Author: cheriebell69@hotmail.com

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Women of America unite: You’re still missing the true fight

The hotly divisive nomination of newly confirmed Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court was not so much about boorish adolescent behavior in high school and even college.  The arguments were about females who claim sexual assault, especially decades after an attack, still just an allegation.  Who should believe her?  When Kavanaugh’s accuser Christine Blasey Ford was a young teen-ager, the question would have been who would believe her, which is why she never spoke a word all these many years … until the very guy she swears long ago jumped her, groped and forcefully stopped her cries for help was a serious contender for the highest court in the land.  Hearing her story, the entire nation split into two jagged sides, mostly along women against men though there were women who supported the handsome candidate and faithful family man now raising two girls.

We as a nation had to bear witness to the once timid teen of long ago publicly tell her side of the story to an almost all-male Congress and millions of Americans via cable news.  Then Judge Kavanaugh aired his rebuttal.  Both choked back tears of emotion recalling their separate recollections: hers that the teen-age attacker was definitely Brett Kavanaugh, his that he has never attacked any female his entire life, punch-drunk or sober—though he conceded to loving beer.  ?  What kind of ‘Trumped’ up hearing was that?  Every word then-Judge Kavanaugh read from his oral argument sounded as if penned by the President himself.

We realized Republicans were easy to agree there was no proof of a sexual assault—and there never will be.  So brilliant and cunning are sexual assaults, not so much rape nowadays with the DNA.  But many women believed Dr. Ford’s testimony because they have experienced similar horseplay when they were young, immature and naïve, never in a million years thinking an adolescent boy would jump her or cop a feel or snap her bra or cup her breast.  Every sexist excuse I thought died with the 1970s came flying out of the mouths from those who wholeheartedly supported Justice Kavanaugh: Boys will be boys; the guys probably thought the girl would like the attention; she named the wrong guy; she looked like she wanted it; she shouldn’t have been hanging out with older teens with booze and no adults; she was wearing a bathing suit; and my personal favorite: women are essentially pure evil and are notorious for making up lies against men just to get them in big trouble and destroy their lives forever.

Yeah, right

On behalf of all women around the world, let me assure: the number of vindictive conniving women who would go through the time and trouble to concoct a lie of sexual assault against a man is nowhere near the number of men who sexually assault women and girls every single day … and get away with it.  This sobering fact was intentionally lost in the smokescreen of a salacious he said/she said American moment.  Americans should never forget our own national statistic: 1 in 4 girls are victims of sexual assault.  And with most girls frightened into never telling a soul, the statistic reasonably could be 1 in 2 is a victim of sexual assault … by males.

And to my fellow sisters understandably up in arms over sexual assault and the general public’s initial disbelief of the ‘unmentionable’ that spotlights the accuser more than the accused—well, my dears, there is a much bigger issue to rage against perpetual sexism.  Instead of taking to the streets to protest Justice Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, they should have been using their time and effort to protest the lingering situation worthy of national scrutiny: Why the hell aren’t there more women on our nation’s Supreme Court by now?  Women make up a slight majority of the population, five million more of us than men.  In representing all the people fairly, the U.S. Supreme Court should reflect our nation’s true demographics by gender, race and ethnicity, instead of carrying on like white males dominate the national landscape.  They don’t.

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A good friendship cut short by juvenile diabetes

Recently I dreamed about my good friend Jean.  That’s the only way I get to visit with her now.  She died a few years ago.  As a young adult, she had been diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, having to inject herself in the abdomen every morning.  One time I naively watched, only then realizing the severity of her condition.  Diabetes is deadly serious, the seventh leading cause of death in the U.S. with more than 250,000 deaths annually.  By the time Jean was 60, she had experienced every single one of the health battles brought on by this disease.

She didn’t deserve it.  She was tall and slender, naturally tan with shining green cat eyes and a wide smile, outgoing with lots of friends, a member of local film societies and astronomy clubs.  Her most distinctive feature was her raspy voice, the sexy tone of a long-time smoker.  Jean was happiest when smoking a cigarette.  I never warned her about smoking, how doctors say it makes diabetes even worse.  I figured she knew all about diabetes and the risks.  Smoking seemed her greatest pleasure in life, and I was not about to hound her, because I cherished our friendship.

Jean was a few years older than me.  We met at a party.  She and I had similar interests and enjoyed each other’s company.  We started a girls’ night of sorts: exploring new restaurants, seeing movies and shows, or just visiting over the phone.  We liked foreign films and art flicks and Baby Boomer rock.  She was very professional, a paralegal who took her work and appearance seriously.  I was just learning how to create a career in journalism and later education.  She would review my resume, part of her duties while seeking employees for law firms, and over a cigarette advise me wisely.

She became someone I could tell my troubles to such as dating, getting along with co-workers and dealing with assorted bosses.  She was like an older sister.  We went through a bout of unemployment.  That’s probably when we spent the most time together, just visiting, cooking meals for each other, and going to the dollar cinema to pretend we were part of the working masses.  Jean was a feminist, one of those who graduated in the early 1970s.  She was of an era I admired, and she was better versed than I on subjects like women’s rights.  She could sniff out sexism when I still gave men the benefit of the doubt.

Things my best friend taught me:

Tip restaurant servers at least 20 percent, more for excellent service; wear hats to get attention from men; always use table clothes and real linen napkins; buy flowers and split them into bouquets throughout the house; when driving, try to get off the highways as soon as possible because it’s safer.

After yet another unemployment streak as a paralegal, Jean had to move from Texas to Florida and was finally doing well for awhile.  She lived within walking distance of the beach, something she missed while living in north Texas.  She grew up in Delaware and talked about clambakes and fish boils right on the beach.  She loved lighthouses, too, so one Christmas I bought her a picture calendar of assorted ones, each similar yet unique, just like us.  Jean bought a nice three-bedroom Florida home complete with a lanai, a patio and swimming pool area enclosed in a sheer netting to keep bugs out.  A couple times a year, we’d call each other.  While listening to her adventures and then advice to improve my life mostly at work, I was soothed by the background sound of rolling waves from the nearby coast.

One summer I flew out for a visit.  She took me to her astronomy club late at night in the Florida Everglades.  There was no light, but the sky was filled with millions of stars.  Her colleagues used high-powered telescopes and showed me different planets.  In the near distance was the sound of a creature I’d never heard.  I described the mooing as a satanic cow.  The Floridians laughed, telling me it was an alligator or crocodile.  Both live in the swamps where we stood.

To have juvenile diabetes, Jean lived pretty well, taking insulin regularly, and had a great big appetite.  She could eat anything and not gain a pound.  She kept hard candies in her car just in case of an insulin spike.  If we were at a late-night bar, she always ordered an Irish coffee “without the whiskey.”  She was cautious with alcohol, telling me about a time when she was younger and had been drinking with friends and took a cab home.  The driver detected she was drunk and walked her to her house then forced his way in and attacked her.  Nothing happened as she screamed until he left.  She took the incident as a wake-up call to improve and never leave herself vulnerable like that again.

