Author: cheriebell69@hotmail.com

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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.

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Twelve daze of Trumpmess

On the first day of Trumpmess, our country came to see

a federal inquiry!

On the second day of Trumpmess, our country came to see

two hushed honeys and a federal inquiry!

On the third day of Trumpmess, our country came to see

three years for fixin’, two hushed honeys

and a federal inquiry!

On the fourth day of Trumpmess, our country came to see

4 a.m. tweeting, three years for fixin’, two hushed honeys

and a federal inquiry!

On the fifth day of Trumpmess, our country came to see

five plea deals!

4 a.m. tweets, three prison years, two hushed honeys

and a federal inquiry!

On the sixth day of Trumpmess, our country came to see

six sneaky staffers,

five plea deals!

4 a.m. tweets, three prison years, two hushed honeys

and a federal inquiry!

On the seventh day of Trumpmess, our country came to see

seven Russian theories, six sneaky staffers,

five plea deals!

4 a.m. tweets, three prison years, two hushed honeys

and a federal inquiry!

On the eighth day of Trumpmess, our country came to see

eight victory rallies, seven Russian theories, six sneaky staffers,

five plea deals!

4 a.m. tweets, three prison years, two hushed honeys

and a federal inquiry!

On the ninth day of Trumpmess, our country came to see

nine DNC hackers, eight victory rallies, seven Russian theories,

six sneaky staffers,

five plea deals!

4 a.m. tweets, three prison years, two hushed honeys

and a federal inquiry!

On the tenth day of Trumpmess, our country came to see

ten legal experts, nine DNC hackers, eight victory rallies,

seven Russian theories, six sneaky staffers,

five plea deals!

4 a.m. tweets, three prison years, two hushed honeys

and a federal inquiry!

On the eleventh day of Trumpmess, our country came to see

11 a.m. work days, ten legal experts, nine DNC hackers,

eight victory rallies,seven Russian theories, six sneaky staffers,

five plea deals!

4 a.m. tweets, three prison years, two hushed honeys

and a federal inquiry!

On the twelfth day of Trumpmess, our country came to see

twelve meddlin’ Russians, 11 a.m. work days, ten legal experts,

nine DNC hackers, eight victory rallies, seven Russian theories,

six sneaky staffers,

five plea deals!

4 a.m. tweets, three prison years, two hushed honeys …

and a federal inquiry!! 

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A little Christmas brings time to reflect, remember and rejoice

Ours will be a little Christmas this year.  No big deal.  No winter vacation.  No decking the halls with Christmas memorabilia as in years past.  No expensive presents or major gifts (that I know of, tee!).   No, my husband and dogs and I will have to be content sharing love and appreciation and maybe a hot toddy.  The Christmas lack, merchandise-wise, is due to me … still waiting to hear back from our federal government.  Remember around Easter/Passover when I blogged about starting a new nonprofit to advocate for journalism and journalists?  That’s my one and only attempt at starting a business and relying on final approval from our government, as my work will be not-profit driven, just a passionate cause.

As for spreading yuletide cheer, I’ll spend a few dollars on small gifties.  I won’t say exactly what, just in case a recipient is reading.  But suffice it to say, my contributions this year will be stocking stuffers.

But oh how I’ve enjoyed some wonderful Christmases past!  My earliest memories are sealed in black-and-white snapshots: of artificial Christmas trees, green or white, decorated with fragile bulbs of electric red, yellow, blue and green.  And each day coming home from elementary school to find another huge box wrapped in red paper with Santas and reindeer or wreaths.  Inside may have been a girl’s vanity dressing table or a psychedelic-designed record player or a new doll like Velvet.  My parents spared no expense on the holiday, so it seemed.  But actually my sibling and I were learning some valuable lessons.  In those days my father worked at Sears and had a big employee discount.  So he allowed us to pick anything we wanted from the annual Wishbook up to $50 each.  We didn’t know about taxes but often would pick toys totaling right up to $49.99, never daring to go over $50.  It really was generous of Dad.

