back when we were all the same

Back when; when I was a child, when my parents were young, when my neighborhood had children in every house but all the dogs were yard dogs and no one liked cats, we were all the same. 

We lived in a place where mothers stayed home and cleaned house and reared (never raised--you raise sheep or cows or potatoes) children and watched daytime soap operas.  Fathers came home every evening to a clean house with a homemade meal on the table, maybe a beer or a martini first and afterward, wife did the dishes while hubby watched TV and kids prepared for bed.

We all went on a 2 week vacation every year.  Had a car for the family to make that trip and the weekly shopping trip and the kids either walked to school or rode the bus.  Every house had a metal swingset in the backyard and a sandbox.  The front yard had flowerbeds and a birdbath.  And everyone was at church on Sunday morning.

It was great!

But it was never real.

It's as if we averaged all those people in the neighborhood and then pretended it was the truth, the reality.  It was our shared fiction.

And we never looked outside the neighborhood.  And the Whole World was the United States.  Everyplace else was just a story, a fictional story, no more real than the stories about cave men or the stories about the crusades or vampires.  None of that existed in our world except through TV.  Which was only slightly more real than a good story book--or a bad story book.

When I was 7, the TV news told us some man that was a communist had shot our president--we all cried; our whole second grade class--and the buses took us home early, and we were off the next day or week or some strange length of time and watched his riderless horse walk down the street while wondering why he had a horse instead of a car--and cried again--poor lonely horse.  And we vowed to never be communists that shoot presidents.

When the TV news showed race riots--suddenly these people of another race were in our country  that had never been there before and  they were trying to kill people for no reason.  We had no people of other races in our world until then--all our books showed that--all our tv shows showed that.  We were concerned.  We were scared.  Would those people of other races come to our neighborhoods and kill us, too?

When the TV showed riots on college campuses about the Vietnam war, we were confused.  Our soldiers were heroes, saving people from communism, protecting us all from---something.

When the TV told us Martin Luther King was shot, we didn't know what to think.  Our parents didn't like him.  They wanted him to be quiet.  They wanted him to go away--back to Africa or somewhere, but now they were even more worried about race riots.  The fathers got their old and unused guns out and cleaned them and bought ammo.

When the TV news said the dead president's little brother, who also wanted to be president, had been shot, our families were a little shocked but not actually sad.  "That family is cursed," they said. But their pick for president was fine, so our world was fine.  Yea President Nixon!

When the TV news told us about Watergate, our fine president was in trouble.  Something to do with a hotel.  That was in his second term.  In his first term, he focused on ending the Vietnam War--so that ended the war protests, and then focused on rescuing the environment from pollution and improving race relations.  He was a Republican--apparently pollution was real to republicans back then.  He also worked on ending the cold-war  which was something none of us really understood-but how could you not hate communists--they were not like us and they were bad and evil.

The TV said he resigned rather than be impeached for supposedly paying a burglar $114,000 to bug the Democratic National Committee in order to win re-election.  They weren't going to impeach him for that, but rather for hindering the investigation.  I forget what they called that.  His Vice-president had already resigned before that for income tax violations and taking bribes, so, before President Nixon resigned, he had picked Gerald Ford to be the replacement for the vice-president, therefore also becoming the next president.  I don't think that had ever happened before.

President Ford was the last President of my childhood.  He was not reelected.  I remember him tripping and playing golf but not much else.  I don't know if that made him a bad president or a great president.

I got to vote in the next election due to the ratification of the 26th Amendment.  My parents and I squabbled about it a bit--they thought 18 year olds were too young to vote, that 21 year olds were also to young to vote.  I sided with the idea that if you could fight and die in a war you were old enough to vote and drink.  Hopefully in that order.  (they still don't get to drink around here)

I think I voted for Ford.  I was still thinking that religion and politics were genetic or at least hereditary.  It was not an informed vote, but my parents approved.

Jimmy Carter won.  He was a farmer, but since he raised peanuts and not cattle and wheat, or pigs and tobacco, my family was not impressed.  My future spouse loved him though.  Regularly referred to him as the greatest president since Lincoln.  Looking back, it was probably the truest thing he ever said.

