, we Democrats understand each other.  I never pondered their motives and actions.  They spoke with eloquence, humor, precision and most of all maintained a calm cool leadership sorely missed in this day and time.  They also spoke to the American people only when necessary.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign

According to healthline.com, dementia affects “memory, thinking, language, judgment and behavior.”  A person only has to have two of these brain impairments to be diagnosed.  The online health resource goes on to state “Dementia is not a disease,” can be caused by assorted issues including illness and injury, and can be treatable and even reversed.

Dementia signs include:

Inability to cope with change

Short-term memory loss

Struggling to find the right word in conversation

Repeating tasks and stories

Confused sense of direction

Incapable of following a storyline on TV or when listening to others

Moodiness

Apathy and losing interest in lifelong hobbies and activities

Confusing people and places

Inability to complete daily routines.

As dementia progresses, other signs include personality changes, forgetfulness, inability to solve problems or express ideas and emotions.  The condition escalates into poor judgment, frustration and memory loss of one’s past.  In final decline, the person is unable to maintain body functions and to communicate.

The more we know

Now that we know dementia actually can begin at age 65, and not 80 even though half of people that age and older have dementia, I think it’s time Americans put an age limit on who can run for U.S. President.  Sorry.  I know.  The older I get, the more I think hey, I’m still vital and have a lot of living to do.  But … we all know there is something about the U.S. Presidency that ages the men elected.  Compare head shots when first elected to when leaving Office: Carter, Bush I, Bush II, Clinton, everyone except Reagan, the Hollywood actor who perhaps knew some trade secrets to look younger or not old.

But seriously, the modern nuclear-weapons’ U.S. President IS the Leader of the World.  Sorry Putin, but it’s the truth. Sorry Uncle Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.  I think the new rule should be no one can run as U.S. President unless between the ages of 35 and 65.  I will compromise with allowing the senior citizens among us to run for the Office at age 65 but not 66.  We just cannot take the chance, knowing what we are just beginning to learn about neuroscience.

The latest brain science suggests we ought to keep ours active by reading, learning a new language, playing board games and cards, working puzzles, developing new hobbies, exercise and physical activity.  Dick Van Dyke was asked to write a book about the secret to his longevity.  He said it would be a short book with two words: Keep moving.

Does any of this sound like President Trump?  Don’t all the other signs of dementia fit him like a glove?  Like they fit Reagan when we had to just grin and bear it?  Shortly after President Reagan left office for the last time, we were finally informed of his fateful diagnosis: Alzheimer’s disease, the long goodbye.  By the time he was in his last years of a very long, incredible, monumental life, he had no idea he once was U.S. President.

I remember the Reagan presidency, everything he did and did not do, his repeated Hollywood stories and corny jokes, always asking Congress to win just one more for the Gipper, his blind eye to the AIDS epidemic, diminished speech capacity and loss of verbal eloquence, his protective wife sitting beside him in TV interviews and often finishing his sentences, the complete forgetfulness like when testifying in the Iran Contra trial.  In court he repeated many times “I just don’t remember” to questions that should have rung a bell in importance, once-in-a-lifetime episodes and final decisions he made, unique and deadly serious.  Reagan forgot all about it.  That’s because he did not remember.

Well—as he typically began a comment—we believed him, never knowing the stark reality.  His wife, family, advisors and friends knew.  But no one was going to tell the American people.

We now have a U.S. President who speaks off script at political rallies, saying the same things over and over and over again.  He makes fun of people crudely if not cruelly.  He cusses with wild abandon.  And he forgets his words and family history: oranges for origins, his father’s birthplace.

When an elderly person is showing signs of dementia along with the inability to live alone, families grapple with the decision to take over affairs and turn into the parent of their aged parent.  In doing so, the law provides a competency hearing with a judge.  The elderly is asked simple questions: what is the day of the week, what’s your age, who is president of the United States, what was the name of your spouse, where were you born?  It’s about two dozen set questions that someone with dementia cannot fake knowing or even prepare for.  The judge is interested in finding if the elderly is living in the past, which is common among senior citizens who may forget what they did yesterday but remember in great detail something that happened in the 1940s or ’50s when they were young.  The judge also wants to determine if the elderly person is living in a fantasy world, thinking he’s Napoleon, George Washington or a movie star.

There’s nothing funny about dementia and Alzheimer’s.  It’s frightening to the individual as well as the family.  The loss of mental faculty is harder to deal with than loss of body function, the ability to get out of bed and dress and take care of yourself.  In the beginning, it must be like a prison.  Then thinking evolves into distrust and paranoia, child-like abandon, inappropriate behavior resulting in public nudity and thoughtless speech.

None of us know our current President’s state of mind.  But the signs every day are evident and troubling.  Americans deserve a leader who is (and wants to be) healthy physically, mentally and emotionally.  We deserve a leader who wants to learn and do the job well.  An age limitation for U.S. President may never come to pass.  But given our nation’s precarious situation today in world affairs and the merging of new and astounding revelations about the once mysterious human brain, I could see a future generation who would change the constitutional age limit for president to restrict the elderly past a certain age. It’s just life and aging, not blatant discrimination. When it comes to the President of the U.S., Americans cannot take any chances, not anymore.

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Time to put to bed the 24-hour news cycle

Newsrooms are a great place to work for inquisitive and talkative types like me.  Whether large cities or small towns, a newsroom can be quiet with writers thinking and typing, or the newsroom can bustle with wide screen TV during major crises like a mass shooting or 9/11 or the final outcome of a trial such as the OJ verdict or Supreme Court ruling in Bush v Gore.  But mostly the spacious newsroom is without cubicles, and that is the way reporters like it so they/we can talk to each other.  And no subject was too offensive as we relished open and free conversation: gossip, social trends, politics, medical advancements, music, TV, movies, history, religion, philosophy, family life and yes sex (the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal provided a couple years of laughs and disdain).  We thrived in a work community allowing the sharing of thoughts and ideas.  What we were really doing subconsciously through discussion and banter was sorting out how we would write or frame our assigned articles whether or not related to the topic of discussion.  In the end, a news article turned out clean and objective despite the jokes or pathos.

By day’s end, if we didn’t have to cover a night meeting, event or interview, we’d go home to our personal lives.  That was how I made a living and spent the 1990s through the turn of the century.  I was such a news junkie that I faithfully watched and listened to TV news every morning and evening, read national and state publications, and watched weekly news programs like Frontline and the Sunday morning staples while never missing 60 Minutes.  I did this not only to know what’s going on in the world but to figure out if there was an angle I could investigate for a story at the local level.  Every once in a while there was.