During the ’70s I usually chose the latest Barbie dolls, clothes and accessories.  My entire collection is from the closets of TV’s Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern.  One year Santa gave me something I did not order: a Barbie Karosel Kitchen.  It ran on large batteries that needed frequent replacement, but it contained six sections, one with a laundry machine, next a clothes dryer, a kitchen sink, dishwasher, oven, and refrigerator.  You’d press a button to turn the red Karosel and press another button for sounds resembling cleaning, washing or cooking.  It was kinda strange, especially since I didn’t ask for it.  Why would a kid want to spend time with Barbie pretending to do chores?

It took a couple of years for me to find Barbie clothes in the Wishbook.  But I ended up with lots of fashions like assorted boots and heels, large round pastel eyewear, all to go with miniskirts and maxi dresses of the era.  I ordered a Barbie car, an orange two-seat convertible; a tent with sleeping bags and tiny outdoor cooking gear; and my most cherished present a Barbie sleep-and-keep case.  The case stored two Barbies, but I squeezed in my Ken dolls, too, and a pile of clothes and grooming accessories.  One side allowed for a pull-down bed—a tribute to the ’70s with wall art like Love and the peace sign and a groovy flowery bedspread of bright orange and hot pink.

The Christmas blog

Of all my childhood preteen memories, Christmas 1973 is the most important.  It was the year my parents surprised me with the most enormous and heavy present too big to fit under the Christmas tree.  I had no idea what it could be as it sat there a couple of weeks tagged with my name.  So when the unwrapping arrived, I found this humongous gift was a real stereo system complete with two large separate speakers and a turntable/FM AM radio/8-track player encased in a faux brown wood compartment, placed above a rack for my growing record collection.  It was the gift I never knew I wanted.

My parents, however, had an ulterior motive in providing me such an expensive and totally unexpected present.  For a couple of years, I had a habit of taking over their stereo console in the den, turning their country radio stations to rock and listening to my records on their grand system instead of my little kid record player.  I was of an age where I could distinguish the audible nuances between a record player and a stereo.  I was 11.  So they set me up with a stereo system popular with teens and young adults.  Wow!  They just wanted me to listen to the music I liked in my bedroom.  Guess they tired of hearing Grand Funk’s We’re an American Band over and over and over again.  I didn’t realize it back then, but that gift made such a life-altering impact as I grew into a serious music lover.  Too, I realized I had to be mature handling a real stereo system.  For a couple of years I wouldn’t allow my friends to touch it.

By the end of the ’70s, Christmas was getting to be a drag.  I was old enough to realize how much things cost, no longer able to give my friends individual gifts anymore.  By the time I was 18, our family didn’t even put up a tree let alone bother with wrapping gifts.  Still, unexpectedly my mother got me a large cylinder basket and matching rattan chair from Pier 1.  She knew I loved hanging out at that store, soaking up its exotic Eastern world allure.  I walked into my bedroom after work one night, turned on the light, and there were the furnishings made in India or some place, awaiting my delight and appropriate thankfulness.

It’s not that I’m depressed this year, but Christmas is a time of massive amounts of stuff including food that just makes us all fat and fatter.  It is extremely hard to have Christmas in moderation, isn’t it?  But when money is sparse, that’s how it has to be.  My parents always recalled their impoverished Depression-era childhood Christmases, when the gift would be hair supplies, socks, and if lucky assorted nuts still in their shells and an orange.  Just the smell of an orange brings back Christmas memories, my folks say year round.  Not for me.  It’s the smell of Scotch tape!  The connection must be from wrapping gifts during the holidays.

This year I am not pulling out the Christmas boxes and displaying all the seasonal collections around the house.  I did splurge on purchasing one new Christmas decoration: a replica of a mid-century white porcelain Christmas tree with tiny multi-colored plastic bulbs.  It operates on batteries and has a four-hour timer.  Our house was built in 1946, and I had seen the original tree décor at antique shops.  So I knew it would fit the past Christmases spent by the previous family of our home.  That lone colorful white Christmas tree, placed on a table, is enough to celebrate the season, that plus the wreath on the front door.  And for the first time, I’m not mailing Christmas cards.  Sorry ya’ll.  I’ll create some festive image and season’s greeting on the computer and mass email to friends and family.

