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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.

I know what y’all been thinking: “Why, God, whyeeeee!?!”  We’ve lived with this pandemic for close to a year now with really no quick fix in sight, though surely a viable solution in the future.  But by the look of things, we won’t hear the end of COVID-19 till Christmas 2022; if we’re good, maybe 2021.  Attempts at trying to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus have made us: virtually lose our jobs or figure out a way to work at home, file for unemployment along with tens of millions of other people, stay away from crowds including friends and family, wear stuffy masks, constantly wash our hands, and for parents with school-age children oversee their coursework and studies at home because schools are closed, too.  And it looks like the end of the last school year will continue into the new school year.  No!  God, no!!!

If you’re like me, you may very well have questioned God about all this.  Religions may warn us to never question God about our deepest fears and concerns, just accept whatever happens in life and roll with the punches—like folks did in Europe during the Black Plague.  I say God, of all living beings, wants to know exactly what’s on our minds, especially our fears and most sincere goals and aspirations.  And maybe we’ll get answers, as the old-time gospel song assures us, ‘by and by.’ 

But we like answers now.  Americans like answers right NOW.  There has got to be some reason for burdening our planet with a pandemic.  Everything seemed to be going so well, well mostly for the Wall Street crowd.  Our president boasted ad nauseum we had the greatest economy in the world ever.  Americans young and old, frugal and gambler, were blowing and going: movies, bars, concerts, sports, restaurants, schools, travel, conventions, fairs, commerce, investments, home buying & selling, booming construction, highway expansions, road improvements, even higher education and climbing the ladder to success.  Happy days were here again!  And then … suddenly … the fall.  Separating us from God’s good graces.

How are the mighty fallen!

Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Many folks naturally turn to the spiritual when the economic bottom falls through.  Oil below $0 a barrel and then into negative numbers?  Some economists have flat out projected the ‘d’ word.  With 30 to 45 million Americans unemployed, impacting four times that number when families are factored in, singing “We’re in the Money” is no longer cute. We haven’t begun to see the desperation captured in 1930s’ black and white photos of destitute American families living in their wagons or jalopies, camping in tents, squatting on land, aimlessly roaming town to town for day labor.

We have seen the food lines on TV, relatively nice cars and SUVs forming long lines for miles and miles with families inside waiting hours and even up to half a day for a box of weekly foodstuffs.  On TV we’ve seen similar miles of cars with people getting the corona test.  What will our nation, and the streets, look like when landlords, banks and mortgage companies demand payment?  What will become of us when the bills are past due for months or a year?  None of us good people ever want to be deadbeats.  But without work, 99 percent of us have no money.  Money is security in this country, bub.  We all know the score.  Gotta pay to play.  That has been the American way.

Angels in America

But wait.  What if God is trying to turn our nation around?  What if the only way to do that is an economic collapse caused by a lingering pandemic?  Hard times often bring people to call on God, as another gospel song laments: Where could I go but to the Lord?  God is, like, all any of us have at this point.

So, let us ponder our nation’s true spiritual self.  Hasn’t been too good, has it?  Money has been the reason for anything and everything in the U.S.  And the current occupant of the White House, our national leader, is the epitome of “Money, money, money, money.  Money!”  Americans celebrate the self-made millionaire, the lucky few with the magic formula and timing to build a better mouse trap, offer people what they really want—entertainment, business, products, whatever.  And many would say this national thinking, instilled breeding really, is what makes America great.

That is not what makes America great.  That is not what makes any nation great past, present or future.  Being the richest nation on earth and perhaps in the history of the world is not what makes America great.  Our love of money, our worship of and work toward financial gain and economic freedom, is not what makes Americans great.  How can it possibly be?  It is not even a spiritual teaching.  In fact, we know darn well it’s the opposite of Christian teachings: The love of money is the root of all evil.

That’s the America I know and experience every day, perhaps till my dying breath.  You gotta pay to play.  You gotta have money, and a lot of it, to live in this country.

