Author: cheriebell69@hotmail.com

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The menace and the great society

Picture a society of 300 million people.  Despite their large population and diverse cultures lending to an eclectic appearance, they are for the most part a happy people.  They get along well enough with neighbor and state.  Their nation is extremely prosperous and popular around the world.  So sincere and content are the people of this land that they readily come to the aid of their fellow man in times of disaster and hardship.  Their altruism reaches across the sea to other people living in places where life remains poor and bleak.  People around the world envy this idyllic nation mostly for its innate human rights: free speech and religion, even thoughts and ideas.  Ah, and the motto of this comparatively young nation: The pursuit of happiness!

But there is one enormous problem for those living in this great free society.  Every so often, but increasingly, a dozen or more inhabitants are randomly injured and even killed by a menace, always the same exact menace.  The attacks are often unforeseen and sporadic.  Within the past couple decades the menace has caused countless deaths and insurmountable sorrow throughout the land.  Mostly the menace haunts large gathering places of humanity: shopping centers, movie theaters, schools, colleges, night clubs, baseball fields, parks, Christmas parties, halls of justice, concerts, even churches.  But by all accounts, high schools have been the preferred target.

The menace comes around again and again, leaving the same macabre scene of bloody carnage and wounded survivors physically, emotionally and spiritually—some permanently traumatized.  Incredulously, there seems to be no solution to rid this beautiful society—no doubt the greatest ever on earth—of its deadly menace, which to most people of the world seems very strange.  In fact, people of the world don’t think the menace cannot be conquered.  The world remains aghast at the perpetual atrocities by the lone menace allowed free range in an otherwise peace-loving society.

Ad nauseam 

Within the white dome buildings with towering columns and spacious porticos, the great society’s elected leaders remain at an impasse: divided on how to eradicate their nation’s growing menace.  One side, including the grand leader, has come to believe the menace will only be conquered by the same menace—not unlike a vaccine containing a little of the deadly virus to build immunity and prevent mass illness and death.  They think their idea is logical and sound.

But other leaders do not believe in the same method to eradicate the greatly feared menace.  This group refuses to believe in fighting a menace of this caliber with the same or similar menace.  They seek solutions without really knowing how to bring down once and for all the omnipotent menace, still roaming the great society, and as the citizenry young and old has learned to accept, most certainly planning the next scary bloody insane massacre.

After the latest high school massacre, though, hundreds of students who lived to tell about it found themselves collectively emboldened to speak out against the menace so that it never strikes another school ever again.  Their rage was not so much at the menace but at their society’s leaders, even the grand one.  Unified in mind and voice and of one accord, they called the oldest generation—the generation of their grandfathers than their fathers—weak, feeble and impotent.  Using microphones, cameras and the internet, they instantly spread their message across the land: Down with leaders who support the menace!  Down with the organization that supports the menace and allows it to spread!  Down with leaders who take money from the organization that supports the menace!

Even the grand leader could not hide and pretend he did not hear: words spoken by the youth, a generation growing up without a single day’s peace while attending the great society’s schools.  Having survived an attack by the menace, confronting the deadly evil they had heard about all their lives, they became energized by a shared fervor.  The teen survivors were joined by others whose lives were marred by the menace in school massacres across the land.  For some reason, they were summarily granted a meeting with the grand leader face to face.  Not to waste the leader’s time, they rationally and calmly presented only one request: No more menace.  We’re sick and tired of the menace.  Do something about the menace now.

But instead of going after the menace, and finally doing away with its deadly power, the grand leader called on arming teachers to fight the menace at school.  This was not at all the scenario envisioned by the massacre survivors.  Why didn’t the grand leader understand their simple plea?  They were quite clear: No more menace.  Massacre survivors young and old never called on more menace to fight the menace.  To the survivors, that was nonsensical, like a Hollywood action movie, based on fantasy not reality.

At this point in time, the menace has not left the great society and still remains the constant evil that will not be destroyed.  As for other lands, the menace rarely rears its ugly head.  Every society on earth has prevented the menace at least from spreading as it has done so freely throughout the entire great society, shore to shore, engulfing thousands in blood, death and fear.

“Strange,” others around the world ponder.  “The great society is not at war.  Is it?”

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Future of American elections? To the Way Back Machine

So now that we really, really know for sure with absolute certainty that Russia truly was indeed behind creating chaos in our last presidential election—with the sole intent to denigrate Hillary Clinton and install Donald Trump—we gotta come up with the perfect plan to protect the next U.S. election.  We gotta think of an equally terrible, evil and mind-boggling scheme … to save American democracy in our lifetime!  Even Mexico is calling for the return to U.S. domination and world leadership.  The U.S. used to be the Good Guys, remember?  Here’s what we do (chuckle, snort).  It’s so simple, a child could have thought of it.  But, sh sh sh, don’t tell anyone.

OK, since high tech got us into this colossal political pickle (for those of us who think Trump’s presidency is a train wreck,) for our next major election, we simply go back in time!  Let’s pick a year like 1984 or 1989.  Throw a tarp over those newfangled computerized voting machines and store ’em in the closet at the county clerk’s office.  We can vote by hand, just like our forefathers and a lot of our foremothers did for generations, since our nation’s founding.  We just handpick all our candidates.  Pssst.  You know, you don’t have to vote for every race on the ballot; just pick and choose the ones important to ya.  An incomplete ballot’s legal, maybe just requiring our hand-written signatures like in days of yesteryear.

I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave

Isn’t this a fabulous idea?!!  Wouldn’t the Russians be confounded by our decision to beat them at their own game?  Just dump computer technology for our upcoming election, see how it works.  Oh, and we all must agree to forget about Facebooking and surfing the ’net for political information.  Most voters don’t know how to tell the difference between news and views anyway.  That’s how we got tricked by the Great Russian Bear.

For those of us old enough to remember how voting used to be before the days of computers and the prevalence of hacking, it went like this:  We’d show up to the polls, get a ballot, and then poke out the holes beside the candidate names we chose.  The ballot first was manually checked—probably at a cost much cheaper than hooking every county in the nation to a computer ballot system—and in a day or so, we knew who our elected officials would be.  Simple as making apple pie.

Even with the new voting computers in the 2000 presidential election, voters claimed the lights of the name they touched did not go on and instead another name lit up, meaning their ballot was incorrect if they didn’t repress the candidate of their choice until the correct light went on.  Along with this was the Florida mess where the old punch-card ballots were somehow unclear to read.  We learned related terms like impregnation and chad, but the state’s election board called it.  It got messier when the U.S. Supreme Court was called in to finalize between Bush and Gore.  At the turn of the computer age century, it was like we were living back in Mayberry USA.  The entire nation was left rocking in our front porch swings awaitin’ the presidential results, strummin’ on the old guitar and singing folk songs.  Yehhp, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.  We got the news about the new president in a couple of weeks.  It wasn’t that big of a deal in the great scheme of time.

