Author: cheriebell69@hotmail.com

A drive along the backroads of rural Oklahoma and northeast Texas came to mind when watching the insurrection last week.  Planted throughout the landscape were enormous Trump banners and flags boldly waving in the wind.  The election has been over for a few months.  Even so, whether country estate or wood-frame home along the highway, properties maintained 2020 presidential banners and flags, each as large as a van.  These were the same super-sized Trump flags, some with his smiling face, carried by legions of enraged supporters mad as hell about the election and willing to storm our nation’s Capitol to stop Congress from certifying the election won by Joe Biden.  The mob carried a variety of Trump political ad flags, some proclaiming “Trump Nation,” these alongside the Old South’s Confederate Stars & Bars, and a smattering of U.S. flags.

Thousands who showed up to Washington, D.C., midweek represent half the country.  Like all those elected officials diving under their desks then snatched by police to avoid being dragged to the gallows set up with a noose on the front lawn, I was frightened by the murderous intent to overthrow the government.  We who are not like them should be.

This is what democracy looks like

American ignorance has contributed to our current state of fuming division, that and a fat-mouth know-nothing lying braggart.  The 2020 presidential election was not stolen.  Trump did not win; he did not win by a landslide.  Biden won.  What makes me so sure?  The only reason I understand and therefore have faith in American elections is from covering them as a government reporter.  What I learned while doing the job was elections are local.  They are locally controlled, from city to county, state and federal.  On election night I always had a seat in the county clerk’s office.  Alongside me in the office, where votes eventually come in, were both chairs of the county’s Republican and Democrat Parties.  They were there eyeing the process and results for the very reason Trumpers revolted: to ensure no funny business and that their guy or gal wins or loses fair and square.  Across the nation, there must be thousands of party chairs who oversee every county, state and federal election but especially presidential ones and more than ever this last one. 

Typically older Americans operate the polls, and in large cities perhaps there are more minorities than white people are used to seeing in rural areas and small towns.  They are paid a little bit for what they do, often working late into the evening election night.  When the ballot boxes, locked and made of steel back in the day, are brought into the county clerk’s office, the staff checks and verifies figures.  In all good time, winning candidates are announced.

With the evolution to computer voting machines, still it is the job of our nation’s county clerks—all locally elected officials—to validate the vote tallies, check for inaccuracies, ensure accuracy, and announce winners.  Because of the pandemic, before the election many communities and states quickly switched to mail-in ballots to prevent long lines and avoid health risks.  Nothing suspicious in the sudden move to do so, just an arrangement county clerks and all the other local officials assumed the public would understand, support and appreciate.

Fake news

Along with America’s near total ignorance about our own election process, there is the multiverse of news sources, with little distinction between news and views, what is called the mainstream media and what used to be called the alternative media.  There is no secret about the animosity between CNN/ MSNBC/ABC/CBS/NBC and Fox News.  The palpable rivalry is not just about Fox News’ viewer figures that far outrank competitors but really for serious journalists with integrity the way Fox News plays fast and loose with the facts.  That said, throughout Trump’s presidency, national TV news reporters clearly opined negatively about him.  Verbally Trump and the mainstream national media constantly punched each other in the face.  But the same thing went on during Obama’s two terms as President when every action he took was scrutinized by Fox News and Republican guests like Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Michele Bachmann and even conservative Christian leaders.

Americans were left in the middle—to think for ourselves.  We had to decide what we wanted to watch, which reporters we agreed with, and where we wanted to get our news and hope for the facts. The most loyal viewers of Fox News have been adamant fans of President Trump.  And vice versa for non-Trumpers who stuck with MSM.  The same American divide continued with online mainstream news sources, many often rebuked by Trump either by name or lumped together as “fake news.”    

But social media was and remains far and away from the old timey 20^th century news format of network and cable TV.  Throughout the Trump presidency, the heads of Twitter and Facebook maintained every time Trump told an outlandish lie on social media, he had a constitutional right to free speech.  Irresponsible speech is what caused last week’s deadly insurrection.  For weeks social media posts from Trump and his supporters bragged of a planned violent attack on the Capitol Jan. 6 to stop the U.S. Congress from certifying the 2020 Presidential election.  That day thousands of Americans—egged on by Trump, donning black leather gloves and wool coat—arrived in Washington, D.C., intent on stringing up elected officials as traitors.  Their mission was to ‘take back our country!’—like all of us wanted Trump to continue as President.  Like none of us is capable of thinking for ourselves.

Imagine their dream for our country: life in a Republican regime.  No free speech.  No free thought.  Keep your mouth shut and maybe stay out of prison or a concentration camp.  That’s how citizens live in Russia, China, North Korea, now Hong Kong, some African nations, the Middle East and our neighboring banana republics.  But as we live and breathe this moment, not yet in the U.S.

Epiphany

Exactly what do Trumpers want?  Trump to be President four more years?  Empowerment?  Money?  Tax evasion?  Democrats dead?  No more immigrants?  No more American cities burned and looted?  What are they so mad about that their lives are so awful?  Are they starving, living on the streets, dying, unemployed, falsely imprisoned?  No, from the looks of them at the capitol, they are typically healthy white Americans with good jobs, clothes, cars, money, security and guns.  One rioter yelled at a reporter who asked the cause for violence at the capitol: “You drove me to this!!!!”

No, Trumpers, in their hopped-up fake media-induced need to be cynical, argumentative, overbearing, suspicious, intimidating and violent, chose to believe lies about a rigged American presidential election plus assorted convoluted conspiracy theories.  It is enough to drive a person insane.

Democracy needs two things—besides intelligent citizens—to keep it going: calm rational thought and the truth.  Trump was none of that.  Same for his fans.

The epiphany is Trumpers are a cult.  They believe like a cult.  Now they act like a cult, ready to ‘blow up the system’ as ordered by their leader.  For people like me who want and need to live in reality, truth matters.  Truth is worth dying for, not fakery and phony balogny Trump or any elected official.  We both have something in common, the Trumpers and the rest of us: We understand democracy is an ideal.  Ideals are worth fighting for but not lies, and believing the election was rigged and stolen from Trump, of all people, is a big fat lie.