The United States is supposed to be not only First World but the land of abundance and cutting-edge technological advancements.  Yet the pandemic caught us sorely lacking.  Compared internationally, we’re stupid and foolish.  Our federal unpreparedness including the cut and slashed federal pandemic response division and budget—that’s what caused and will continue to cause all the deaths.  Somehow this land of plenty had no ventilators, not enough ventilators, along with poorly stocked and limited healthcare personal protection gear—masks and body suits which need to be trashed after each and every patient is checked out.  And still not near the ample supply of tests needed to get a grip on the pandemic.

But the real reason this nation of ours has failed its sick people, who should not have had to die, is the lack of hospitals which have been closing nationwide as failed businesses for decades.  Hospitals should never be in the business of business.  They exist to ensure a community’s health and well-being.  What were we thinking just sitting back and saying nothing as rural hospitals and then all hospitals kept closing everywhere in America?

If the pandemic, which we haven’t had as severe as 1918 when none of us were alive save one or two readers, is a natural occurrence, part of life on the planet, well our federal government should have been on top of the situation, the possible eventuality, prepared with state-of-the-art equipment and most of all knowledge.  Instead, we’ve come across as worse than all those socialist and communist countries we love to decry and compare (with $$ in our eyes and on our lips).  Money is not evil, just loving it more than humanity is.

The pandemic and all our economic upheaval and emotional pouting is pretty much what God expects of us, now doesn’t He or She?  Here in the 21^st century, we were pretty smug, certain to cure a bug like we have before with all the other pandemics like swine flu and H1N1.  We even joked about how every year, the media and medical authorities warn us of a new exotic pandemic, usually variations of flu.  Now it’s different because we didn’t want to deal with it.  It spread until it engulfed and overwhelmed the nation as we argue over masks and reopening the schools, usually the largest employer in most communities.

In coming months, as no cure or vaccine will wipe the pandemic off the planet yet, we’ll remember our lives and ourselves for what we were, what we have been, and what now we have to be and ought to be in the future.  Let’s face it, as a nation we’ve been forced to change the way we do ‘business’ … because money does not grow on trees, bills can’t be paid if we have no jobs, and tens of millions of inadvertently unemployed Americans and their families will either be kicked out onto the streets or … through the kindness of strangers that are landlords and mortgage bankers, America can start practicing that religion we always bring up, the one that says: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Money is not the bottom line.  The bottom line is: Live and let live.    

The pandemic continues to disappoint and ruin plans in so many ways, mostly not health related.  Along with job loss; reduced income or no income; no health insurance; homelessness; online work and online schooling; postponed or canceled surgeries and specialized physician check ups; and hundreds of state and county fairs, annual conventions, entertainment and concert tours along with New York’s Broadway season canceled for the year—Europe has banned travelers from the U.S.  Just when my husband and I were contemplating a trip to Austria, Europe won’t have us.  The U.S. has done such a poor job of controlling the virus.  And we’re from Texas, an international laughingstock due to crowded bars and partiers sans masks and social distancing.  We of all Americans will not be permitted entry into Europe.

Being a Texas native, I just assumed the virus would not survive our hot weather, which is at least half the year.  But I was wrong.  I also thought the airline industry could use the business.  Remembering the aftermath of 9/11, I wanted to support the critically vital yet economically crippled industry.  Instead, this year I only have memories of traveling the world.  And here they are!

India January 2013

Namaste, y’all!  Of all the places in the world, India was the one country I most wanted to see.  Not sure why, other than I’m a big Beatles’ fan and they spent time in India, and George Harrison, my favorite Beatle, was deeply influenced by the country and Eastern religion.  So, OM and peace. 

While working on a master’s degree in liberal studies, a professor was forming a Study Abroad course to India.  ‘Yeah, right. Like I’m going to India,’ I thought sarcastically to myself.  But … the words that flowed from my mouth were: “I always wanted to go to India!”  I studied the proposal, noting January is the best time to go there, and I would be with colleagues and a professional tour guide.  Then I researched traveling to India and found disconcerting points to consider.  At the time, polio and many other diseases were still communicable; Western women are considered promiscuous and may be hit on or attacked; beggars should be ignored; tourists should not wear jewelry; travelers are advised to avoid street food, tap water, ice and even fresh fruits and vegetables due to possible contamination.  Tourists are cautioned to brush teeth with bottled water.  A travel nurse advised a series of vaccines including Hepatitis A & B, Tetanus, Typhoid and rabies. Monkeys, dogs and other animals freely roam India and potentially can bite.