Then we had Reagan.  I loved "Death Valley Days", my parents loved "Death Valley Days",  If he wasn't IKE, and they really liked IKE, he was good enough.  When he left office, I'd been a nurse long enough to know that he had a problem long before his presidency ended. (seeing we had no system to protect us from someone that is no longer fully cognizant leading the country was an eye-opener.)

My mother, who had been a registered democrat since age 21 changed to republican that year at the same time I changed to democrat.  I would have registered independent, but then couldn't have voted in the primaries.

Then came Bush, then Clinton, then Bush again, each one disappointing in different ways. I voted for 3rd party candidates or sat it out each of those 6 elections.  I was busy.  I had no idea what they were doing.  Looking back on history form this time--I REEEAAALLLY had no idea what was going on.

Then Obama ran.  The final Bush was so grammatically embarrassing and had thrown us into that stupid Iraq war and I started paying attention again, more, really paying attention.

I did not love everything Obama did.
I did not hate everything Obama did.

Reality is, in 8 years, neither of his daughters made the news for drunkeness,  or went to rehab, or got arrested.  There were not stories about him starting a war to pay back the ruler that messed with his father.  He did not change the judicial system from directly related to the population to logarithmically related to the population, and he did not send our troups to the middle east for oil. He gave us healthcare--not the universal healthcare I wanted, but closer than anyone since 1880's had done.  And he made all those people that had always been here--that I thought didn't exist when I was 7--very happy. He made them real, made them matter, gave them hope.  He gave a lot of other people hope also.

Obama was a very moderate democrat and was demonized by soooo many as if he was some left wing crazy.

I was a Bernie supporter last election.  He wasn't left enough but the closest I'd ever seen at the national level.  A part of me thinks, if all the folks still thinking that everyone is the same in their world would wake up, things would have gone differently.

Now, NOW we have a man that sees himself as another Ronald Reagan.  Some one should explain the difference between the magic of the silver screen and the TV version of the national enquirer--reality TV.

I voted.  Not for our current president.  And I doubt anyone will ever refer to him as the greatest president since Lincoln. 

I must admit, if he must be compared, it would be to Andrew Jackson.

Back when Andrew Jackson was keeping slavery alive and profiting from that and political power--we weren't all the same either.

Be different, and be aware that different is not wrong or bad or in any way negative.

And, don't get so busy you lose track of what is going on around you.

Sometimes you wake up in an alternate reality.

warrior women

We currently are in the midst of a time in which many are waking up to the way that culture, roles and beliefs create the meaning of our lives and control the direction our lives take. 

There have always been cultural beliefs that cripple people, and even kill people.  If you can't think of any, think of albinoism in a place that considers albino body parts lucky but albino lives useless. 

Think of female genital mutilation to make a woman clean enough for marriage and prevent her from wanting sex, but that also makes childbirth dangerous. 

Think of little girls with their feet bound so that they must be carried from chair to bed their whole lives--the perfect little princess, crippled by her place in society. 

But there is more evidence of this than just physical crippling., In America, women were not taught to read or write unless their family was both wealthy AND thought it important.  Poor girls did not go to school in many places until after the civil war--at all.  That was not their place--that was not their purpose.  We are not so far from the old "keep um barefoot and pregnant" advice that used to be given to sons.

There were/are times in which adulterous women were stoned.

Victorian America enjoyed clitorectomies to prevent masturbation and "high-natured" women from wandering outside their vows.

While there are a multitude of ways in which women have been controlled and punished and crippled, and we recognize those still going on in other cultures and religions,  we are blind to our own cultural input into how women are.  (If shaved legs, plucked brows, liposuction, implants, nose jobs, and monthly exposure to chemicals in the name of feminine beauty isn't cultural--I don't know what is?)

Our current, insidious, mental crippling of women is not well recognized by most.  They offer to teach their son to use the lawn mower and their daughter to clean the bathroom.  We note how pretty and proper little Betty Jo is while bragging on Sam's muscles and strength and intelligence---even when he "is just acting like a boy, i.e., tearing up the yard, back-talking his teacher or vandalizing the neighbor's garden.  When they get dressed up, the boys are expected to go play and roughhouse, the girls, in dresses need to be careful not to show their underwear or break their new and delicate sandals.  We now buy them both legos, but his are primary colors to build space ships and buildings, hers are pastel and come with lots of people and flowers and pets.