She reduced smoking to a few cigarettes a day but not entirely quitting cold turkey.  She was able to live a seemingly healthy life with diabetes during her 30s and 40s.  But after she turned 50, the disease declared an all-out war.  Jean was unemployed again during a Florida recession when diabetes was affecting her eyesight.  As the years passed, with each phone call I realized diabetes was taking a toll on her health.  She had to undergo eye surgery and doctor visits that involved a needle in the eyes, all due to diabetes.  The procedures were not successfully restoring her vision.  And at some point, she knew she would never be employed again.  Because her situation was dire, I advised her to sell the house and move in with her mother in Delaware.  A year later, that is what she had to do.

So I started calling her every now and then in Delaware.  Again, Jean’s prognosis was not good.  Soon she was undergoing dialysis due to kidney failure and was placed on a list for a kidney and heart transplant.  She lost her sight and though she was living in her childhood home, one day she walked into something she didn’t see on the floor, and the fall broke her hip.  She had to be moved into a convalescent center.  I’m sure that was the lowest moment of her life.  I realized I needed to plan a trip to see her.

A Yankee-Rebel friendship

I flew up to Delaware, met Jean’s mom, noticing the matching light green eyes of the two women.  Jean, smiling merrily, had to use a walker to get around.  I don’t think she could see me.  We had made all kinds of plans, like spending the night at my hotel (where she needed to know where she could smoke since it wasn’t permitted in the rooms) and taking the Amtrak the next day to Philadelphia.  I was leery this plan, that reinvigorated her so much, may fall through.  Sure enough, she called late night to cancel, explaining she was going to the hospital  about her leg.  A side effect of dialysis, Jean had gained water weight in her calves, and one kinda erupted with fluid and needed medical attention.  I toured Philly alone.

The next day Jean was able to take me to Amish Country in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  I did not realize I would be driving.  She arranged for a rental car, and we three women drove out there, Jean sitting in the back sipping on a soda as her elderly mother guided me from the front passenger side.  Whenever we stopped for a break, Jean mysteriously left.  Her mother knew what she was doing.  She’d spot Jean sitting outside having a smoke and scold her daughter harshly.  I played it down, trying to persuade her mother to consider the big picture, though never saying aloud, “Jean’s dying.  Let her enjoy her life.”

On our final day together, Jean wanted me to drive her around her hometown, a historic locale settled off the Delaware River in the 18th century.  She had me drive her to row houses in what seemed a rough area.  She asked what I thought about her moving into one, to have her own place again.  She was determined she’d get to work again once her health improved.  Despite declining health, Jean never lost her vitality and spirit to work for a living.  She was able to get both Medicare and Medicaid, thanks to lawyers who knew how to fight the system on her behalf.  Jean was blind, on dialysis and a transplant list.  Why would our government give someone like that a hard time?  Jean went to dialysis three times a week—and the ordeal took the entire day, leaving her exhausted and needing to recuperate the following day.

During our visit, I gave Jean a unique piece of jewelry I had bought for myself.  It was a replica charm bracelet from the British royal family featuring a half dozen or more gold crosses, each with a different faux jewel: ruby, diamond, emerald, sapphire.  On the back of each cross were engraved Biblical passages.  Jean loved it and wore it to all her dialysis treatments as a conversation piece.  I wanted it to make her feel beautiful and loved.  When it was time for me to leave, Jean was chatting about nothing important while looking away from my direction.  I hugged her and choked back tears to say, “You’ve been a really good friend, Jean, my best friend in life.”  Jean, in her raspy voice, smiled and replied sheepishly, “Ahhhh!  You’re my buddy!  We had all sorts of fun together.”  Her mother stood by, quietly witnessing two friends saying goodbye forever.

Months later I called.  This time Jean told me one of her legs had been amputated.  Trying to keep the conversation upbeat, I asked about her artificial limb, how’s she doing learning to walk again.  I didn’t mean for that to be our last conversation.  But calling her time and again was so heartbreaking.  I waited a year later … then called one night around Christmas.  Her mother did not remember me and sounded suspicious when I asked to speak to Jean.  I recounted my trip to Delaware and how Jean had been my friend in Texas for a long time.  Her mother finally told me Jean had passed away a few months ago.  Tears welled for a brief moment.  I was surprised but not really.  Jean, her mother explained, had been in the hospital with pneumonia and with all the other complications, her body gave out.  She died on her birthday.  Jean told me she thought people who died on their birth dates were special, that that was something so unique it must have some kind of cosmic connection.

Always practical when it came to legal matters, Jean assured me her final arrangements had been made including who to notify and that I was at the top of the list.  But I was not called, and to this day I wonder about that.  I quickly looked up her obituary online, finding it scant in details about her wonderful life and vivacious spirit, even brave battle with diabetes.  Instead of flowers, mourners were requested to donate to her mother’s church.  Jean was not religious.  The only perfect thing about her brief obit was the picture, a close up of her with an ocean in the background.  She’s clasping a glass of red wine while a big smile captures her joie de vivre.

Oh, if Jean were alive today!  What she would say about our latest president.  We would never stop laughing.  Shared politics was perhaps our strongest bond.  She once told me I was one of the very few liberals she had met in Texas.  Perhaps she felt out of place.  But she made the most of living in the Lone Star State, even hanging out with Texas legend Kinky Friedman, a highlight of her life.  Jean and I shared cultural, political and even spiritual views.  No wonder we enjoyed talking to each other.  In fact, Jean would be so proud of me creating a blog called The Texas Tart.  I imagine she reads every one wherever she is now.  In the dream, I told her I was going to write one about her (silently realizing I’d have to address her struggle with diabetes).  She beamed excitedly and told me, “That’s a great idea!”

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Leave it to Communist China to eradicate Muslim terrorism

Have you heard what China is doing to a minority Muslim population?  From the sound of it, they’re ‘nipping in the bud’ religious terrorist attacks, schemes, plans and thoughts.  The Communist government is attacking this murderous global problem by special indoctrination camps for certain undesirables, like Orwell’s 1984 and Hitler’s Nazi Germany.  The goal is to destroy the Muslim’s belief in not only Islam but any religion.  Of this goal, Communist China will no doubt be 100 percent effective.  What’s the other option for Muslims practicing their faith in China: death?

According to several recent news reports, a million members of a Muslim minority called the Uyghurs (pronounced ‘wee-gers’), who have traditionally lived near the Mongolian border, have been rounded up and forced to reside in camps.  There they will undergo forced assimilation which no doubt will include learning to appreciate the social equality and efficiency of communism while also destroying one’s intellectual, emotional and spiritual bond to religion such as belief in God or Allah.  Remaining Uyghurs not yet forced into camps must welcome Communist Party workers into their homes for inspections.  The Uyghur community maintains every family now has at least one member in the indoctrination camps.

The Uyghur minority is objecting to this mass humiliation as a violation of their human rights.  They claim they are not ethnically Chinese, and their land was not part of China until invasion and annexation in the mid 20th century.  Uyghurs have been discriminated against as workers unless they prove to be devout followers of Chinese communism and enthusiastic members of the Party.