Enter cable news, the internet, online talk radio, social media, and the advent of the 24-hour news cycle.  We each have our favorites (Fox News; CNN; MSNBC; Headline News; and the TV networks CBS, NBC, ABC and PBS).  Maybe some of us watch one in the morning and another at night.  But the non-journalist lay person may feel inundated with news, news, news spread out on cable TV.  Perhaps by now they’ve discovered it’s the same old news regurgitated every 30 minutes … unless some element changes, gripping our attention once more like an old vaudeville trick to keep you in your seat.

Now more than ever the public is well aware of the slow news day.  We newsies never wanted everyone to know about that situation: how sometimes we had to pull out a story, make a mountain out of a mole hill, when there wasn’t much story there.  We had deadlines and a copy quota.  Some newspapers instigated daily stories like two or four or six per reporter.  Gadzooks.  I never worked for a paper like that.

Unlike a community newspaper or local radio/TV broadcast, the internet has provided myriad options for news both local and world.  And who’s been winning the audience is the ‘citizen reporter’ and blogger.  Readers like interesting writing.  They like a bit of fiction weaved into their nonfiction.  Keeps the brain roasting, like a soap opera.  This may have something to do with Fox News winning the lion’s share of viewers when it comes to political coverage, far ahead of the other TV networks, cable shows and major papers.  Turns out, folks like the Fox premise of mixing news and views.

Journalism is supposed to be truth and nothing but.  No slanting the story, no exaggerating the facts, no putting words in the mouth of the quoted, and no political or social spin.  There are opinion writers and editorial staff who tend to that aspect of journalism’s mission and occasional duty to fully inform the public by exploring issues that can be controversial and of course political.

The blogger and citizen reporter are freestyle, even innovative.  Journalists were known to be objective and honest and in that regard maybe staid and stale, old and boring.  Maybe the public never believed reporters told the truth based on at least three reliable sources and balanced writing and quotes to ensure all sides were equally presented.  Reporters could joke and laugh about serious situations in the confines of the newsroom, but when we wrote for publication, it was clean of leaning one way or another politically, socially or culturally.  We understood the difference between news, feature, column and editorial.  Today not only is the line blurred, many news consumers want it that way.  The public wants to be entertained while being informed, the gist more than the research, facts embellished by humorous quips more than concern with accuracy.  Funny how the newsroom journalists with their sharp humor were overly cautious when writing and editing news articles, unless the subject matter required the writing to be ‘on.’  Those were fun stories but few and far between the usual serious news.

Wake up and smell the coffee

From morning TV news shows like Fox & Friends, Morning Joe and Headline News to mid-morning, late-morning, noon, early-afternoon, mid-afternoon, evening to mid- and late-evening follow ups, news shows with plenty of opinions are a cultural constant—a soundscape to our nation’s collective political knowledge and understanding.  Names of TV journalists are well known: Chris, Erin, Anderson, Wolf, Jake, Neil, Shepard, Bret, Martha, Ali, Dana, Shannon, Brian, Tucker, Jorge,  Lawrence, Rachel, Cuomo, The Five, Don, Hannity, Laura, etc. The 24-hour news cycle seems to have been created by news people who wanted star status.  More than anything else, they wanted their own show, like Oprah.  Televised journalists are camera-ready, relatively attractive, articulate and in the know, I’ll grant them that.  But the result of ‘everyone having their own show’ has left millions of viewers emotionally exhausted, real feelings over just hearing the news. To fill a 24/7 ideal, news is repeated, pounded, hounded to death … every day, week and month.

All this news from the mass media, especially the internet and social media like Twitter and Facebook, has created maybe a better informed society. Yet the price is high anxiety.  People for the most part have all they can do just to make ends meet, working to feed, clothe and shelter their families.  What started out as a presumed necessity in presenting live coverage of war has turned into a news nightmare filled with horrific mass shootings, human tragedies from the worst weather on record, and alarmist predictions on impending climate doom and off-the-rails politics.  Heaven help us!

The mass media is not going off the air or leaving cyberspace.  So it’s up to individuals to come to terms with sleeplessness and feeling overwhelmed, anxious and depressed by the constant sounds and images of ever-changing world events and real-time evolution of clashing cultures.  Here’s what to do: Turn off the news.  Watch something else. Get some sleep.  Raise some kids.  Go news-less for a few hours, for most of the day like our parents and grandparents did in the days when we had no choice.  As someone who thrives on news and venturing into the 24-hour cycle, I can take it pretty much.  But society can’t.

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Letter to the DNC: Say it, Gun Control. Now.

Dear Democratic National Committee:

As a registered Democrat, I recently received in the mail the DNC’s official 2019 Democratic Party Survey.  I was more than happy to take a couple of minutes to check off and rank what I think should be key political priorities from the DNC’s various lists.  I am referring to categories and concerns that included: taxing the wealthy; reducing taxes on the middle class; Russian aggression in world affairs; Trump’s recklessness; climate change; job creation; saving Social Security; saving public education; college affordability; affordable healthcare and prescriptions; women’s rights; immigration; terrorism; and restoring U.S. cooperation with and leadership and support of NATO and other nations with whom we once had been friendly and trusting allies.      

But I was surprised to discover the number one issue for me apparently is not a prominent concern with the DNC.  I am referring to gun control.  Among a plethora of subtopics, including a repeated chance to select a choice along the lines of ‘I don’t have any problem with the Republican Party objectives,’ gun control was listed only ONE time.  It was included in a list of the responder’s personal objectives.  So I marked it yet was only allowed that one time, this my number one concern in America today.

I cannot believe my lifelong political party—the bleeding-heart liberal, altruistic, pacifist, promoters of the 1st Amendment, proud card-carrying members of the American Civil Liberties Union—would play down our nation’s obvious crucial Number One problem: continuous mass shootings that terrorize the minds of every single school kid and many if not most others who live and work in this great nation.  Gun control must be one of the Top Three issues Democrats address for urgent solutions and reform.

Instead, the DNC topics left me with the impression the Democratic Party is shying away from gun control.  Perhaps the two words leave a bad taste in the mouth of politicians these days.  We have yet to speak near as loudly as the adamant, brazen and emphatic other party/ies who reiterate to constituents any gun control is against the 2nd Amendment.  Because the DNC listed gun control only once for selecting, I assume this issue is not going to be a priority for the 2020 presidential election.  Why not?  Why the hell not?