Good rrrrrrriddance 2020!!!  Am I right?  Wasn’t this just the worst year of our lives?  The new virus, the pandemic, the masks, sanitizer, hand washings, ‘social’ distancing, school closings, toilet paper shortages, grocery store runs, mandatory shutdowns, mass unemployment, two-week quarantines, hospitalizations, culminating in nick-of-time vaccines … and with all that precaution, still so many deaths?  Earlier in the year when we were learning about the novel coronavirus in New York City, Texans including yours truly thought such tragedy could never happen here because we’re spread out with lots of land, unlike cramped, stacked tiny NYC.  By year’s end, Texas now ranks first in Covid-19 cases and second in Covid-19 deaths, right behind New York.

The whole situation seems so … unnecessary, like it could have been prevented, at least cut short from spreading worldwide.  Yet history tells us humanity has lived through many plagues, most more gruesome and deadly than our novel coronavirus and certainly without the comparably comfortable modern hospitals, medical procedures and medications.  It’s just that this being the high-tech 21^st century, where our sights were more in outer space than back here on earth, we thought plagues were a thing of the past.  With our space-age bio science and vaccines, surely modern man could ward off a new bug.  Were we so wrong!  And by we, I mean those of us most fortunate to live in the First World.  This kind of panic, pandemonium, and inability to control the spread of a new disease is common in Third World countries, not the awesomely powerful ‘We’re Number One’ USA.  Americans thought we had become immune to pandemics.

A pox on all our houses

Some blame China for not telling the world about the new virus in the beginning, which may have prevented the worldwide financial devastation and health crises of a pandemic.  China is to blame in that it is a communist nation.  Why do we keep forgetting that?  Yeah, there are communist nations still on planet Earth, and they’re not going away.  Contrary to American popular belief, communism did not die out in favor of capitalism.  Communism is China’s core thought and instinct.  Communism means the government takes priority over its people.  Therefore, a communist nation would treat the rest of us with the same disregard.  We humans are not important to a communist nation.  China has no need to tell us anything, and its leaders have no shame about it.  How many “Twilight Zone” episodes do we need to re-watch to understand authoritarian government?

The bottom line is it doesn’t matter who started the pandemic, how, when or even why.  When it comes to this historic costly deadly health crisis, as the TV stars tell us, “We’re all in this together.”  What a strange motto considering we’re warned against hugging each other, shaking hands, standing closer than six feet or even spending time with friends and family who do not live in our home?  Each of us feels utterly alone during this pandemic.  Social media and video calls are a poor substitute for human contact.  Even the dying cannot be comforted by their loved ones face to face in the same room.

The breath of our life

The word ‘disease’ is metaphysically broken down into the syllables ‘dis-ease,’ the belief being we tend to experience illness when we are emotionally and/or spiritually uneasy about issues unrelated to physical wellness.  Hmm.  But the New Age philosophy falls apart when so many healthy people get sick and even die from a disease especially a new one.  A pandemic is unfair.  Or is it?

Take the philosophy a step further, however, and consider the new disease: a lung infection that affects our ability to breathe.  The affliction can become so severe, it engulfs the lungs, leaving them frozen and unable to function without a respirator.  The ill are suffocating, and some will surely die.

Hasn’t the slogan of a large protesting segment of American society been “I can’t breathe?”  It’s on T-shirts, caps and now face masks.  And didn’t that chant start a few years prior to the novel coronavirus?  “Think!” John Lennon sang in a song long ago.

Well, enough hippie mumbo jumbo.  Who knows why we got here and have to endure another pandemic, formerly known in the olden days as plague?  Now that many of us will be taking the Covid-19 vaccine in 2021, we can start to view the pandemic with 20/20 vision.  The biggest take-away is we should never become so arrogant to think the world cannot be knocked down to the ground by a virus, because obviously it can happen again.  Our government leaders and citizens must rethink what or who is more important when it comes to surviving hard economic times.  Whether communist or capitalist, a country is just dirt without people.

In another song, Lennon wished us well with a Happy New Year, the chorus concluding: “Let’s make this a good one without any fear.”

Cheers!  To you and yours, all the very best!

I’m gonna miss the folks this year on Christmas.  Thinking about it, I’ve spent this holiday at their home in Oklahoma since, gosh, 1997?  And before that, my parents were the only ones I spent Christmas with pretty much every year of my life.  Somehow we’ve made a big deal of this holiday, not always celebrated technically on December 25 due to work, illness and the availability of each of us to come together the same time every year.  For the past two decades, my husband has been gracious to spend the holiday with my folks, dropping by before or after to visit his folks.  Although he is an in-law, he enjoys my parents’ rather odd tradition of gift giving.  They call it ‘Chinese Christmas.’  I cringe a bit at the racist term, but my parents—born in the Depression Era with childhood Christmases of no gifts save an orange, handful of nuts, comb or pair of socks—light up during this after-dinner festivity when piles of wrapped and sacked low-cost and debatably useful items are opened and scrutinized.  The game starts with the oldest person in the room, my Dad, taking a turn and then followed by others sitting clockwise.  Each person picks a gift from the pile and unwraps it so we all can see.  The next person can either steal an opened gift or take a chance choosing a present from the holiday pile.  This game takes hours … because despite my pleas to limit each of our contributions to five or ten gifts a year, we prove to be a generous bunch and during the year get carried away purchasing little things here and there, laughing to our spouses when spotting an item unsuspectedly at a store with a wink saying “Chinese Christmas.”  [We gotta come up with another name.]  I am the only one in my family who will not miss ‘Chinese Christmas’ this year.  Ahem.

20^th Century Christmas Past

My childhood memories of Christmas are colors of bright red or green foil wrapping paper, satin bows, name tags with string, the smell of Scotch tape.  My mother being a teacher was off for two weeks along with my brother and me.  We always opened our gifts a few days before Christmas so we could travel to Oklahoma and spend the holiday with Dad’s family.  Maw Maw and her daughters crowded her tiny kitchen with a high ceiling and tall windows and commenced to cooking, baking and roasting until the room was miserably hot.  Maw Maw made the most delicious yeast rolls—soft and warm as her heart, made with love.  There was a huge turkey; sliced ham; assorted cooked beans and vegetables; dressing; cranberry sauce spilt on a plate, its can shape intact; sweet tea; and then assorted homemade pies and cakes.  The desserts were set on top of Maw Maw’s washer and dryer which were in the dining room, a walled-in back porch.  It was a country meal, unpretentious, and everyone left full. 

