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New York Times misses the ideals & aspirations of middle America, again

Since its formation in the 1850s, the New York Times has been the city’s main newspaper but in modern times has perceived itself as America’s newspaper.  Problem is most Americans don’t feel the same way especially nowadays.  The New York Times, along with CNN, is constantly chided by our current president as fake news.  Truth is the New York Times is about as good journalism as we have in this country.  I check it every day along with The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and other news sources across the country.  There have been rare moments when the New York Times and even the Washington Post did indeed publish fake news stories.  But at each paper, the culprits were individual reporters: the infamous Jason Blair formerly of the New York Times who wrote pure fiction and got it published in the paper on more than one occasion, and then back in the late ’70s that gal formerly of the Washington Post who inadvertently won the Pulitzer Prize for what turned out to be a fictitious feature series on a child heroin addict.  But other than those two black eyes, these newspapers have kept their nose clean with ensuring real and viable journalism.

So when the esteemed New York Times Editorial Board published its endorsement for the next U.S. President and Vice President, I was pleasantly surprised.  The board of course was not going to endorse a second term for Donald Trump but wrote pleasantries on Democrat presidential aspirants Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg along with a couple of atta-boys for Pete Buttigieg and Andrew Yang.  Then the paper went on to recommend Americans vote Elizabeth Warren as the next U.S. President … and Amy Klobuchar for Vice President!  A capital idea!  Very novel.  Very much with the times.  Not one but two female firsts as President and VP.  I never in my life envisioned such a goal.  Wonder why?  Maybe younger adults have foreseen the possibility.

Front page news

During the 2016 presidential election, the New York Times featured a daily meter on the front page indicating chances of a win by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.  Hillary was usually 80% and higher, Trump often with as little as 11 points to 20 or so.  And look who won.  And both candidates essentially from New York City.  Boy, were the citizens of New York (City) surprised that their own local-boy-makes-good, the story Trump naturally thought the Times would print but never did … and never will.  The paper does not want to be burned again for printing a story they know their readers would consider fiction.

Shortly after the election, the New York Times editor acknowledged his national media institution was smarting from its dead-wrong prediction.  All smugness gone, the editor decided on a few changes to ensure this sort of thing would not happen again to the New York Times.  The paper had to concede its reporters know nothing of middle Americans, those who live in the vast territory between the two coasts—how they think, how they feel, what they believe collectively.  So the Times would hire scads more reporters who would be stationed throughout the U.S., similar to how the equally longstanding Associated Press reports on the country.  An AP reporter resides in a major city or region for a couple of years, reporting on the important local events before being assigned elsewhere.   The New York Times also was going to expand the religion staff.  Most big city papers have just one person who covers religion and writes about the subject of faith.  The Times’ plan was to hire a few more reporters for a religion staff, each reporter capable of covering specific realms of the world’s major religions.

The 21st century New York Times had to acknowledge in 2016 it did not have its finger on the pulse of the nation, in contrast to its understanding of the coastal elites who ironically included Hillary and Trump.  Maybe this year a presidential election meter will not be featured on the front page of the New York Times or anywhere in the paper.

Not who but when

Getting back to the novelty of two women leading the Free World as U.S. president and vice president, endorsed by the New York Times, both women make the paper’s grade when seeking to build bridges across the nation’s vast mid section: Klobuchar from Minnesota and Warren from Oklahoma.  Klobuchar was the candidate who stood outdoors in falling snow to announce her bid for the White House.  She’s got grit.  Perhaps that should be her motto.  Warren is similar, highly educated and a hero of economic affairs.  She is practical about family budgets and carries that pragmatism into ideals to restructure the national budget, which still is heavily pro-military spending.  She is no-nonsense, thinks like the common man instead of the wealthy, and has real-life experience with family hardship and lost economic dignity.  As for her claim of a smidgeon of Native American ancestry, not only is it true, she looks very much like any white American who claims a tiny bit of Native American heritage.  Both candidates will knock the socks off their Republican contenders (Trump/Pence) in debate.  Smart money is on the women.

Sen. Warren, D-Massachusetts, is 70.  She is married with children from a previous marriage and by now a grandmother.  She had been an esteemed law professor at several universities including the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard.  As the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts, she served on committees on aging; banking, housing and urban affairs; and health, education, labor and pensions.  Her bachelor’s degree from the University of Houston is in speech pathology and audiology, and she once taught in a public school working with these special-needs students.  But Sen. Warren’s blue-collar childhood in Oklahoma City and Norman, Okla., sets her apart from most who seek the highest office in the land.  Her father worked in sales before a debilitating heart attack. The family never recovered financially.  Her mother, a housewife, had to pick up work as a sales clerk while barely a teen-ager Elizabeth started working as a waitress.  In high school she was an outstanding debater for which she won a college scholarship.  She married, had kids, and the family moved to New Jersey.  After divorcing in the late 1970s, she kept the last name and a few years later married a law professor who is her husband today.     

Sen. Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, is 59.  She is the daughter of a sports reporter and a teacher.  She became a lawyer and later was elected to the U.S. Senate where she gained notice for passing more legislation in one year than her peers.  She is married with a grown child.  She cites a hospital policy for motivation to seek high office.  When her child was born, the hospital allowed only a 24-hour recovery for mother and newborn.  She took the issue to the state which passed a law mandating at least a 48-hour hospital recovery after giving birth, which President Bill Clinton later signed into law making it standard policy across the U.S.

Warren’s platform includes policies on the issues of farmers, opioid crisis, student debt, corporate taxes and big tech regulation.  She has become controversial on her stance for universal healthcare.  She understands something most Americans do not: While half the country works for large industries that provide decent insurance, the other half are self-employed or work for small businesses with no insurance or outlandishly expensive and unaffordable insurance plans.  Klobuchar’s reputation is much more moderate, yet she is pro-choice and supports LGBT rights.

Both ladies … excuse me, women … excuse me again, candidates think ‘Americans first’ when it comes to real family concerns: health insurance, prescriptions, living wages, fair taxes, schools.  Will either Warren or Klobuchar be great presidents or a good team as Prez and VP?  Should anyone care if they are the first women to hold the nation’s two highest offices?  Will it be men against women in the voting booth?  If nothing else, at least in the year 2020 the esteemed New York Times had the wherewithal to endorse these two presidential candidates who happen to be women.  Will the Times’ presidential endorsement matter to those living in America’s heartland?  When it comes to New York City and its snooty newspaper, they’ll likely pay it no mind.

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Just talking it over with Death

Hi Death.

Hey.

How’s it goin’?

Oh, same old, same old.

Imagine so.

So, you wanted to see me?

Not really.  OK, no more than anyone else, right?

Right.  I hear from lots of people every day.  What’s the problem?

Just tired, I guess.  I think I’ve seen all this world I wanna see, done all I wanna do.  Nothing to look forward to. I just don’t like the times I live in now.

You sound depressed not suicidal.

Aren’t they the same, I mean, in the end?

Depression is life itself.

Huh.  Death, I never thought of it that way.  Seems we think everything’s supposed to be one big party of happiness, we don’t know how to deal with the long stretches of ‘nothing special going on.’

That’s right.  I hear that a lot … for centuries … since the beginning.  You wouldn’t believe the people I hear from who are alive right now.  They have everything going for them: looks, health, job, family, home, money, lots of things.  And still, they’re just not happy.