Pacifists and ostriches

Are Democratic leaders unwilling to once again take up the hot-button issue of gun control nationwide?  The DNC survey should make clear how serious gun control is among Americans who think liberally instead of conservatively, and I bet even those who think moderately.  Mass shootings are a daily tragedy in this country.  It’s as if we all are living in a war zone.  The reason is obvious: what used to be illegal, military-style assault rifles—the type that sprays bullets to kill large numbers of humanity in seconds flat.  And in my America, that is exactly what happens every day, a mass shooting somewhere, only the most extraordinary gaining national media attention.

For the record let me say to the younger generations, it used to not be this way, and as you already know it doesn’t have to stay this way or get worse.  Gun control has been a controversial issue as long as I can remember, going back to TV’s “Donahue” and “Lou Grant.”  In 1980 an editorial cartoon depicted a handgun and a packet of saccharine with two lines that read “One of these killed 34,000 people last year in America, the other a few rats in a laboratory.  Guess which one was banned?” There was a little headway in curbing handguns, our most pressing cause of shooting deaths and disabilities back then, by mandatory background checks and three-day waiting periods.  Opponents rightfully pointed out criminals get guns any way possible and avoid government interference.

Through the decades, the gun lobby was blamed for America’s proliferation of guns, which has culminated in the adage ‘Americans have more guns than people: three for every woman, man and child.’  But in reality the National Rifle Association’s Washington, D.C., lobby dollars are small potatoes compared with megabucks from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and big pharma.  But I wonder if the NRA’s financial downturn is in any way caused by constant mass shootings, each year tens of thousands killed and disfigured.  Among our many rights in America is the right to sue anyone any time for any reason.  That is worth remembering in resolving political controversies, and usually it is the reason anything gets resolved legislatively.

It’s not the gun lobby that has created a nation with a number of psycho mass shooters.  Blame could be placed on parenting and neglect; crowded public schools where bullies seem the heroes; our free society of uncensored media including over-the-top grotesque horror and violent movies and computer games that by now a couple of generations have played to superiority.  When the objective of most computer games is to shoot and kill as many people-like animated characters as possible, how could the rush from winning time and again not warp a human’s psyche?  It’s fast-paced action; one sole focus; requiring a bit of hostility; power-inducing; lots of practice shooting; and not a moment to humanize anybody, real or animated, on the computer screen.

It was called desensitizing.  But that’s a term from the ’90s after everyone tried to understand Columbine.  Ever since, we’ve been reliving it somewhere in America, every day with most of us only aware of the few times the horror makes the national news: another mass shooting at bars, a synagogue, churches, high schools, elementary schools, mega stores, malls, country music concert, movie theaters, political rally, congressional baseball practice, or employee Christmas party.   

Now a military weapon being used on American streets is called the flamethrower, like the kind of weapon North Korean leader Kim Jong-un reportedly ordered to execute a former ally.  It seems a bullet-riddled body is no longer horrific enough, doesn’t leave the world to fully comprehend consummate power by a totalitarian leader so that all tremble in fear.  The flamethrower is popular in computer games and movies.  The enemy is no longer shot to death but torched.

Power to the people

In closing, I appreciate the DNC allowing me to rank your listed political issues for the coming storm of the 2020 presidential election.  Perhaps I’ve digressed, maybe with a flair for the dramatic.  You know our people tend to be soft at heart, easily persuaded to sympathy and sentimentality … yet also to reason and common sense for the common good.  If we’re to get tough with the ultimate American bully, then I say hit ’im with gun control.  This issue remains our nation’s worst and most horrible and unnecessary escalating problem.  Say this over and over again: Folks, we gotta have common sense gun control.  This is perpetual mass murder we’re talking about.  We have to deal with it now.  And let the people know there are solutions, compromises whereby 2nd-Amenders and gun-controllers give and take.   

Maybe I’ve come across as naïve, although I’ve lived all my life in gun-toting Texas yet may not realize the deep emotional attachment my fellow Americans have to their guns.  After all, these are people who will never relinquish their guns and proclaim, “You can take it from my cold dead hands!!”  How can we who prefer some kind of logical gun control counter that kind of fervor, whether it’s from thirty percent or half the country?  When it comes to ending mass shootings by military-style assault rifles, I’d rather be on the side of the angels than give up the fight to the cynical opposition whose only response is “America: Love it or leave it.”

Sincerely,

The Texas Tart

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Facebook: To stay or not to stay? That is the question

Anyone else out there considering leaving Facebook like me?  I wrestle with it every day, more and more, as I realize the enormous political divide between the views of 98 percent of my Facebook friends and me.  This contrasts to maybe two percent, of my Facebook friends mind you, who share my views and opinions, you know, left of center.  Both sides cling so deeply to opinions as well as political, social and religious beliefs as to have been settled long ago and cemented in concrete.

It’s a tough 21st century decision leaving Facebook over other social media.  A tiny part of me wants to stay in the loop with old school friends, former colleagues and teachers, and of course a great big number of kinfolks.  I really want to hear about and see the latest pictures of everyone living their lives through their ups and downs: traveling adventures, having babies and grand young’uns, living all over the U.S. or just hangin’ in Texas, retiring, new projects, hobbies, announcing loved ones’ eternal departure or their own painful health developments along with prayer requests.  I like original snapshots with a sarcastic or humorous comment, such as misspelled words or miscalculated costs labeled on mega store shelves.  I’ve shared a few myself because I think I have a sense of humor.  There’s a lot to laugh at as we travel together through this time called life.

However, the biggest and growing part of me wants to leave Facebook altogether.  Cher did.  Or be like the cool ones who never joined, such as comedian Bill Maher.  He could foresee a problem with Facebook: allowing millions around the world to know every little move he makes and that despite celebrity, and more so because of it, it’s not a good thing.  Tens of millions checked out of Facebook after the 2016 election and the 17 federal investigations that all concluded Russia intentionally and with malice meddled with our American election and will do it again.  And they mostly and easily interfered through Facebook.

How?  By sowing seeds in thought, sight and emotionalism that were sure to divide us.  Our political enemies know us better than we know ourselves.  Russia in particular not only created fake news that to the untrained eye and mind seemed believable, but they also targeted about 80 million Facebookers to send the posts.  With help from a huge unknown internet information conglomerate, they sought specific like-minded people whose accounts on Facebook were an open page to conservative political, social and religious leanings.