We question the sexual orientation of girls in science, girls in sports, girls that drive trucks. 

We want them to figuratively, cover their heads and not follow dreams that are too lofty for girls.

And we do it while bragging on their beauty, their artistic ability, their cooking skill, their poetic nature, and great communication skills.

I love the beauty of women, the artistic and crafty, the well made meal, flowing word craft and long talks full of emotion and ideas.

I also love power tools and astronomy and geology and chemistry.

I will not say I am more or less feminine due to either of those loves.  Our interests do not need gender identification or sexual identity.

There is so very much more to us--male us, female us, people, girls and boys, men and women--than our gender.

There is a long tradition of the triune goddess.  Maiden, Mother, Crone.  But I think, before someone had there way with tradition, trying to make woman less "manly" , trying to soften away her power, there was a fourth.  I think the warrior woman is as basic to the female version of god as the other three.

There have always been warrior woman, from Harriet Tubman, Joan of Arc, Anne Bonny, Gruine  O'Malley, Maya Angelou, Rosa Parks, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Charlote Perkins Gulman, to most of our mothers and grandmothers and selves, each a version of a warrior, that fight their fights and struggle for improvements in society and and communities like she-bears, like lionesses, like---women with a cause, a reason, a project that needs to be conquered.  Every female that has rejected her place in society, that has loved a profession that is seen as manly, that has battled for her loved ones and fought for her right to be herself, is familiar with the importance of her own warrior self.

But why do we limit one half of society while empowering the other?

What does that do, how does that work, why would anyone need that to continue?

Fear?

Insecurity?

A deep need to be the boss of the family?

A strangely twisted belief that makes women less--evil and dangerous?

Who cares---women are just people just as men are just people.

Let your inner warrior woman out every once in a while.  You don't have to kill anyone or even take up roller derby---but flexing those muscles occasionally will make you remember your own power.

And it might help you to tackle that next big chore--running for the senate, running a business, running a chain saw--whatever.

You can do it.

How Propaganda Works.

/https://www.patriotbeacon.com/2017/06/budweiser-stuns-nation-releases-4th-july-ad-conservatives-awe/

The above link is to a Facebook post that is being shared this fine 4th of July.

It's about a beautiful advertisement by Budweiser about helping veterans.

It involves a famous veteran.

There is nothing wrong with this ad.

The article is from Breitbart.  Here is the first paragraph.

"Since the world of Hollywood is so liberal these days, it’s rare that a brand takes a stand for veterans of the military. That’s why it came as a welcome surprise this week when Budweiser released an ad for the Fourth of July that honors veterans of the U.S. military."

This implies that advertisements are anti-veteran.

So I'm hunting for advertisements about veterans.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=advertisements+about+veterans&id=95934FEE8F6913E03BD1D9D0C4AC495E681EC30C&FORM=IQFRBA

There were tons of positive advertisements about veterans, open the link and look at them.  they go back to WWI and continue to the present.  Advertisers love Veterans, veterans are as American as apple pie and the 4th of July.

Now for negative liberal advertisements that are about veterans.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=negative%20liberal%20advertisements%20about%20veterans&qs=n&form=QBIR&sp=-1&pq=negative%20liberal%20advertisements%20about%20veterans&sc=0-46&sk=&cvid=2A0BBC2309BF4CE6B87D5321B43EF38D

There are lots of them also--there are even some that might be anti-veteran and pro-liberal--all from other countries about their own liberal parties. 

There are also a crapload of anti-liberal advertisements from our own country.

Not one anti-veteran from a liberal source in the United States.

So I challenge you to find a single advertisement with a liberal source that is anti-veteran.  Find it.  Add it to the comments.

Why?  Because this is how propaganda works--it takes something everyday and spins it so that it villanizes the other group. 

It takes something that is true, that tugs at the heart-strings and hooks something to it that is untrue and aims it at their own "enemy".