Each year the growing family, from Maw Maw & Paw Paw’s original eight children, surveyed the feast set out on the kitchen table, counters and stove; scooped our servings onto paper plates; grabbed a plastic glass of iced tea or pop; and found somewhere to eat throughout the small house.  We ate in the living room, in bedrooms, outside if the weather were nice, and the lucky family members got to sit at the large dining table.

After I left for college, Maw Maw had a debilitating stroke, and all those big dinners at her house were suddenly filed into our family’s collective memories.  The eight families started celebrating separately with their own in-laws and grandchildren.  The country Christmas dinner continued in the families with better cooks.  My family never wanted to spend a lot of time in the kitchen.  We either ate out or arranged a take-out turkey meal with all the trimmings.  My parents, it turns out, are fond of barbecue and mustard potato salad for their holiday meal. 

Welcome Christmas 2020

Talk about a hard candy Christmas this year!  We’d been advised by our national disease control experts to keep gatherings low at ten and under then six and under, now celebrate only with people we live with.  Don’t exchange air with people with whom we do not reside.  That would be all our loved ones for most of us.  But with hospitals filled to capacity (and no adjacent field hospitals for some reason), we who are healthy are begged to stay home, wear masks, don’t travel (60% of holiday travelers are not flying this year), wash hands, don’t touch our face and wait patiently for the vaccine.  For many of us that will be a wait in intervals for two doses.  Summer 2021 is looking good.  Be here before we know it.

What I really am gonna miss about my parents is their era.  They are decidedly not 21^st century, not online, without computer or smart phone.  They remain 20^th century, mid to late, the epitome of.  For a blue-collar suburban family-of-four formed in the 1960s, we were representative of a precise time in American history, even much lauded in retrospect.  It’s funny because back when I was aware of growing up in the ’70s, the times seemed so boring.  They also were full of fear: a Cold War with the USSR whereby both nations believed nuclear annihilation was imminent, OPEC and the energy crisis, gas lines and oil spills, Middle East crises, shooting deaths by hand guns, and fear of the future due to certain overpopulation and projected environmental crises.  My memories growing up are more of cold weather than warm.

Despite all the perceived boredom amidst worldwide turmoil, Christmas every year was a beautiful time for everyone, a moment of rejuvenation and renewed hope, universal happiness that warmed our hearts.  Why couldn’t the spirit of Christmas last throughout the year, as children wonder in my favorite holiday song Christmastime is Here?  For my part, I loved being in the school Christmas concerts and plays and when older enjoyed caroling.   As a music teacher, I took students caroling every year … except this one, inhibited by the virus and health experts who maintain singing even with masks spreads the virus faster than talking.  OK.

It’s just that … singing lifts the spirit.  Many people enjoy holiday music, but singers experience a whole other level—deeper in the psyche, passion, spiritual perhaps, a human need.  This year at a new school, my choir presented our first virtual concert.  Each student recorded themselves from home singing the concert songs.  A sound engineer linked their video and audio.  At school everyone watched the presentation on our laptops.  Seeing two dozen students, each in a box, singing seasonal songs, unmasked, was so normal, many of us adults were teary eyed.  Feeling dormant emotions at last.  Silently longing.  Senses aware of our past this time of year and all that humanity has lost … from not touching one another.

I’m alone this Thanksgiving Day.  Just ate a chicken roaster breast with sweet potato casserole, black-eyed peas, ice green tea and a slice of pumpkin pie with whipped cream.  Already 1,000 calories, and I skipped breakfast for this feast.

Really, I don’t mind spending a holiday alone.  I’ve spent many holidays with the folks, so sitting here alone typing a blog reminds me of the days when the type of jobs I had meant sometimes I’d work a holiday.  I was OK with it.  Probably adopted a blue-collar work ethic from my dad who sometimes worked holidays for double time-and-a-half.  Wow.  I worked holidays but nothing more than regular pay.  Often an employer would give me the next day off or a day of my choosing.  That worked out fine.

I’m saying that the holidays in themselves aren’t so special to me.  They are not Holy Days, and in my upbringing even those are suspect.  Who’s creating these special dates when all of society is supposed to stop working just like that?  I like work and working and never minded being called in to do a shift on ‘holidays.’

This year I chose to stay home because of the severe warnings by the federal center for disease control.  They’re already predicting this Thanksgiving, the beginning of America’s usual extended month-long holiday season, to be the Mother of all Super Spreaders.  So given my line of work, as a school teacher, I figure I very well could be exposed despite all of us wearing masks throughout the work day.  My parents are elderly as are other relatives.  I think it unwise to go with the hip travelers’ mantra heard on the news, “You gotta live your life,” when something bad could happen.  It’s unlikely, maybe.  But I’m siding with the other American mantra, “You never know.”

So far I’ve skipped a large family reunion this summer, Labor Day visit, and now Thanksgiving and more than likely Christmas.  Not sure if I’m doing the right thing, that guilt trip also heard from travelers: What if this is the last time I ever see dear old (    ) again?  But doctors would say I’m doing the right thing avoiding the elderly, crowds, indoor family gatherings, and this new one ‘sharing air.’  On such matters as a contagious and potentially deadly illness, I defer to doctors.

That said, I’m not afraid of the new virus, figure I could be an asymptomatic carrier, very likely have already come into contact with others who actually have the virus.  I’m not worried about myself and my age group and younger plus those of us with relatively good health.  But there are all those other people out there with all kinds of chronic illnesses, many which impact the lungs and breathing.  Plus, medical experts haven’t figured out this virus yet.  Some people who’ve survived COVID-19 have chronic health problems even involving their hearts.

Perfect 2020 vision

This year has been awful for everybody around the world.  A fourth of our national workforce unable to find jobs.  A quarter of all children in this country alone going without food.  Millions of students unable to attend school or learn online.  Tens of millions of families not knowing where to turn, how to live, what to do, where to go.  It’s all due to the pandemic and mandated restrictions like closing businesses, yet only certain industries over others.