Sometimes alt-right images and slogans landed on my Facebook news feed, sent from beloved family and friends, people I’ve known all my life.  And to this day, this is what takes up most of my viewing on Facebook.  For example, in the eight years leading up to the 2016 election, I scanned over a number of anti-Obama, anti-Michelle Obama and anti-Hillary Clinton bots.  These pieces were either written up like a serious news account of some fantastical feat or were simply disparaging pictures of one of these well known Democrats with a slogan like ‘Obama’s grandparents were CANNIBALS!’  Millions of Facebookers believed anything negative against Democrats in particular and with a click shared them to all their contacts including suspicious little ol’ former government reporter me.

Let your fingers do the walking

Some I’d research online and figure out that Obama’s referenced grandparents were the ones in Kenya and did not eat people.  But the bots came more and more, many coming my way which assured Obama was the devil and Trump the preferred choice of Jesus Christ.  Once Trump won the election, still the bots appeared and were shared in noticeable numbers.  The most ludicrous was a picture of the long-haired, bearded, robed, sandal-footed white Jesus that WASPs hearts aglow would instantly recognize.  ‘Jesus’ was oddly carrying an old-fashioned suitcase in each hand and even more strange running toward the viewer.  The slogan was something like “Obama kicked Jesus out of America.  But Trump welcomed Him back in!”  Holy moly. The old suitcases, and that Jesus would even need to carry them, were obvious signs to me that the image came straight from the former USSR, always decades behind the Western world when it came to new and improved things like washing machines and luggage.

But people I know believed these sentiments to be true, time and again, sharing these things mindlessly, no questions asked.  I think they thought they were sharing their Christian faith, like they wouldn’t be good Christians if they just trashed it, like I always did.  ‘It was an image of Jesus Christ, so the message must be meaningful.’

Along with political slogan images are those computer-created posters, along the lines of a photographed flower or sky or tree or ocean or dog or bird, a bit of nature and slice of life meant to lift the spirit, coupled with a not too profound statement like “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”  These are not original or created by anyone I know on Facebook.  I’d rather see original photos and artistic expressions with and without poetic food for thought.  But it seems most social media users enjoy sending to everyone bland stock photos with positive and of course pro-conservative and Biblical quotes or a one-sentence musing.  Saturday Night Live’s meandering “Deep Thoughts” comes to mind.

For my part, I have shared articles and imagery/quotes on occasion when the moment in history is relevant.  In other words, I think before sharing.  And when I quip, I review and edit my post for brevity and clarity so that I say exactly what I mean.  But recently when I’m not busy and have lots of time to kill, I get into the Facebook feed more than I ought.  If and when I add my two cents to a thread, man the heat turns up … on me.  And I realize my place, alone with few liberals and Democrats.  [Come on, guys, where are all you in the recesses of Facebook and cyberspace?  You make up half the country; you say more than half.]  And another thing, my Facebook account’s got me wondering how come hardly any relatives and friends think like me?    

The thing about Facebook and any written or copy-and-paste commentary is the loss of human interaction.  No vocal inflection or tone.  Readers can’t tell if what is presented in quips and retorts is supposed to be sarcastic, witty, sad or aggravating.  Human emotion and intention are lost through our use and overuse of Facebook and e-mail for that matter.

So, why do I stay on Facebook?  Well, one positive has been participating in a few Facebook groups like for Beatles’ fans, classical music lovers, humane society, family page, travel group, and even worldwide spirituality.  That last one gets a long list of participants from various world religions.  It’s interesting philosophy, so I stick.  Also, I produced my own Facebook pages, at the suggestion of Facebook corporate, for my educational nonprofit and this blog.  So there would be a problem leaving, if either of my business pages is looked at in the future.  Darn.  What to do?

All my troubles seemed so far away

It’s not so much the Russian bot thing or proliferation of real fake news.  But the revelations, the political and social and religious beliefs—and the staunch unwillingness to support another’s right to a different view, as Americans used to and were willing to die for—coupled with the vitriol at President Obama and Hillary Clinton, and now that they are out of the picture, nonstop passed-along and shared internet-created by God-knows-who half-alarming half-sarcastic slogans about any controversial Democrat elected official and any American who remains liberal minded.

It’s like we’re experiencing another McCarthy era. Instead of ganging up on alleged commies, it’s just American Democrats, again half the population if not more I’m told.  I always knew the Right felt the Left were red commies, nowadays collectively referred to as socialists.  But I grew up in and was shaped and educated by the most liberal era in American history, the 1970s.  Today the malapropisms and bigoted rantings of TV’s Archie Bunker are revered and respected.  Millions of Americans believe that guy was right all along.  And equally loud-mouthed liberal Maude must have been dead wrong, especially when the over-40-year-old woman had an abortion.

I suppose when it comes to scrolling Facebook, I can just skip over the mounting derogatory slurs against my political peeps and views.  Someone advised I don’t have to respond to any inflammatory shares.  As for original comments with which I disagree or would like to point out another view, I get in more trouble for sending a quick counter.  There will be hell to pay.  And life is short.

Yet we are drawn to our smart phones and more often than not, we of a certain age I suppose, to the Facebook feed.  Checking its entirety takes up too much of our time and we are learning detrimentally affects our well being.  The latest fad besides closing our account on Facebook is to leave it alone for a week, with most participants maintaining a sudden sense of … happiness.  Yes, I remember being genuinely happy.  It had to do with being oblivious, of spender in the grass.

Remember how happy we were before Facebook?  Even way back before the internet and social media?  Before we knew every little thing about each other: our beliefs on the two no-no’s of conversation when trying to get along: politics and religion?  What a bunch of dopes we’ve become!  I get it now: None of us is ever gonna persuade another to see an issue like we do.  I’ve seen the threads of arguments go both ways on Facebook until finally one person decides no more—not in defeat, just out of emotional and intellectual exhaustion.  It is only then, when we close Facebook and put away the smart phone, that our brain returns to reality: still capable of seeing, smelling, hearing and feeling the beautiful world around us with all God’s creatures living together in harmony naturally.

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Abortion: No reason, no discussion. No reasonable discussion?

First, let’s agree: nobody believes in abortion.  There are no greeting cards to sympathize or celebrate it.  For many women it must be the worst decision of their lives, often to erase a previously bad decision; just as surely as for some to erase a horrible criminal act, and more rarely but truly to save their own lives.  The problem is: abortion remains legal as many Americans believe in their heart and soul this procedure for any reason at any time is always wrong, a sin, a crime against humanity, an abomination to God.  The other problem is just the mention of the word—such as New York state legislature’s recent ‘abortion law’ that would allow late term if and when necessary to protect the health and life of the pregnant woman or teen.