More importantly is not to forget what we’re celebrating along with the birth of Christ and the beginning of a new world religion if not an optimistic worldview—based on forgiveness and love for all mankind.  Winter solstice, an ancient celebration of earth and the changing season, occurs around the same time as Christmas, and it is no coincidence.  It doesn’t matter when Christ was born, but the timing in December wraps up, so to speak, a holy day of respect and recognition of our home planet and our family: of cold and warmth, bitter and sweet, past and present, concern and comfort.  Christmas is what we make it, for ourselves and for others.  So happy holidaze everyone this year!  Let us be merry and bright and full of good cheer!

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Texas wants to straighten out straight-party ballots and voters

They’re not fooling me one bit: the Texas Legislature and all the work they’ve been a-doin’ from the Clinton to the Obama administrations, gerrymandering precincts and now disallowing voters to select the straight-party option.  I remember during the 20th century when local Republican and Democratic party chairs recommended all voters simply check the straight-party option conveniently located at the top of the ballot, each party chair maintaining theirs had the best and most outstanding candidates in all races.  In that bygone era the party elders just wanted to make it easy on voters since so many if not most don’t vote at all.  Too, they knew most voters don’t bother researching each and every race such as all those district judgeships and state commissions—names we’ve never heard of let alone the duties of each office.

Yeah, we’re just a bunch of ignert ol’ hicks spread out all over this great big Lone Star state like a swipe of mustard on a bun.  All right, maybe ignorance is kinda true for a lot of voters, folks just pickin’ names on the ballot based on vague familiarity and past acquaintances from high school and church (no one we really know or heard of running for office) or to quote the late Molly Ivins when Texas voters chose ‘cute’ names on the ballot and in the process voted for “the wrong Don Yarborough.”  Mostly straight-ticket voters are probably sticking to the political party with which they define themselves and likely always have.

My fellow Texans, it’s gonna be up to us to decide how we gonna play this game called e-lek-shuns.  And it’s gotta start with knowing the difference between Republicans and Democrats.

Grandpa knew the difference

My grandfather was asked this question by his children.  Back in those days, he intently listened to the news on the radio as well as read the daily newspaper.  He took our nation’s history and voting privilege very seriously, and as a poor man trying to provide for his ever-expanding family he sought some kind of ray of hope, of financial stability on the horizon.  He was, of course, devoted to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Grandpa  taught his children: Democrats care about the common man while Republicans care about money.  Simple response from a not-so-simple man living in desperately hard times.  I don’t know if he ever perceived how the two governing concepts go hand in hand.

So the old Depression-era distinction or belief in the two parties continued until the 1960s, when if you can believe it, people down South switched party affiliations like … hmm, like it was the end of the world.  The switcheroo had to do with the Civil Rights movement and the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.  Southern Democrats were gonna have to support African Americans, simple as that.  Instead many white Democrats ran lickety-split to the Republicans, whose political agenda never promoted the advancement of people of color.

Then there was the hippy factor and the Vietnam War, separating American voters into hawks and doves.  Doves just wanted to make love not war; hawks were ready to fight for any reason anywhere—something like that.  Then American politics got really ugly in the ’70s with radical Democrats, college youth completely dissatisfied with the status quo by the Man.  To be a Democrat in those days implied one may support violent protests at home to end the war overseas.  A generation gap evolved with Democrats usually younger voters and Republicans their parents.

Ready for his close up

Enter Ronald Reagan, the law-and-order governor of Hippie California.  Americans generally forgot he used to be a Democrat before switching to the GOP.  Why?  It’s no mystery but one that needs reviewing.  His wealth increased and so did his tax rate.  He no longer believed that government could and should solve all the country’s problems.  He believed government was the problem.  Many Democrats, former liberals who at the time were parents of the Mini Boom, agreed.  They were called Reagan Democrats.

So we’re back to the two-pronged philosophy of our country divided by Democrats and Republicans.  Clinton’s presidency brought together the parties.  His style was called Business Democrats, AKA New Democrats, and he was quite adept at using tax revenue to build and create new business especially in neglected communities.  Did I mention he is credited for balancing the federal budget and erasing the deficit to $0?  That feat was not mere luck but phenomenal economic foresight.