Center of the world

Renowned for audaciously ruthless global business ventures, from mining Africa to building islands in the international waters of the South China Sea, China has patiently watched as the U.S. and other nations ineffectively deal with terrorism in their own countries.  Along with sporadic violence instigated by Al-Qaeda and ISIS, China diligently observed two decades of perpetual war in the Middle East which has left hundreds of millions dead and wounded.  For its role in leading the Middle East war on terrorism, the United States owes China more than $1 trillion.

China has had its share of Muslim terrorist attacks within its borders.  But when it comes to China, communism is going to defeat any other way of life.  Their brand of communism includes torture, mind control and death.  China’s Cultural War of the 1940s began by rounding up all teachers and the educated who were summarily slaughtered and culminated in forcing Buddhist monks and nuns to copulate in public.  China is not like the United States and Western Europe, both unwilling to violate human rights even in war.  China does not adhere to or believe in a human being’s inalienable rights of freedom, free speech, free press, or individual pursuits of happiness.  That is the way communism remains in China; it dominates any citizen’s thought to the contrary.  As for religion, God, spiritual beliefs: that will be crushed if detected in the human brain of a fellow countryman.

In the 1980s, China permitted Western influence and culture, even Christianity, but college students began protesting, wanting total freedom not just a taste.  Then in 1989 China’s military massacred an estimated 10,000 protesters in Tiananmen Square.  Life soon was restored to normalcy and faithful communism with a sustaining vengeance.  China’s communism is like a plague that destroys all mankind or like an alien invasion of humanity as quietly as “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”  Creepy, how Communist China has yet to fall like Eastern Europe and the USSR.  Makes you wonder what they are holding onto.  The answer is supreme, glorious, indestructible power.

With a population of one billion, modern China is bustling with a generation far wealthier than Chairman Mao would have preferred.  After all, communism is supposed to be ‘all for one and one for all,’ meaning everyone receives the same earnings from a government stipend regardless of occupation.  Money, or the love of it, ultimately will change the hearts and minds of the Chinese.  Communism pretends to hate capitalism and free enterprise, but no one earns money better than China, mostly on the backs of a slave workforce.

So now China joins the rest of the world in dealing with global terrorism stemming from radicalized Muslim communities and individuals.  Throughout the 21st century, China has watched war-weary Americans and other international soldiers return to their homelands—presumably demoralized; with some blind, deaf, amputated, emasculated.  The beauty of Communist China is it will once and for all defeat the global enemy of terrorism in as much as it relates to religion.  A quick online look at the extremely fit and insurmountable Chinese soldiers, marching goose step in precision along their nation’s latest artillery and killing machines, one foresees extreme victory and rather soon.  Communist China is more than willing to pay the price to eradicate Muslim terrorism within a vast expansive territory.  Similar to the terrorists themselves, the Chinese method is simple: obliterate all human rights, especially religious beliefs and practices.  China has shown the world what it takes to install and maintain Godless communism: consummate brutality physically, psychologically and spiritually.

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Planned Parenthood: damned if they do, damned if they don’t

There was a time in America when citizens supported the idea of ‘planned parenthood,’ that individuals can and should determine when and if they have children.  The golden era was during the women’s rights movement of the 1960s and ’70s.  Marching beside the nation’s women all along was Planned Parenthood.  The national organization, formed in 1917, drew controversy upon inception back in the olden days when its main goal was advocating for contraception and providing contraceptives.  But mention Planned Parenthood today and the first thing that comes to mind is America’s most divisive issue: abortion.  And for the umpteenth time, Congressmen are attempting to cut all federal funding of Planned Parenthood, the lone organization that has undoubtedly been the life-saving grace for many a girl and woman, more so for the poor among us.

Because it’s already against the law, Planned Parenthood—the most financially scrutinized not-for-profit in the nation—cannot use federal tax funds for abortion services.  However, The Catholic News reported this year that government funding is the largest source of revenue for Planned Parenthood: $500,000 million annually for an organization that performs more than 300,000 abortions a year.  Another online fact sheet claimed Planned Parenthood’s government funding, including Medicaid and other federal health department reimbursements, makes up 94 percent of its total revenue.  The Washington Post Fact Checker looked into the revenue and services conflict but used figures provided by Planned Parenthood posted on its website: three percent on abortion services, 42 percent on sexually transmitted disease prevention and treatment, 34 percent on contraceptive services, nine percent on cancer screenings, and 11 percent on women’s healthcare.  Each year Planned Parenthood reportedly serves three million people, mostly women and girls but also male adolescents and men.

Planned Parenthood’s total revenue is $1.164 billion, meaning less than half comes from the government, each state also obligated to provide a funding match for Department of Health services like Medicaid.  The organization divided its 2017 revenue figures and sources as:

$543.7 million in revenue, 37 percent from government health services reimbursements and grants;

$267.5 million, 36 percent private contributions;

$318.1 million, 22 percent non-government health services revenue;

$34.3 million, five percent other revenue.

Picture if you will

Many people cannot forget those pictures from inside the womb of fetal development, first shown in the 1960s: wondrous images of tiny bodies, feet, limbs, heads and facial features in mere weeks in human development.  Why, it looked just like a fully formed newborn baby.  When the happy couple discovers they are expecting, the baby is fully formed in their minds and hearts.  That makes miscarriage all the more heartbreaking as well as pregnancy termination for whatever the reason.

Another development that would change the public’s collective mind about abortion was miraculous medical advancements with premies: premature babies born as early as five months, not fully ready for life outside the womb but arriving just the same.  Imagine holding a 16-ounce bottle of water then realizing that was the size of a premature baby who managed to survive and grow outside the womb and today is healthy and normal.  In light of those developments, millions of people who may have once supported abortion started to change their minds, seeing the procedure as unnecessary, immoral, selfish and cruel especially when so many couples are waiting to adopt.

Still Planned Parenthood is not going away and remains strong in its mission, “striving to create the healthiest generation ever.”  The website features a quote from president Cecile Richards: “We are here today to thank generations of organizations, troublemakers, and hell raisers who formed secret sisterhoods, who opened Planned Parenthood health centers in their communities, and demanded the right to control their own bodies.”  That was the issue that led to legalized abortion in the 1970s: females demanding control over their bodies and their lives.  And, too, control over their time, which is very important yet left out of the national feud.  When abortion was legalized, ensuring a safe medical procedure, it was supported by tens of millions of women who knew others had undergone a back-alley abortion or used other means like a wire hanger and were permanently injured, infected or died.  They didn’t want any of that, those gruesome extreme measures that confused young girls will take to end an unwanted pregnancy, to ever happen again—not in this country, not in modern times.

Last year The Kaiser Poll, a conservative organization, reported that 75 percent of Americans still support federal funds to Planned Parenthood while 22 percent support cutting all federal funds to the organization.  The poll also revealed that one in three women and one in four people have visited Planned Parenthood for health services.  Aren’t health services, 97 percent of what Planned Parenthood provides, to ensure a healthy population worth our tax dollars?