And our obsession over time for election returns also played a part in the disastrous 2016 presidential results.  Americans have become the most politically impatient people on earth.  Come on, ya’ll!  The rest of the world population is laughing at us.  Who can blame them?  We’re immature, most of us hardly voting to begin with, then we want to know election results a few hours after casting ballots.

Whoa Nelly

We gotta hold the brakes when it comes to our future national elections.  Our entire form of government, still just a crazy cock-eyed 242-year-old philosophical experiment, is at stake.  Besides relying on super fast voting computers that can be hacked, half the country got sucked into Russian Bots.  These were somewhat cleverly disguised hard-punching nonsense political ads casting Hillary as the devil incarnate and Trump as the choice of Jesus Christ Himself.  What kinda American idiot would believe such a thing?  Tens of millions did.

So the Russians got us and got us good.  We don’t have time to be smartin’ over it.  What’s done is done, and we can’t let it happen again … ever, never again.  Voting sans computers is a start.  Voting is just too precious a right, a right a lot of people on the planet would love to have and as human beings deserve.

Why are Americans so cynical about our own elections, saying things like the choice is always ‘the lesser of two evils?’  American cynicism stems from money—money, money, money, money, money.  We allow this pervasiveness to buy elections when we agree money’s the root of all evil; well the love of money is evil.  That would be another thing to change: campaign financial caps.  We could promote campaign finance reform in a national ad like “Who loves America more?”  That usually gets our countrymen’s attention.  Which party, Dems or Repubs, would be willing to cap candidate election spending?  And what would be the cap?  Not billions of dollars again!  That’s how we got into our current political nightmare.

My fellow Americans, the Russians proved to know more about us than we know ourselves.  They played on our deeply held Christian beliefs, distorted history, racial prejudices, class jealousy, job insecurities, pop culture worship, and pitiful education.  Many of us were duped, dare I saw were ‘patsies?’  We started believing whatever we read on the internet.  Isn’t that a bit un-American?  Wasn’t it Will Rogers who used to quip, “All I know is what I read in the papers?”  That means we have to check all accounts to get the full story.

This next election, let’s agree to be on guard by the oncoming flood of Russian internet ads that feature Christ, crime, guns, immigrants, jobs, economic future, fear and panic.  Think before we click.  It takes time to research the facts and find the truth.  We can start by researching the small print campaign ad notice ‘Paid for by.’

But make no mistake: Russia is out to create havoc and chaos in our American political system, playing on our deepest, darkest fears.  Yet the one thing the enemy doesn’t understand about being a real American is our independence.  We all call ourselves American, even feel empowered within a political party.  Yet each one of us has our own views … about everything.  Many Americans rarely vote straight ticket.  Thinking for oneself is the seed to a perpetual democracy.  A lot of us forgot about our individual independent “I’ll think for myself, thank you” streak back in 2016—and in so doing totally freaked out.

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From Dead Bird Mall to Red Bird Mall once again

The former Red Bird Mall now resembles historic ruins.  For decades hardly anyone wanted to shop there, preferring to venture across Dallas or in recent years nearby Cedar Hill for its trendy outdoor walking mall.  Many cities across the U.S. are burdened with mid-century malls.  Old and gray and huge as the sea, they remain sprawled across a good hundred acres—taking up way too much space and offering no tax revenue.

The death of a mall is a pitiful sight especially for Baby Boomers like me with memories that keep us forever 16.  The biggest thing to have come to my neck of the Dallas suburbs was this very mall.  Opening in 1975, it seemed destined for eternal business with anchors like Sanger Harris, JC Penney and of course Sears.  The mall shops were crazy eclectic but competed to fulfill our every want and need.  More shoes and dress shops than a busy gal could visit in one day, a couple of record stores (for the latest album rock) and eateries galore made the mall an inexpensive teen date: a place to roam and people watch.  Christmas time was especially crowded.  As a teen I always liked going to the mall.  It made me feel alive.

My first real job was at that mall where I scooped ice cream at Baskin-Robbins.  We wore pink baseball caps and smocks.  I learned to operate a cash register, figure tax, and count correct change back to customers.  After school on the days I went to work, the price of a single scoop had increased a penny or two, sometimes a nickel.  If I recall correctly, a scoop at some point was 20 cents then more and more, corrections noted in pencil near the register.  The owners, a married couple, wanted to train me in management.  Turned out the young assistant manager was stealing from the register and summarily fired.  But I had greater dreams to fulfill and passed on pursuing management.  Besides, the job paid $2 an hour when the minimum wage was more than that.  When I inquired about the discrepancy, the owners explained if a company is small, employees don’t have to be paid the federal minimum wage.  After some months, I quit to finally earn minimum wage at a barbecue joint.

But working at the mall really appealed to me.  Many occasions I’d approach every single store, on both floors, and ask for an employment application.  Through high school and early college, I usually could land a job at the mall.  My sales clerk experience included the children’s clothing department at Sears and a clothing store called Woman’s World that specialized in the latest fashions for larger ladies.  I enjoyed my breaks at Sears because I could go to the candy and nut counter for a bag of warm cashews and an Icee.  At the ice cream shop, employees got a free scoop for coming to work.  I usually passed but when succumbing to temptation chose Daiquiri Ice on a sugar cone.  I was trying to be sophisticated.  Besides, I liked the cool turquoise color.

 All’s fair in mall and war

Because of the mall’s location, in south Dallas, a lot of whites referred to Red Bird Mall as Black Bird Mall.  What an awful thing to say, just because a lot of shoppers were black.  But see, the majority whites at the time were not yet willing to be inclusive or think of the community and our country as multicultural and multiracial—as I had come to realize in college.  The racial epithet of sorts was around 1989.  Yes, there was crime at the mall, perhaps more than other malls in Dallas, still at the time unverified as fact by the general public.  It seems an urban legend started the moment Red Bird Mall opened: a horrible story about a little boy attacked in the mall’s restroom.  Hearing the story as an adolescent, I believed it and was on guard if ever having to use the mall restrooms, eerily placed down long corridors.  After I grew up, going alone to the mall seemed unsafe.  I could tell things had changed.  The young crowds seemed rough, loud—and most importantly to business—weren’t there to shop.  But neither was I most of the time in junior high and high school.  I did shop for and buy a prom dress at the mall my junior year: a lacy baby blue evening gown and a very fond memory.