Money is the root

A government teacher taught the difference between Democrats and Republicans by quipping: Republicans see a cockroach and call an exterminator while Democrats see one and stomp it with a shoe.  Democrats keep their curtains open when they shouldn’t while Republicans, though unnecessary, keep their curtains closed.  Shtick was his way to answer the age-old American question, “What’s the difference between a Democrat and a Republican?”

I think the answer is similar to the difference between Missionary and Southern Baptists.  It’s about where the money goes based on the priorities of the organization.  Republicans believe, in the paraphrased adage of President Cal Coolidge, the business of America is business.  Business has to be good for the little guy to prosper, for anyone to prosper.  A fair point.  Democrats believe government should help the little guy when he cannot take care of himself through employment, education, food and healthcare.  An altruistic notion.

So now, how have the two long-standing American political Parties come to blows, like sending mail bombs to big-name Democrats, over how the money’s spent?  What the hell?  Some say the animosity came from the Democrats doing in President Richard Nixon.  Others say the hatred seeped in when Republican political know-it-all Newt Gingrich created a list of adjectives to use whenever speaking about Democratic opponents.  Such words that would eventually be tied to all Democrats include: liberal, sick, pathetic, weak, corrupt, destructive, intolerant, insensitive, radical, traitors, self-serving, selfish, incompetent.  Hold on just a cotton-pickin’ minute!  Don’t all these words describe some Republican leaders, too, or anybody for that matter?  Goodness gracious.

That list of adjectives cleverly devised to stick it to Democrats along with the modern internet age of fast-paced political arguments have escalated the so-called major differences between political Parties to a deadly battle of sorts, still without declaring civil war … yet … again.

Straight-jacket politics

Back to the original subject, the straight-party ticket may not be the smartest way to vote especially in the Information Age when voters really should look up any candidate and read about him or her and decide for ourselves who we like or trust.  But the straight-party ticket obviously has been used in recent national elections as a protest vote, one that clearly tells the other Party in charge: “I can no longer sit back and let your side ruin the country, in my humble opinion as an American citizen, taxpayer and voter.”  The straight-party vote was more or less a ‘fed-up’ and ‘throw-the-bums out’ maneuver … one that a sore-head Party decided to take away from all of us.  The straight-party vote was just too overwhelming and powerful and maybe primarily used by Democrats.

Some say all the other states do not allow a straight-party line on their election ballots, so Texas should follow suit.  Why I never thought I’d live to see the day Texas would want to be like all the other states in the Union.  Our elected officials in Austin may say this is for our own good, like making a kid drink milk, that using our brains to make a decision as crucial as voting for the right Don Yarborough is literally life or death.  It’s life and death all right, of expanding political thought, social movement and cultural change.  But hey, we’re all Americans.  Democrats and Republicans have too much in common to want to kill the other side.  Right?

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God bless immigrants … because America doesn’t want to anymore

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

the wretched refuse of your teeming shores.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

 

Whack!  Off with her head!!  Seems Der Spiegel over in Germany was right all along about President Donald Trump.  Right after the 2016 election, the European news journal ran a cover cartoon depiction of Trump: holding in one hand a bloody sword while the other held up the bleeding head of the Statue of Liberty.  The revolting editorial cartoon, in color for the macabre, was supposed to be political satire based on Trump’s agenda if and when elected U.S. president.  His first order of business was to stop immigration (soft-pedaled as illegal immigration).  The Statue of Liberty has long been a world renowned symbol of America’s embrace of immigrants regardless of nationality, race, ethnicity or religion.

And now President Trump’s plan to halt immigration, specifically of Latin Americans, is coming to fruition right after the 2018 midterm election.  He and he alone ordered the U.S. military to protect the border.  There are two conflicts with the presidential order.  One is illegal immigration, already handled by federal border patrol agents.  Then there is the issue of asylum.