Undaunted, however, I signed up for the Multicultural Teambuilding Course: Study Abroad India!  The flight was 14 hours, landing in Dubai briefly to hop a connecting flight to Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, India.  Meeting our tour guide and with luggage in hand, our group walked out of the airport and into throngs of somber Indians awaiting arrival of loved ones.  The evening air smelled of ancient mold and modern chemicals.  My eyes burned the entire trip.  The tour bus would provide cold bottled water daily.  We sped off to our hotel, the driver occasionally honking along with many others winding through the busy crowded highways and busted streets.  Before entrance into the hotel, our luggage was scanned through an outdoor conveyer belt.  Meanwhile, we Americans were greeted by a female manager dressed in a customary sari.  She summarily painted a small single red dot on our foreheads, above and between the brows. 

During the mornings, we attended lectures about India and the international business world then spent afternoons touring.  The adventure was through northern India’s Golden Triangle: New Delhi, Agra and Jaipur.  The morning breakfast buffet was always an exotic assortment of foods, each labeled with long complex words too hard to remember or pronounce.  For lunch and dinner, I stuck with naan bread and tofu with curry sauce, a vegetarian diet.  By the last lecture, we learned that India’s billion people celebrate millions of gods by lots of festivals featuring a wide array of foods.  We witnessed a couple of large weddings, complete with painted elephants and Bollywood music.

While traveling India, I found the people to be warm, smiling and cordial, always greeting with prayer hands and a bow while saying “Namaste,” a Sanskrit word that means “God in me sees God in you.”  And they expected you to repeat the customary greeting back to them, which I did.  The many tourist sites we visited, however, were met upfront with a crowd of beggars, male teens who could not walk because they had polio or other crippling deformities.  With their skinny legs folded, they held their hands in back on the ground and pushed their torsos forward, stopping by balancing one hand in back and the other outstretched while they asked, “To give, ma’am?  To give?”  This was heartbreaking.  In fact, in New Delhi hundreds of small short tents are set up right beside the highways.  They are the housing for migrant workers who maintain a centuries-old tradition of living in tents to move where there is work.  In the early morning hours, these groups warmed themselves around small fires on the side of busy streets.

India’s Taj Mahal in Agra was the most breathtaking vision.  It was made with crystals and appears to glow from afar.  The historic intricately designed white mosque is guarded with armed police, and pictures are forbidden inside the tomb, plus visitors must slip a pair of booties over shoes which are not permitted inside a mosque tomb.

Lasting Impressions: The poverty.  We Americans are so blessed beyond measure.  Masses of people who appear to be ill.  Blue skies yet burning eyes.  Overcrowded and littered streets with bustling vehicles and the occasional lone dog walking alongside traffic, even curling up to sleep.  Men urinating on the streets.  Monkeys running and jumping shrub to shrub.  Squatters, toilets at ancient tourist sites.  Colorfully decorated elephants walking down mountains, guided to weddings in the cities.  Business vehicles painted to personify female gods.  Business buildings with large statues of Ganesh or a mural of a blue Krishna.  The symbol for OM and swastikas everywhere.  Camels hitched to low trailers loaded with cargo, slowly clopping along busy streets beside speeding automobiles, small motorcycles and Tuk Tuk taxis.  The smell of Ylang Ylang.  The white pentagon temple celebrating all five world religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  The serenity of India’s people as well as animals.  Tears when first seeing the Taj Mahal.  Tears and prayers for the beggars.

 England July 2013

My lucky year for world travel continued with an opportunity for a required graduate writing course: historic fiction that featured a Study Abroad course to World War II sites in England and France!  The nonstop flight was only nine hours.  We arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport in the early morning and met Yvonne, our tour guide.  Her parents met during the war, one French, the other British.  She spoke both languages.  Outside the airport were hundreds of bicycles on racks.  Our travel bus took us briskly through a two-lane highway with heavily wooded terrain, thick tall trees abutting pavement on both sides.  Trying to look ahead made me drowsy.  Then there were the roundabouts, felt at every intersection.  Ohhh.  Ohhh.  Ohhh.  Our first stop was Oxford: a fairy tale village where people still live in thatched-roof cottages that surround the world renown university along with churches and graves dating back to the 10^th century.  The early morning air in July was cool bliss.  The sun came out around 4 a.m. and set after 10 p.m.  Standing beneath a shade tree was noticeably cooler, something I’ve yet to experience all my summers in Texas.