In recent decades, terrorism tactics along with screaming protesters outside the doors of Planned Parenthood clinics culminated in closing many facilities and cutting the number of doctors willing to perform abortions, still a legal medical procedure.  How many doctors were murdered because they worked for Planned Parenthood or in their private practice performed pregnancy terminations?  During the 1990s as the abortion issue escalated along with physician harassment and murder, President Bill Clinton maintained his policy would be to ensure abortion was ‘safe, legal and rare.’

But … 300,000 abortions a year isn’t a rare occurrence.  It makes so many Americans very angry to think abortions occur every day; despite the many reasons physical, financial or other; however complex and personal.  As long as federal tax funds are used to provide abortion services, citizens feel they can vehemently object, claiming religious and moral grounds and a violation of the soul, theirs and the unborn as they believe it.  The idea of abortion being a private matter, a personal issue and individual belief, that is nobody’s business but the human female young or old will not be tolerated—not in this country, not in this century.

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Hail to Susie: a dog’s life lived well, no need to clone

First thing I did after moving into my first house in 2004 was to get a dog.  I searched the SPCA, intent on getting the smallest dog, which turned out to be a 19-pound black-and-tan dachshund mix already named Susie.  As all the big horse dogs barked and jumped excitedly begging me to spring ’em from the joint, Susie was the only one who was solemn, laying belly down on the cement ground, her head on the floor and brown brow patches moving curiously  like she thought she’d gotten herself into a pickle.  An attendant took her out of the cage to greet me.  Surprised to be chosen, Susie wagged her tail and appeared ready to go, as if she’d been waiting just for me.  I paid the fee and drove her home in my car.  Soon as we arrived, Susie shot out and ran into the backyard, bouncing in the grass, smiling with glee, happy to finally be free.

I’ve never had a dog like Susie.  I cannot walk her on a leash because she pulls hard, like she’s on a mission, sniffing out critters alive and dead or thrown away foodstuffs.  She is the only dog I ever had to enroll in obedience school which both of us, dog and master, had to attend.  She only learned one lesson, to sit at my loud and stern command.  And she never got the position quite right, but we compromised with her laying belly down with head up and alert to my command, awaiting a treat.  I read about dachshunds and found two things: Dachshunds are indomitable, and they won’t stay in a backyard.  To their minds, the whole world is their backyard.  In other words, Susie’s nature was to get out of the fence and explore.  During most of her life, she did this many times, exhausting my husband and me while the neighbors got to know her name well and be on the lookout, too.  We learned to always check the yard for her newly dug holes to crawl underneath a wood fence.  We’d plug them with large rocks, bricks and heavy cement blocks.  Still, Susie was strong enough to move them or dig other holes to plan an escape.

She remains a nuisance whenever we come home or anyone else enters our house.  She enthusiastically jumps on people, demanding a greeting and attention (one of the reasons I took her to obedience school).  We figured she was lonely and eventually brought home another SPCA dog, only to find Susie if not restrained jumps on anyone coming in the house.  It’s friendly of her but bad dog.  We’ve taken her to the city’s small dog park where Susie designates herself the official gate greeter to other dogs.  All the weenie dogs gather around Susie, encircling her in either familiarity or admiration for her impressively large size.  We call Susie ‘Queen of the Dachshunds.’

Whenever we’d find that Susie had escaped the backyard again, my husband and I walked the neighborhood yelling for her.  I’d have her leash in hand in case of capturing her once again while my poor husband drove all around, windows down while calling her name.  There is a nearby creek that probably attracted her.  Many nights, after I’d let her out back before bedtime, we’d find she’d escaped.  One foggy evening, I walked all around the neighborhood streets, calling for her, very angry spending my time this way and having to hold an umbrella so my glasses wouldn’t get wet.  By the time I had given up and was returning to the house, Susie was walking right beside me.  I didn’t realize it till we were close to home.  Damn dog.

Don’t get me started on her annual trips to the vet where more than one assistant has to be called in to hold Susie while her nails are clipped.  The vet took to muzzling her because she tries to bite anyone restraining her, wagging her tail merrily all the while.  Having gone through this ordeal for years, the vet scolded me, “Haven’t you taught her ‘NO’ yet!?”  Hell yes I tell her NO several times a day, but this dog don’t mind.  She minds her father better than me probably because of his size and deeper voice.

During those first months of house training, I got Susie to use pads in a specific area of the house.  But some evenings when we were watching a movie or working on the computer, Susie would pee intentionally near us, I suspect as a domineering act because she was looking straight at us while doing it.  We’ve learned to listen to her growls and beware of her jumping dominance as a sign she needs or wants to go outside.

And wouldn’t you know it?  Susie was determined to sleep on the bed with us, like any other person.  For the first two weeks with Susie, I tried training her to sleep in a kennel outside the bedroom.  Nothing doing.  She wouldn’t stop whining, barking, growling all night long.  I moved the kennel into the bedroom; then tried to train her to sleep on a pallet beside the bed; consented to allowing her to sleep on top of the bedspread but stay at the foot of the bed.  She wore me down from lack of rest and insisted on sleeping between us with her head close to our pillows.  Sometimes I’d awake in the morning to her snout facing me, brown eyes staring at me.  Wonder what she’s thinking?

Killer dog

Unlike my previous dogs—cocker spaniels that enjoyed playing with squeaky toys and could fetch balls—Susie always would gnaw the squeak out of any toy and commence to destroying each and every one.  She’d start by ripping off the tail, legs, arms, ears and any pointed appendages for some reason.  Susie’s a natural born killer.  That first year we had her, in the wee hours of the morning she constantly ran off the bed into the kitchen chasing what turned out to be a rat.  She was alert but not quick enough and would return to bed.  It took several months of interrupting our sleep, but Susie won: finally trapping the rat in the mud room between the kitchen and our bedroom.  The rat was terrified hiding behind the dryer.  Susie hovered and waited.  When the rat bolted, Susie snapped it up horizontally in her jaws, shaking it dead, leaving tiny blood splatters all over the place.  She grinned with pride and the taste of blood.

We called Susie our wolf hero and presented her a framed certificate for killing the house rat.  Susie would go on to kill again and again: squirrels, mice, roaches, grub worms, a black feral cat, a raccoon her own size … and unfortunately one of our own dogs.  Susie always thought tiny dogs were playthings; we realized this at the small dog park when she wanted to play too rough with tiny dogs that people held in their arms.  But one time at the creek, we took in an abandoned mini chiweenie with long red hair and green eyes, still with puppy breath.  We realized we’d have to keep the 5-pound pup separate from Susie for awhile.  Naming her Chelsea, we let her outside with our other dog Tommy to play and grow strong.  Susie would watch intently through the backdoor window, whimpering wanting to play with them.  After a couple of weeks, I allowed the three dogs to play together, carefully monitoring Susie to stop any roughness.