In an effort to rejuvenate the mall, it was renamed Southwest Center and its interior walls redecorated in a style reminiscent of the Old Southwest, more New Mexico and old Mexico than modern Dallas, Texas.  It just didn’t fit for those of us born and raised in this area.  As the poor economy of the late ’80s and early ’90s continued to threaten businesses from independent shops to national retail chains, my old shopping ground got a new nickname: Dead Bird Mall.  It was a hilarious yet honest depiction given all the mall vacancies.

Eulogy for a dead mall

A year ago the Dallas mayor proclaimed intentions to yet again reincarnate Red Bird Mall, first off to rename it as such because originally it referred to a nice upper middle-class Oak Cliff area of Dallas.  The city is working with businesses like Starbucks to once again populate the vast concrete territory still harboring some semblance of a mall.  But perhaps malls should be a thing of the past.  As wonderfully convenient, though costly, as shopping malls were—everything under one roof—times have changed.  People shop online first to purchase so many things.  Then there’s Wal-Mart and Target.

So what’s gonna bring ’em out to the modernized Red Bird Mall?  Perhaps a lot of small single buildings connected by outdoor walkways, fountains, floral landscaping with shade trees, benches, ponds and nature—a beautiful place for meditation, reading online and waiting while others shop.  Rule one should be in considering a new shopping development to revitalize Red Bird Mall: Why do people want to go there?

In retrospect, maybe we should list all the reasons people stopped going there: safety, loud unruly crowds, loitering, theft, assault, guns, drugs, evening hours, humongous terrain, accessibility, health issues, and impractical shops.  Consumers of the 21st century may have no need for the old mall experience that millions of us hold dear in our memories.  Our generation knows better than most: The past tends to be romanticized … because we don’t want to reminisce about the way things really were.

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Mid-century suburban life cemented memories

It was a picture perfect morning.  Early spring 1967.  Mom was changing her bed.  A set of washed sheets blew in the breeze to dry.  I could hear them playfully snapping as they hung on a line in the backyard of our suburban house.  I was 4 years old, standing against the bedroom wall, taking in the moment.  The windows were open, and fresh air caressed my face.  I remember white walls, white sheets, and the feeling that this moment was most wonderful.  I realized I was alive.  And Penny Lane was playing on the radio.

All senses were engaged so this pleasant childhood memory would remain in my mind for life, returning every once in awhile this time of year … and anytime and anywhere that Beatles’ song was heard.  Life was pleasant, simple, clean.

Around this same time, however, other outdoor sights and sounds would be disconcerting.  We lived right next to a suburban forest of sorts: short trees, thick brush with stickers and faded plants, nothing beautiful but natural nonetheless.  Soon the rumbling noise of tractors, bulldozers and construction men interrupted all I knew about life, about peace.  Before the work crew appeared, we had lived on a rural road in a Dallas suburb.  My parents had chosen that sleepy nook because they were from the country themselves.  But they had no idea our earthen street with maybe five houses spaced far apart would be smothered in concrete cement … forever.

As I ventured outdoors, driving my big red trike on the wood sidewalk, I noticed a huge street sign abutting the untapped brush: Dead End.  Probably the first words I learned to read.  Then one day that sign was mowed over, trees uprooted, the land flattened and platted for dozens of modern late ’60s brick homes.  Before the houses were built, first the concrete was poured over our dirt road.  Then the wood sidewalk was turned into cement, curb and gutters replaced the ditch, and lots of digging was done to install concrete pipes for sewer and water lines.  My Dad never got our house hooked up to the city sewer line; we would remain septic tank folks.

Urban sprawl

After the white dust settled, the rubber was poured, its thick pungent tar smell still rudely embedded in my mind.  The street was laid in maybe 15-foot blocks with rubber strips in between I suppose for ‘breathing’ through all types of Texas weather, to keep the concrete from buckling.  As I grew into an older child, I liked placing my toes in the occasional newly squirted pliable rubber across our residential street.  I had learned to accept annual work crews, pounding concrete excavations, heavy metal repairs, finished up with new rubber.  Playing in the new street rubber was lots of fun for a city kid.

Our community grew and grew especially during the 1970s as families from other states were relocating to Dallas but desired to live outside the city.  We were called a bedroom community.  The main restaurant we had in my early years was just Dairy Queen.  But soon McDonald’s came to town followed by every fast-food establishment and pizza joint known to kids across the U.S.  Teen years were filled with meeting at those hang outs to socialize with fries and a Coke or Dr. Pepper.

Having grown up pretty well adjusted and content within a suburban bubble, I never realized my hometown lacked, mmm, charm.  Not until I went off to college and traveled around Texas did I see the huge disparity in quality of life.  Other towns were much older than the mid-century suburbs, but they had generations of families who maintained their communities’ grace.  Old large houses were renovated into restaurants, law firms, or just nice homes for doctors and those who could afford the upkeep.

Streets were lined with trees providing shade.  I’d never seen such a thing except in very small towns like where my parents grew up.  Walking around my neighborhood during the summers left me squinting from the sun and getting a pink burn.  Shoes were a must given all the hot concrete.  I grew up where houses from the early 20th century would have been considered old and necessarily torn down.  Trees were not a priority.  I learned that urban fact when all the trees were yanked to build more homes, larger and larger through the decade.  What was more important to my community leaders was moving in more families.  Our community expanded until there would be no more undeveloped land, no more nature.  And when the entire town was built out, they started building up with more apartments.

Progress was our middle name

What were suburban city officials thinking in the mid 20th century?  They were the Greatest Generation but in charge of ‘modern’ city development.  More population meant more taxes for more amenities, right?  When I left my concrete city, I realized the error of their ways.  Communities nowadays are better planned.  I suppose if it weren’t for all those cement towns with no beauty, style or nature, the new and improved housing developments would not have been created.  Modern residential neighborhoods emulate 19th century city neighborhoods.

And what got me to thinking about all this?  Well, the city in which I live has been bull dozing and pounding apart my residential street, right at my driveway.  We—the city crew and I—have had to get along and make things work as the heavy-duty work trucks park in the way of me trying to move my car to leave and then later return home.

The unannounced street work jarred my early childhood memory as I sat indoors feeling and hearing the vibrations against windows and across the wood floor.  Construction tractors were breaking up the entire street to fix a busted water line from the big cold a month ago.  The first job had been a patch; this time it was a permanent repair.  The sound of smashing concrete and men yelling orders is one I grew up with and have had to learn to accommodate as a city dweller.