London is a world-class city compared to picturesque rural Oxford yet charming with tall Victorian buildings renovated for modern business and apartments.  We attended outdoor theatre at The Globe, sipped wine while walking along the Thames River, and toured Winston Churchill’s war bunker.     

Then a fellow Beatles’ fan and I walked to Abbey Road to see the area of the famous studio where the Beatles recorded their albums.  First, we ventured into London’s complex subway system called The Tubes then walked a few blocks to Abbey Road.  At the time, the entire area in front of the studio entrance was pasted with lots of graffiti, thanking the Beatles for their music and many endearing sentiments to John Lennon.  Fans had written messages on every section of concrete walls, bricks, cement block posts and even iron rods on the gates.  The studio sets quite a way from the graffitied entrance.  The graffiti was mind boggling and then to think the government allowed it.  Lots of tourists, individually and in groups of four, continuously stopped traffic for photos while walking the exact spot as the Beatles did for the cover of Abbey Road—including me.

Lasting Impressions:  Flower boxes outside every window house, apartment and business.  Commerce closing early evening, leaving open only the pubs and night venues.  No convenience stores.  Free museums.  Fish & chips served with peas.  Baked beans for breakfast.  Feeling completely at home, no doubt from ancestral DNA.  Walking alone in Oxford at night and feeling safe.  All the Beatle fans from around the world hanging out along Abbey Road.  British charm.

We left England via the ‘Chunnel,’ the massive train system that crosses the English Channel to northern France and includes deep underwater sections.

France July 2013

We stayed in the village of Bayeux, where businesses and apartments still fly weathered flags representing WWII Allied Nations. At dusk we walked along cobbled roads and slender streets deep into the town center to find restaurants. The next day we visited the Museum of the Battle of Normandy, with none of us leaving with a dry eye.  We drove through the French countryside and ate baggette sandwiches at a seaside amusement park. Then we walked the beaches of Normandy where today children play freely. Several of us collected sand from the beach. Later we toured the Normandy American Cemetery—where gusts of warm ocean breeze caressed each of us standing together high upon the cliffs and slowing turning to view the cemetery’s somber panorama.  Graves are divided by U.S. state and eternally guarded by trees from the deceased’s specific home.

We left for Paris, caught a light summer rain, and crossed the Seine River that snakes through the city.  Unfortunately, at the last minute we were bounced from a hotel adjacent to the Eiffel Tower.  Instead, we drove right past the massive iron structure and continued clear across the city to a European micro motel.

Lasting Impressions: (Paris smells like urine.  Everywhere.)  The French prefer you to speak French.  People standing very close to each other in lines.  Body funk, theirs not mine.  Hot hotel rooms. Political graffiti throughout Paris on statues, steps, buildings, park benches.  Billboards and music videos with topless women.  Intimidated by language and an unfamiliar and unfriendly city.    

Ireland July 2017

Hoping to spot a wee fairy or sprite, and because I learned my ancestral DNA is one quarter Irish, I joined a tour group to southern Ireland along the western Atlantic coast.  Sites included the community of Kerry where the bustling downtown area featured a middle school band playing American pop tunes.  We ate at a pub and sang along with the nightly entertainer, a male singer with an Irish brogue who accompanied himself on acoustic guitar and included a couple of American songs by John Denver.  We drove 100-plus miles along the Ring of Kerry, riding up through rugged mountains so high the clouds shadowed the terrain.  The sites were rugged slate cliffs, cottages, and the Atlantic coast.  On to the Cliffs of Moher, we walked up steep slippery slate against strong winds and mist.  An umbrella is quickly ruined and simply out of place in Ireland. From the top of the cliffs, the view was thrilling combined with the feel and the smell of the sea crashing onto the cliffs.  Later we toured ancient portals, areas marked and preserved by the government.  The portals were thought to have been used by the ancient Irish many centuries ago to step into another dimension to seek guidance through life.