Any former American school student must find it hard to believe the United States will no longer provide asylum to Latin American refugees, whether they walked a thousand miles in a massive crowd or crossed the border as a family with children.  Border patrol agents know what to do when catching and apprehending anyone illegally crossing the border.  If individuals claim asylum, they are allowed temporary entrance into the U.S. but must wait for federal immigration courts to hear their plea, often just the immigrant’s word based on personal experience without documentation such as photos and cell phone videos of rapes and gang shootings or recorded threats against their lives.  The Hondurans heading north reportedly to America have claimed their lives are in danger, meaning they would certainly be tortured and/or killed if they remained in their homeland … which is where they’d rather live, don’t you think?

Home is where the heart is

Political and religious asylum has been a human right long recognized and respected by the U.S. probably because ours is a nation of immigrants, people whose lineage is not originally from this part of the world.  The majority of us can check our family history online nowadays and find when our roots were firmly planted in the soil of America, once called the New World by Europeans of the Renaissance and Enlightenment eras.

In the digital age of the 21st century, the power in charge says Americans have had enough of foreigners migrating to our shores.  Why do they keep coming here when they know Americans will resent and suppress them?  When they know we’ll keep them poor, yell at ’em to speak English, and refuse to get to know them or help in any way other than begrudgingly with our hard-earned tax dollars?  Hmm.  Money is always the initial prejudice.

According to the U.S. budget breakdown, the biggest slice of the pie goes to support the military, then another big chunk goes to Medicare (the elderly who paid into it during their working years), and so on until finally a tiny sliver is left to assist legal immigrants with low-income housing, some foodstuffs, very basic healthcare (Medicaid) and enforced public schooling.

The poem at the foot of the Statue of Liberty had it right all along: Most immigrants who come to this country—like most of our ancestors—are poor not rich, hardly living a life of privilege off U.S. taxpayers.  And immigrants stay poor for at least one generation.  Most immigrants to this country are good conscientious people, folks just wanting to survive and yes prosper, actually begging for what they believed was a natural God-given human right to be free from persecution.  They are willing to do anything, work any job, accept the lowest wage, reside in high-crime areas, put up with taunts and jeers coming from the top of our political power structure and supported wholeheartedly by the loudest of Americans—people who’ve forgotten their heritage, their family’s journey not all that long ago.  What a shame.

To be poor and also an immigrant is to be liberal, meaning open minded to other ways of living and thinking.  Right there is the core issue irritating the heart of Americans who do not believe their tax dollars and our nation should support immigrants for any reason whatsoever.  Immigrants, legal or illegal, have never been our country’s Number One problem, likened to an infestation of cockroaches that must be exterminated.

Immigrants to America do not deserve to be kicked in the gut by steel boots and scorned with hateful rhetoric and general meanness.  And if we’re really being honest, immigrants seeking asylum, from homelands dominated by violent crazy narco governments, do not have in their numbers the thousands of native-born American rapists and criminal sociopaths who daily terrorize citizens until stopped by police.  The sociopaths of narco governments remain behind in the countries they dominate.  For life is good, why would they ever leave?

Meanwhile in New York Harbor, modern Americans can tear down the plaque at the foot of Lady Liberty or redact the poetic words once symbolizing the golden purpose of our country’s beautiful and just existence.  But those very words and the profound meaning will not be ignored or forgotten by millions of Americans and neither will our consecrated assurance in the sanctity of humanity.  We’re all just human beings down here, trying to stay alive, walking toward the light of liberty wherever we find it near or far.  Like it or not, we all are equal to each other, maybe not in the eyes of the races but in the eyes of our Creator, the One we each answer to one way or another.

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Americans created communities that hate Jews or know nothing about them

I’ve lived in Texas all my life, and there is a phrase I’ve never ever heard spoken, not by my neighbors in the Dallas suburbs and East Texas or my family from rural Oklahoma.  That phrase is “dirty Jews.”  As I think about it, I never heard anyone in school or church say the word ‘Jew’—and if so only in biblical references and with certain respect such as “Jews are God’s only chosen people” or a reminder “Jews didn’t kill Jesus; the Romans did.”  That is my background.  On the flip side, I can’t say I’ve never heard anything derogatory against blacks, Mexicans and even women but not a word of disrespect or animosity (or even acknowledgement really) about people who happen to be Jewish.

Having lived many decades now, I’ve sadly come to realize there are parts of my own country where hatred against Jews is commonly spoken in jest or contempt by mostly white people in families and communities where emotions are enraged by the thought of a Jew living next door or attending school with their Christian children.