Ah, but since I left that cement sea that was once my hometown, I’ve learned the art of meditation.  Now any time I want, I can clearly relive that moment some 50 years ago when life as I first realized was splendid … “beneath the blue suburban skies.”

 

 

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Wanna run for Congress? Millionaires need not apply

New Rule: From now on, anyone running for U.S. Congress and Senate, cannot have an annual salary more than, oh I don’t know, $100,000.  ?  Sound good?  Still unfair?  No more than $75,000?  Something that would put him or her in the league of regular folks, maybe no more than $40,000?  Come on now, there are a lot of people in this country who earn salaries like $30,000 and $40,000  a year and even raise kids.  But the point I’m trying to make is NO MORE MILLIONAIRE POLITICIANS!!  Yea!!!!!!  Rahhhhhh!!!

With our usual federal government shut downs, it seems it’s not so much a liberal-conservative fight as a disconnection between millionaires and regular folks.  Millionaires have never cared about poor people (and for them that includes the vast middle class), what the Millennials used to refer to as the 99 percent (of us).   Remember when the kids protested on Wall Street just a couple of years ago?  Then we elect a self-promoted billionaire as president?  What’s up with that?  How did our nation change on a dime?  Just wondering what happened to the collective rage against all people rich.

Only millionaires play chicken with people’s lives and livelihoods.  Regular folks would never do such a thing.  We have more empathy toward our fellow man, sort of.  I mean, we are Americans, and since the Reagan ’80s our national motto has been “I got mine. You get yours.”  Works out great for some folks, maybe even most Americans with the wherewithal to earn a college degree or born with business savvy and ambition or tech or high-paid trade acumen.  But not everyone does well in our great land.  There are all kinds of reasons: physical disabilities, chronic illness, mental illness, addiction, low self-esteem, low intellect, anti social personality disorder.  Then there are issues dealing with race, color, sex, religion and ethnicity.  People of color have been saying for decades there are points against them in our great nation when it comes to who gets the jobs and promotions and why.  It doesn’t matter how many bi-racial family ads are on TV now.  The nation as a whole hasn’t let go of discrimination.

Billionaire Boys Club

So now really we have a billionaire club infiltrating politics.  And since politics is about governing people’s lives, I’d say it’s unfair and I’d go so far as to say non-Christian.  Wouldn’t you?  OK, let’s leave the issue of religion out of it.  Let’s not ask “What Would Jesus Do?” when it comes to a government shut down.  After all, the great majority of our nation’s millionaires and billionaires and Congressional representatives proclaim to be Christian.

The first time I was ever aware of our government’s money problems was in 1981.  That was the first time I heard our government was broke.  And we’ve been broke ever since.  Well, there was that shining moment when President Bill Clinton proudly announced our new national debt was $0.  That’s zero dollars.  The politicians, especially the ‘vast right wing conspiracy,’ had convinced us concerned Americans the budget could never be balanced. Shame on them.  Clinton was lucky he rode the perfect wave of the telecom boom … which turned into a tech and dot.com bubble that eventually burst.  Nevertheless, he did prove our national debt could be resolved.

Now I’m just thinking out loud, but does anyone else think our entire federal budget is just a house of cards?  We’re just robbing Peter to pay Paul?  If we are truly unable to keep our government financially operating time and again, then something’s, like, major wrong with our nation.

The one person I would never trust to fix our perpetual federal debacle and international embarrassment is a millionaire.  Wanna know why?  Because I know that millionaires never, ever, ever, never, ever, ever spend their own money.  Trump never did contribute faithfully and willingly and lovingly to his own presidential campaign.  He’s got to be the first in American history to not gamble on his own presidential bid.

And the likes of him, billionaires and millionaires, are in charge of our federal budget?  Something’s out of whack.  And it’s been out of whack for too long.

Roll over Tom Jeff’rson

Our nation’s Founders in their wildest dreams could have never imagined the vast financial mess of our great country, supposedly the greatest and richest on earth.  How could a nation built on democracy, free will, equality, and even everybody’s pursuit of happiness go so profoundly astray financially?  Maybe it is the guaranteed ‘free will.’  Humans don’t do well with free will.  We have a tendency to put off tomorrow what we don’t want to do today, like pay the electric bill.  We get credit cards to take care of our needs then our wants, then we can’t pay them either, blaming high interest rates.  Over a period of five decades—our prime working years—life becomes a series of calamities: illnesses, job losses, home and car repairs, spouse death, divorce, stock market crashes, loans, inflation, recessions, raising kids, college, etc.  We find we aren’t any better off than when we’d first begun to work.  The future looks bleak.

That’s the kind of thinking that got Trump elected.

The bottom line about governing is very simple: THE BILLS HAVE TO BE PAID.  That’s how families do it as well as cities and states.  In government jargon, it’s called a zero budget, where they figure out the money coming in over a year or two and budget it.  We don’t dip into money that does not belong to us like Social Security, Medicare, education and the military.  We don’t borrow from nations to fight our wars, because those nations may turn around and use our debt against us.

The real shame about being an American is how we allow millionaire congressmen (a few of whom, by the way, have nothing better to do than show us their junk on the internet) to play Kick the Can with federal financial obligations.  Why do we allow them to do this?  Too much trouble to get involved?  We don’t want to be thought of as old coots firing off phone calls, letters and emails to our elected officials in hopes they actually will be persuaded by our angry words to change their ways?  Why are we afraid of people we elected into office?  Who’s really in charge of this country?  We’ve forgotten: The people have the power.

For a couple hundred years, our form of government has allowed us to elect others to govern, to run the business of America.  And if the ones we’ve elected can’t govern, then we the people are going to have to start doing it.  A change in qualifications for office—especially banning millionaires—would be a good start.  I think the constitutional framers never intended for a bunch of rich men to run the United States of America forever.  Our 18th century American forefathers, those who lived during the Age of Enlightenment, who were free thinkers and fans of Western philosophy, knew a democratic government could only work and last if it’s tended to by all citizens including farmers and laborers, and not just and only by educated dandies.

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Winfrey for President? O-prah-ther

So the Democrats last hope is to run mega TV star Oprah Winfrey for U.S. President?  She can’t run for any other office in the land?  It has to be the absolute top spot in the federal government and the most powerful position in the world?  Isn’t she already kind of our president anyway?  Since recently receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes, the mass media merged with show biz to gush over the possibility of running Oprah for president in 2020.  To which her longtime companion Stedman Graham replied: If the people want her to run, she would do it.  So there.