One night we dined inside an early medieval castle for a banquet whereby our only utensil was a knife.  The following day, we roamed around castle ruins on the way to Dublin.   In the city we saw the Book of Kells at Trinity College.  The book produced by monks dates back at least 800 years and tells the story of Jesus mixed with Celtic legends, beliefs and symbols.  On my own, I toured the Whiskey Museum, interestingly located across from the college.  I learned whiskey is derived from an Irish word that means “water of life.”  At the tour’s end, we tasted four whiskeys.  The taste is … not for me.  The tour concluded with dinner and a live performance called Celtic Nights featuring authentic dancing to acoustic instruments, notably wooden spoons.

Lasting Impressions

The Emerald Isle, green foliage everywhere.  Their love of music; even the green flag carries a harp.  A folk musician at every stop: guitar, banjo, accordion.  Playing along on an enormous community drum. The Irish love of American pop music; even a taxi driver sang along to 1970s pop songs from his radio.  Fairy trees. Hearty meals (thick seafood soup with rustic Irish bread).  Dublin’s Poetry Corner and the city’s marquee celebrating the country’s famous music entertainers and writers.  Medieval Mead (honey wine).  The ever-changing weather.  Land of red heads.  No snakes.  St. Patrick’s encircled Christian cross everywhere.

She awoke.  Birds chirped joyously outside the hospital window.  She cleared her throat, dry after surgery, blinked to focus on white walls with pleasant art.  Her doctor was right.  She felt peaceful, content and happy after the memory implant was adjusted.  Celeste was overwhelmed with feelings of happiness.  She was in awe.  Her eyes welled with tears.  She found herself smiling.

“You ready to go home?” she heard her husband ask, feeling his hand cup hers.  “Home?” she asked.

“Remember?  Our house in the woods.  We call it Glendale,” Marc said, trying to coax her memory.

Yes, she remembered home.  She recalled her work as an American history teacher and research into race relations.  But then …  Nothing.

“I need to get home and continue my research,” she said as Marc waved a hand to cut her off.  “No, there will be none of that for a while.  That’s what ignited the implant.

“Remember?  The chip prevents certain recall,” he warned.  “Shhhh,” he lipped with a kiss on her head.

“What’s wrong with me?” Celeste asked.  “Why was I in the hospital?”

“The chip was malfunctioning,” Marc said.  “Made you have bad headaches.

“You don’t remember blacking out, all the nausea and severe pain?  Right here,” he said touching her forehead.

She then felt serene.  She was aware of her feelings.  In a few weeks after summer break, she would be ready to return to teaching.  Research into American history would have to wait.  It wasn’t worth the suffering and the day surgery to correct her memory implant.

They drove across the bridge into a bucolic landscape that greets arrivals to Glendale.  Celeste gazed into the vista, inhaling fresh earth, feeling the breeze of an unusually cool summer day, listening to birds and the dogs happy to greet them, searching the familiar terrain of blue sky and hills on the horizon.  Her senses were restored fully.  Vividly.  She would always want to remember this.

Bettie and Luna, rescue dogs of unknown lineage, jumped on her before she could get out of the SUV.  “Now get down,” Marc ordered the pets.  “It’s all right,” Celeste said, hugging each one.  “They love me.  Dogs always forgive and forget.”

Inside the house, Celeste walked to the study.  Papers and books were strewn across the rug.  The desk chair was toppled to the ground.  She straightened up the mess.  “What happened?” she asked Marc.  “I found you unconscious and called 9-1-1.  The paramedics took you to the hospital.  Knew just what to do, what was wrong.”