Eventually the little pup wanted to get stronger and play-fight with Susie.  The two ran wild in the backyard and played very rough and tough, toppling over each other, forcing the other down to submission while growling and play choking the victim which would quickly return onto legs and ready for another go.  Susie lost some weight with all the exercise.  They were inseparable for a few years until Susie grew old.  Chelsea was 5 and becoming more dominant, always attacking Susie by jumping off the bed to knock her down.  Susie didn’t want to play rough anymore.  Besides, Chelsea had sharp teeth and was prone to biting.  One night Chelsea got into a big knock-down drag-out fight with Susie.  The two would not stop fighting each other.  It was horrible and hard to stop.  Things changed between them.  A year later, the fight between them erupted unexpectedly late night in the backyard.  Susie won.  We were mortified, heartbroken, and very angry, not knowing what to think about Susie anymore.  A few days went by as she moped around like she’d lost her best friend, her Daddy.  I asked her softly, “Why, Susie?  Why’d you kill Chelsea?”  She opened her mouth like she was going to tell me then realized she can’t talk.  The vet said dogs are not like humans; the bloodlust is always there.

Stop cloning around

Susie celebrated her 15th birthday this month.  As always we sang “Happy Birthday,” presented her with a good meal of salmon and potatoes, gave her a pink frosted dog cookie, some duck meat chews, and ice cream for dogs.  She grabbed the container by her teeth and pranced into the backyard away from the other dogs with the same treat and holding the cup between her paws proceeded to spend the next five minutes licking the cold peanut butter contents under the Texas sun.

Despite her zeal during preparation of each and every meal, Susie has slowed down considerably.  I think her bones ache, so I started adding a supplement to her morning meal.  She’s only had one surgery, years ago to clean wounds and sew her up after a dog fight with a much larger and stronger German shepherd.  I doubt Susie sees or hears well though her sniffing sense seems intact.  She can be heard snoring throughout the house as she sleeps very soundly.  Her naps can last most of the day except for interruptions by our other two dogs.  Sometimes she has a mild stomach sickness I suspect from eating grass and other things in the backyard.  Often she looks at me confused.  She enjoys going in the backyard, lying on the grass right under the sun, which probably is healing and soothing to her.  She can’t walk on a leash as fast and as forcefully as she used to.  Halfway through a walk, she just stops and lies down.  Still her heart is good, and she’s been given a clean bill of health at her annual checkups.

We know Susie’s years with us are numbered.  As a longtime dog owner, I’ve made the heart-wrenching decision to put a beloved pet to sleep when they’re in ill health, in pain, and very old and frail.  However, in this brave new world in which we live, dogs are being cloned, at $100,000 a pooch, mostly for billionaires and major stars like Barbra Streisand.  For someone who has played strong female characters, one would think the superstar could handle life after the death of a beloved pet.

Would I clone Susie?  Nope.  One dachshund has been enough for me.  She is either a breed or a dog who wore me out with her stubborn streak and bullying ways.  Yet I love her dearly.  We’ve been through so much together.  She’s a much better dog now that she no longer needs or even tries to roam around the world.  On her 9th birthday, I created a card with graphics from her presumed past lives such as a bull, a walrus, a hog, a snake, a donkey, an ape, a bucking bronco.  I wrote “The many incarnations of Susie.  You go dog!”  And she has for six more years.

Pet parents must come to grips with the fact that we outlive our pets and must be able to deal with it.  It is their nature and our grief.  And doesn’t nature already reproduce more than enough dogs and cats to fill the grieving hearts of humanity?  So why is cloning dogs necessary?  The breeds are practically identical.  The most humane action pet lovers can take after the death of a beloved furry friend is to go get another one or even two.  Maybe this is the reason God made sure dogs and cats would be reproduced naturally in abundance.  They’re everywhere to be found.  Just waiting for love.

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Requiem mass for the spiritually broken

Kyrie, eleison

Lord, have mercy

I’m not Catholic, and I don’t know a lot of Catholics.  But through the years, most of the ones I’ve gotten to know are actually former Catholics.  So bitter are their childhood memories of Catholic schooling; obligated mass attendance; memorized Hail Marys and many formal prayers; built-in guilt; confession; communion; signs of the cross; and catechism of memorized saints, rituals, holy days, feasts, mass settings, and biblical passages.  By the time my ‘former-Catholic’ friends were young adults, they were more than cynical about The Church.  But other young people who were raised in Protestant denominations get burned out on religion, too, and strike out on their own, simply choosing not to attend church all the time.  Early adulthood is a time of breaking away from required childhood routines, teachings and most importantly spiritual beliefs.

The Catholic Church being a big mystery to me, not unlike the Jewish faith, I never realized what all the silent anger was about among the few Catholics I knew and wanted to get to know better—why a deliberate non-mention that they had been raised Catholic.  When the subject came up, they would roll their eyes and grit their teeth.  Seemed like they didn’t want to talk about that part of their lives especially to me, a non Catholic.

All I’ve known about The Holy Roman Catholic Church is from high school World History.  It was the original Christian church; forming after the fall of the Roman Empire around 450 A.D.; and for 1,500 years dominated Western Europe in culture, dress, law, music, art, architecture, deeds, expectations, behavior and thought.  Teachers in the public schools made sure we understood how foolish The Church had been way back when in leading The Crusades, specifically mentioning the Children’s Crusade, and that in Europe the longstanding Catholic Church had become corrupt which ushered in the Renaissance and Reformation.  For decades hence, there would be many bloody battles and outright wars between Catholics and Protestants especially in determining which would rule England and other Christian countries.  When one Christian sect was in power, the other was severely persecuted.

Sanctus

Holy

I’ve found mature American Catholics to be open minded and liberal thinkers, recalling their fight for civil rights in the 1960s as well as joining protests to end the Vietnam War, serving in the Peace Corps and providing worldwide humanitarian relief through Catholic Charities.  An image that comes to mind is the smiling nun at the Woodstock music festival who flashes the peace sign.

Agnus Dei

Lamb of God

But then again … and again … and yet again … the public is informed of another massive scandal within large communities of the Catholic Church involving sex abuse of children and adolescents by dozens of priests.  Now I understand the … shame … of those who would rather refer to themselves as former Catholics, maybe determining themselves not religious at all.  The revelations are nothing new and to a jaded society may be not only secretly suspected but remain in the forefront of the minds of non Catholics.  What are we to think?  Sure there have been the famous TV evangelists and little-known preachers throughout the U.S. who’ve committed the same sin, the same crime.  But in sheer numbers, there is no comparison, and it’s because of an ancient institution.

The latest scandal involved six dioceses in Pennsylvania; 1,000 victims; 300 priests; and an institutionalized cover up since the 1940s.  These were rapes, sex crimes that should have been reported to police … but weren’t … for whatever reasons.  In 1997 a similar scandal by a “pedophile priest” occurred within the Dallas Catholic Diocese involving almost a dozen altar boys which went on for years.  The priest was sentenced to life in prison, and a $119 million jury award practically bankrupted the Diocese.  To prevent such crimes in the future, the jury mandated the Dallas Diocese report any rumor or suspicion of child sexual abuse by priests to law officials, never to hide the unholy again.

In 2015 the Oscar-winning movie “Spotlight” was about The Boston Globe’s investigation into a sex scandal within the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston.  Five priests were criminally prosecuted, not to mention a plethora of lawsuits.  The Catholic bishop kept the sex crimes secret and reassigned offending priests, as was done in Pennsylvania.  So … The Church knew all along.  The newspaper reported the scandal in 2002 and won the Pulitzer Prize.