Well, not so fast.  Powerful, attractive, intelligent woman that Oprah is, there are skeletons in her closet, and the media if they investigate hard enough will find them.  Certainly her ferocious Republican opposition will.  And Oprah is not running on the Republican ticket, though she’s probably benefited mightily by their policies.  Oprah has never held an elected government office.  Yes, she’s created and operated a media conglomerate including her own network.  But given her background, I have to wonder about her ‘handlers,’—the real know-how people Oprah shrewdly hired to perform actual daily operations, because Oprah’s real job is being a well-put-together celebrity.  [Pssst.  I met one of her TV show handlers who confided Oprah is “high maintenance.”]  Who cares, the Dems would say.  Oprah is the most popular person in the universe.  She would be a shoo-in as first woman president and first African-American female president.  Surely our nation is ready for this by now!

Have you been reading the internet and seeing all the hate groups out there, the ones fully empowered by the Trump presidency?  They are tens of millions of Americans and no fans of Oprah.  Yes, Oprah will have the women’s vote but not necessarily the men, not our red-blooded, beef-eatin’ hairy American men particularly of white stock.  I’m just being honest.  Still, Oprah could win the U.S. presidency simply by placing her name on the ballot.  Americans feel we know her.  She was on TV forever.

Roll ’em

Oprah’s skeletons for scrutiny if she ran for political office include: leaving college to take a job offer in TV media, never marrying (even Gloria Steinem eventually married), former employee lawsuits claiming her business a climate of anti-male harassment (OK, that part is laughable considering the vastly common workplace scenario between the sexes), and declining to support impoverished American youth who asked for computers and bikes instead of a quality education (which she indeed provides for an all-girl school in Africa).  And there’s the issue of her teen-age promiscuity that ended in the birth of a premature baby.  The alt-right would give her the ol’ one-two morality punch even though Oprah’s baby boy died shortly after birth.

But the fairer sex of the American populace would be most forgiving of this and all of Oprah’s skeletons.  Oprah has been candid about her entire life, we believe from watching her every day for twenty years.  She does not feel one bit guilty about leaving college to do what others have done when offered a big career break, plus she eventually finished her degree after fame and fortune.  She has proclaimed her longtime beau, Stedman, to be the only man in her life who always treated her with respect.  By not marrying, she is certainly ‘cool,’ more interesting than if she did go through with a wedding and sign on the dotted line.  The teen-age promiscuity was directly related to her childhood years of sexual abuse by several family members, about which she has divulged in painful detail.  It seems once Oprah became a national sensation, a drug-addicted relative spilled the beans on her love child at age 14.  The relative needed money from a tabloid and attempted to smear the big-name star.  It only served to make Oprah out to be ‘every woman,’ more like regular gals than the upper classes.

Along with surviving the shame of incest and rape, her most empowering story line is her childhood poverty, once living in a home with no running water.  This kind of poverty often instills in a child the big American dream, to chase stardom.  And Oprah did.  She was in her element in The Color Purple, again boasting that her character’s important scene about fighting off male beasts was shot in one take.  Oprah could relate honestly and painfully to the character she played, a hefty black female from the early 20th century South.

Harpo productions

The one criticism about Oprah or her talk show that has left an imprint on America today (yet won’t be a campaign issue) is the condensed sound bite.  Her talk show formula was not unlike Donahue or Geraldo: interview an author, celebrity, panel of experts, psychologists, and assorted regular people (called guests) with the same situation for the show’s daily theme (gay, bi, trans, addicts, family dramas, diseased, impotents, swingers, shop-a-holics, weight losers, childhood stars, social outcasts, etc.).  First the issue or problem would be laid out and discussed and then experts would speak on how to make life better—Oprah always interjecting her brand of homespun yet deeply profound Christian-New Age wisdom.  It worked like a charm.  By 4 p.m. Central Time, viewers felt like they’d really learned something from watching Oprah.  But really, we didn’t.

Unlike Phil Donahue—who left audiences in the ’70s with more questions than answers and certainly unsure of his own opinion on controversial subjects—Oprah’s quasi-educational episodes were just tidbits of information, maybe not worth a full hour of our attention.  If you wanted to delve into the specific issue, read the promoted book fiction or nonfiction.  But for someone who supports education as the most important thing to benefit one’s life, Oprah and her audience never grasped that higher education, like a master’s degree and doctorate, will create more doubt than answers to life’s dilemmas and mysteries.  The highly educated are comfortable with doubt, the less educated frightened by it.  The Oprah formula hoodwinked a generation of Americans into thinking they knew about life and stuff simply by listening to someone else and maybe empathizing.  That’s not real knowledge.  Real knowledge is off the couch and real life lived outside the TV box.  Oprah herself really lived, really experienced life in abundance and splendor.  But her tens of millions of fans not so much.  So the show was a national disservice in this regard.

But, hey, Oprah is the one who introduced our nation to Barack Obama and his lovely wife Michelle way before he ran for president.  He was charming and handsome and unique.  She knew he had star power, plus he was a Democrat.  She backed him financially, and he won two terms as President of the United States.  At his first inauguration, she was spotted among the crowds, leaning on a fellow onlooker, listening to his historic speech, smiling, hazel eyes teary and aglow—she looked so proud, like she really had accomplished something monumental, perhaps the most important thing she ever did with her life.

Now, should Oprah seriously consider running for president?  It is an interesting notion but one I am not inclined to support.  The media should get real and stop promoting her: like they declared Hillary Rodman Clinton when she ran time and again, referring to her candidacy as a ‘coronation,’ like there was just no way she would lose especially that second time when Obama was not on the ballot.  Ugh, Hillary lost to a foul-mouthed boastful rich white man, one Americans felt they knew from watching him on his TV show.

Would it be any different with Oprah?   If Trump is game two years from now, he would fight Oprah the same way he did Hillary.  It would be dirty, unfair, filled with lies and innuendos, and the American TV-watching public would love it.  Oprah, I think, is no match for the kind of filthy politics into which we have lowered ourselves today.  In a different era, perhaps someone with her stature, charisma, class and endless money could compete for the U.S. presidency.  But knowing what we know now, even Oprah Winfrey couldn’t win.  Oprah, after all, is above it.

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The 21st century: How’s that been working out?

Instead of a retrospective commentary on all the major events of 2017, I thought it better to look back at the entire 21st century.  We’ve been living in the ’teens now for almost a decade, most of us born back in the 1900s; learning, buying and updating new tech every year; rather easily accepting social change like gay marriage,  legalized marijuana, and admitting to smart phone and social media addictions.  So far it’s been a century of … adapting.