I get it.  Guess I always suspected such.  Happiness comes from within.  I should know that by now.

But you forget.  I hear ya.

The older I get, the longer the slumps, the darker the path.  You know what I mean?

Where I’m at, it’s lights out, totally dark.

Oh yeah.

C’mon!  You aren’t ready to be with me.  Cheer up!  You got lots going for you.  I know. Make a list of all the good things you still want to do.

Before you and I go waltzing off into my final sunset?

Yeah!  Always liked your dark sense of humor.  My style.

Takes one to know one.

Then after you check over your list, don’t put off anything because of money or the feeling of no hope for money.  Think more magically.  Or like you think, more mystically.  Envision you living your best life on earth.  And don’t forget to enjoy the gifts—and you have a lot of them— all around you.  Life is lived in the Now.

Mmm.  Very Zen.  You read what I read.

You know me, girlfriend.  I know who I’m talking to.

And remember, you have more to do with the end than I do.  The time, the circumstances, the age, the place.  I just come collecting when you’re ready.  Not the other way around.

See, Death, that’s hard for me to believe.  There are so many who suffer and then die.  I think if they had something to hold on to, like a cure or surgery, they would have endured.  We celebrate that life-affirming story all the time.  That gives us hope, not the other way around, the final goodbye.

You’re looking at this all wrong.  First, life is for learning.  You don’t learn anything during the good times.  Second, no one lives forever.  Third, life is the hardest thing you’ll ever do.

Life is the hardest thing we’ll ever do.  So it’s like we’re doing time on earth, like a prison sentence?

Is that how you wanna think about your time on earth?

Some people live their lives that way.  I never wanted to think of mine as a prison sentence.  I want to be optimistic, but I get down sometimes, especially when things aren’t going my way.

It’s only human.  Don’t beat yourself up.  You’re one of the most optimistic people I know, and I know everybody who is and ever was.

OK, so I’m optimistic, a dreamer, and I’m not the only one.  That doesn’t mean I’m … happy with the way life is going right now.  Sometimes life is harder to live than other times.  It seems there are roadblocks, personality conflicts, situations I am not in control of.

Where’d you get all that psycho babble?  In control?  Life is like one long crazy roller coaster ….

OK, OK.  I get the metaphors about life.  I think my problem is more about society, American society, modern times, media, social media—my era.  The message engrained since maybe TV, color TV, is how neat and clean life should be, could be, can be.  My generation and my parents’ and the younger ones have spent most of our lives watching life: dramas and comedies, characters, other times, other places. Wait. That’s it!  Isn’t it, Death?  That’s the reason for a collective depression: spending the majority of our waking hours watching other people do stuff.  That’s the problem!  And it leads to overwhelming sadness within each of us.

Well, that’s very insightful.

And the best thing is we can solve it!  Just monitor our time spent ‘watching’ life and spend most of our time ‘doing’ life! Wow, I’ve had an epiphany, don’t you think?  And, I owe it all to you.  Death, you are the best listener a human can have.

OK, I wouldn’t go that far.

No, no, really, people should appreciate you, how close you are to each of us, with us like a shadow each and every day we live and breathe.  Why, you’re nothing to fear at all!

Now, hold on, I have a reputation to maintain.  I like a little fear in my human beings.

Yeah, but the fear leads most of us to keep on living, to choose life!  Oh, how life affirming a talk with Death can be!

Shhhh!  See YOU later.

Much later! (Wink)

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The American male entanglement: long hair, from the 1960s to the 2020s. Wait. What?

Why are all us Texans made out to be international laughingstocks … again?  This time, like the last time in the mid ’60s, it’s over the way school boys want to style their hair.  Damn Beatles.  Back in those days, three Dallas male students were expelled for violating the school dress code governing hairstyle.  Newspaper pictures of the adolescents reveal they looked like any post-Beatle pop star of the era.  They were not emulating “My Three Sons” but “The Monkees.”  Then in the mid ’70s, the U.S. Supreme Court had to spend time ruling on what became a national issue of whether or not a school boy could wear his hair over his ears and even over his shirt collar.  Damn evolving Brady Bunch boys.  During the Vietnam War years, employers from schools to the U.S. Postal Service and police departments were perplexed over the ‘long’ hair dilemma.  The generation gap was wide open over this lone issue.  The older generation thought men should look like men by maintaining a weekly haircut and daily shave.  The younger generation thought long hair was cool, super cool, and to the girls very sexy.  As long as the hair was washed, even if shaggy or tousled, and not a filthy smelly tangled mess, what’s the harm?

PEEEPULLL:  Get a pictorial world history book, will ya?  See all the ‘long-haired’ men throughout Western European history, every single one of them from childhood to old age.  Even their powered white wigs came with braided pony tails and big pompadours like Liberace.  Hmm.  Just exactly what is this hang up against long hair on men anyway?

The male hair issue is not solely about rebellion.  The waist length hair of say Big Brother and the Holding Company was a political statement against the draft and the Vietnam War.  But guys going Beatle style was just … well, to get girls.  They saw how girls squealed over the lovable Mop Tops.  And guys will do anything to impress the gals.

Too cool for school

The long hair issue was a big deal during my school days.  Dress codes were strictly enforced. Boys had to wear their hair short while girls could not wear short dresses—the ‘determination’ made by the tip of our middle fingers against the sides of our legs standing up.  Yeah, these were real rules to be taken very seriously.  We were told that kids who went to schools with no dress code were undisciplined and much more apt to stir up trouble in the classroom.  These were the days of paddling and after-school detention, so it’s not like there weren’t any disciplinary measures we would avoid at all costs.  We behaved and followed the rules, 99% of us anyway, including me.

At the beginning of every school year, boys’ hair was always a big issue.  Every summer boys, whose parents permitted, grew their hair as long as they wanted, at least to the fashionable lengths usually covering the ears and neck.  Then school would start, and every dress code re-read in homeroom, and some guys would show up with their long hair knowing they would have to be sent to the principal and get their hair cut.  They walked out heroes.  But upon returning the following day, their faces were solemn.  They were broken little guys.  Their hair was cut, chopped above the ears.  It wasn’t funny anymore.  They lost their sense of empowerment.

High school in the late ’70s was a whole other scene.  Guys were allowed to grow their hair longer, but it couldn’t be too long.  There was the high school classmate who kept his straight hair super long, against the dress code, so at school he wore a woman’s short wig.  He also wore John Lennon glasses.  All summer long he wore his hair in a pony tail sans wig.  During the school year, he was just trying to get along, deal with The Man without getting expelled, whatever it took to earn that high school diploma—which he deserved.

By 1980 at a neighboring high school, there was a senior who wore his hair real long, straight and dark like his complexion.  He was Native American.  The school left him alone.  Perhaps the school board figured the white man had caused enough grief to his people.

Shake it loose and let it fall

And ‘white man’ are the revealing words in this overblown issue and moot point of male hairstyles.  Add ‘modern white man’ or ‘mid-century post-WWII white man,’ and we may get to the root of the hairy chronicles.  Yet that doesn’t explain the neo white man, my own generation of leaders who deem the Houston-area teens’ long dreadlocks as unorthodox and unfit for school. 