In paradisum

Into paradise

Pope Francis is livid over the same scandal involving priests not only in America but Ireland and other countries around the world.  Obviously, to Catholics and non Catholics alike, something has to be done immediately.  One solution is not allowing a priest to ever be alone with a minor.  Some Catholics are calling for The Pope to reconsider permitting women to enter the priesthood and allowing priests to marry.  Why are these two reforms still controversial in the year 2018?

In the 16th century, Martin Luther posted dozens  of disagreements with The Church.  He also had an opinion on allowing priests to marry, writing that celibacy is not required in the Bible and that on the contrary God called humans to be fruitful and multiply.  Once the Protestant Reformation was under way, ministers were allowed to marry, and their wives were part of their ministries.  Luther also believed marriage would prevent temptation.  He also disagreed with priests as a necessary go-between for man and God.  Luther preached that everyone is called to minister to all people, which is biblical, spoken by Jesus Christ Himself.

Today’s Catholics, led by the popular and progressive Pope Francis, are allowed their own discretion on many intimate beliefs such as contraception.  What is surprising to non Catholics like me is why a billion people around the world remain dedicated to The Church.  Protestants, from the root word ‘protest,’ don’t understand and would simply switch to another church.  Given the cover ups, criminal sexual abuse against children, the perversion and hypocrisy—why do so many remain loyal to The Church?  Are they eternally dedicated though sorely ashamed and disgusted with atrocious sins and crimes by some priests involving the innocence of children?

Catholic or Protestant, we are taught to believe before we are taught to think.  The Catholic faith—with its beautiful stained-glass depictions, sky-high cathedrals, priests donning ornate robes and hats, processions, rituals, congregational prayers and songs, unified mass scripture readings and lectures—is essentially what religion should be: a sacred and profound bond of humans in mind and spirit.  There are millions on earth who still believe “To err is human, to forgive divine.”  But at what cost to our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, all God’s children?

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Who are Q? Who who? Who who?

So I’m hearing a lot about this mysterious Q.  Seeing the T-shirts and posters at Trump rallies, wanting to keep up with the latest craze, and watching Bill Maher on “Real Time” sarcastically proclaim he is the one and only Q, I decided to check out what this is all about.  Right there online, first thing I learned was “Q” is a longstanding music magazine in Great Britain.  That can’t be the American-conspiracists’ Q of which I gathered from the recent buzz.  My online search also included “Q for Beginners—Part 1” by the prayingmedic and “Q/The Plan to Destroy the U.S.” by BPEarthWatch.  Huh.

There was also an article by collective-evolution.com titled “Who is Q?  Mainstream Media Crashes the Party to Take Control of the Narrative.”  Collective-evolution, citing itself as ‘alternative news,’ presents an insider’s knowledge of what the media proclaims or has just found out about Q aka Q-anon: that it’s a far-right conspiracy theory with Trump as hero.  The article asks like-minded readers, however, to ponder if journalists actually and honestly can report on what they do not understand.  [Reporters report on just about everything they don’t understand whether they know about it, like it or even believe it.  They actually like learning about things they know nothing about and don’t understand.  It expands their minds, makes them interesting and probably turns them into liberal thinkers.]

The low-keyed prayingmedic kindly tells viewers about how Q came to be known online since October 2017.  During the informative chat, advertisement sidebars included a research group seeking “Men with depression” and website titles like “The Great Awakening” alluding to the End Times—assuming everyone now would agree our times are the infamous Last Days of mankind.  The one certainty about paranoid people is their certainty.  They got it all figured out, this without ever working in or for the United States government.

Night of the living dead

Why do millions of Americans want to live in the End of Days?  Why would anyone long to experience World War III?  Do you know how many doomsday prophecies I’ve lived through?  Too many to mention.  But since the ’70s, they all were projected by ministers who announced the exact day and time, got lots of media attention and money, and then when the fateful days came … the world kept turning.  Gravity kept us in place, the same place, our beloved home away from Home, planet Earth.

Perhaps mass depression is to blame for so many believing now is the End Time.  The mass media already theorized on a mass delusion among Trump supporters, more so with those donning Q cards at political rallies.  Constantly researching the internet is rapid paced; it can’t be good for the human brain and apparently leaves many people with no time to think for themselves.  Did you know that in Canada, school students from fourth to eighth grades study how to use the internet and when proven they have internet smarts including passing a test, they receive an internet user license.  Smart people, our neighbors to the north: rational, calm, cool-headed.  They’re not like Americans: with our puritanical Salem witch trials history, suspicions of anyone and everyone ‘different,’ gullibility, fear, alarmist inclination, and always on the lookout to prevent One World government when ultimate evil will enslave humanity in horror and degradation.  Surely it’s just around the corner.

Stephen Hawking, the brilliant cosmologist, was asked about the possibility of aliens from outer space.  He doubted a world government conspiracy to keep such things secret, logically pointing out how governments have proven time and again to be rather inept at the simplest of tasks like balanced budgets and efficiently plugging pot holes and maintaining other public works.  The man was a rational genius.

Having survived numerous dooms days and the mass anticipation of such, I am now at the point of irritation.  What kind of example are we showing young people, who haven’t even begun to live and experience the wonder and beauty of life?  We don’t have the right to discount their young lives and future by proclaiming now the End of Days.  Why is it always middle-aged and older adults who believe in such things, as if they can’t wait for it?  How dare millions of Americans insist we all are living at the End of the World?  That only Jesus Christ Himself can save us?  That the year 2018 and further into the 21st century is most assuredly when the End will come?  Tell that to our ancestors who lived through a helluva lot more war and man-made evil than any of us modern Americans—coddled and bored people with too much free time.

Get over believing Q has a clue into a Deep State government.  Trump as our nation’s savior is nonsense.  Yep, post-internet or pre-internet, the only thing certain in life, besides death and taxes, is man was born with a brain.  When you are thinking for yourself, you’re gonna find few people, not millions, who think like you do.  Lest we forget, Americans are rugged individuals not a bunch of scaredy cats.  The world is not ending.  There are no dots to connect.  We create our government; we’re in control and need to start acting like it.  Get on with living the rest of your lives.  Lay off the internet for awhile.  It’s amazing how quickly the brain restores full clarity so that we become clear headed once again.

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American WASPs still stinging immigrants

So the U.S. has the worst immigration laws in the world?  Well, let me respond with a little ol’ American folk song, parodied by yours truly, to go somethin’ like this:

This land was their land.

It wasn’t our land

from California to the New York island.

We took it from them.

Sometimes we paid them.

Now we must share this land for all.

No other nation on earth has our history—and sole purpose to admit people from around the world including our own hemisphere—especially within the past 500 years.  Everyone on the planet knows America’s convoluted, though in premise sparkling, history.  Europeans started migrating over here in the 1600s.  But the land the White man named America was not uninhabited.  There were thousands of native tribes, mostly brown-skinned people (described as red-skinned by the White man).  What would become the United States of America was born in multicultural conflict, not to mention the issue of enslaved Africans dragged in chains all the way over here to work the land for free till death.  What a multi-cultural mess: this vast territory, unstable, shocking and terrifying until forced colonization by the English-speaking Christian British.

