PART ONE
I turned fifty-seven last month. I nicknamed it my Heinz ketchup birthday.
Looking ahead to the upcoming final entry in this blog, in addition to living almost six decades, I find myself looking at a lot of things. All that time alive and all these comments have given me a particular perspective on things. In putting this together, I found that I had quite a number of odds and ends, if you will, so I decided to split what I had into two posts. Today, is the first part of my tidying up before this blog wraps up ...
If you look around, I mean really look around, you will find things of great joy and great sorrow, things of beauty and things of ugliness, equity and inequity, triumph and failure, and so on. It is easy to focus on one thing, or type of thing, and ignore the other. A lot of that is filed under focus, as in, what you want to focus on and give your energy. Looking at both, it can feel like a never-ending spiral.
Really, it is more along the lines of the Chinese philosophical symbol of Yin-Yang, which symbolizes that opposite forces/energies/intentions may be connected to one another ... sometimes even bringing about one another.
In other words, there is good and bad in life and the trick is navigating both of them.
Look at the violence in schools. Students bringing not only knives, but guns to school. Guns! Sometimes, to show off. Sometimes, to send a message of Back off! Sometimes, to murder fellow students and/or teachers. This is a symptom of our losing our ability to disagree without violent conflict. It used to be that the worst a student had to worry about -- well, aside from passing a test -- was a fistfight, flipping the bird, swearing, or mom insults. (And there would be repercussions at school AND at home afterward.)
How quaint those things seem now.
I find it heartwarming, even encouraging, when I see teenagers in Florida survive a horrific domestic terrorist attack by a former fellow student and then turn that into the largest massacre prevention movement in this country since the horrors of Columbine High School twenty years ago and Sandy Hook Elementary School six years ago. Alternately, I find it discouraging when there are forces willfully trying to allow such horrors to continue. Still, the #NeverAgain movement has brought about the most positive change on this issue and I hope that continues.
Many times, as the saying goes, those who do not remember and learn from the past will repeat it in the future. Sometimes, that comes in the form of warnings not heeded ...
Other times, it may be a willful ignoring of how things were done before ...
Images from the first ever preemptive strike by U.S. military
Speaking of war, I find it, at worst, humanity's greatest disgrace, and at best, illogical. World War I was known as the "war to end all wars". World War II, often referred to as "the big one", has also been called "the great war". Tell me, what war is "great" really? Sure, the victor(s) can savor a great victory, but at what cost? Before anyone misunderstands me, I understand, in the case of World War II, that a great enemy, Adolf Hitler, needed to be stopped. I am not arguing that he should have been allowed to continue his evil plans, not at all. (Such was part of the path former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain took, much to his disgrace.) Still, look at what the result -- granted, it was deemed good versus evil -- was: violence, murder, and destruction met with violence, murder, and destruction. Hate begets hate; violence begets violence. In the spirit of the phrase You won the battle, but we won the war, we may win a war, but what we had to do to win it is, at best, a sad commentary on humanity. It is, truly, a sad commentary on the human condition and a downward spiral with an inhumane result.
Instead of warring against a people or a country, we have (in the interest of furthering the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about) been at war for the past seventeen years against an activity ... terror. Look on a map ... you won't find any country with that name and no people named Terror, either. The financial cost for the War on Terror so far is estimated at nearly six trillion dollars. Six trillion! By warring against an activity, perpetual war is guaranteed, and those kinds of dollars could be spent far more wisely.
Does anyone remember what an actual democracy looks like? I understand there are those who say there hasn't been a real democracy in the U.S. for a very long time, that certain groups of individuals around the world run (or at least have their hands in) things like politics, world finance, and social structure. (I'm not big on conspiracy theories, but I do agree with that belief.) As the late comedian George Carlin once quipped, we only have the illusion of choice. At the very least, we seemed to have a democracy. To whatever degree we did or did not have a democracy, now there are those who are willingly destroying it in plain sight.