Whatever stage of pregnancy, we have an image of a fully formed baby.  He or she is already named and characterized with his or her whole life planned out, if only in the hopes and prayers of others related and unrelated.  That a late-term abortion inflicts pain and suffering on the unborn is of grave concern to those who oppose the procedure.  New York was chastised as legalized baby killers by those who sincerely mourn the terminated unborn.

But … not one word, not one mention, consideration, concern, sympathy or empathy for the one who carries the unborn, the mother whose life is deemed by her physician to be at risk if she goes through with the pregnancy.  Imagine: her deep sorrow, her family’s heartbreak, the loss of faith at being placed in such an impossible and unforgiving situation.  Most people know no one who’s had to make such a choice.  Such terminated pregnancies are one to two percent, but they happen.

Science v God

The U.S. Supreme Court has heard several cases to reverse Roe v Wade.  Instead they tossed the hot political potato back to the states and let them decide.  The Court wisely perceives the issue of abortion, whether a majority of citizens is pro life or pro choice, is rooted by communities, state and region and is not universally shared throughout the entire nation—because this national issue has been one long screaming match with equal numbers embroiled in political battle.  Through the years a few states banned any and all abortions regardless of rape and incest or life-threatening fetal deformity or maternal illness likely to end in the woman’s or teen’s death.  Texas reduced medical facilities that perform abortions to less than a half dozen.  Along with mandatory waiting periods prior to obtaining an abortion, states require parental notification, mandated reading, and viewing the fetus while listening to scripted dialogue.  

In 1967 California and Colorado were first to legalize abortion in cases of rape, incest, severe handicap or pregnancies that threaten the life of the mother.  In the formation of a new human being, a lot can go wrong with the fetus and the mother.  Though almost unheard of nowadays, healthy young adult pregnant women have been known to suddenly die of natural causes or infections.  Pregnant women have been known to develop diabetes, life-threatening high blood pressure, cancer, stroke or heart attack … the list goes on.  These are not scare tactics to prevent the propagation of the species.  But a third of all pregnancies do end in miscarriage.  [That’s another hot political issue that had been questioned by male lawmakers who assume women are to blame for miscarriage instead of learning the common interruption is of natural design, simply survival of the fittest.]  The Texas Legislature passed a law that requires a death certificate and formal burial of fetal tissue from both abortion and miscarriage.  Good grief!  Have we all gone mad?  Has repulsion over abortion led to all loss of human logic and reasoning?

If college students in a course called The Spiritual and Moral Lives of Children and Adolescents could discuss abortion sans emotion, why can’t everyone?  I thought this that night when the discussion took place, in a class of women, mostly teachers, taught by a revered male theology professor and Christian minister.  “I can’t believe we’re discussing abortion,” I commented during the lesson on considering feminist spirituality.  An older classmate remarked back to me, “This is grad school.  We should be able to talk about anything.”

So we did, calmly and rationally, one voice at a time.  What I heard were women who understood and support another’s right to choose.  I was surprised to hear it … spoken aloud … confidently as if this decision was common sense and everybody knows it.  In my world most people are vehemently against.  Some of my friends made known their decision in childhood, if you can believe kids talked about abortion in those days.  We did.  I’ve made my life’s work to seek the truth, the facts, the reasons why, along with all points of view.  But this lone subject and emphatic opinion has been and remains so loud and earnest, so emotionally and religiously overwhelming that I have had to force myself to think otherwise.  Too, life has taught me to ponder the loudest mouth.

For my class comment, I shared a recollection from the spring of 1989.  Surgeon General C. Everett Koop was making the TV rounds of morning shows to announce a federal report on the mental health of women who had had an abortion.  He was pressed to collect the data by the Reagan administration.  But when Koop’s report found no scientific basis to support the premise or assumption that abortion causes lasting psychological harm to women, the Administration did not want it released.  Dr. Koop, himself pro-life, felt his duty to make the findings public.  He reported the vast majority of women in the study went on to finish high school and/or college—the main reason they opted for abortion—eventually married, gave birth to healthy children and led productive lives.  The majority agreed abortion was the worst decision of their lives but yet at the time was the right thing to do.  About two percent of women in the report experienced lingering emotional distress directly related to their decision to abort a pregnancy, Dr. Koop pointed out.  In the general population, mental illness including depression and anxiety impacts a much larger segment, from ten to twenty percent, I concluded for the class.

When millions of people ban together in a cause they believe immoral and can cry about it, it becomes mass hysteria.  Pro life or pro choice is an individual’s deeply-held feeling, opinion and personal belief.  The U.S. government got involved in the ’70s, and remains involved for now, to protect a female’s right to control her body.  The government cannot yet demand she stay pregnant regardless of developmental or maternal health.  That last part upsets anti-abortion proponents, pro-lifers.  But now we see that even the woman’s or teen’s health is not regarded as worthy of life, not even worth mentioning.  Life begins at conception, they’ve determined.  But what about the pregnant person’s right to life?

No greater love

Perhaps when a female becomes pregnant, she should sign a legal document implicitly stating her wish in the event the pregnancy causes medically documented risk to her life in the first, second or third trimester … No, that would not suffice for the millions who would rather the unborn be born and the mother die than a pregnancy terminated in order for her to live.

Visceral feelings about abortion, in the worst case scenario, and the doctors who perform it along with lawmakers who protect it, overshadow this silent universal truth: An expectant mother would gladly exchange her life for that of her unborn offspring.

And if this life-affirming rationale were not true for every pregnant female, opponents of abortion would want to interfere.

Decisions like this, heart breaking to the core of the human spirit, are intensely private, personal, medical—nobody’s business and not to be judged.     

Now, let’s agree that life is hard, harder for some than others, and sometimes there isn’t an answer regardless of our personal ethics, religious beliefs and spiritual views.  This subject has taken up decades of our time.  Yet it still demands a lot more thought … in quiet contemplation … away from the crowds.