The teens’ dreadlocks have a cultural component, not so much political or rebellious statement.  In the case of the two African American teens sporting long locks, their family is from Jamaica.  Give ’em a break.  The issue is not so much about hair styles, fashion and rebellion but control, generational control.  And that’s always been something young people will rebel against.  Am I right, ya’ll?  Hell, yeah!!  Coming back now, the memory of the wild and free spirit of youth.

For years I taught in the public schools with very strict dress codes including oddly enough male hairstyles.  The fads some years back were the Fade and the Faze, still in style today.  Etched into the back of one junior high kid’s shaven head was the Dallas skyline; other boys had artistically shaved emblems supporting the Dallas Cowboys, Stars or Mavericks.  That I suppose would be distracting for kids sitting behind the head, yet everybody got used to it.

But along with specific color polo shirts per grade level worn by both boys and girls, khaki or black slacks only, mandatory belts, black or brown shoes—discipline was still the number one problem.  Let’s not forget about the uproar sagging caused nationwide.  Young people will find ways to disrupt the order and routine that school is supposed to instill.  Besides, at this point in history, guys wear the hairstyles of my father’s generation, long hair seeming old-fashioned if not a nuisance many young males no longer want to deal with or maintain.

When it comes to hairstyles especially on young males, which in the grand scheme of things is just a passing fad, the best advice comes from the ones who inadvertently started the sensation to begin with—The Beatles themselves: Let it be.

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We’ve come a long way, baby

To the young girls out there, the title refers to a feminist ad campaign for smoking a specific cigarette brand aimed at women.  For girls of the Boomer generation, we liked the spirit of the wildly sensational magazine ads: an old heirloom photo depicted a 19th century woman washing clothes on a scrub board or performing one of a dozen menial housewife chores, her long hair pinned up, neck collar tight, corset cinched ’neath a long-sleeved blouse, long skirt, black hose.  Then in another ‘vintage’ photo, the lady is scolded and scorned for sneaking a cigarette break.  In the foreground of the ad was a large color photo of a 1970s’ model: a take-charge woman donning a pant suit or maxi dress, windblown hair, slinky blouse unbuttoned to reveal tan skin, lips glossed and a devil-may-care smile, her long cigarette held loosely between the forefinger and middle.  The ads were alluring to young girls figuring out if they wanted to smoke or not.

But today’s blog is not about the filthy habit and deadly consequences of smoking cigarettes.  For us American women, the year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which guarantees women the right to vote.  American women had protested for almost a century prior, so engrained was the societal concept that female humans were possessions who change their last names when married, do not work outside the home, are to give birth time and again regardless of health or die trying, do not wear the pants in the family, are to be seen and unheard.  Basically, it was the old man adage that women are subhuman with tiny brains, fickle, dainty, silly beings incapable of taking seriously the election of governing leaders.  Indeed, we—society as well as American women—have progressed a very long way.

And yet … every day we learn of a fellow woman or girl who has been abducted by one or more men, a mother who’s missing, a wife vanished—only to learn later of foul play or rape or both.  Then there is the Me, Too movement, Bill Cosby prison sentence, Harvey Weinstein trial, and the recent realization that Hollywood was and has always been from its inception a Boys Club where the casting couch was the only way for a want-to-be actress talented or not.  Did you know that silent film star Mary Pickford warned America’s young girls to stay away from Hollywood?  She lovingly advised them to stay home with their families rather than risk their lives and reputation to go to Hollywood in search of a movie career.  But throughout the country in communities large and small, the silver screen with larger-than-life humans was too captivating for many a naïve, stubborn and adventurous gal.

The women in white

The women’s suffrage movement of the early 20th century is captured in early moving pictures and black-and-white photographs.  The marching women were called suffragettes and chose to wear white clothing to stand out in the era’s drab photographs.  They looked like angels.  Some states and regions permitted women the vote prior to the Amendment but only if she were a widow and a land owner.  More and more women protested, for decades mind you, and were unrelenting until the ultimate boys’ club, the U.S. Congress, granted the vote to all women.  To be clear, the American right to vote had to be guaranteed nationwide by constitutional amendment.  Isn’t that just incredible and practically unbelievable to all of us alive today?!?  My grandmother would have been 19 the year women were granted the right to vote in any and all government elections.  The vote was about power, and white men made sure everyone was not going to have it or obtain it with ease.  Throughout the 20th century, it took several acts of Congress to guarantee every single American citizen, including women of color, the basic democratic right to vote.     

Ever since 1920, the great American century kept blowing and going as women little by little gained more freedom of choice beyond voting, like a college education, independent housing, banking, careers, even marriage and the role of wife or housewife and eventually the choice of motherhood.  Another anniversary for women to celebrate this year is The Pill, the most popular contraceptive first widely prescribed in 1960.  Shoot, even Loretta Lynn sang its praises.  Then the sex revolution was in full swing right up to the tennis match dubbed Battle of the Sexes at a time when FM radio played every day Helen Reddy’s empowering pop anthem “I Am Woman.”  Women always knew they could be anything they wanted to be … if it just weren’t for men standing in the way.

Now 100 years after the women’s vote, we have more women in Congress than ever in U.S. history and have had a couple of chances to elect the first woman vice president and president. (Pssst.  Hillary Clinton was the first woman elected president by popular vote.)  Still … there’s the daily news, overshadowing all we’ve accomplished since the days of yesteryear, our grim reality, revealing how much work there is to do so ALL males, not just men in general, treat women and girls with respect and as equal human beings.  Young women can’t go jogging alone?  Women can’t leave an abusive husband or boyfriend?  Women have to always carry a weapon and be on the lookout for an attacker?  Women can’t wear anything they want or don’t want to wear?  A woman can’t live by herself?  Women are still asked by male employers if they have children?

So, we women have the right to vote.  That’s been great and cause for immense social progress in the past 100 years.  By now we certainly can work at most any job, including the military, and pursue our individual aspirations.  But even so, women must always remember to never flick the figurative cigarette, appear too carefree, in control and self confident in the presence of some men, not all but some, a few even—and those not always easy to distinguish.  We can live our lives freely but only to a certain extent, more so when young.  When it comes to the two sexes, that’s the way it’s always been and strangely enough to modern minds still is.  

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For heaven’s sake, our country’s at stake

Look at the American Evangelicals calling other Evangelicals … what, less pious?  This politically conservative voting bloc had been staunch supporters of President Donald Trump (or anyone who crowned himself a Republican).  The Party distinction had been first and foremost before touting their choice of president.  But a rift of sorts has split … what, extreme Evangelicals from progressive Evangelicals?  Two conservative Christian publications recently announced their fading support or maintained support of Trump regarding his impeachment.  Christianity Today and Christian Times are seemingly in a battle for the souls of Evangelical readers or just plain Evangelical Christians.

They used to be known as the Moral Majority back in the Revs. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson days of anti-gay and pro-Reagan preaching.  That would have started in the late 1970s.  However, given the era’s motto ‘Do your own thing,’ no one really questioned millions of American Christians calling themselves ‘moral.’  No one saw the … what, hypocrisy in calling themselves moral?  Prior to the Reagan Christian era, Americans had gone through some wild times to escape the drug haze of the ’60s.  The ’70s was ripe for a wide range of spiritual seekers: from Jesus Freaks to the Born Again movement.  Even President Jimmy Carter, a Baptist, called himself a Born Again Christian.