At the turn of the century, we could see where we were heading as far as the World Wide Web and even cell phones with cameras.  We knew practically every home would have a computer if not one for each family member as well as school classrooms for every student.  We could see that every book would be electronically converted for reading online—as well as every book ever written, every song ever recorded.  With websites, social media like Myspace, and YouTube, we could foresee the day everyone would indeed be famous for at least fifteen minutes.  We could see that each of us would become more independent as far as shopping and paying bills online, watching new movie releases via computer, and—most importantly perhaps—reading and researching scads of information, articles (real and fake), blogs and websites (official and unofficial) courtesy of the internet.  What we did not foresee in that last futuristic insight, however, was how divided our nation would become politically, empowering extreme thoughts and action from the ‘alt right’ and socialist left.  Americans of the 21st century do not seem to share the same basic democratic philosophy and values of our country’s Founding Fathers.

2001 tech odyssey

In the year 2000, I had yet to own a computer.  I didn’t even know how to get online or surf the web.  My only experience was at work where I used computers since the 1980s, learning to handle a mouse in 1992.  The small-town newspaper where I later worked had one new big computer that a newly hired computer technician would operate to put together an online edition.  We reporters would ask the computer tech to print out news stories, research figures, or phone numbers of people we needed to interview if we couldn’t find such information ‘old school’—because the computers in the newsroom were not suited for internet connection.  Too, the computer guy would print out any emails we received.  Reporters each had a work email address tacked onto our published articles and sometimes received email but had no computer on our desks to check such correspondence.

By 2001 not only did I own my first home computer (a blue Mac), started paying a monthly internet bill of $10, and created my first personal email address, but the newsroom also got the same computers.  Finally at work we had the internet at our fingertips.  I relished checking The New York Times every day as well as double check spellings of people, places and things, historic dates, facts and figures.  I also enjoyed surfing the net for entertainment websites, from Lucille Ball to Loretta Lynn, The Beatles to The Rolling Stones—whatever popped into my pretty little head.  The whole world was at my fingertips … I imagine everybody on the planet with internet access felt the same way at this point in human history.

Later that year I had moved to a big-city paper and not only was handed a laptop for the first time but also given a cell phone with an assigned phone number and expected to have at hand 24/7.  I was elated, feeling part of our fast-paced modern times, my own era.  Then suddenly right after 9/11, many websites were down like The New York Times, and network news was covering only this American terror story of the century.  New information was not coming across the internet as fast as everybody wanted and expected coast to coast.  We were thrown back into a dark age of sorts, realizing our modern times without internet, satellite and electronic technology.  We may have feared a bit, but within a few weeks life and high tech went on.  Within the decade, Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone and iPad—both turning out to be must-have technology for all consumers, adults to children.

Best of times, worst of times

So far the 21st century has brought into the collective consciousness the best and worst of Man simultaneously: perpetual wars yet life-saving medical advancements; the first African-American president followed by a successor voted in to dismantle his legacies; commonplace mass shootings here in the U.S. while millions of citizens march on world capitols for social and government reform; men of ultimate power and prowess brought down by women who alleged sexual harassment; a plethora of internet fake news stories alongside crucial investigative reporting of the truth; police shootings of unarmed black men, many captured on camera, giving birth to fiery protests and national alarm; hacked websites and internet interference to alter elections as people vote on dubious computer ballots; presidential candidates knocking the U.S. government, one for favoring the rich over the poor, the other for favoring the poor over the rich.  Incredulously, the latter won—and has never ceased to Tweet up a storm.

Nowadays with everyone using 21st century technology—tech that when built is only meant to last three months before another advancement and necessary replacement—it seems there is a lot of static in the air.  We can hear it on cable news with arguments left and right and see it throughout the day with an onslaught of online stories and instantaneous imagery.  It’s as if we don’t know what to believe anymore.

This is because we read online only what we want to read, see only what we want to see, believe what we want to believe.  With all the internet travel and social media fads, we’ve left our brain on auto pilot—everything happening so fast.  No time to think.  Just react.  The Information Age has become … no way to live.

Remember the 1900s?  How simpler life was then?  Why, just the last part of the century, what technology did we have to have: telephone answering machines, electric typewriters, word processors, VCRs, CDs and CD players, Walkman, Pong?  More importantly, for those of us who can recall those olden days, we had more time.  Who would have thought it about the late 20th century, because we were warned then that technology was advancing too quickly and would leave humanity in a tailspin, many incapable of keeping up?  Still we were able to live our lives ‘off line’ instead of online (there was no internet).  We never lost human contact because we left the home to shop and socialize, used our voices for conversation instead of typing disjointed thoughts to send rat-a-tat-tat as emails or Tweets.

In the year 2018 if we’re honest about how we’ve been using and abusing technology, we’ll admit to being frazzled, on edge, fearing everyone in the world even our own family and neighbors.  Our president, after all, is a reflection of us, and this era will go down in American history.  Don’t blame the latest cutting-edge technology, social media or fake news.  We’re the ones with the problem, the sickness, susceptible because we are humans with minds and souls.  All the uproar that has infected millions of us is contained within the mind.  The one thing we’ve seemed to have forgotten amidst all the fun and necessity of high tech is that technology is science: machines and wires, circuits and chips and binary code, and an on/off switch.  Humans are not machines, though machines are getting to be more like us.  Humans are not thinking beings who feel but emotional beings who think—a lesson to contemplate from The Twilight Zone that is the 21st century.

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Valdez tosses hat and star into the Texas Governor’s ring

The odds of beating Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in 2018 are slim to none, a moot point already settled in the minds and hearts of most Texans republican or democrat.  We all know our state with its dominant conservative underpinnings and dogmatic religious scaffolding—where the people as a whole don’t take kindly to words like ‘progressive’ and ‘neo’ and are slow as molasses to change or accept changing with the times.  Why no wonder states up north think of us Texans as a bunch of stubborn mules.

With Abbott as governor, our state has taken a backward turn specifically on morality issues.  Case and point: fetal burials.  That’s right.  Any fetus from abortion or miscarriage within the womb of Texas must be buried proper—as if a fetus really is a fully formed newborn baby Texan.  Why all the women who suffer miscarriages have to be placed in the same hot snipin’ controversy as abortion is beyond rational thinking.  To punish those who miscarry is also beyond empathy.  And that has become Texas, our Texas.