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Recalling those blue-collar blues, then and now

Yessir, I can surely sing ’em.  I come from proud working-class roots.  Except my mom was a teacher, but society kinda treats teachers like glorified babysitters instead of professionals.  Though I’ve had a couple of professional careers, I ain’t ashamed to have used more muscle than mind in many jobs throughout my life.  My first were menial, like baby sitting or cashiering at an ice cream parlor and later a barbecue joint.  Once I became of legal working age, I was thrilled to work part time at Sears at the mall.  It was the ’70s, and though Sears was losing out against rivals like JC Penney, I was happy to finally be one of those high school teen-agers with a secure job: one where I didn’t have to deal with food (except when scheduled to work the store’s nut stand) and could wear nice clothes like an adult.  I was assigned to the children’s clothing department which featured a Dallas Cowboys’ fan shop.  I wore dresses, hose and platform shoes while folding and hanging clothes but mostly picking up after customers.  It was then I realized how inconsiderate society is when shopping.  But it was a job, so hey.
 
A year later I wound up working part time as a newspaper reporter, covering the high school beat for my hometown paper.  The pay was $10 an article, which in those days had to be retyped by a typesetter.  I was a natural at the job, turned in two or three stories a week plus a column, and wore whatever I wanted though always dressing professionally when interviewing.  I got my first taste of a profession, a career.
 
I worked my way through college.  As a freshman, I tried hard to get a job at the local mall or the town newspaper.  But the timing wasn’t right.  Desperate for some source of income that would provide the incidentals of a young lady, I ended up working at a sandwich shop across from the university.  Never was really good at handling food though.  And then the customers wanted their food fast.  I was … too neat.  And slow.  And after a couple of months got the heave ho.  Just as well.  I dreaded closing by myself late at night, having to sweep and mop the entire cement floor, and then cleaning the toilets in the men’s and women’s restrooms.  P U!
 
I ventured into the logical working gal’s job of waitress.  But again, me and food jobs don’t get along.  After six weeks, I was informed I was unable to manage five tables at a time and was summarily fired during the shift.  Shoot, I hoped that job would be my college gig for spending money.  Cash tips could be $60 a night.  No one ever told me I wasn’t doing a good job.
 
But the close of a door opens a window, and mine was a much better job as a reporter for the university news service.  I was in my element, sniffing out stories and whipping up articles, using whatever typewriter I could find on campus because I did not have one of my own.  This was in the days before personal computers and laptops.  This job, however, was grant funded which meant it was precarious.  I earned $200 every two weeks and lived in an on-campus apartment, really feeling grown up for a college kid.  I was praying this job would be my lengthy gig to get me through college.  But ’tweren’t to be.  The Reagan years ushered in the Gramm-Rudman budget cuts interestingly toward colleges and universities and work-study students like me.  The job lasted one year.

Of books and nooks
The college helped me find another job, this time in the library.  I was the assistant to the assistant music librarian.  And again proved to be a natural with the prerequisite clerical tasks: naturally organized, accurate, thorough, respectful of deadlines—I proved to be the whole ball of wax.  The job required researching copyright and other publishing information for hundreds of sound recordings, books and journals—all in my college major of music.  I learned to use the computer in this library job.  Part of the work dealt with typing all data to replace the card catalog drawers.  The work had to be completely accurate, not one mistake.  Or you’d have to get back into the computer and fix it.  Anyway, I was paid the hourly wage of the day and worked a few afternoons a week.  It was enough to get by a little.  My boss and I got along fabulously.  She gave me a birthday gift, an album of Gershwin’s classical music.
 
Along my college route, however, another snag occurred.  Long story short, I wasn’t graduating as soon as I had planned.  I prematurely quit the music library job and ended up searching for another work-study position.  All along, throughout college I wrote freelance articles for the city paper but never was hired for steady work like in high school.  Reading the posted campus want ads, I saw a job for writing tutor in the library writing lab.  I applied and was interviewed.  The tutors were paid slightly more than minimum wage due to our proven college-level writing expertise: We helped peers formulate and write better papers for required coursework.  The writing lab director was impressed with my clerical background and hired me not only to tutor but to keep up with and file all the paperwork.  Again, I excelled at the chores.  But by my final year of college, even a poor college student as I was no longer qualified for federal work-study.  The writing lab director kept me on, shuffling my salary into another account, as she explained it’s all just paperwork.  
 
Cutting to the chase, I graduated … only to be unemployed for a year and a half, tried my hand at piano and voice lessons and substitute teaching before getting a job back at the college library as binding assistant.  I prepared hundreds of books and journals for professional binding and oversaw a crew of college students with repairing ripped and missing pages and worn spines.  The job required no degree and was indeed blue collar.  Everyone at the library knew me, so I was hired quickly.  It was a living for several months, but I ended up in the big city to pursue a profession: teaching or newspapering—wherever life leads.   
 
Life is a journey
Even as a graduate, I realized I would have to pay work dues.  Like I did in high school, I walked the entire mall and applied everywhere (except the food court where I wasn’t wanted anyway).  I was called by the art-frame store manager several times to be assistant manager.  Though I love art, I kept passing, holding out for something else.  Heck, I probably should’ve just taken the job.
 
Realizing I wasn’t going to be teaching the upcoming school year, I earnestly looked into joining the Peace Corps.  They were hiring college grads to teach English in the former Eastern bloc nations of Europe.  On the application I also selected to work in Africa or India.  But life took me back to the newspaper biz as a clerk at a big-city paper.  We clerks hung out together during lunch, worked on all kinds of projects like compiling contest entries including the Pulitzer Prize.  We glued and pasted articles in scrapbooks while chatting about our college days and wondering what to do now as graduates.  We earned like $6 an hour.  But I took full advantage of the opportunity before me, frequently tossing story ideas to the features editor and got one approved to write and publish, a huge triumph.  In a couple of years the paper went out of business as cities became one-paper towns.  This was before the internet, social media, blogs and dubious news outlets.
 
How did I survive?  By getting hired part-time at the homeless shelter at which I had been volunteering.  Now I was the weekend night monitor, sleeping overnight Fridays and Saturdays with the homeless.  Dressed in jeans, Beatles T-shirt and sneakers with walkie-talkie and master keys in hand, I patrolled the hallways and checked the rooms, making sure occupants were where they were supposed to be and that there were no drugs or booze of which I kept a partial blind eye.  I also had to oversee guys working community service by serving meals and cleaning the kitchen.  By day, well I subbed as a public school teacher anywhere anytime any school any subject.  So I had to switch mindsets from professional to working class, know how to act professionally then dress down to hang with the underprivileged.  I was careful not to be smug with the homeless or less than a consummate professional in dress and deed with school students and principals.
 