The memory implant was a high-tech solution to end human hatred that once had gripped the nation into war-like dissent.  Celeste understood that much.  But as she pursued research of American history and racism, reading and watching news accounts about social upheaval during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, her mind was interrupted, short circuited.  It was the chip.  She could not force herself to study to memory the angry divisive era:

Statues toppled as racist relics, originally erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy to honor Southern war heroes in the American Civil War.  Police officers roughly apprehending African Americans, a few of the arrested even dying during the process.  Months of fiery protests against police brutality.  The names of deceased black people, most unarmed and more than one in their own home or on their property, chanted, printed on T-shirts and signs.  Graffiti.  The f word.  The looting from city to city.  Police cars ablaze.  Police and rioters assaulting each other.  The president nowhere to be seen, only heard, his monotone blaming states and cities where riots were bad and dozens of businesses destroyed.  He called on the military to take control, but military leaders refused, citing the Constitution does not allow them to fight their own people on their own land. 

Such violent protests would never occur again.  The chip was a brilliant solution. The ultimate.

If Celeste continued with the research, her memory chip would malfunction again.  Citizens have the chip in order to remove animosity, bigotry and hatred toward others.  This was proven long ago by anthropologists and brain science.  The chips embedded in the brain brought about a longstanding era of peace and tranquility along with productivity surpassing all previous economic times.  The chips simply made everyone live happily ever after. But a history teacher needs to study the past, and people need to know.

The headache came on strong.  She held onto the desk and saw a bouquet of flowers Marc had waiting for her.  She smiled and for a few lingering seconds inhaled every bloom, each with a unique fragrance, together a fresh heavenly scent that filled the room.

************************************************************ 

Celeste and Marc ate protein bars and fruit in the breakfast nook.  Through open windows they watched backyard foliage and critters roam along with their playful dogs.  “Let’s go outside,” she said cheerily.  “No, it’s a little too cool.  I think you should stay indoors another day just to be on the safe side,” Marc advised.

“I know,” she thought aloud.  “Let’s invite the Clarks and Molinas to our house for a cook- out.”

“If that’s what you’d like, I’ll arrange it,” Marc said then sent texts to the two couples.  “How about tonight or tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s fine.  Gives them a little time.  None of us are working this summer session,” Celeste said.

Marc kissed her goodbye, reminding her to take it easy and put away the research project.  She smiled obediently, sipping a cup of coffee.  After he’d left, she watched the two dogs, how they got along but sometime fought each other for a fresh nut or grub worm uncovered in the yard.  The fight broke out, sometimes lasting a minute, usually just a couple of seconds.  No harm done.  They learned to get along.  Celeste wondered why humans needed the memory implant.  Then her mind wondered to more pleasant thoughts.  She had a menu to plan for the barbecue.

******************************************

She found herself in the office again, not sure how she arrived.  Did she go shopping?  Yes.  Where’s the food?  In the fridge.  Did she black out?  Her head throbbed.  This time inhaling flowers didn’t soothe the pain.  Her internet device was set to a city protest in the summer of 2020.  Signs read “Abolish the police,” “End racism,” “Defund the police,” “Black Lives Matter.”  She had typed comments from the protesters expressing the reason for their anger.  She reread the research she had prepared …

“Honey!  Wake up,” Marc told her, holding his wife on the floor, patting her face.

“Why’d you start researching again?  You knew this could happen,” he scolded.

“My head hurts so bad!  I’m bleeding!” Celeste said, realizing the blood came from her nose and ears.  “What’s happening to me?”

Marc lifted her body and rushed to the doctor.

**************************************

The light was bright in her eyes.  “What’s going on?” Celeste asked Dr. Dory.  He clicked a small light on and off in her pupils.  “Dr. Landon, dear, I wish you would understand the purpose of the chip is to prevent unpleasant memories,” he told her.

 She knew.  No one is to read or watch or listen to any work about racism in this country.

“They’re not memories,” Celeste told him, “not my memories or none of ours.  What I’ve been studying are facts, history.  Our nation’s history.  It’s important to know.”

“Why would you want to stir up past controversies that tore our nation apart?” he asked.  “The implant took away all that pain, ill will and bad feelings we humans possess deep within our reptilian brain and even to the frontal lobe.

“We cannot help but be prejudiced and bigoted against people who do not look like us.  This nation tried for close to 300 years.  All that was proven was everyone is prejudiced.  And because of that, we cannot be fair, just and kind.  It would take thousands of years for every human to rise above our inclinations when it comes to racism.”

“No, I don’t think that is true,” Celeste countered.