In Wisconsin, the POT lost big time in that state as part of the Democratic "blue wave" (which was more like a slow roll of molasses). Before leaving office in January, those POT members passed legislation that limited the incoming Democratic leadership of some of its power, which the voters of Wisconsin had voted to give them. Outgoing POT Governor Scott Walker signed the legislation into law. In Michigan, the POT state Senate passed legislation that would limit incoming Democratic State Attorney General Dana Nessel. It would give their party the right to intervene in any lawsuit brought against laws passed by the POT in the state legislature. (Surprisingly, POT Governor Rick Snyder vetoed the bill.) Again, the voters had voted to give Nessel the position of state Attorney General and all of the power that comes with it. Finally -- for now, that is -- South Carolina is likely going to vote in the Summer on canceling the state's POT primary, slated for February 29, 2020. President Trump handily won the state in 2016 -- 55% Trump, 41% Clinton -- so it is likely he would win the state's primary again, but what about the voters' will being tabulated and recorded?
The United States of America's form of government is listed as a constitutional republic, but it is also listed as a republic, a democracy, and even a democratic republic. Fact is, there is no one term to fully describe this country's form of governance. (That is, aside from "terrible".) The democracy part is gone. If you did not believe it before, look around. If you were someone who ascribed to the U.S. being a democracy, that very democracy is gone. What good is it to call it a democracy when the will of the voters, as expressed by their votes, is going to be taken away? When an election is held in another part of the world and it is likely the results will not have the import they should, it is highlighted in the news and there are several entities that monitor those elections. We condemn the fact that the people's votes may not matter in other countries, and we should here, too. In a true democracy, all votes matter, and that can be emphasized as ALL votes matter and all votes MATTER. What has been a gradual erosion of our democracy has now become an overthrow of it.
Two more notes on the election process itself: One, get rid of the Electoral College. And no, I am not saying that because I voted for Hillary and she lost in 2016. I am saying it because it is outdated. As much as some argue removing it would provide a less equitable representation in presidential elections, we have that now with it in place with elections coming down to one or two states. It needs to go. Two, and I've said it before on this blog, everyone must stop voting out of fear. The powers that be have been exploiting that fear and taking advantage of this country because of it.
This is purely observational and not from a place of my never making mistakes -- I've made more than my fair share -- but can we all, please, start being and acting responsible again? Sure, we can look at the current political climate (and politics in general) for just one example but, good God, avoiding responsibility has become a national obsession. Politicians being irresponsible to their constituents ... parents being irresponsible to their children ... businesses being irresponsible to their employees ... friends and family members being irresponsible to their friends and family members ... humanity being irresponsible to the planet ... I mean, it just goes on and on and on!
Yes, sometimes people make honest mistakes and may have to pay unjustly for them. When that happens, it must be dealt with to try and correct it, but let's be honest, that is not what we do the majority of the time from which trouble arises. Whatever happened to taking your lumps for things you did wrong? Mind you, it is not every single person on the planet who acts that way, but it seems to be a case of what can be described as either an epidemic (or, perhaps, a pandemic).
Unnecessary and unwelcome returns have become a thing now, instead of occasional occurrences. Not that these ever fully went away, but we did what we could to try and eradicate them, at the very least to the point where any of these are rare.
Thanks to the research of Dr. Jonas Salk and others, polio (full name: poliomyelitis) was defeated, with the last case being almost forty years ago. Polio is contagious and can cause severe breathing difficulties, paralysis, and even death. Polio has been brought into this country by travelers coming here who already had it, but as a national epidemic, it was defeated through regular vaccinations. Cases of a polio-like virus, called Acute Flaccid Myelitis, have been surfacing for the past four years. Not to mention the increase of cases of measles, after that was declared to be eliminated (no continuous transmission for a period of longer than twelve months) almost twenty years ago thanks to vaccinations. The anti-vaccination movement wants a return to early twentieth century or pre-twentieth century medicine.
Another unwelcome return is the meteoric rise in racial hatred as well as nationalism and neo-nazism in this country. Yes, they have always been there, but proponents have been emboldened by the actions and rhetoric of President Trump and other politicians, other types of leaders, and fellow citizens. Still think the words of the President don't matter that much? For these people, second-class citizen status is reserved for non-whites, and three Reichs just aren't enough.
And now, for the shortest piece in this post:
Two years after Franklin Delano Roosevelt's death in 1945, during his fourth term in office, Congress passed the Twenty-Second Amendment. They did that regarding presidential terms in office, but not their own. Now, why is that?
And that ends part one. More tidying up to be done tomorrow.
Terry
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