This exhausting whirlwind ended when I was hired full time at a used book store.  With my library experience, it was more my speed.  I could see potential for moving up in the corporation but still pursued other jobs, casting my net across the state.  On my two weekdays off, I drove all over Texas seeking work, filling out job applications (none were online yet) and doing some interviews.  To my complete surprise, I ended up back in the newspaper biz as a real-deal reporter.  I took to the job like a fish in water.  A few years later, I was hired at another newspaper.  A career was building.  Several years later, I wound up at another big-city paper then within a couple of years crossed over into teaching, building my original career aspiration sixteen years after college.  I kept up the pace with all this career stuff for close to thirty years, even earned a master’s degree along the way.
 
Free as a bird
Then boom.  Right or wrong, I took early retirement, pursued some risky ventures (like that nonprofit still in federal limbo due to the shutdown) and applied online for close to a thousand jobs—all easily done these days with one click.  Even so, finding a new job has not been easy.  To pay the bills, I’ve returned to my working-class roots … handling food, this time at a grocery store: schlepping gallons of milk and heavy bags of dog food or cases of bottled water across the counter, carefully handling cartons of eggs and bread, packing every little thing as if it were my own.  I’ve developed a chronic numbness from shoulders to fingertips and when a full day is done, my body aches like I’ve been run over by a train. But I experienced similar pain by the end of each school day teaching a decade and a half; it comes from mandatory standing. Yet I handle grocerying with a friendly smile and sincere kindness.  After all, there’s no need to be hasty or rude to paying customers.  I get the picture of what business is all about. To make a long day go by faster, I remember my newly created mantra, one for the working folks: Work, break. Work, lunch. Work, break. Work, leave.
 
As for my third act, this blog is part of it.  Who knows what else may come along in life, the thing John Lennon said happens while we’re busy making other plans?  Now that I’ve grown comfortably into middle age, I am more at ease.  The urgency to get on with the rest of my life and make a spectacular splash and workworkworkworkwork is pretty much gone—though I’m not dead yet. I figure another twenty years or more remains of work energy.
 
The inadvertent time off from career has been reflective.  Diving back into the working class, a job that requires no degree, has been not so much humbling as for me expected.  Growing up in a family that would rather be the hired hand than the big boss man, I’ve come to see a job is just a job. No need to look down on yourself for what you do for a living.
 
I’ve never thought any job I’ve had as dead-end.  I always saw potential for advancement, maybe not in the exact career I wanted or anticipated, but management maybe.  Looking back at a working life, I’ve thrived on hard work with few rewards, keeping busy while earning never-enough pay, earning my keep best I can, doing my part to help others, maybe leaving folks in a better frame of mind.  Building a career, like building a life, takes everything within us: energy, smarts, foresight, and the ability to roll with the punches because there are a lot of them and they hurt real bad.  Life is our own creation.  Relying on the internet with its plethora of ‘job’ listings—real and bogus—cannot take the place of our individuality, experience, expertise and self worth nor the spiritual bond among people.
 
For all the kids out there starting out, the journey toward work and careers is really an individual pursuit of happiness.  Don’t ever forget that.  If a working job comes along while waiting for the big career profession, consider taking it for awhile.  The work we do, the job title and menial tasks, is not what makes us who we are.  But it develops the interesting trait of character and most of all teaches us what we still need to learn about ourselves and how to treat others who come in and out of our lives.  In other words, like life itself, no job lasts forever.

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Gotta loathe our federal elected officials

I am ashamed of each and every one of our elected men and women in Washington, D.C.  The only people who would play with 800,000 federal workers and their families while screwing over millions of American citizens in the process are fat, lazy, rich millionaires and even fatter billionaires.  The only obligation you have while holding your powerful office is to keep the United States government operating.  You should not be able to sleep each night in a warm cozy bed while ruining less fortunate and powerless American families.
 
Get back to ‘negotiating.’  Eat crow.  Forget about a stupid 5th century, environmentally unsound 2,000-mile wall between the U.S. and Mexico border.  For 200 years, our country has managed quite well without one.  Drugs will always be with us.  The need for drugs and the risk of addiction and overdose or addiction management will always be a part of the human condition.  That’s how our nation should deal with our big drug problem, and the educational and psychological method takes generations of time and effort.  Our drug crisis should be dealt with by our citizens, families, churches, schools and society rather than the government.  But the complex international drug trade is not the real reason for a border wall with Mexico.
 
Back to the federal shutdown, all of our national leaders from Congress to the White House must learn how to practice the Art of Diplomacy.  Government is not like running a business.  It is far more important and involves the lives of tens of millions of tax-paying citizens.  Businesses come and go.  A smart business person knows most will not last more than 30 years.  But a democrazy—excuse me—democracy must endure.  It requires constant effort, hard work, difficult decisions, painful emotions, sleepless nights, concern for the greater good, selflessness and most importantly intelligence … as was phrased in our nation’s beginnings, common sense.
 
Enough with the cruelty trickling down from the very top of the U.S. power structure.  Everything in life is about compromise.  Poor people know how to do it every day.  Families with one TV compromise on the shows they will watch.  They compromise at the grocery store when deciding which is cheaper fresh fruit or canned, which is more important new towels or milk.
 
March of the penguins
Where are the chambers of commerce, bankers and the rest of the corporate suits taking to the streets demanding an end to another childish national government shutdown?  They’re the ones who understand local economics: how every dollar spent in a community rolls over seven times, meaning seven businesses benefit from people with jobs.
 
Shutting down the government and ruining livelihoods should be illegal in the United States of America.  We’re not a banana republic where a game of chicken is played by the powerful, the heartless and the gutless.  Or are we?  The strength of a leader is not measured in fear but character.  The character of a leader is developed by having actually worked from the bottom up instead of growing up with a silver spoon in the mouth.  A leader should reflect an exemplary moral life grounded in decency and empathy toward our fellow man, not brute force just to break the will of others.

Our national leaders have forgotten who they work for and who elected them.  The American rich no doubt have the upper hand financially.  But their tiny numbers are no match to the hundreds of millions of us who have to work to pay bills and actually want to work for self worth.  We the People must remind our elected officials they work for us.  In this country, pal, the People are in charge.  Every elected official works for us and is paid by our sweat, physical or mental or both.  You have no right to shutdown our federal government while expecting the most vital work still be done by employees without pay.  It’s uncivilized, moronic, and unAmerican, and we will not tolerate it. Consider this a final warning, a come-to-Jesus meeting.