On the related issue of family planning, however, Abbott did some good a couple of decades ago as Attorney General.  Remember when he practically single-handedly went after deadbeat dads (and some moms, too)?  We don’t even hear the term ‘deadbeat dad’ anymore.  Families who were owed back child support finally had someone who listened, seriously pursued the whereabouts of ex-husbands and children’s fathers, left no house or apartment or trailer or family member or employer unbothered to doggedly find parents who individually owed tens of thousands of dollars to their rightful children.  No ifs, ands or buts.  It was a beautiful coming together, so to speak, of what is fair and just and legal.

On this sore subject, before Abbott came along the general rule was if a father was out of work and can’t afford to pay child support, throwing him in jail as punishment would solve nothing; he certainly couldn’t earn money behind bars, heh heh.  So, many Texas children were financially unsupported by their fathers for … well, probably since the great state of Texas formed in the 19th century.  We’d grown accustomed to it.  But then modern mothers and computer technology capable of locating the whereabouts of anyone changed the old ways and excuses of deadbeat parents.

Just a shot away

But recently Gov. Abbott, a fiercely loyal party republican, took on the status quo of sanctuary cities like Houston and Dallas, cities where local law officers didn’t take on the federal role of immigration.  Abbott banned ‘sanctuary cities,’ a phrase not really legal yet muy caliente among the philosophical right.  A so-called sanctuary city means local authorities will not pursue immigration status of citizens; in other words, illegal immigrants are allowed to remain and live and work in certain U.S. cities.  If the feds come knocking, however, illegal immigrants always could be deported.

Neo conservatives like President Bush and new democrats like President Clinton saw eye to eye on the subject of illegal immigration.  Businesses brought in cheap labor.  Then it became necessary for the government to look the other way when it came to snooping around for the legal status of human beings, millions of people living all over the U.S. not just in Texas and California.  In the manner of his former job as attorney general, Abbott threw down by threatening state funds from Texas counties with sanctuary cities.  Some elected officials stood up to the Governor on this controversial issue, again one that may call for some level of human empathy.  One was former longtime Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez.

Valdez was born in Texas to a large family of migrant workers.  Prior to being elected sheriff, she earned two college degrees and worked in the military as well as the federal government in law enforcement.  Now she is running for Texas governor on the democratic ticket.  Her recent candidacy drew controversy when the Dallas Police Association summarily backed Gov. Abbott.  Folks wanna know why.  Was she ineffective as sheriff?  How?  Was she not tough on crime, too soft on illegals?  Could her stance or public perception come from her upbringing, her background, her ethnicity, her ties to migrants and her family heritage?

Valdez has not been a major political player in Texas.  But she gained nationwide recognition as the first openly gay female Hispanic sheriff in the U.S. back in 2004.  Liberal supporters may believe she is unique for modern Texas history, even our future: Hispanic, female, gay.  But see, this is Texas, ya’ll: a real big state with thousands of small towns, more small towns than big cities.  Small Texas towns haven’t yet totally embraced gay and lesbian, let alone transgender, people—many who move to the cities for support and the pursuit of happiness.  The Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex has become the number one haven for gays, lesbians, transgender, and bisexual people and couples—this demographic population larger than those in San Francisco and New York.

But there’s Dallas, and then there’s Texas.  In many ways, the city and state are incompatible (though Dallas voters as a whole remain a major republican stronghold, proving deep Texas roots all right).  That’s what the rest of the U.S. doesn’t know about Texas and Texans.  The people have become as diverse as the state terrain: from grassy plains to rugged mountains, sandy seashores to towering forests.   For a long time, we’ve been able to just pack up and move far away enough to get along yet still call ourselves Texans.  But like everybody else has found through travel and relocation, Texas is becoming a small world after all.

 

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Texas weather is worldwide

Oh this Texas weather!  It’s December already, and the beginning of the work week was over 80 degrees while the end was close to freezing.  Now on Saturday I had to turn on the AC as I decorated the Christmas tree!  A quick look at the Farmer’s Almanac indicates another mild winter in Texas.  Oh we’re accustomed to freak weather, like the snow dusting in Houston and Austin.  Houston, for those who have yet to experience the city, is tropical: humid and mild year round.  There are Houstonians who do not own winter coats.

All this freaky weather, especially hot spells in December, bring to mind the cries of climate change and how it is most likely manmade.  I won’t say hogwash, yet I don’t jump on the band wagon to save the environment either.  I’m aware that each recent year has been hotter than the one before and each subsequent year the hottest on record.  I know scientists continue to monitor the earth from space and send back images revealing continued ice loss among massive land and water regions at the top of the world once frozen solid and home to polar bears and other life now struggling for survival and undergoing an evolution of sorts or extinction.

I also think back to the coldest winter in Texas I’ve ever experienced: December 1983.  It was so cold that the temperature stayed close to 0, and the pipes froze in the trailer where I lived for a spell during college.  My car would not start during that lingering bitter cold wave; I feared the engine block was cracked.  The folks I spent Christmas with that year joked about standing in front of the open refrigerator to feel a warm breeze.  It was that cold.  But then the other Texas winter I’ll never forget was the following year: December 1984, when I baked a turkey wearing shorts and sandals because the weather was so warm.  I learned way back then that weather is unpredictable and changes drastically year to year.

Wait a cotton-pickin’ minute

Remember that old joke: If you don’t like the weather in Texas, just wait a minute?  Well, a similar joke has been said among the Irish about their entire country: You can experience all four seasons in one day.  That got me thinking about all this climate change uproar.  I’m a big fan of Al Gore, saw his Oscar-winning movie An Inconvenient Truth, wondered why he and Tipper divorced after decades of marriage and romance shortly after his renewed fame from said movie.  So concerned for the sudden drastic and consistent changes in the environment, I even started praying daily for God to help us save our planet: guide scientists and mechanical engineers to create better fuel and/or automobiles or transportation modes, help us to ensure a global food supply, and help us with escalating fires like the constant ones still spreading for years throughout California.

Experiencing the lingering and increasing heat from year to year coupled with something we Texans thought we’d never ever have—earthquakes!—might make many start pondering end-time prophecies and near-futuristic permanently doomed climate scenarios such as in movies like Blade Runner.  Over the past couple decades, summers have become harder for me to enjoy.  The sun feels like it is literally searing my skin when I am outdoors for just a few minutes in July and August.  I’ve wondered why, given the obvious hotter summers, our schools are not closed in July and August and maybe half of September instead of June and July especially in Texas.

I’ve traveled to Delaware, New York and Boston in the summers only to experience just a bit of reprieve from the oppressive heat in my home state.  Is anyone else having trouble breathing in the Texas heat like me?  I wonder if I’m just getting old(er) and growing discontent, if my skin is getting more sensitive, have I become totally spoiled by summer AC.  [In Texas, AC—whether in cars, homes, hotels or business buildings—is a necessity practically every day of the year.]  Then I think about my grandparents and all the old-timers generations prior who lived full lives without AC.  HOWWWWW?  These are folks who used little or no deodorant, bathed weekly, had no indoor toilets, wore more clothes than we do, and walked everywhere in their small towns.