First, what we’re seeing, finally, is it’s not the virus that is the source of our problem, the lone problem shared with everyone else on the planet.  It’s how our economic systems, national and global, work and then don’t work or won’t work when a monkey wrench is thrown in.  Fine when there’s no pandemic.  Financial ruin whenever a pandemic comes along.  Pandemics occur, ushering in mega health crises.  What shouldn’t happen is food, shelter, education and healthcare are removed along with jobs and income, especially during a relatively short cycle of a year or two.

The vaccine can’t arrive soon enough.  Untested, still millions will roll up their sleeves for a shot, including me.  I see it as my duty in this unprecedented time.  Besides, wearing a face mask fogs my glasses.  I literally cannot see most of the time.  I’m walking through this era virtually blind and like everyone else have lost patience.

We just want our old lives back: when we didn’t have to think twice about hugging one another, visiting family for holidays and any reason, traveling, shaking hands, making a personal appearance because it leaves a lasting emotional impression lacking from a letter, photograph, email, phone call or online chat. But when we do live past this terrible time in our collective history, we best start contemplating how to take care of each other regardless of hardship.  The year 2020 has shown us the things we miss when they’re taken away and our very human reactions, from petty to selfish, angry to depressed.  By now we should be seeing the light at the end of the darkness. It’s visible to anyone who wants to see it. Whether you believe or not, the dawn of a new era awaits us.

Someone asked if I were happy Saturday, Nov. 7, 2020.  Joe Biden finally had been declared the winner of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, ousting President Donald Trump.  Jubilant would describe my high emotions.  Joyfully overwhelmed.  Ecstatic maybe.  Definitely tears of joy flowed as I watched live coverage and saw tens of millions of Americans equally elated that Biden had won the presidency.  Our mutual gleeful satisfaction also was realizing the past four years of a political, societal, emotional and spiritual downward spiral into the darkest abyss of fringe America had been halted.

But only by a point or two here and there state by state.  We won’t forget it was a very tight race.  Winner takes all in our Electoral College patchwork to name the U.S. President state by state.  Since 2000 I’ve seen the Electoral College work against the popular vote twice and radically support the old-boy institution done away with.  Any Republicans with me now?

To think that during election night, as it seemed Trump had won yet again, with small states blue and big states red including Texas, I’d given up and wept pitifully for my once-great nation: the envy of the world, the best country on earth, the fruitful land with basically good decent people with heritage from all over the world, the very terrain from sea to sea on which God shed His grace.  See, I’m so used to being the only Democrat in the house, in public places and spaces, at various employment, among friends and within my own family for the most part.  I had been brainwashed into giving up on a Democrat winning the presidency in 2020.  But by bedtime, I heard the Great Old Man (and I call President-Elect Joe Biden that as a term of endearment) tell us in his calm familiar coach’s voice to be patient.  He hadn’t given up on the election, the process, democracy or more importantly the American people.  It didn’t matter how small his campaign rallies were this year during the pandemic when we’re urged to be extra-extra cautious and avoid crowds of ten or more especially strangers no matter how deeply bonded politically.

By the end of the week, I had no fingernails.  How could Joe Biden remain so calm?  Age?  Wisdom?  Decades of political experience?  Yes, yes, and yes! 

Day by day throughout the week, the news trickling in was good for Biden—not so much for Trump who pressed, depending on the state, to stop the count or to count every single vote.  Wha?  As of this writing, he has yet to concede the loss while Biden has moved on in the work of healing our nation’s deep divisions, emotional wounds and radically opposing viewpoints within the family unit, a lot egged on by social media.  If anyone can do it, a Democrat like Joe Biden can.  He’s always been a moderate, never been radical, always worked across the aisle.  He’s fair and most of all listens … to everyone.  He’s methodical and plans.  In the presidential campaign of his life, he made very few mistakes.  Way to go Joe!

The Circle Game    

And now my blog writing has come full circle.  I began this blog of political humor and social commentary in the winter of 2016 right after Trump was elected president, specifically because Trump was going to be our U.S. President.  I clearly saw he was reckless and dangerous for the country and the world.  Four painfully long, exhausting, extremely difficult and cRaZy years later, Trump’s on his way out.

He lost his bid for re-election to Joe Biden, the Vice President of President Barack Obama and long-time Democratic legislator who ran for president a couple of times himself: a reasonable and personable guy, non-leftist, non-radical, non-billionaire, non-braggart, with working class roots, a regular Joe whose childhood was spent in Pennsylvania and later Delaware.  Biden says everyone knows his story.  He was a lawyer who at a young age was elected to the U.S. Senate in the 1970s then suddenly lost his wife and little girl in a car crash that also left his two injured sons in the hospital.  His intention was to bow out and wrap his life around his boys.  But the old men of the U.S. Senate came to a grief-stricken Biden and convinced the young man the best thing for him to do was to get to work.  He was obligated to the voters, the people who elected him.  He didn’t want to go.  His heart wasn’t in it.  He has spoken candidly about that time as a widower raising two little boys alone, saying the unspeakable: At the time, he wanted to die, too.  But his sons needed him, and for whatever reason, he took the advice of old men who coaxed him to go to work.

Biden was the type of Washington, D.C., legislator who took the train every day, a 90-minute ride to and from his home in Delaware.  In a couple of years, he remarried and was blessed with another daughter.  His bids for U.S. President never gained traction.  But then Barack Obama picked him to be his running mate.  Biden had the job for eight years, riding the train to and from work every day.  His son Beau, a war veteran and elected official himself, always wanted his dad to run for president, telling his father he would be a great president.  But Beau also fought terminal cancer.  His death in 2015 took the breath out of his father.  It was too much tragedy for one lifetime, more than a person could bear.

I was surprised when in 2020 old man Joe Biden tossed his hat into the ring for the Democratic presidential nomination.  Given his age, it seemed a bad idea, a last-minute shot, like he needed something to do.  He wasn’t good debating a new generation of energized and diverse Democrats.  Then he spoke nostalgically about working with racists legislators in the 1970s to get legislation passed that would benefit the nation.  When candidate Kamala Harris countered with her childhood as a bussed elementary student due to racist policies, Biden closed his eyes for a moment.  I knew he regretted coming across as cavalier and that he was not a bigot or racist, but only people a lot older would know that about him.  I also thought, “Wouldn’t it be something if he gets the candidacy and chooses Harris as his running mate?”

And that’s exactly what happened.

Life.  It changes fast.  It changes slow.  Joe Biden would even say painfully slow sometimes.