And now after the largest massacre of Jews on U.S. soil, all of us who call ourselves American must never forget the many enclaves throughout our homeland where anti-Jewish sentiment festers and boils.  We must always be aware of those whose family and acquaintances are hostile toward Jews, wishing them dead, insisting they control the mass media, writing and talking online about their hatred of this particular group of people.

I cannot comprehend the world’s perpetual hatred of Jews, of all people, still today given their history and the Holocaust—which did occur and was proudly chronicled and methodically recorded by Germans during Hitler’s reign.  The only anti-Semite acts I recall growing up around Dallas was synagogues vandalized with swastikas, probably the work of teens, wannabe Nazis who more than likely by now have lived long enough to regret what they did.

Faster than the speed of speech

Americans have always wrestled with our constitutional right of free speech.  This is why and how we’ve come to this point in our political and social history: the internet and our insistence to leave uncensored what others say and believe, no matter how offensive, prejudiced and untrue.  Even the American Civil Liberties Union, which members include a number of Jewish people, would support the right of everyone to say whatever he or she wants, short of pranking “Fire!” in a crowded theater.  Therefore, responsible speech was the key to maintaining our free society.

But because of free speech in the Information Age, we’ve created an era of ugliness.  Those white communities throughout our nation, the ones who collectively hate Jews enough to kill them or wish them harm, have discovered a brotherhood of sorts on the internet.  White Nationalist websites are worldwide with memberships growing wildly since the dawn of the internet.  These are sites filled with jokes and sensationalized stories about blacks and every race and ethnicity on the planet, of course including Jews.  After Trump was elected president, our own crop of white Nationalists and neo-Nazis felt they could finally come out in public and proclaim their ideals, chanting in their march on Charlottesville “The Jews will not replace us!!!”

Shocking—to someone like me, raised without ever hearing an unkind sentiment against Jews.  I grew up on ’60s & ’70s TV, watching plenty of comedians comfortably make fun of their Jewish heritage, their people and the stereotypes.  In the privacy of our homes, we laughed because the comedians, actors, singers, writers and shows made us think it was all right to laugh at what was ludicrous.  No harm done because in the heart of TV land, we held no animosity toward Jews as a people or a culture.  We were entertained, never seeing a hint of sadness in those who made us smile.  We had nothing to fear from each other, audience and entertainer.

Too, we were horrified when watching movies about real-life stories during the Holocaust, of degradation and for a few survival.  We cried at depictions of a stark reality, what European Jews had to go through during Hitler’s reign.  We wept because of our shared humanity, never for a moment thinking deep resentment and hatred toward these people still exists, not all these years after the last world war.

Like the Nazis, white Nationalists are more often Christian than atheist, surely celebrating Christmas and Easter especially if they have children.  That is most incomprehensible: Christians hating Jews.  The Jews would tell us the hatred started long ago, an animosity, a tribal fear, a social and cultural jealousy that goes back in time thousands of years, way before Christ.  Jewish history is not the history of everyone else.  That is because many communities would not allow Jews as residents.  Then television and movies brought Jews right into our homes, like virtual neighbors.  Turns out, Jewish people, whether through humor or historical fact, can teach the rest of us quite a lot: about spiritual faith, common decency, empathy, justice, assimilation, wisdom, humor, cooperation, communication, and acceptance of those who hate them … and always will.

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Bill & Hillary’s excellent adventure: a national speaking tour on their worn-out brand

Here’s how President Bill & Hillary Clinton’s speaking tour will go down: Democrats with money and power will purchase lots of tickets then give them to various employees and others who will then pass the tickets off to family and anybody before stashing them in coat pockets and desk drawers to be forgotten.  But the Clintons will get paid regardless.

If they were divorced, the Clintons’ speaking tour would be much more interesting.  Instead, it’ll be the same ol’ stories by the same ol’ couple that America has gotten to know all too well.  What could this former ‘power couple’ possibly share with the American people that might uplift our spirits, especially the Democrats let down by Hillary’s inability to win the presidency when her contender was Donald Trump?  Remember how everyone in the world was surprised she did not win and he became President of the United States?