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Ready for the ninth and final year of the 20teens?

As we face the end of a tumultuous decade, let us not be downtrodden but prepare for the most spectacular event certainly yet to come, if history tells us anything.  The 21st century teen years were not unlike living with a surly adolescent: pushing toward unfettered independence while desperately seeking guidance and assurance of parental love; staying out beyond curfew, mouthing off and breaking other rules to push boundaries and discover if any punishment still stings or breaks the will; learning to drive as anxious backseat parents pray silently for their safe return and instant maturity of their teen-age offspring; breaking away from believing everything ever taught by any adult while developing their own cynical if not radical views on complex issues like politics and religion.  Well, parental old guard, we made it through with sanity intact, some of us even spotting a few rays of light that will transform rebellious youth into admirable friends, someday.  
 
In this decade the world reached consummate concern for the future of life on planet Earth with the Paris climate accord, and Americans reincarnated the Women’s Rights movement.  With more mass shootings than any previous decade (a mass shooting every single day in America), future legislation in this final decade year or the following year will undoubtedly address the issue soberly than ever before and do something that will significantly halt our national recurring horror especially among our children at school.  As soon as Trump swarmed in as president, tens of millions of Americans and others around the world protested in the streets not only making known their distrust of Trumpian politics and the man himself but maintaining the election and outcome were dubious and possibly corrupt.  A return to civility and common decency among politicians will likely prevent another national election of the biggest-and-baddest ever again.
 
Number 9
But 2019 holds promise for mankind as a review of past final decade years have shown:
 
1909—The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) founded by mostly white Americans appalled by routine lynching of black Americans;
1919—The League of Nations formed, later to be reconstituted as the United Nations, to prevent future world wars and political and economic catastrophes;
1929—The stock market crash, though ushering in the Great Depression, would lead to a New Deal president with innovative and far-reaching public projects putting Americans back to work as well as setting controls on the banking industry while federally insuring depositors;
1939—World War II officially begins along with the ultra secretive Manhattan Project that would eventually ensure world dominance of the United States at the cost of our vigilance to prevent a future nuclear war;
1949—Communism takes brutal control in China while ironically novelist George Orwell publishes his foreboding political satire Nineteen Eighty Four, which depicts the real story of life within a country of thought control, word removal, surveillance cameras, and on-cue weeping by devotees of Big Brother;
1959—The Twilight Zone begins airing nationwide, each black-and-white episode probing the human imagination with godly or godless wonder but mostly bringing to life the deepest darkest fears of America’s post-war generation not to mention the little Baby Boomers watching each week beside their parents;
1969—THE most important moment in human history, televised by computer technology, the world witnessing three brave American astronauts landing then walking on the moon, an incredulous feat boosting American pride despite hostility and division while leaving most feeling insignificant when viewing Earth from outer space;
1979—Middle East politics, culture and religion force themselves permanently into the everyday psyche of a previously oblivious free-wheeling, car-loving, get-up-and-go American society;
1989—The fall of the Berlin Wall meant Western culture and capitalism ‘beat’ the propped-up utopia promised but never realized for decades among citizens forced to live behind the Iron Curtain of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics;
1999—The Columbine High School shooting massacre, along with a Fort Worth church shooting at a teen service, indicated a horrific rift in American mentality when it comes to guns, gun rights, constitutional liberty, violent imagery portrayed in video games and movies, and mental illness—all of which to this day remain unresolved and incomprehensible yet politically strengthened, divisive and socially ruinous as ever an issue faced by Americans;
2009—The first African-American elected President of the United States, Barack Obama remained calm, cool and collected in every crisis and political battle, often resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court as Congress refused to practice diplomacy during his two terms in office.     
 
21st century teens
Highlights of this decade could be: Obamacare; Russia playing Americans via social media; Curiosity Rover on Mars; Lance Armstrong; Bill Cosby; Ebola; ISIS; Black Lives Matter; same-sex marriage; the Trump presidential campaign and election; Hillary Clinton, first woman to run by a major party for U.S. president; Brexit, indicating all’s not well in globalism; Me Too; NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem; removal of Confederate statues; Unite the Right rally chant “Jews will not replace us”; and the deadly opioid crisis.
 
ISIS terrorist attacks continued worldwide and at home, from the office of a French satirical publication to the Boston Marathon; from a Paris football stadium, restaurants and rock concert to a San Bernardino Christmas party and an Orlando nightclub.
 
But a review of the past nine years in America shows increased deadly mass shootings that left hundreds dead and many more wounded, physically and emotionally:
2011: at a political rally; 
2012: at a movie theater and then at an elementary school;
2015: at an African-American church;
2016: at a nightclub in Orlando;
2017: at a Baptist church and then at a country show in Las Vegas.
 
What will be the memorable history of 2018?  Probably more mass shootings like the one at a Florida high school.  But that time youth found the wherewithal to create a movement of their own, one for the nation really, those of us sick and tired of legislators sitting on their butts and unwilling to do something to prevent mass shooting murder sprees.  The first Never Again rally brought marches in every state as well as sympathizing nations.  One march was in New York City where none other than Paul McCartney was spotted marching with the crowd.  Asked why he was participating, his answer was simple as he explained he, too, has been impacted by gun violence, recalling a dear friend shot to death.
 
Yet school shooting massacres didn’t stop as somehow we were surprised with the same story from the small Texas town of Santa Fe.  Mass shootings continued nationwide with reporters killed inside the newsroom of The Capital in Maryland, youth at a gamer tournament, Jews at a synagogue, and young adults at a California bar. 
 
If there is an optimistic capper for the Teen decade of the 21st century, 2019 would produce meaningful gun legislation and election security to ensure the sanctity of our democratic process.  As for the nation’s citizens, a return to public civility in tongue, tone, tweet and email would go a long way in restoring American trust in our fellow Americans regardless of political beliefs and affiliations.  We can vote for whomever we want. Remember?

Along the same lines, Americans say they don’t know who to trust when it comes to the news, referring to online and cable TV products. For that matter, Americans aren’t that concerned when journalists are shot in newsrooms or hacked to death by order of a national leader, one who does not support free speech or a free press.  A 21st century American president who refers to the media as the ‘enemy of the people’ along with national apathy toward journalism and journalists is the most incredible and detrimental development to come out of the 20teens, in my opinion.  As adolescents are prone to think they know everything already, perhaps the forthcoming decade will bring maturity and the serious mindful responsible actions of a grown-up.