My best friend was from Wilmington, DE, and she always spoke highly of Joe Biden.  In the 1970s before moving to Texas, she worked his campaigns, said she knew him well, assured he was just a regular guy and would make a great president.  No doubt in her mind.  I wasn’t so sure as we discussed politics back when the Democrat contenders included Bill Clinton and Al Gore.  I wanted Gore.  I always wanted Gore.

Light at the end of the darkness

Lots of lessons these past four years with a president like Trump.  I never bought his sincerity as President.  Seemed phony from the get-go.  Yet he won.  Half of America made sure of it in 2016.  Through the years not only have Republicans supported his every whim, they don’t even call themselves Republicans anymore.  They are Trumpers.  Their political philosophy is Trumpism.

It’s frightening how close the election was now and in 2016.  Historic voting numbers this time around both for Democrats and Republicans, I mean Trumpers, but still practically 50/50.  One side wants the other side gone.  One side will work with the other side to get things done.  How can government, a democratic government, operate like this?

Diplomacy is how a democratic government gets things done.  Biden is perhaps our most consummate diplomat, learning it from the old men of the U.S. Senate whether D’s or R’s and then eight years as VP hobnobbing with leaders around the world.  Diplomacy is how we restore our nation’s divides.  The art of diplomacy is how the U.S. will restore our rightful place as world leader. 

The business of government is messy and ugly, nothing really beautiful other than the rare occasion when a moment brings warring factions together to a peaceful end and, come on now, compromise.  So we find politicians are necessary to get things done.  Bitching and moaning and constantly complaining and yelling haven’t gotten a damn thing done in our country.  It’s just loud anger.  Like it’s always been in America, half the country waited for the next election to see if their guy (and someday gal) would win and the tide would turn favorably to their way of thinking.  My half waited.  Oh, we exercised our free speech to call out horse feathers when we saw it and balderdash when we heard it.

Americans have lost faith in diplomacy since 9/11.  September 2001 was a long time ago.  The two subsequent wars are over.  The need to bully the world is over.  The chip on our shoulder has been knocked off by Russia and China who have shown us the harm they can do.

We have become our own worst enemy.  In losing the election, Trump has no one to blame but himself.  Biden is proof calm heads prevail.  For whatever reason, America had to go through a leaderless era.  With our well-known stubborn tendencies, in 2016 Americans had to blow up life as we knew it and choose the wildest card, someone who would rule as if people were expendable machines, little people living little lives with no hope for the future and certainly no help from government ruling with a cruel iron fist.  Darkness will make you see the light. Sometimes we have to walk through darkness to appreciate what we once had and count our blessings present and future.  Joe Biden knows this well.

This presidential election year, I have never been asked so many times by so many people the same question: You wanna explain to me why—how—can you possibly still be a Democrat?

I mean, it’s laughable.

My smarty response could be: Given our president, I could ask you the same question.

My knee-jerk reaction is: In the United States of America, I don’t have to explain my political views to anyone.  But I realize the people asking the question are lookin’ for a fight.  Bored, I suppose.  We know we won’t change each other’s views on politics.  So, I blog instead.  Whether or not anyone reads it, I am just very thankful to live in a nation where free speech and free press (any idea is uncensored by the government) is the law.

It’s funny this modern Great Divide, reminiscent of the Baby Boomers and the WWII generation.  Back in 1960s, it was thought to be caused by a Generation Gap.  Now we’ve developed a Political Ideology gap, a heated angry vitriolic and maybe eventually deadly civil war-mongering divide.  Each of us, Democrats and Republicans, honest to God thinks the others are completely nuts, dumb as cotton, silly billies, insane in the membrane.  [And … not right with God.  Keep reading.]  With social media and the internet sending us views faster than our eyes can read, our brains can comprehend, and our emotions rationalize, we should know by this point in the Information Age to first take a few deep breaths.  After all, reasonable people don’t want to press send on a hot-headed profane nonsensical smart-ass political quip or rebuttal.  All CAPS and misspellings and exclamation points.  That’s a real shame among us Americans.

Hot mess

America used to be a beautiful nation in concept, leadership and people.  Our presidents were known as the Leader of the Free World.  Our diplomatic work for democracy, fair elections and basic human rights were just.  The bad guys feared us because we were the good guys.  Now the world has watched several years of Americans cutting off our nose to spite our face.  The world never realized the deep-seated animosity and hatred brewing among the races and ethnicities, once proclaimed as our greatest asset—that people of all religious and cultural beliefs and practices could live together in relative peace and harmony.  But KAOS sat in enough American bars and worked beside us long enough to figure out our innermost prejudices and fears, basically of non-white non-Christian non-American-born ’nother beings.  The KKK call them sub humans.  The federal government kept those dangerous pockets within our nation, the areas with blatant racism especially against African Americans, under control for decades.  But no more.

Since the end of the 20^th century, the world witnessed every time a mass shooting occurred only in America, usually by young males, usually at school.  The world watched as the Black Lives Matter movement grew to gain global support.  The world watched every time an American police officer was caught on camera shooting or killing with his bare hands another Black American … right out in the open.  The world watched our cruelest immigration policies culminate in caging kids and babies in diapers while sending their parents elsewhere—right here in America, the land of immigrants.

It’s laughable how Republicans have come to calling Democrats socialists.  What happened to calling us communists?  That’s what they thought of us in the ’70s and when I was starting to vote in the ’80s.  They chided us for being card-carrying members of the ACLU.  For the young kids out there, the ACLU stands for the American CIVIL LIBERTIES Union.  Conservatives think ACLU is a cuss word.

America may be a republic, but our government provides a lot of socialist programs created to ensure the weakest among us (the elderly, children, the ill, the poor) are taken care of and protected: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schools, food programs, grants for tech or trade school and college, etc.  These are reasons I’m a Democrat.  And the global pandemic, which has led to tens of millions of job loss and income reduction, has made us realize we have to help each other.