There were religious cults, too, like Jim Jones, the Children of God, Rev. Moon and the Moonies, the Hare Krishnas, and fundamentalist Mormon sects.  Even Baptists were splitting as some churches were starting to pray in tongues while others believed this impossible if not unnecessary in modern Christian times.  But the Moral Majority had one thing going for it: They sought and gained political power.  They were clean-cut people who appeared to have their priorities straight: God, family, country and community.  They were often middle- to upper-middle class with many blessed in various stages of wealth.  They were church-going, Bible-believing, End-Times preaching, tongue-talking … I’m joking about that last description.  The Moral Majority as a political movement didn’t believe in such things.  But politically they embraced Pentecostals who do believe in theory and practice.  Along with the Moral Majority’s reach into politics came social causes, the loudest of which was anti-abortion.  These would be the people who for a couple of decades protested outside public women’s health clinics, where everyone knew abortions were performed, until doctors were shot and killed, and today there are virtually no public women’s health clinics known among the general population.

The Moral Majority was about power.  They wanted everyone else to believe just like they do, and dissent would not be tolerated.  The opposite of moral, mind you, is immoral.

A new morality

Then something unexpected happened that would change the Moral Majority, pushing its once mighty power back into a footnote in American history.  The children of the Moral Majority wanted more than just staid church music and rigid structure.  Somewhere along the line, conservative Christianity changed: allowing more contemporary, rock and even rap music in services, concerts and Christian radio; praise dancing; raised arms and spoken prayers by everyone in the congregation.  Teens of the movement would not sit still during the Power music to quietly contemplate the power of God.  Enthusiastically they jumped up and down with excitement when the music was fast, raised arms to commune with heaven during ballads, sang along and openly wept with the words that touched their hearts and souls.  They were young and free and wanted to feel God’s love, grace and mercy.  And in so doing and so thinking, their views changed.  Their generation would not remain judgmental toward gays as many churches started to welcome them.  Their generation would not condemn mixed race unions or marriage.  They would sport tattoos of biblical scriptures or symbols.  They would look and dress like any young person of their generation.  And when they were of age, they would drink a little beer or wine as sin was reconsidered and up for debate.     

The word ‘evangelical’ used to denote devout Christians who spread the word of Jesus throughout the world, you know, like evangelist preachers.  But in modern times, Evangelical describes someone who is a right-wing political conservative rather than a person who cares for the widows and orphans or anyone else who may be downtrodden or disenfranchised and is in need of a hot meal and bed for the night.

Whoah!  What do I know about biblical teachings?  Well, the two topics near and dear to me have always been politics and religion.  Call me a glutton for punishment or banishment or condemnation.  I don’t want to fight and argue about either, just to understand and make decisions for myself.  All of it is enlightening. If I were to change the public education system, I would include a course on world religion, especially in this day and age.

Americans believe in religion and politics.  The mixing of the two is where we can and have gone astray.  But what everyone should remember about religion, especially Christianity, is how many churches there are across the American landscape—denominations built on different teachings and interpretations over the scriptures and even the words of Jesus Christ.  So how did anyone think mixing religion with politics would possibly work?  Not in this country.  It’s impossible … and un-American when you think about it.

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Impeachment. Again?!

I can’t believe I’m having to live through my third impeachment.  I know Republicans.  Nixon was not impeached.  Well, to an 11-year-old who only wanted to watch TV during the long hot Texas summers of 1973 and ’74, it seemed like he was already impeached.  And, my poor mother the teacher!  Oh how she rued the daily interruptions, two whole summers of monotonous day-long congressional inquiries carried on all three networks.  The whole boring mess left her unable to catch up on her favorite soap operas.  Those were the days.  Bored out of her mind, she often took my brother and me to spend afternoons at the city swimming pool or go to amusement parks.  Mom would read romance novels while catching a glimpse of us every so often.    

Fast forward to the Clinton impeachment of 1998-99, which was brief yet seemed just as long and even more intense with 24-hour news and the internet months before and analyses after.  But the salacious scandal had sex, so no one was bored, maybe a little queasy.

And now for a good year if not longer, the mass media has done nothing but blast the Trump investigations and congressional impeachment hearings ad nauseam.

It’s just too much to bear for a middle-aged American let alone the seniors among us.

Russia, if yer listenin’

I knew when candidate Donald J. Trump asked Russia to hack into the emails of his rival Secretary of State Hillary Clinton … he would be impeached if ever elected U.S. President.  My jaw dropped upon hearing the words spoken at a campaign rally, amplified by microphones and videotaped for posterity by the mass media.  He thought he could run a nation, a democratic country, like he did his business: cut throat competition, finding dirt on competitors, paying off people to stay silent, survival of the fittest, constant firings, loyalty oaths.  All brass and crass.

This is precisely why I think a businessman is not the best candidate for U.S. President.  I seek a candidate who’s actually run a government whether federal, state or city.  I also trust a candidate with a law degree and who has practiced law.  They know more about the law and understand the law and respect the law better than lay people.  Military background is good in this day and age.  But high intelligence and well roundedness is what I ultimately seek in a presidential candidate.  Running a modern nation, by far the strongest in the Free World, is not like running a business.  In fact, communism is more like running a business.  The leaders have ways of dealing with the weakest.  Trust no one. People are for the good of the nation not the nation for the benefit of the people.  In communism and business, the mission is survival of the entity, and the people, the workers, be damned.

Trump and his die-hard supporters appear to be unfazed by the looming impeachment trial.  That is because the Republicans in the U.S. Senate are lockstep behind the president.  Their anti-impeachment blather, however, has been used by Republicans and heard by the American people before, during Watergate.  The media is the enemy of the people.  The media has brainwashed the public against the president.  It’s a witch hunt.  It’s a coup to overturn the previous election.

It all ended when Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment and a public trial.  He had accepted word from the Senate that the majority of his party and the people no longer supported him.  The following election found many Nixon Republicans losing another term, and a lot of Democrats were sent to Washington to get busy doing the nation’s work, a nation of people with human needs.

What goes around comes around

Fast forward to Clinton, who did not resign but instead faced the impeachment trial, allowing himself as Executive to be judged by the co-equally powerful Legislature.  He was slick, though, and in the end was not removed from office over lying about an affair and trying to cover it up during a federal investigation.

And who’s the wiser?  Nixon laid low for a long while, and comedians like Rich Little dropped their impressions of “I’m not a crook” while waving two-handed peace signs (it was actually the V for Victory sign, I would learn decades later) to audience laughter.  Nixon returned to handling global affairs even at the request of President Clinton.  And Clinton left office with high approval ratings, wrote a tome of his life story to explain his motivations and all-too-human short comings, even approved an entire wing of his presidential library to present and explain the scandal and his impeachment.  Even his former lover Monica Lewinsky has come out of hiding from the public after 20 years, now over 40 and claiming she made the mistake of falling in love with her boss, a married man and popular Leader of the Free World, and that she was just too naïve back then to fully understand the consequences and repercussions.

Living history is funny to watch sometimes.  Having lived through near-impeachment and impeachment and the aftermath of both, I look forward to the day when all Americans can be light hearted and rational when discussing the Trump impeachment trial—shortest one in modern history, we are promised.  I have faith that as Americans we will again return to our collective purpose: being one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. 

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How does a marriage of political division work? Knowing what and who’s more important.