“What you think does not matter,” the doctor replied.  “The chip solved a host of social problems, deadly and abusive encounters that occurred every single day in this country.  Crime was reduced by 95 percent thanks to the chip.  Now you must stop researching racism.  There is no need to dig into a healed wound, miraculously healed by the memory chip.”

Celeste inhaled deeply and stood up, wobbly but determined to say her piece.  The doctor warned her chip was still unconnected.

“Listen to me,” she said.  “People who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  Remember?  First certain books were banned as racist, then movies, music, then free speech and eventually free thought.  We are living in a society of … morons.”

She slapped her hand over her mouth, realizing the fear of her words.  The doctor grabbed her arm for an injection.  “Please,” she cried then begged, “people need to know the truth, our truth, our past.  Life is about righting the wrongs of the past.  First, we have to know those wrongs and feel for everyone.  We have to understand those who lived before us.”

****************************************************

The cell was dark and cold.  Celeste hugged her body as her teeth chattered.  “Where am I?” she called out.

“Be quiet,” a woman nearby whispered.

“Are we in jail?”

“Detention.  Until our chips work right.”

“Why are you here?”   

“I was researching my family tree to find plantations where they worked in the 1800s.”

“You’re African American?”

“Sure.  You’re white?”

“Yes, does that matter to you?”

“No.  Does my race matter to you?”

“Of course not.  We’ve got to get out of here while our minds are free and clear.”

A small paper note glided on the floor of Celeste’s cell.  She read the plan by her neighbor, Lauren.  A hole was already prepared beneath their adjoining wall.  Celeste lifted a floor tile.  The hole was small and dark.  “I’m going now.”

“I’m way ahead of you,” Lauren whispered.

The women scurried through the underground sewer toward the light of a full moon.  They crawled out into a creek bed, wiped off their jumpsuits and smiled, running quietly into the woods.

“Where should we go?” Lauren asked.

Feeling pain free from a restored soul, Celeste replied, “I don’t know.”

Watching the initial protests over the death of George Floyd by police, a revolting real-life scene brought to us by smart phone videos, I turned to social media and wrote an adage about myself: Still back the Blue.  That’s because there are a half million police officers in America, and their jobs are not easy even for the well trained.  And I wrote Still Back the Blue because just a few years ago, lest we forget, Dallas police officers were gunned down by a sniper during a Black Lives Matter rally, a national shock that brought President Barack Obama to the city to eulogize the slain officers at the nationally televised funeral.

When I was a news reporter, the cop shop featured somber yet approachable police chiefs and sheriffs and was a routine beat for stories on crime, criminal activity and the occasional homicide investigation.  Then with a career change to public school teacher, I found again myself befriending the police, a visible presence on practically every campus.  Reporters, teachers and police work with the same folks.  This is a statement not meant to be insulting.  Crime occurs a lot in poor neighborhoods where nonwhite disenfranchised families are perpetual victims.  A professional, therefore, working within poor communities must convey a disposition of kindness, compassion with a calm level head.

That is not the professionalism captured by cell cam video of a policeman holding his knee over the neck of Mr. Floyd, who police apprehended for allegedly trying to pass a fake bill at a Minneapolis convenience store.  Upon seeing the viral video, our nation held its collective breath along with Mr. Floyd as the scene lasted more than eight minutes, and the handcuffed suspect on his belly told law officers he could not breathe.  Autopsies report Mr. Floyd died not from a cracked windpipe—which emotionally is what we saw—but from a heart attack and/or asphyxiation brought on by pressure applied to his neck.  But no one can wipe away the imagery witnessed via cell cam: a white officer holding his knee on a black man, already under arrest and handcuffed, until he died.  We also saw three other policemen standing at the scene and doing nothing to stop the unjustified deadly arrest.  The live video did capture nearby citizens warning officers that Mr. Floyd can’t breathe.  Then it appears he died right before our eyes.

The past two weeks of angry protests in U.S. cities and around the world against deadly police brutality specifically involving African Americans (and even the recent unjustified shooting death by former and wannabe cops) have drawn together tens of millions of people.  Protest signs read “Stop Police Brutality.”  Agree.  “Stop racism.”  Agree.  “Abolish the Police.”  Can’t agree with that.  And “Defund the Police.”  Wha?  Protesters are up in arms over not one, not two, not three, not four, not five … but in the past few years too-many-to-count deadly police apprehensions of and encounters with unarmed African Americans—some caught on phone cameras by citizens.