The moral of the story

When asked how can I still be a Democrat in this day and age, I’ve replied, simply, because I care about people; I believe we’re supposed to care for others not just ourselves.  Life is hard.  There are no guarantees especially of prosperity, income and job security.  Then there are the unforeseen tragedies, often personal and private.  I believe taxes are supposed to help the down-trodden get back on their feet.  Like President Bill Clinton, I accept that when it comes to government ‘hand outs’ (as Republicans call aid to families in distress from: job loss, low education and job skills, health crises, death of a spouse, divorce, abuse, destroyed housing, natural catastrophes, etc. etc. etc.), ten to 20 percent of the government grants and loans will never be repaid.  We’re not so naïve to think everyone is an upstanding citizen good for his or her word and signature.  Like Clinton, I believe most Americans are honest, decent, law-abiding citizens who, like us, love our great nation and its many opportunities, economic assistance being one.

The Republican Party fought Social Security and Medicare.  (Pssst.  They’re still fighting it, and the younger generation elected to Congress want it gone.)  They believe a person and family should stand up on their own, figure out a way to make lemon aid out of lemons, maybe come up with a million-dollar idea, get a job any job.  They tout the rugged American individual, the larger-than-life myth seen on the silver screen.  The rest of the world doesn’t believe in individualism.  The rest of the world is ancient compared to our nation.  Most of the world’s people have been through bloody wars; lost everything; migrated to stay alive; suffered plagues, floods, pestilence, starvation, and murderous coups with crazy dictators.  Americans of the 21^st century don’t understand history is what has brought us to where we are today.  People need and expect government to help them.

Government should provide a safety net when times are hard.  People are not to blame for circumstances they cannot control.  The America I once knew, regardless of the leader’s political affiliation for the most part, was a nation that helped people in dire straits instead of kicking ’em when they’re down, blaming them for their predicament, and scorning them for not being white.  First things first.  Help the needy.  That and practice what we preach.

WWJD?

Isn’t it peculiar that American Christians can be either Republican or Democrat?  Neither political party honestly can claim all followers of Christ.  Politics used to be second to our religious beliefs and to the particular church affiliation and denomination we were so inclined to belong.  Somehow in America, politics has become the new Christianity.  The belief is all or nothing, heaven or hell, right with God or as evil as the devil.

These were the same teachings and fervent preaching against communists during America’s Cold War.  Then communism fell.  But the anti-something sentiment so many Americans need in order to feel ‘American’ (or superior) was suddenly gone, too.  Some Americans weren’t done hating.  Now too many Americans have turned their hatred toward the masses of humanity.  The list of ethnicities and races, gender and sexuality, religion and countries is practically endless.  It’s … exhausting.

No, I’ll pass on joining practically everyone I know and become a Republican just to be nice. I remain a Democrat, few of us that there seems to be among folks I know here in Texas and northern red-state neighbors.  No need to pray for my redemption just because I’m a Democrat.  Spiritually, I’ve never been persuaded otherwise.  And if the good Lord calls me home, I’m ready.  If my explanation into the incredulous ‘how and why’ I still remain a Democrat—as they proclaim, with everything that has happened during the past four years—well, here it is: I just couldn’t in good conscious vote for Trump and most Republicans on the ballot in the year of our Lord 2020.

A little boy is murdered.  The social media post shows a picture of the smiling happy child with a lengthy written story detailing a despicable crime.  The post goes on to say the boy, who is obviously white, was shot by a young black male.  According to the post, the boy was shot to death for riding across the yard of the assailant.

No doubt millions of Americans want to know where is the public outrage because this story did not make the national news.  Is the outrage over a white child murdered by a black male?  Yes, that seemed to be the point of the social media post.  The picture is of a white child, but the explanation begins by saying this little boy was shot by a black male.

Stories like these, that don’t make the national news when similar stories do, is a reason why so many call the mainstream media the lamestream media and why so many do not trust the media and certainly think the media is anything but objective.  The racially charged undertone should make this a priority story, many Americans seem to believe.  And why not, they ponder.  Then they may remember the 1990s and the age of PC, political correctness, which was a liberal call to not offend any person due to ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, physical or mental challenge, religion, culture, age, weight, height, socioeconomic status, you name it.  The comedy acts of some entertainers were ruined or had to be retooled while old ones were shelved from rebroadcasting.

As a former news reporter, I’d like to explain why this specific story may not have been covered by the national media.  First, this story is one of five child murders that occur every day in the U.S.  Yes, five children are victims of homicide each day in America, the statistic higher here than any modern nation.  You sure you want to hear about all these horrible crimes every single day for the rest of your life?  No you don’t.

America is made up of millions of small- and medium-size towns.  Murder does not touch their lives every day, maybe once a year or less often.  So, when murder occurs in their community or neighboring areas, region or state, it is widely covered.  That news, covered responsibly, is sent to the Associated Press which sends all vetted stories to be picked up by media outlets nationwide.  Big city media and those greater smaller community newspapers and broadcasters determine each day the news stories to run.

It’s not difficult to understand what makes one murder story go nationwide while most—the great majority because tens of thousands of people are murdered every year—are only known in the communities where they occurred.  Space and time are primary considerations.  Then the details: Is it a mass murder, was it committed by a mass murderer, was the child first reported missing (all of those go nationwide by law), what were the circumstances, was it a hate crime, was it committed in a church or an amusement park or other unusual place, is the assailant being sought by the law, is the assailant charged with the homicide, is the suspect the child’s parent (usually they are)?  All these editorial considerations are made in seconds.  Believe it or not, the national mass media tries hard to avoid sensationalism or over sensationalism.

Social media gets away with it

But social media thrives on sensationalism.  Addicted readers like to feel angry or ecstatic, anything but numb.  Responsible reporters think first before letting emotions come into play, if even then.  The media expects the public to act the same way: think before feeling when hearing about an awful event like child murder.

The mass media doesn’t want to offend the public with gory details.  So those would be filtered out of a news article about a murder.  Crime scene photos also are reviewed before publication. One reason is to not upset the victim’s family.  Fairness is another issue the media considers when reporting a murder, when speaking of the victim and the assailant or suspect.

Now let’s talk about race. 

Minorities do not trust ‘institutions,’ I learned in a journalism workshop at Texas Christian University.  Such institutions include: the criminal justice system, the judicial system, the prison system, the education system, the government … and the media.  What?  Being too young to recall the civil rights movement, I thought the media and minorities were hand in hand, working together, the media careful not to offend but to uplift minorities and disenfranchised people and communities.  In my mind, seeing life from inside my white skin and behind rosy glasses, I thought the nation’s mass media should be credited with broadcasting the civil rights’ protests.  The media reported Southerners speaking against African Americans, holding signs supporting the KKK and segregation.  News cameras were rolling during every protest when the police and the canines attacked African Americans who wanted their cities and states to recognize them as human beings and Americans with the right to vote, to work, to shop, to be educated and to live anywhere.  I thought the media of the 1960s did a commendable job reporting things the way they were.  But Black people continued to distrust the media.