Today is my husband’s and my wedding anniversary.  Eighteen years now.  Thank you!  What makes it last?  Love, after all these many years of shared ups and downs, I suppose.  And dogged determination to just hang in there … week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after dec—well, we’re not there yet.  And then there’s our mutual laziness.  Despite arguments and disagreements, we don’t have the energy to actually d-i-v-o-r-c-e.  I suppose we stick together because we’ve grown to respect each other, put up with the other’s faults and flaws.  Each of us is very aware that nobody in this world is perfect.  So we’ve remained married to one another.

Some of you may recall my first Texas Tart blog about my marriage, how my husband and I are as divided politically as our nation.  In fact, I started this blog of political humor and social commentary after the 2016 presidential election.  I figured we would be living in interesting times, and I wanted to write and laugh about it every week or so.  You may wonder how the past three years of political rancor and turmoil have affected our marriage, my husband Mr. Republican and me the bleeding heart liberal Democrat.  Well, let me tell you.  It has been extremely hard … on both of us.  I’d say more on me than him.  I mean, my gal didn’t win the presidency.  But I’ve lived through Republican administrations before yet nuttin’ like this.  The divisiveness has taken an almost evil turn, as if there are political foes chompin’ at the bit to declare all-out civil war.  A civil war between Republicans and Democrats, shootin’ people who don’t believe the way you do?  How crazy would that be?  As we’ve seen during the present administration, there are some crazy people in America, some holding great power and more concerning controlling the money.

From Bush to Obama

When we first married in December 2001, George W. Bush was President, 9/11 was our nation’s tragic sorrow along with psyching up for a long war on the other side of the world, and at home millions of layoffs were taking place.  It was hard times for me and Doo, er, I mean my husband.  We’d been married only a couple months when he was depressed about the economy, wondering how were we gonna manage to pay the rent.  In a tender moment of embrace, I softly mentioned how this kind of thing happens whenever a Republican is in office … and wop!  He didn’t hit me, just firmly reminded me to whom I was talking.  I thought I was trying to comfort my distraught spouse who was down on his luck.  But no, I was scolded for dragging politics, his politics, into bad economic times.  Huh?  Way before I had married, I believed recessions occur during Republican administrations.  Has to do with being tight with the tax money. So my words slipped out while trying to think of an optimistic future (when a Democrat is in charge again).

Ever since when it comes to making this marriage work, I’ve watched my words about a Republican president, not to mention a Republican governor and legislators federal and state, even mayors.  Through the years when it comes to political discussion between us, I still call it like I see it.  He can handle a sardonic tone.  It’s one of the things we have in common, a dry sense of humor, me more on than he, but he’s a great audience.  During the election between Bush and John Kerry, my husband exuberantly left for work on Election Day but not before returning to advise me to “Vote Republican.”  I laughed out the door. Imagine me voting for a Republican president.  I couldn’t wait to press the buttons for Kerry and anyone who would work toward ending those stupid forever wars and restoring faith from the American people instead of calling French fries Freedom fries and scaring everyone with daily color codes to announce the national terrorist threat level.

Well, my guy didn’t win. Nothing I haven’t dealt with and lived through before, four more years of a Republican administration. Then came the John McCain and Barack Obama election. Late that election night after I’d fallen asleep before the final results, my husband walked into the bedroom to announce soberly Obama had won. I was overjoyed because I didn’t think he’d win.  Finally, I thought to myself with a giddy smile, there is a God.  It’s the same thing Republicans say when they win, isn’t it?

It was a joy living through the Obama years.  In my opinion, the guy made very few mistakes.  Then again, I’m a singer in the choir when it comes to my party.  But my husband … he was like everyone else I know: relatives, majority of friends, co-workers.  Sore losers, maybe, but they did not like anything Obama said or did.  But funding perpetual wars was over.  One war ended.  Year after year, slowly but surely, the economy did get better.  Even the unemployment rate dropped remarkably low. And tens of millions of Americans were insured through expanded Medicaid, which opponents facetiously dubbed Obamacare.  Obama was not just popular among the majority of Americans and people the world over, he was a super star.  Among Democrats, he was beloved.  In 2016 that half of the nation who didn’t like President Obama for whatever reason along with Democratic policies got together and turned our country back to whatever they thought it should be.   

Seriously?

The night Donald Trump was elected President, my husband was as happy as I’d ever seen him.  He still is.  His man in Washington is A-OK, and there are a lot of Americans who feel exactly the same way.  Trust me down here in Texas.  I … I try to deal with it best I can.  But, um, it’s soooo hard.  It’s like living in American Bizarro World.  All I can think is this must be how half the country felt during the Obama years.  They thought everything he did was so awful.  We’ve pulled ourselves to the extremes politically when we used to get along. The reason Americans got along throughout all the previous Presidential administrations, save Nixon, was we never took our politics all that seriously, more important than our families and the people we love and respect and have known all our lives.

A politically mixed marriage is nothing new in America.  What are the odds of finding a mate who thinks and believes exactly like you do?  When you find someone who thinks politically opposite, that calls for maturity and emotional strength, of knowing thyself.  It calls for being open minded enough to understand the other’s points, even change your own opinions, and we both have.  There are a lot of issues that can break up a marriage, but ‘he’s a Republican and I’m a Democrat’ would be an awfully silly one.  Marriage betwixt the two can be hard for the self-proclaimed politically passionate (and we have that in common, too), but it’s not impossible.    

A long time ago, I wrote a newspaper column lamenting being one of the few known Democrats in a small Texas town.  I idealized the 1970s when, I thought, it was cool to be liberal.  After reading it, a wise old man dropped by the newspaper office to set me straight. “It has never been cool to be a liberal,” he implored. What did I know? I was just a kid in the ’70s, influenced by TV shows like “MASH” and “Donahue” and movies like “Saturday Night Fever,” hard rock lyrics, keep-the-party-going disco, and the scuzzy branding of major U.S. cities like New York.  Do your own thing was a national motto.  From what I recall, some people took the times and all the freedom too far while the rest never lost their scruples and worked together to improve our world.

When I learned that being liberal is not the comfortable path of conformity with patriotic American clichés; not the road of the masses who believe a universal moral right and wrong with no gray ambiguity found in the human condition; not the group in which everyone looks just like me with not much tolerance for other cultures and religions—that was all I needed to know.  Alone or not, I would be a Democrat for life, even in Texas. I like being the underdog, fighting for the disenfranchised.  A mixed marriage of sorts was bound to be in my future. After all these years, I’ve come to understand my husband’s stance to make American great again, though I disagree with the premise. And I could be wrong, but by now I think he secretly admires my sincerity, no matter how terribly wrong he sees my politics.  

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The 20teens: Decade of unnecessary anger, senseless rage, moronic lies, self pity, amorality, the consummate Age of Rude & Crude

In the year 1989 The Dallas Times Herald ran a feature series retrospective on the 1980s, calling it “The Mean Decade.”  The adjective was attention getting, you see, because those were the revered Reagan Years.  But the faux optimistic veneer of Morning in America was pulled back to reveal the Reagan Revolution of less government assistance and reduced taxes on the wealthy produced: millions more citizens living in poverty, because the poverty income had been lowered; young adults who had to forfeit college, because student loans and grants were severely cut along with the Johnson-era Social Security benefit guaranteeing a child of a deceased parent would get a college education; poor elementary school kids watching their better-off classmates eat lunch every day, because the federal school lunch program was cut; tens of millions of Americans with debilitating mental illness and the mentally challenged were kicked to the curb, because government institutions were defunded, emptied and closed; and lest it be forgot, the AIDS epidemic brought no compassion from our elected leaders who instead echoed moral outrage at millions of sick and dying victims homosexual or not.  The Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War ended yet billions and trillions of U.S. tax dollars were diverted to expand if not bloat the God-Almighty U.S. military industrial complex.