What’s going on?

Anyone can research statistics on police use of deadly force.  They are kept by the FBI and more recently by The Washington Post.  The Post’s report is called Fatal Force and shows that 1,028 people were shot and killed by police in 2019.  About the same number of people have been killed by police in the U.S. every year since 2015 when the Post started collecting data.  Almost half of police shootings were of white people, a fifth were Hispanic, and a third (30 percent) were blacks.

However, the report finds blacks are shot and killed disproportionately than whites considering racial demographics (more whites than blacks, still a minority in most cities and in our nation’s total population).  Since 2015, the total number of whites killed by police was 2,416 (population 197 million) while 1,265 blacks (population 42 million) were killed.  The report also noted 889 Hispanics and 797 other/unknown race/ethnicity were killed in police shootings.  About 20 percent of those shot by police had serious mental illnesses.  Most alarming, police body cameras were not worn or were unavailable on most of the shootings, according to Fatal Force.

Of those shot and killed by police, 321 were unarmed.  More than 3,000 of the deceased had a gun.  Some had toy guns: 180.  Most killed by police were men (5,130) and 235 women.  The statistic is low for those shot while fleeing the police, but 3,375 were not fleeing officers.  This may point to another problem for the police.

Last year was the deadliest for police shootings since statistics were recorded by the newspaper.  Still, each year marked close to 1,000 police shooting deaths.  So far in 2020, the figure is 429.

Standing trial

On the flip side, police killed in the line of duty in 2019 was 89: half by criminals during a crime.  In 2018, the figure was 144.  In one year, 64 officers were shot and killed and an additional 21 were killed by ambush.  The statistics for police killed in the line of duty are: 164 in 2015; 171 in 2016; 152 in 2017; and 150 in 2018.  

Police arrest ten million people a year.  Does that cast perspective on what’s going on?  In dealing with crime, police are not encountering the most upstanding citizens.  Let us not forget that the police deal with criminals.  They expect to deal with people who break the law.

But ten million arrests, and less than one percent deaths, should show that 99 percent of police do their jobs well instead of the opposite.  They protect and serve the good citizens and try to catch the bad guy.  We pay them to do this because otherwise each of us would be left with taking the time to stalk and investigate someone who may or may not have caused a crime against us.  Every one of us cannot play cops with no training and assume we’ll remain calm when we want to impose our own justice and shoot to kill.

There are close to 687,000 law officers, and the figure is down quite a bit from just a few years ago.  The racial makeup of our nation’s police force is 77 percent white and 13 percent black.  By city, the figures, from 2013, were:

Los Angeles: white 35 percent, black 11 percent, Hispanic 43 percent

Dallas: white 54 percent, black 25 percent, Hispanic 18 percent

Houston: white 45 percent, black 23 percent, Hispanic 25 percent

New York: white 52 percent, black 16 percent, Hispanic 26 percent

New Orleans: white 38 percent, black 58 percent, Hispanic 2 percent

Chicago: white 52 percent, black 25 percent, Hispanic 19 percent

Baltimore: white 50 percent, black 40 percent, Hispanic 7 percent

Philadelphia: white 57 percent, black 33 percent, Hispanic 8 percent

Minneapolis: white 80 percent, black 9 percent, Hispanic 4 percent.

Police racial demographics often do not represent community makeup.  Usually the number of white officers is more than the demographic while black and Hispanic officers come short of matching the real community racial and ethnic demographics.  And all of that should not matter.  By now every American should be able to deal with people as individuals and not with racial, ethnic and socioeconomic prejudices and bigotry.  That is practically rule number one and has been in this country for decades.  That is our community and nation’s expectation.  Yet again another unarmed black man is shot or killed by a police officer who is usually white.  Americans want those incidents—whatever the reason—stopped NOW, and they are no longer willing to sit idly by when practically every day another citizen cell cam shoots a police encounter that in the public’s eye should never have ended in death.