After losing the election, Hillary remained reclusive to pout and sulk.  But during that time, America changed.  For one, there’s the Me Too movement.  Many still think President Clinton is or was a rapist, not just a playboy and skirt-chasing cad.  All agree, including ol’ Bill himself, that he’s been a sex addict, a perpetual womanizer, a dirty dog.  A lot of women never forgave Hillary for not divorcing her husband when the Monica Lewinsky affair went public, which would lead to President Clinton’s impeachment.  During the most public crisis of their marriage, Hillary stood by her man—and as she’s tried to explain to us, too, stood by her president.  She’s one helluva woman … or wants us to believe that about her.

Haven’t the Clintons lived in separate houses in different towns and different states?  Maybe that’s the secret to their long enduring marriage!  But make no mistake, what they want to tell us will be totally scripted and nothing candid so that we and history might get a little insight into the way they really are as husband and wife.  That’s what we care about more than their politics.  And the Clintons can talk politics till the cows come home.

Yesterday …

Before Hillary ran for president in 2008 and again in 2016, she was voted one of the Most Admired Women in the World every year, always landing in the top spots right up there with Beyonce.  That’s saying a lot especially with the young women of the world who voted in that poll.  Hillary was respected more internationally than nationally.

Maybe the Clintons, the most recognized elders of the Baby Boomers, think they can reignite the idealism that marked their generation.  Then again, a lot of Democrats voted for Trump, thinking “Anyone but Hillary.”  And a lot of Republicans voted for Hillary, thinking “Anyone but Trump.”  To many Americans, the 2016 election indeed was a choice between the lesser of two evils.

All this talk about Hillary as evil doesn’t make sense.  She didn’t divorce her husband even for blatant infidelity, which should have scored her major points among the religious.  But her decision to remain married, to Bill, backfired.  Maybe conservatives suspected another motive for Hillary sticking with Bill, perhaps thinking she was simply power hungry.

What’s so funny, and I mean strange, about the Clintons is how they were friends with the Trumps.  There is a famous photo of the two couples: the Clintons standing beside Trump and his new wife Melania at their star-studded wedding.  The four of them appear the best of friends, people who understand each other, travel in the same social circles and at the time the same political sphere.  During the impeachment, Trump was quick to take up for Clinton, maintaining the president was getting a raw deal—all that right-wing political furor, public time and tax money over an affair.  Trump had been a lifelong Democrat until he eyed the presidency, first running as an Independent then winning as a Republican and now chastising Democrats for all the evil in the world.

Strange bedfellows

The funny strange thing about the Clintons is how similar they are to Trump: sharing the same narcissism, relishing in the spotlight, insisting on national attention.  Their crowds for sure will not be as loud and riotous as Trump rallies.  Theirs is a softer touch.  When speaking publicly, Hillary appeals more to the intellect than the emotions, often appearing stoic and guarded with little sense of humor no matter how much she broadly smiles and laughs out loud.  She doesn’t appear naturally carefree—not like she was in her pre-Bill days when Hillary Rodham sans makeup and coiffed hair was a standout career woman, an intense person of quiet character and meaningful purpose in work that would benefit the disenfranchised.

But when Bill Clinton speaks, people listen.  We used to.  He had warmth, charisma, a way with words and phrases, an ability to speak more from the heart than the head yet managed to marry both qualities that make us human.  Northerners called it Southern charm.  Southerners just liked him from the start because he was genuinely one of us, even from a small town in Arkansas.

Bill can laugh at himself and his many foibles.  Hillary can laugh at herself, too, yet the general public still does not believe her self-deprecation as part of her natural personality.  She comes across as insincere, again the power-hungry persona that many Americans swear they sense from her, not knowing her personally as most of us don’t.

By those who know him best, Bill has been called a genius.  And you know what they say about geniuses: how they lack horse sense?  Isn’t it funny how life bestows upon a very few high intelligence that seems wasted in the very ways that matter to regular folks, people whose priorities are: God first then marriage, children, family, work and community.  The strange coupling of the Clintons is how their personal values did not center on home and hearth or fidelity or for that matter the humble American character that makes us serve humanity first and place ourselves last.