Thank God democracy was restored in the 1990s with the Clinton Years, along with humanity, humility, reason, love—and most impressively trust and faith between the U.S. federal government and the people.  That era is called America’s Last Great Decade because the greater good, benefit and welfare of the American people was put first and foremost. 

The ‘mean’ adjective comes to mind when casting perspective on the times in which we live today and have experienced together during the tumultuous 20teens.  But this decade has been meaner than mean, nastier than nasty, uglier than ugly, more horrific than horrible.  Mean would be a rather tame description of our times compared to all the pain and suffering and ill-logic we the American people have had to endure and ruefully will continue to live through every day: mass shootings; disregard for truth, justice and the American way; contempt for journalism and journalists; indifference and cruelty toward desperate and frightened Latin American families rightfully escaping vicious narco states just for the hope of asylum in the U.S.—where they want nothing more than just to live.

In the beginning, there was light

President Barack Obama, elected in 2008 and inaugurated to the most positive and impressive mass viewing in 2009, was during the 20teens a light, ironic given his skin color.  But compared to his predecessor, he had a clear vision of what America should be.  He also knew all too well what America was and could be.  He walked a tightrope every day trying to work with Republicans, rich white men in suits, mannequins, humorless, pasty faced save one.  Sitting at the round table with America’s first black president, these white legislators never allowed themselves to crack a smile at Obama’s humor and charm.  No, for eight long years they remained sourpussed, bitter, holding their breath, always evading to glance at President Obama whom they obviously perceived as just a monkey in a suit.  They did not fool anyone with intuition.  I know my people.

White legislators from all over the U.S. knew their people, too, their constituents, the white male loud mouths who did not take kindly to a black man in the White House.  The mass anger started then.  Throughout the Obama years, there were federal investigations into several government departments and police agencies across the country caught using racial slurs and passing along if not creating derogatory pictures of President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.  So many investigations of government workers carrying on like this, it could only be the antics of certain white men but a lot of them.

Blacks were angry, too, pushing back when time and again an innocent black male was shot to death by a white police officer, sometimes by several officers in a spray of gunfire.  The shootings were even videoed live by citizens with smart phones.  Still, nothing changed in society despite who the U.S. President was.  So the protests and chants of Black Lives Matter and ultimately the violence and fires began.  Whites don’t like U.S. cities burned in what they term a race riot, and the way was paved for a law-and-order guy to run for President in 2016. 

During President Obama’s two terms in office, he confided with the American people his biggest regret was not being able to stop America’s gun problem, the mass shootings that can only be accomplished by high-powered war rifles not handguns or a huntin’ arm.  He routinely called the families of our war dead, because he could not quickly stop the Iraq war or pull America out of Afghanistan, both conflicts started in the Bush years and cemented in the minds of a generation the term ‘perpetual war.’  Obama also took the time and sympathy to call the families of each person killed in every one of America’s mass shootings during the 20teens.

But the white people’s rage spread, infiltrating our young males who remain the dominant mass shooters.  These are young guys who often kill themselves in the process or want to be killed, who want to die.  They prefer death to their miserable American lives.  They assume everyone else feels the same way.  Well, we don’t.

Dark side of the moon

President Donald Trump really didn’t win the election fair and square.  Because he ran as a Republican, he simply got more states with larger electoral votes to claim the dubious victory.  But his Democrat opponent won the popular vote by a couple million American voters, lest the facts be forgotten.

Trump’s Orwellian inaugural speech maintained rampant crime throughout the country and a Mexican and Latin American overthrow of ‘American culture.’  He also implored the world now bows to the U.S. and will pay trillions owed for unfair trade tariffs.  White Americans perhaps breathed a sigh of relief, a freedom most had never known: the freedom to finally say exactly what they’ve been a-thinking about people of other flesh tones, languages, religions and cultures.  Perhaps they were sick and tired of having to keep it all bottled up, never permitted to share harshly defined resentment toward blacks and Mexicans, even Jews, the tired old story how they’re taking over America and this ain’t my country no more.   Whites have belly ached for centuries about this same fear even while fighting Native Americans for their land.  Slave owners certainly must have thought the same while standing along their neo-Roman porticos to survey their vast plantation fields worked by dozens of African-American slaves young and old from sun up to sundown.  Surely white land owners could see they were the minority even then, so brutal force was necessary to stay in power.

During the 20teens computers were in all schools, businesses and homes and the palm of our hands adult and child.  The internet’s social media allowed platforms where Americans enjoyed free speech more than they ever could have thought possible two decades ago.  Whites were free to say openly how they hate other races, masses of humanity.  Young people were left unsupervised to roam the darkest recesses of the internet—the filthy images, words and bigotry.

Finally we’re coming to a new era of the 2020s.  America ricochets politically from one extreme to the other, liberal to conservative and back again. Like a perpetual bumper car race, we hit the other guy and ram him to the side while individually we once again try to make our way to win the race, whatever that might be in life: job, career, salary, healthcare, housing, money, security, peace, personal happiness.  Americans think they should have everything they want in life. The rest of the world thinks that’s awfully selfish of us, of anyone.

Americans of the 2020s will be not unlike young people in their 20s.  They’ll relish total freedom.  They’ll be a lot more mature than they were in their 20teens.  They’ll learn to watch their words and actions and appreciate consequences.  They’ll start developing a deep concern for humanity, even altruism.  As most will be parents, they’ll see themselves in their children and take the time to censor their own poor behavior, speech and judgement—because no one really wants to turn a loving unprejudiced child into an insensitive bigoted smart ass.  If human history can teach us something about an evolving society through the decades, we learn that each term begins with promise and appreciation but then ends in exhaustion and anger.  In 2020 we have an opportunity to become the Americans we are supposed to be in the world: a kind and generous people who willingly embrace all cultures and all colors for that is our ultimate strength and truly what makes America great. We are freedom loving and peaceful, open minded and diplomatic, abundantly blessed agriculturally, spiritually and intellectually.  We’re the Good Guys, remember.

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From anti-vaxers to anti-doctors, what’s the harm?

I just can’t go there.  I can’t join them yet.  Being an open-minded person, still leaning toward caution than risk, I’m not yet convinced vaccines do more harm than good.  I can’t cross that line of thinking the medical establishment is pulling the wool over our eyes.  Can’t yet join the millions who say they and their family will never be vaccinated against anything ever again.  I ponder yet admire that level of brazen.  These are musings from a political radical—well, maybe in my 30s.  Now I’ve mellowed into a liberal … but medically maybe a moderate.

Who thinks they’re smarter than a doctor?  Nowadays everyone does.  Who needs a licensed educated insured cautious practicing physician to diagnose human ailments and diseases when we have the internet in the palm of our hands?  We can diagnose ourselves silly with research from the worldwide web and of course indulge presumed courses of treatment.