Why?

Because for three centuries prior, American newspapers, the only media, denigrated African Americans in every conceivable way.  There were newspapers for white communities and newspapers for Black communities, often published by Black men who were ministers or educators.  The white papers seldom featured news about Blacks unless it was a particularly sensational crime.  Southern newspapers promoted lynchings as community events, drawing hundreds and thousands of townspeople together like blood-thirsty Romans at a coliseum to watch a gruesome hanging death.  More often than not, an innocent man, woman or child was swinging dead on the tree.  Here’s a headline in a Texas newspaper: Negro man killed in car crash.  The year was not 1870 but 1970.  The American mass media had a long way to go to restore trust in their Black communities.

Nowadays when social media posts a Black person killed a child, and the picture is of a white child, people, white people, want to know why isn’t this on the news.  They really want to know why wasn’t this story told to the public just exactly as it is in social media: an evil black person killed an innocent white baby.

Responsible journalists aren’t going to report the story mentioning the race of the assailant.  And the assailant would be referred to as ‘alleged’ assailant, and when arrested and charged by police, still use the preface ‘alleged’ all the way to the day he is found guilty by a judge or jury in court.

America’s mass media and race relations remain rocky.  White reporters cannot really know the Black perspective no matter a journalist’s sincerest intention in trying to make up for centuries of injustice and intolerance, bigotry and racism with well-meaning attempts to bring enlightenment and make things better somehow some way. I should know.

Whew!  Dear God.  I just had to stop reading the social media on filthy ol’ Facebook.  As comedians would say: Rough room.  Seems this election year stars another woman who dares run for Vice President.  And men, as well as their like-minded women folk, are spewing the same old filthy sexist and racist slang this ilk used on Facebook for eight long years against President Barack Obama and the 2016 presidential campaign with Hillary Clinton.  The one-two punch against Vice President nominee Kamala Harris includes: the w word, the h word, the c word, the s word, the fw combo, and the b word—the latter almost a description of pride nowadays among strong women who don’t give a damn about this profane sexist adjective.   

And when I wrote a response against Harris being called the w word, Facebook wouldn’t run it, cautioning my commentary did not meet its community standards.  MY commentary?  I repeated the same word that was offensive.  Why must women be offended every day reading the same old anti-female cuss words on the Facebook feed?  What 20-something Facebook Community Standards’ specialist is asleep at the wheel?  The feminist sisters call this the double standard, and man is it alive and kicking in 21^st century America.  Anything to get Trump re-elected it seems.  In trying to get a put down to stick against Harris, Trump described her as a “man-woman.”  This is the best he’s got?  This depiction maybe because she wears pantsuits?  Then my mother would be called a man-woman, too, because that’s exactly what she wore throughout the 1970s as an elementary school teacher.    

Again, a brown-hued American is questioned about her birthright to run for President and be on the ticket as VP.  This time they are going after her mother, born in India.  Let me remind everyone that Trump’s white mother was not born in America.  Key word is white, or ruddy. Either looks just fine to American racists.

What’s in a word?

Why am I, a staunch supporter of free speech, against filthy anti-women sex slang smeared all over Facebook and no doubt the internet?  After all, I was a newspaper reporter and learned the art of colorful cussing, though usually when mad at the computer and never ever in print. But somehow, for some reason, I’ve yet to refer to any female in the common sex slang used by inarticulate men.  What is my hang up?  Why don’t I just join the Facebook crowd and call women who run for U.S. president the h word and w word and worst of all the c word?  Am I a prude?  No, that’s not it.

But there is something to language and profanity.  Remember when profanity was not only illegal in public (it still is yet not on Facebook), as kids we’d get a slap across the face or our mouths washed out with soap, usually by the hands of our mothers?  That’s because language is important.  And filthy language used all the time by millions of people on social media, especially during every presidential election year in 21^st century America, brings down the human spirit.  We are depressed enough without having to endure the raunchiest profanity that only involves women and sex.

The w word, the h word, the s word, the fw combo, the c word—these are rapist words.  This is exactly how men with psychological problems against women feel and why they rape and continue to rape and eventually murder until caught, imprisoned or shot by police. 

In America, a woman or girl is raped every two minutes.  Every single day.  More than 700,000 reported rapes a year.  Half of the perpetrators are known to the victim; half are unknown.  So America, we have a problem, at least to half the population.  The problem is our culture that allows men to brag about sexual conquests and get elected U.S. President while any American woman who runs for the same office is verbally and emotionally assaulted by millions of men and women on social media.  Like it or not, those very few women who dare to run for President or VP represent all American women, really the entire gender.  The attacks are not against one female candidate but all of us.  Anti-women sex slang is beyond disconcerting, rude, inappropriate, stupid and by now overdone and just not funny.  This sort of language is an assault of the female psyche—which is the real intent of rape.

Yin Yang

Right here I was gonna insert a quote from the Book of Thomas, part of the ancient Gnostic Gospels, and muse on ideals spoken by JC Himself, about how we as spiritual beings must love, appreciate, recognize and honor our dual nature, the feminine and the masculine, and in so doing become whole human beings.

Then I thought, you know, you guys have had decades now to figure out women are not just sex objects, were born with intelligence, are capable of education and careers, can start and run corporations—and all that having been proven, surely women could run the U.S. government if ever elected President or Vice President.

America has a way of moving forward technologically, like with computers and rapid-fire social media posts, but not so fast socially and culturally.  Just mentioning the Book of Thomas closes the minds of many Christians here, some who type and send that filth about Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton and President Obama.  Look, if you have a problem with the candidate or the elected official, just say what your problem is.  It would be refreshing if anyone on Facebook would comment on specific policies and proposals, that have been proven factual, which cause your disdain for a candidate.  Enough of the w word and c word and n word all year long until the election … and, oh, if her side wins the presidency?!  With men the world over bashing female consciousness to cyber death, the internet would simply explode into nonexistence.  Maybe that would be for the best, I mean for humankind.