Anglo Americans can’t forget our shameful past in ‘settling’ this land, right up to the late 20th century when Americans began to realize through public education the damage done to ancient civilizations and Native people.  And we think we have the right today to squawk about illegal immigrants?  If there weren’t jobs for them, people south of the Rio Grande wouldn’t keep coming up here.  American businessmen had a lot to do with creating the alleged illegal immigration problem rued today.

And who’s doing the ruing?  Mostly businessmen and the rich of WASP ancestry.  This is why Americans who felt our nation was not-so-great returned to electing a forty-fourth white man president.  To put a stop once and for all to illegal immigration, even in cases of asylum, the new president’s policy was to separate Central American parents from their Native speaking children.  Say what?  Some of the Indigenous families do not speak Spanish let alone English.  Despite the new get-tough deterrent, after traveling hundreds of miles and undergoing insurmountable hardships, many families crossed over, assumed the position to surrender in arrest to the United States while watching their own children taken into separate custody hundreds and thousands of miles from South Texas.  Many of the little ones were understandably traumatized by the family separation.  What an unholy mess yet again by White-ruling Americans.

Red and yellow, black and white

Something drastic had to be done to stop illegal immigration.  Not really.  Illegal crossings along the southern border have been reduced substantially: from more than a million annually during the Clinton years to less than a quarter of a million annually with the vast majority of those people seeking asylum.  Decent people cannot and will not live in Central American narco states where drug cartels rule with brutal beat downs, shake downs, gang rule, murder and rape.

Now American history is coming full circle.  It was similar hostilities—called ‘religious persecution’ in our schoolbooks—when English and European families began to leave everything behind for the New World.  Some died during the rough six-week boat ride across the choppy Atlantic Ocean.  Naturally, many arrived sick, feverish, infected, infectious, and yes dirty.  Through the decades, most European immigrants did not speak English.  Yet somehow they kept coming and coming and coming all the way over to this land right here.  The Catholic Irish were discriminated against for employment.  Then Italians were treated similarly.  And on and on with each nationality, although most Whites generally agreed to uphold equal discrimination against people of color from Central and South America, Africa and Asia.

There isn’t a plot of land in the entire country that anyone can claim free of past Native occupation.  But Native Americans did not believe the earth was something man could own or possess—only to care for, love, appreciate and cultivate.  All the earth belonged to God—their Sky God, the Supreme Being.  Whites took advantage of the sincere spiritual philosophy, offering trade for land: horses, pots, rifles, skins, whatever, maybe coins.  Who knows?  God knows.

Many supported Trump’s campaign to Make America Great Again (evidently code for Make America White Again).  Americans of fifth and sixth or more generations have had enough playing around with Spanish and English: seeing grocery signs, billboards, government documents and election ballots in both languages; infuriated with every business phone call a language selection cue to press 1 or 2.  Public schools in states bordering Mexico are becoming majority Hispanic.  Much to worry about … if you’re White and want everything and everyone to stay as it seemingly was in the last century.

Things change.  Times change.  Territories change.  Societies change.  Of this Europeans still residing in countries with bloody histories spanning a thousand-plus years know well.  Human migration is nothing new—in truth, it’s the way of the world.  But to a Baby Nation not yet 300 years old, with a ruling class still carrying on our forefathers’ prejudices and bigotry, immigration is the number one cause of all the world’s problems.

During the 20th century, America was great at assimilation: everyone melting into White privilege and culture.  But by the end of the century, when hyphenated Americans began to have pride in their diverse ancestral heritage, a social push back began.  African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, Asian-Americans, Arab-Americans, Native Americans, etc., will no longer resonate WASP prejudices.  Those days are gone.  So we Americans and all the wanna-be Americans can accept, understand and enjoy our multi-cultural past, present and future.  Or we can go our separate ways—refusing to live together peacefully.

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The cuckoo’s nest is expanding and visible at major city intersections

Every time I see one of those homeless people holding a sign at a busy street corner, I think about One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  Or is it 1984?  Either way, both novels have to do with individual freedom.  Both also have to do with what it takes for a person to fit in society.

Cuckoo’s Nest, both the book and the movie, resonated with Baby Boomers who felt a connection to personal freedom and sanity.  The story is set in a mental institution in the early ’60s when along comes a criminal patient with the sardonic charm of an untamed animal.  Jack Nicholson plays the role and won the Oscar, probably for his portrayal of receiving electric shock therapy—a minute or so of tortured convulsions, every second believable and painful to watch.

The satirical novel by Ken Kesey asks us: Who is really crazy?  What is crazy?  Aren’t we all a bit crazy?  The story propelled a movement to change the courts and psychiatric care by not locking up everyone who simply doesn’t fit in with society.  Individualized and more humanistic therapies evolved in hospitals nationwide which allowed for triaging levels of psychiatric need and care.  Also, instead of leaving psych patients to vegetate, residents were encouraged to leave the premises for activities like swimming, biking, shopping and visiting movies, restaurants, amusement parks and museums.  If treatment works, which may include medication along with psychotherapy, individuals with diagnosed mental illness can hold jobs and careers and live in group homes or on their own.  The changes made for better healthcare so people who struggle with mental illness are able to live in society.

 Loony Tune

From a sociological viewpoint, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest leaves a lingering impression because of the theme: a conflict between the rulers and the unruly—the rulers being doctors, nurses, teachers, police, judges, parents, all authority figures; the unruly being the weak and the misfits.  Nice, polite, orderly, really meaning no harm, the rulers expect everybody to follow, obey, and believe in society’s rules.  Then someone like Nicholson’s anti-social R.P. McMurphy is sent inside a white sterile mental hospital where he sees pathetic patients never getting better.  Even the sedate quasi classical music sounds warped played from old albums.  The entire situation was crazy to McMurphy’s way of thinking.  He couldn’t help but shake it up, to the quiet discontent of calm and stern Nurse Ratched.

In the late ’60s, societal conflict was similar as the young counterculture bravely said no to the Man.  Youth longed to feel total freedom, allowed to make their own mistakes and choices and live life on their own terms.  Rules be damned.  It happens every few generations: the younger finally unwilling to follow the older way of life.  It’s a natural societal progression.  But it always begins with painful arguments: the mature empowered yet disrespected; youth suppressed and rebellious.

Finally McMurphy has had it with all the rules and no fun micro managed by the dreaded Nurse Ratched.  But she has the ultimate power to force his obedience.  He’ll never trouble her again.  Still all the men in the ward are influenced by McMurphy’s lust for life, rebellious spirit, fighting rules and institutions—which for most patients should be a temporary stay.  The most important lesson he imparts to the mental patients is: You’re no crazier than anybody else out there.  One of McMurphy’s disciples escapes the institution, busting out by sheer force and will, running across the manicured lawn, following his heart into the woods.  Because his character is Native American, his escape to freedom is musically enhanced by the sounds of a simple drum beat representing the heart, rattles for moving bones, and a strange flute melody personifying his unique spiritual path.