Climate, fry-ment

The difference between people now and a hundred years ago must be the earth was a bit cooler, the heat tolerable, right?  Our planet obviously is undergoing vast temperature and climate changes, and we should care about it.  However, I don’t know how suddenly these changes have been going on.  Al Gore swears by it as his plantations have become unproductive over the span of a decade due to climate change such as lack of rainfall and super storms.  He tells a Southern joke about when we see a turtle on a post, we can bet it didn’t get there by itself.  ?

The climate debate is not only about the science [the Trump administration summarily removed all references to ‘climate change’ in at least one government website] but if we modern humans are totally to blame.  That is a bitter pill to swallow.  In my lifetime, I’ve seen pollution and smog levels go down dramatically, cleaner air and water, bans on aerosol cans and many other restrictions on a list of chemicals including Freon.  To non scientists like me and most people, the skies are blue, rain falls, sun shines, seasons change, food is plentiful, God is great, and life and humanity go on.  All is seemingly right in the world.  And we don’t want to hear otherwise.

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The man thing: Women and society have had enough

Men.  Man, what’s going on?  Or should the question be what’s been going on, all along … since the beginning of time?  A lot of famous men in show biz and politics are being accused of sexual misconduct, if not outright assault, by the fairer sex.  Most of these alleged—and acknowledged incidents (thanks Louis CK)—occurred decades ago usually when the victims were young women or teens.  Every day we learn of a new allegation, another long-time famous and powerful man from the movie industry to government, Republicans and Democrats, gay and straight.  Al Franken?  Well he has the distinction of working in both man-made realms.  Perhaps the reason all the dirty laundry is coming out now is due to Bill Cosby and Donald Trump: one left to ruin, the other still elected President of the United States.  Both scenarios cast perspective on our society: No one really cares about what women say when it comes to men and sexcapades especially from decades ago.  It will always be he said/she said.  Not so fast.  The days of giving the accused good ol’ boy a fair shake until proven guilty may be coming to an end as women’s stories, their recollections, are now believed by millions and millions of people, women and men, living in this newly created era.

In trying to figure out all this unseemly activity between the sexes, it may appear a lot of men do not know how to behave in the presence of a woman, especially if the woman is not his date or even interested in him in a romantic way, if she’s just his friend or co-worker or employee.  Seems men have a need to be the aggressor and women to be unimpressed, coy (which confuses men) or willing to play along.  Monica Lewinsky confided to Barbara Walters that she hiked the back of her skirt to let President Bill Clinton see her thong underwear: She wanted to let him know she was available for play.  What a national mess that turned out to be, and whether or not Hillary Clinton wants to admit it, that impeachment ordeal had a lot to do with Americans declining to give her the presidency.

Boob tube

In retrospect the blurring of appropriate and inappropriate behavior between the sexes came along with the bawdy TV sitcom, and long-time rerun, “Married with Children.”  In the opening credits, tired shoe salesman Al Bundy plops on the couch to mindlessly watch TV but not before pushing his hand down his pants, just a little beneath the waist.  Either he’s just being a guy and wants to relax and let his meal settle (Al hardly ever ate a meal), or it suggests masturbation.  That show first aired three decades ago.  Through the years we’ve seen an onslaught of FOX TV shows with women as mere sex kittens, gratuitous sex scenes, not to leave out other networks and cable TV with the likes of “The Man Show,” along with sleazy horror movies and video games where women must be raped, popular comedic phrases like “I’m rich, bitch” and a generation of misogynistic rap lyrics.  Women have been objectified on a modern sociological scale, still perceived only in sexual context.  Damned if she does.  Damned if she doesn’t.  Damned either way.

When Christianity was forming, there was an all-male sect that believed women to be pure evil, so they best stay away or face eternal damnation.  That sect died out.  Then the Church rethought the significance of Mary, the mother of Jesus, so maybe women weren’t so bad after all, even serving a divine purpose as men most assuredly believed their own place to be in the eyes of the All-Male God.  Yet in practically every society, women continue to be second-class citizens.  Women still generate suspicion in men who through the ages have claimed the opposite sex to be everything from witches to whores.  It’s been a man’s world all right.

Along with the male inability to see women as equally human, there is the underlying abuse—which is about power.  So a male masseuse giving a back massage to a female client pushes muscles until fingers come in contact with a nipple; an Olympic doctor performs sex maneuvers on pre-teens under the guise of gynecological exams; a man simply whips out his thing just to see a woman’s or women’s response; a grungy man hides to spy on women shopping the bra and panty section at a department store.  A sixth-grade boy ‘accidentally’ trips and falls into a girl and clutches her breast simultaneously.

Sugar and spice

Wanna know why boys and men get away with this behavior over and over again?  First, women are self deprecating by nature: “I could be wrong, but I think he touched my …” So they second guess themselves.  They don’t want to accuse and go public if perchance the incident were an innocent, nonsexual misunderstanding.  Women are often unsure of themselves or their memories of what really happened.  “Men can’t be that nasty, can they?”  [Pssst.  A man would tell us yes.]  Then there’s the fact that women are too damn nice.  They don’t want to tell and retell a dirty secret.  And ultimately, a lady thinks everyone else will assume she was at fault, a tease.  Really?  Just socializing or doing business with a man means sex stuff can occur?

Freud was first to report what unwanted sexual advances do to young girls.  Repeatedly he found through psychoanalysis that his adult female clients, most of whom were deemed neurotic, were consciously unaware of childhood sex abuse usually by the hands of their fathers and male relatives.  He was so disgusted with this unbearable truth—that speaks more about his own sex than the women he helped—he quit the field he pioneered.  He just couldn’t take it anymore.  Television drug counselor Dr. Drew has been publicly candid about the secret truth that comes out in therapy, how common the issue of childhood sexual abuse is found to be the reason for drug abuse and addiction.

Statistics are one in four girls and one in six boys are victims of sex abuse.  And again, most victims never tell the secret.  The “Me too” campaign is trying to change all that.  Society is being persuaded to not only listen to a female when she speaks of an uncomfortable incident or situation involving a man and his unwanted sexual behavior but also to believe her.  If there is any good that will come out of confronting past and current sex and power abuse by men against females of all ages, it is that not all men are this way.  There are honorable, decent, good, law-abiding men in this world.  They’re out there somewhere.