Does this make sense to anybody?  How reckless can people be assuming they know more about anything and everything that goes wrong with the human body than a doctor?  Today millions trust the internet over a doctor.  Even Kramer said so on “Seinfeld” back in the ’90s.  Kramer.  He also said the alternative media is where the real news is.  So there you have it: Do you wanna be a Seinfeld or a Kramer?  I’m still a Seinfeld.

What kind of idiot says medical schools make doctors stupid?

This is actually an internet meme.  As a retired educator, I don’t like it.  First, I question the young guy in the picture, the dude sitting laid back at a table outdoors with that sign which also beckons anyone to ask him why.  We know the millions of dollars it takes just to become a doctor, still the one group with double and triple the required education than other college graduates.  Say what you will, think what you will, but more education makes you smarter not stupid, dumb dumb.

What really bothers me about some guy out there claiming medical school made him stupid is the impact it has on our young people.  They will never forget that meme.  When they come of age to start planning a career path including college, that meme buried in their subconscious will hinder aspiration toward the top of the medical profession.  America already has a hard time getting anyone to seriously pursue the career of physician, simply due to the astronomical medical education cost.

The most important thing for us to remember about anyone who pursues medicine and the admirable path of MD—whether family practitioner, pediatrics, OB/GYN, neurosurgeon (that means brain surgeon) or by far the most lucrative, sports medicine—they all have to be highly intelligent people.  Come on now.  Few of us are born with or develop the inclination to ace chemistry.  So, knock that chip off the shoulder and admit none of us know more than a doctor.  That said, the medical establishment has long been suspect for its sustaining financial bond with the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Who said watching TV makes you stupid?

Ah, now we’ve come to the reason people today think they know more about their bodies and the goings-on within than a doctor.  Slick pharmaceutical TV ads—with fine actors in real-life scenarios as background music touches the heart, ensuring memory recall—cost big pharma a bundle.  More than one generation now believes the ads offer any cure and treatment for an array of conditions—some conditions a lot of people don’t even have.  I’d say most of us don’t have.  That’s hitting the nail on the head.  See, I remember when the pharmaceutical industry was prohibited from advertising prescription meds on TV coast to coast.  Why?  Because people are highly susceptible to hearing repeatedly about headaches, fatigue, mental illness and cancer, so much so that some viewers start to think they have those conditions, too, and then ask their doctors for the specific prescription … before a diagnosis.  Smart doctors know how best to deal with such a patient.  Shady doctors would play along.

The generation of taking a pill or pills to feel better, however, is dying out.  No pun intended.  My generation and younger asks questions first before taking medicine or undergoing treatment just because a doctor says so.  Perhaps we’ve created a generation of pseudo know-it-alls who at this point in medical history just don’t believe a word that comes out of a doctor’s mouth.  But that was not the Baby Boomers’ intention.

Hey, when I’m sick, I’m the first to seek natural healing and aromatherapies, say prayers and positive affirmations while clutching crystals and crosses—anything than take the time out of my job to wait in a doctor’s office with coughing sneezing wheezing sickies, then strip down in the exam room and 30 minutes later tell a doc what’s wrong and then get dressed to head to a pharmacy.  But, my experience time and again is: I always end up doing just that, along with taking natural healers, too.  It’s a vicious cycle getting sick or injured or old and enduring a newly developed chronic pain.  Still, I go to a doctor because sometimes I cannot heal myself, and I get sick of being sick.

Along with pharmaceutical TV ads, people are on to the cost of health insurance.  Remember when we thought something was going to be done about that with each presidential election starting with Bill Clinton?  Then Barack Obama does just that, upends the system.  And there was hell to pay.  Turns out, Americans love their insurance.  That was NEWS TO ME.  The only people who love their insurance are the lucky who work for huge corporations and businesses.  Otherwise, the rest are screwed by premiums and deductibles that the Other Half would consider simply a lie.  The cost of health insurance is no lie.

So now I’d say the Boomers, hippie dippies that they once were and some still are including yours truly, have produced a couple of generations who have taken our natural skepticism of authority and The Man to a whole other level.  It is not just question everyone about everything.  It’s shooting the bird at an educated segment of the population.  In the end, the doctor will see you now.  And if not him or her, then the funeral biz awaits us all.

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Julie

“Please God, please.  Noooooo.  Please—don’t let …”

Julie cried silently to herself, mouthing the words without tears.  She read the testing stick: Pregnant.  She knew her decision would have to be quick.  The sniffers would come around soon enough.  The short round rolling robots perceive DNA and the pregnancy hormone in particular.  “God,” she closed her eyes.  She had hoped for the relief that life as she knew it, as she had planned it, as she foresaw it, would go on.  She wanted no one to know her secret, her mistake.

She confided in Miranda, her college roommate.  “What are you gonna do?”

“I don’t want to have it,” Julie answered somberly.  “I want to finish college.

“I don’t believe I should have to have it.”

“You have to have it,” her friend replied.  “You have no choice.  None of us do.  Not anymore.”

Looking through the blinds, Julie was in a daze of fear and panic.  She thought of Romeo, the way he made her feel. She, they were in love.  How was she going to tell him his life was over, too, at least for a year?  That was the sentence for males who impregnated a female but could not afford the baby.  One year in prison.  The sniffers determine paternity.

“This was not supposed to happen,” Julie said. “Why can’t this be my private life, my decision, the way it used to be?”

“You don’t have a lot of time,” Miranda warned.

“You think I don’t know that?!”

“You have maybe a day before …”

“I know, before the sniffers come around,” Julie finished the scenario.

That would be humiliating, chased down by a whining silly round robot or several.  Then everyone would know.  And that was the point.

“This should be private.  Why should my parents know?  I’m an adult.”

“Well, they pay for your college,” Miranda reminded, then apologized as she hugged her friend.

———————————————————————————————————

They heard a knock on the door.  It was Romeo.  Miranda opened the door, cautiously scanning left and right then quickly pulled him inside the campus apartment.  “What’s going on?” he asked playfully.  Miranda looked away while walking into the other room.

Julie looked at him and took a breath.  “I’m pregnant.”

She wiped tears from her eyes.

“Oh … that’s … that’s not what I expected to hear,” he replied awkwardly.  “How …”

She chuckled behind tears, “You know.”

They stood silent before Romeo approached Julie, embracing her tenderly, enveloping her, breathing in her sorrow, entering into her shame.  “Look,” he whispered, “we can leave, go to California.  It’s legal there.  No questions asked.”

“How are we going to suddenly leave in the middle of college?  Those sniffer hounds probably already know.”

“Let’s go right now.”

“I need to think.”

“You’re not thinking of keeping it?” Romeo asked.  “You know how we’ll be treated.  We’ll be locked up until the baby is born.

“I don’t want that,” he commanded.  “We don’t deserve that.  No one does, especially young people with our whole lives ahead.  We shouldn’t have to be parents until we want.”

Sometimes, Julie thought, Romeo spoke with such passion, like he was a born leader and could take charge and protect her and everyone who felt powerless to fight the system.  Julie realized why she fell in love with him.  It wasn’t just chemistry and attraction.  She admired and respected his entire being.  In her mind and heart, they would marry.

But she didn’t want to marry yet and not for being pregnant.  Maybe in a few years.  She wanted that time for Romeo, too.  They could be parents later when they could afford it, when they wanted to bring a new life into this world.