CrAzY

So back to the street people.  How do we explain our nation’s growing homeless population and the problem of chronic homelessness?  It’s got to be caused by more than unemployment or jobs replaced by robotics, low skills or intelligence, drug addiction or veterans returning from war.  The problem has got to be mostly about spiraling mental illness … and families who cannot deal with a relative amidst any or all of the above.  Families used to feel they didn’t have to.  Mental illness was society’s problem because although the majority of the mentally ill are not dangerous, there are people with homicidal and/or suicidal tendencies.  It’s tragic—a huge cosmic joke.

In the early 1980s as federal budget cuts included mental facilities, funding was shifted from large institutions to community hospitals and psych wards.  The feds expected states and cities to continue paying for such care and mental health maintenance locally.  Those in charge also were persuaded by pharmaceutical advancements that helped many patients with everything from depression to paranoid schizophrenia.  Somehow when neo mental health philosophy met the tax buck and many institutions were closed, mental patients literally were given a one-way ticket to various American cities, perhaps where they had family, and forced to figure out how to cope.

Legislators assumed the issue of mental illness was and should remain a private matter and family affair.  They did not realize the stress of modern American life: folks too busy earning a living; too tired working two or more jobs; raising kids and teens; dealing with their own issues of finances, divorce, health, depression and anxiety.  The last thing the average adult can handle is a ‘crazy’ relative, even blood kin.  Caring for a mentally ill loved one may very well require a degree in psychology.  It’s that difficult of a problem, complicated, and extremely serious, sometimes a matter of life or death.

The homeless population is increasing throughout the U.S.  Street people in Dallas increased more than 20 percent in the past year.  And wasn’t Dallas a city that enacted a law to fine citizens who give to beggars, especially those standing at busy highway intersections?  Take a good look at the homeless, who stand everywhere to be seen and ask for help.  They are severely ill body, mind and spirit.  They are not crazy-as-a-fox just because they pick the busiest intersections to hold signs promoting their plight and financial need.  A couple of bucks from strangers will not solve their problems, often exacerbated by addiction.

It appears homelessness, for whatever the reasons, can’t be fixed and has become acceptable.  Maybe homelessness remains by the powers that be as a fearful reminder to the rest of us who look away in disgust or thoughtfully refrain, “There but by the grace of God go I.”  Freedom requires people be healthy inside and out while maintaining a positive, optimistic outlook.  But not everyone is born to handle total freedom that comes with making a life in America.  Ironically, in the technologically efficient state-controlled society of 1984, the homeless, though shunned and neglected, are the ones who live freely.

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An affair to remember, courtesy of the United States Congress

What?  Was?  That?!  Our U.S. Congress—having nothing better to do this long hot summer—spent more than one work day grilling an FBI agent, live on cable news, about ‘anti-Trump’ emails.  How dare they (interrupt my daytime cable news watching)?  Have they no decency, sirs?  No.  No, they really don’t.  Particularly humorous was Texas’ own Rep. Louie Gohmert’s moral scolding of FBI Agent Peter Strzok for the many times he looked his dear wife right in the eyes while keeping secret his extra-marital affair. This from the party of Donald J. Trump.

Ignoring at least a dozen women’s claims of sexual harassment by Mr. Trump, the boys in Washington found plenty of time to brand a scarlet letter A on an FBI agent.  At issue was the agent’s affair with a female colleague whose government–issued cell phone texts became a matter of public record.  As the couple carried on conversations during 2016, they sent each other texts pondering a Trump win as president: the female concerned, the male assuring Trump would never be president, punctuating his certainty with the words, “We will stop him.”

American idiots and conspiracy buffs alike took that to naturally mean the FBI would, let’s just say ‘make Trump go away.’  Just like the CIA made President Kennedy take a permanent leave of office.  Like the Illuminati has a plan for one-world government.  Like the devil infiltrated the Vatican and continues to run loose among us to steal our very souls.  Like the U.S. Air Force redacts documented proof of extraterrestrial aliens.  See, I watch the “X-Files,” too.

But I never took the text by a secret agent lover man to literally mean any physical harm to Trump.  I naturally thought “we” referred to the People of the United States, all 300 million of us, at least 150 million, who would take to the streets if Trump were elected and never shut up about how the 2016 election was indeed rigged.  The day following that boring Congressional hearing, a dozen Russian agents were indicted by our federal government for just that: interfering with a U.S. presidential election by using the internet.  Coincidence?  [There are no coincidences.]

Have you or anyone you know ever been a member of the Party?

To those of us willing to endure a few hours of pointless testimony and pontification, party affiliation and allegiance was the focus of the very Republican Congressional inquiry.  Again and again, Congressmen questioned the federal agent about his ability to truly separate his feelings toward Trump while investigating Trump-related affairs, no pun intended.  The agent swore and attested to his professionalism in doing his job as a federal investigator even if delving into the Trump campaign.  It did not matter if the agent were Democrat, Republican or Independent, he maintained he could do his job and do it well with utmost clarity.

Nahhh, replied the Congressional chorus.  They would not believe an educated, mature, seasoned professional federal investigator with the F B I could put aside thoughts, feelings, impressions, gut instincts and educated guesses while performing a vitally important investigation.  Can’t be done, the inquisitors declared.

Yes it can.  Maybe immature kids out of college or elected officials are not yet capable of putting aside religious and political inclinations, but someone with an important federal job that calls first for an intense persona can push away unsubstantiated suspicions at the snap of a finger.  Federal investigators are that good.  And thank goodness, don’t you agree?  Though the American people continue to be divided by deeply-held yet opposing political views, more feelings than thoughts, a professional in any field is obliged to separate opinion from the job at hand.  We expect just that, or a lot of jobs won’t get done.  This dual mindset, called a poker face, is expected every day of teachers, law officers, judges, doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, counselors, surgeons, lawyers, reporters, military personnel, just about any profession.

The Congressional Inquisition really wanted to know the party affiliation of one Peter Strzok, as if they had him pegged as a pinko liberal Communist Democrat.  Nahhh, just about all the FBI agents involved in the Trump investigation are known Republicans.  And everyone knows the FBI never liked the Clintons.  It’s just that the very strange and peculiar 2016 presidential election had a lot of Democrats voting for Trump and a lot of Republicans voting for Hillary Clinton.  We’re some screwed up nation, huh?

The Congressional scrutiny of an FBI agent smacked of forthcoming loyalty oaths, something Trump reportedly had wanted from his cabinet picks and department heads, perhaps other appointments like a Supreme Court Justice.  Let’s just hope ‘loyalty oaths’ are yet another massive American conspiracy theory.  Imagine, a U.S. president demanding loyalty oaths among every federal employee.  We still have free speech, thought and ideas, right?  Americans who think differently than the U.S. president won’t lose their jobs, be publicly humiliated, or sent to special ‘camps,’ right?  (Whistling “The X-Files” theme.)