My concern, Facebook and sexist Americans, is the frequent use of profanity denigrating females will continue to shame our country and our culture but also influence immature readers, particularly young males.  I wonder if everything people write on Facebook is spoken in the home, at work, and among family with kids and elderly relatives.  Would the language be spoken in church?  Why not?  Writing online has given many people the impression they can say whatever they want, right or wrong, profound or profane, and they don’t give a damn who sees it.  Right.  Everybody sees what’s online and will see it in the future, from earth below to heaven above.

I get it now.  The epiphany: America’s problem with the media.  The disbelief.  The cynicism.  The skepticism.  The uncertainty of what is the truth, just what is truth.  The obsession with calling out fake news at every breath.

I, perhaps news media’s biggest advocate, get it now because the national cable news networks have run the pandemic into the ground.  Coverage 24/7 of nothing but the coronavirus and the president’s handling of the most critical health and dire economic situation of our lifetimes ….  People, you’re absolutely right.  The cable guys have exhausted us with ‘sky is falling’ nonstop coverage, such as CNN’s perpetual posted daily updated numbers of cases and deaths in the U.S. and comparably the world.  And the virus may just be getting started.  Can you imagine the same screaming hyper in-your-face coverage of COVID-19 a year from now?

Broadcast news is a relatively new journalism development, starting back in radio days of the early 20^th century.  Let us return to those glorious years of Big Band music, soap operas, comedians, funny shows and serial dramas with organ-accompanied cliffhangers, plus old-time gospel preachin’ and foot-stompin’ bluegrass.  Radio was vaudeville in a box.  News was the last thing on their minds, from listeners to producers.  And can you blame ’em?  Can you imagine covering The Great Depression on 1930s’ radio like today’s cable news has brought us the latest pandemic:

The Great Depression Year Three!  Mr. and Mrs. America, this is Reid Luger bringing you and your red-white-and-true-blue family the latest in our nation’s complete economic collapse.  Millions of families with little ones in tow roam town to town, state to state, in hopes of work and food, humbly asking our Lord for their daily bread.  Will their prayers continue to go unanswered?!

America’s unemployed make up a quarter of all able-bodied men in their prime working years.  The rich man continues to lose big, but his loss trickles down to the little guy, many whose families had nothing to begin with.  Homesteads across the country wear foreclosure signs like a necklace, placed there by banks as money itself remains our scarcest commodity.  American families pray in cathedrals along crowded city sidewalks or gathered in humble country churches nestled in the secluded wild wood.

Where is God?  What must we do to get America back on track, to supply coal into our country’s economic engine?  Oh, the humanity!!

(Cue Big Band orchestra “Dancing in the Dark”) Now stay tuned for another hilarious episode of Fibber McGee and Molly, sponsored by Ivory Soap.  That’s right, Ivory Soap, the soap of angels, with long-lasting suds, and ladies soft on your hands and ever so gentle for baby’s bath.  Ivory Soap leaves you feeling clean and supple, never greasy.  Our simple formula rinses off your skin leaving it silky smooth to the touch.  So, pick up a bar of Ivory Soap today at your local grocer’s.  You and baby will be glad you did!  (Cue baby coo)

Ladies and germs

Yes, in the days of yesteryear, news was maybe five minutes a day.  Newsmen didn’t talk unless they had something NEW to report.  There’s a novel idea.

Cable news went wrong in several ways.  One is not realizing there isn’t that much new news to begin with.  Then allowing most of the airtime to be opinions, talking heads instead of any new news, just a lot of talk over old news.  This makes up the entire 24-hour period.  Go to sleep already! 

But where 24-hour news really did itself in is not considering the psychology of the human species.  Humans, no matter how intelligent or patriotic, can ONLY TAKE SO MUCH.  It may be more biology than psychology or sociology.  Constant doom and gloom are a turn off, man.

And how is cable news even able to stay on the air?  Who is watching this stuff?  More importantly, who is buying the stuff from the sponsors?  Who has the money?  Aren’t tens of millions of Americans unemployed, soon to lose their homes and apartments?  That statistic can’t be wrong.

I understand the contempt for the news now.  I don’t like that the American people have become so cynical, disbelieving anything and everything reported in the news and distrustful of journalists.  Free press is still written in the Constitution, but it seems the American people have erroneously learned to accept this means journalists can say whatever they want.  That was never the intention of the Framers.  They thought a democratic government could not function if the people do not believe what they read, and now hear and see, in the news. 

So, we’ve come to this.  A U.S. President who bellows “fake news” when referring to CNN, The New York Times, MSNBC, The Washington Post and all other news outlets who pride themselves in digging for and reporting ONLY the truth.  And we have a nation of citizens who not only disbelieve the news but are unabashedly devoted to Fox News, known in journalism and legal circles to play fast and loose with the facts.  Fox News’ coverage of President Trump, however, according to a recent media study, actually presents equally pro and con stories, 50/50, while all the other national media are soundly against this president.  Not only are the mainstream news obviously leaning against Trump, from the night he was elected, the reporters often snarl and editorialize when reporting on the latest Trumpisms.  They roll their eyes, cock their head to one side, and use vocal inflection a blind person could discern as negative and unfavorable of the president.

Reporters, whether writers or broadcasters, are never to let on like they are for or against the subjects they cover.  They can grin and bear it and write a book when this part of their career is over.  Then they can have their own news talk show and editorialize and pontificate about politics and society.  But see, humans don’t generally think like reporters.  They listen to broadcast news, even stick to one news channel for decades, and they do likewise when surfing the ’net for shared opinions and news presenters.  This is the human condition.  It is bigger than journalism, Fox News, fake news, CNN and “Morning Joe.”  People are busy.  Right now, humans are scared.  The news should not peddle fear.  The news should be just the facts.  And as the human masses don’t have the wherewithal to turn off the news, which is mostly opinion pulled left or right, it would be beneficial for media networks to resort to the standard variety show era featuring more entertainment in the performing arts than repeated hard news.  Just think of how many lives truly were saved in the 1930s because of radio with its lively, optimistic, engaging and consistent format with news important but not the main event.  Americans already knew they were in a deep depression.  They didn’t need to be reminded of it every hour of every day and night.