And now pregnancy could change their lives but not before placing them in separate facilities for a year.  She knew the law.  Pregnant girls could marry or move into a mandatory facility until the baby was born.  She could keep it only if she could afford it.  The community would place her in a job.  The fathers of unplanned pregnancies got a tougher sentence if they could not afford to provide for the expectant mother and the unborn baby: one year in jail.  It was punishment because males know better.  “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”  Youth of their generation saw the signs everywhere since junior high.

———————————————————————————————————

“We’ll marry,” Romeo proposed.

“No, it won’t work.  We have no money to keep a baby.  Maybe when we graduate and are able to get jobs.  But not now,” Julie said, starting to weep.

Romeo looked through the blinds, knowing the sniffers would eventually roll around the corner, detecting.  The couple had little time to think or plan.

“How about your parents?  Can’t they help us?” he asked.

Julie shook her head in fear.  “My parents can never know this!

“They would not understand.”

“What?  A couple in love?”  Romeo said tenderly, stroking her hair.  “They know about that.”

“My parents cannot know this,” she asserted, end of subject.

“Our parents were lucky living young when your life was your business not the government’s,” Romeo said, sarcastic and envious thinking of the freedom.

President Roberts, the first woman president, ran on a platform of abolishing abortion and punishing both the mother and father of pregnancies if they could not afford it, even stiffer penalties if they tried to induce miscarriage or abortion.  Parents, family, friends, churches and social organizations could come to a couple’s aid by providing funds to pay for health care as well as the baby’s first year of life.  But anyone caught participating in an abortion, for any reason, any age female, would be punished and imprisoned.

“Look, I know someone who knows how to get you some pills,” Romeo said quietly, adding slowly and softly, “that would induce miscarriage.”

“You mean an abortion?” Julie said flatly, quoting the government’s policy.

“Miscarriage.  Whatever.  It used to be routine in the U.S. before the law changed,” Romeo said.

“Those were the days,” Julie said, cracking a smile.

Thinking about the option, to swallow some pills until she cramped and bled, she asked, “How will we get away with that?”

“There’s a solvent that comes with it.  No one would know.”

“I’d know.”

“You sound like you want to stay pregnant and …”

“Have a baby?” Julie said.  “We haven’t called it a baby yet, like we’re supposed to.”

“It would be easier to just marry,” Romeo told her.  “No one cares if you’re pregnant and have to.”

Julie sat down on the sofa, finally the weight of the world off her shoulders.  “I don’t want to have a baby now,” she decided.

“Get the pills.”

———————————————————————————————————

California broke away from the U.S. due to the Roberts’ law, seeing it as unjust and inhumane.  Julie researched online the small nation by the sea, studying the demographics, realizing the impossibility to remain a peaceful small North American nation due to overcrowding and every kind of earthly battle from floods to fire to daily earthquakes.  She didn’t want to leave Texas or America.  She thought of Canada; it was legal there, too.  But … the sniffers are everywhere across the U.S., roaming freely, more so at night, their tiny gears whizzing at a high pitch … only females could hear.

“The land of fruits and nuts,” she said to herself with a laugh, remembering something she heard about California from old TV characters a couple generations ago.

California had high unemployment due to a large migration of ex-patriots.  The cost of living was out of this world.  And money was the root of her problem as well as for Romeo.  “Wouldn’t it be nice,” she began to sing an old song by a California band.

The sniffers could not be heard.  They hadn’t picked up on Julie yet.

An hour later Romeo tapped on the back window.  Julie lifted the window as he pulled himself in.  The apartments were not closely monitored like the dorms.  College kids had more freedom … to make mistakes.

“This is all you need,” he said.

“I thought love was all you need,” Julie quipped mindlessly, reading the instructions.

She popped open the bottle and hesitated.

“The sniffers!  I hear them,” she said.

They scratched at the door like a pack of wild dogs, intent on seizing their prey.

“You!” Julie said as Miranda appeared from the bedroom.  “You told?”

“Hey, it’s the law.  I had to,” she said with a steady tone.  “Besides, the reward money will pay my final year.”

“Let’s go out the back,” Romeo said, grabbing Julie, still clasping the pill bottle.

“No,” she said, standing silent, gazing through Romeo helplessly.  “It’s over.”

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The walls were blue with white clouds.  She thought she’d died and was sailing above the world.  She closed her eyes and gave the final push cued by the doctor.  The baby was born, a girl with loud lungs, the picture of health.  Julie smiled, happy to be a part of this miracle of life.  The baby was briskly taken to another room.  Julie was confused but understood her baby would be sold to a loving couple who could afford her.  The government would make sure of that.

“Julie, down,” the matron said, instructing the young woman to be still as she was wheeled back into her cell.

She received twenty years for attempting an abortion.  Romeo received ten years for providing the illegal pills to Julie.  They could finish college in prison and even earn other degrees.  For good behavior, their sentences could be reduced to a third of time served.

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“Dear Julie, I love you and want to marry you.  Let’s marry behind bars.  There is no one else for me, just you!  Please say you will.  I know the baby was born.  What was it?  Did you see it?  How are you coping?  In my dreams we are together and I feel your embrace and I am so happy.  Please hold me in your dreams!  Write me soon.  Your Romeo”

Julie read over the letter with no expression.  Prison left her little time to sleep let alone dream.  She was exhausted but had many chores to do, her punishment for years to come.  The walls and floor of her cell were gray cement.  The matrons were hefty and strong.  Their voices were all she heard.  Inmates were not allowed to talk.  Julie hadn’t heard her own voice for months.  She had been nesting alone in a baby room for nine months.  Her sole focus was on the new life growing inside her.  That was her commandment and duty.

After the birth she would begin paying her debt to society.  She scrubbed toilets, mopped floors, painted the warden’s office, sewed pillows in the factory, attended college classes and studied.  The female inmates, from girls to teens to women of child-bearing years, all serving time for attempted miscarriage or abortion, received their meals alone in their cells.  They were not to congregate or communicate with each other.  Their punishment had to be severe. The ladies must feel the scorn of society.  And the younger generation needed to know how stiff the punishment for abortion would be.  “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”  The slogan was on a government poster with a couple kissing in a heated embrace.  The picture seen across the nation was captivating, a romantic moment.  How did the government think that picture would instill abstinence, Julie wondered.

In the imposed silence, Julie sometimes could think to herself.  She didn’t think of Romeo anymore.  She grew to despise him.  She had to kill their love.  Everyone she knew would know her crime.  She never spoke to her parents though they often came to see her in prison.  She thought of the millions of strangers who did not care about her and whether or not she got pregnant and wanted an abortion.  Then again, just as many felt her life was their business only when she was pregnant and sought to terminate.  To them, science proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that human life—physical and spiritual—begins at conception.

Whatever Julie believed did not matter.  In the back of her mind, she heard a woman’s self-assured commentary from another era: “You don’t have to have a baby if you don’t want.  Your body is your business.”  The tears stung now.  She cried for her mistake, for unintended pregnancy, for the new law changing abortion to a crime of murder, for the loss of privacy, for never knowing the baby she had to have.

She envied women of the old days when they took to the streets to make abortion legal once upon a time.  They held their signs high: Abortion on demand!  Mothers, daughters, grandmothers all marching together.  Abortion was illegal then, too. They were so brave, she thought.  They marched for a reason.  What was it, Julie wondered.