Be conservative.
Be liberal.
Be one of the new independents that don't want a group telling them what is right and what is wrong.

But don't accept lies.  Be a truth-seeker.  Be a truth-spreader.  Be a fact-checker. 

On the internet, in social media--stopping and checking those things that inflame your sense of wrongness and make you want to hate someone is a first step. 

Few things in life are just one-sided.  If a story is not balanced with two sides and doesn't let you know how to find the basis of the horrible claims they make--it might just be pure propaganda.

Propaganda--information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

And don't forget the challenge--to find a single advertisement that is anti-veteran and that is from a liberal propaganda engine.

(since demonizing our own sons and daughters, our young heroes, is never going to make anyone a fan, the very idea of this is preposterous--but prove me wrong and prove Breitbart to be an honest source of news--not just propaganda)

Make America Good!

Make America Great again Good !

I don't want to hear any more about making America GREAT! again. 

Tony the Tiger can keep his "great" line and the Trump campaign be hanged.

I want to hear about making this country good. 
Not again.  Not for the 2nd time or 4rd time.  Not like it used to be

Not "good" like less than "great" but better than so-so."

"Good" like "goodness" and "kindness" and filled with beautiful souls.

I'm talking about taking this country into a place no country has been before.

We don't have to change much as far as the rhetoric: 
People all being equal, fairly treated, equal opportunity, equal justice under the law, power divided evenly--one person--one vote, no limitations except for our own ability to dream, explore, and create. 

The patriotic ideals that we all heard and loved were not the problem.  Those were all great---they just didn't exist for many of the people in this country.  They definitely never existed for all the people all the time.

Ideals can not just be words. 

Words represent  ideals, but the ideal must be more than scribbles on a piece of paper or sounds coming out of someone's mouth.

They are things--like people are things and rocks are things and all the words in the world can not fully describe a person or  even a single rock.
Like goals are things and dreams are things  but the words we use to delineate them  can lack their emotional tone and shades of wonder and strange and oddly shaded nuances.

While these ideals for our new and good country do not have to already exist in complete form, they must be based on something or someone and the traits and characteristics must be seen as attainable and sustainable and---good by everyone that cares about goodness. 

But what is seen as good by everyone?

Is it like Porn--I'll know it when I see it?

Is it like chocolate--almost universally loved and enjoyed?

Or is it more like those universal truths that each religion, philosophy and moral code teaches its own children in an attempt to make both better people and a better world.

Can we make the world better by legislation?, by laws, programs and focused projects?

Can we make the world better by punishing everyone that is not "good".

Can we make the world "good" by removing everyone and everything that is "not only or always good"?

Does "good" have to be actively "good"? or can it be passive goodness--hurt no one and nothing and be good by virtue of inaction?

Is good the opposite of bad or merely the absence of good.

Are people "good".

Are things "good".

Are goals "good," are plans "good," are programs "good"?

Is good the same for everyone?

Does a good 40 year old man need to act the same as a good 12 year old  girl?

Can a  rich person and a poor person both be the same kind of good?

Can we measure goodness?

Maybe, good is too lofty an ideal.
But what better goal than one that is lofty.

To make a "good" country, we need a place in which everyone has the opportunity to be their best self.  
How do we make a more level playing field.
The child born with access to money, love, education, nutritious food, a feeling of safety most of the time (scary movies--can't control those scary movies) and opportunities to explore the environment, be exposed to varied information and play both alone and with other children has a great chance at being a "good" person, of doing "good" things, and of helping the next generation have the same.

A child without access to any one or all of those,  risks want--lack--and the very real possibility of seeing the world as a dangerous, competitive place where everything must be fought for and where their own position in the world is always in danger of being made even worse. 

In an unsafe, ungood world, other people hurt you, they take your opportunities, they decrease your food supply, they make it where you feel you can't trust other people because they want what you want and their isn't enough for both of you. 

To increase their own chance of-- not goodness--but success, they guide competitors away from those things they themselves see as their opportunity for their future.  They tell lies, give bad advice and otherwise push their own "friends" away from success..

Perhaps the first step in making a "good" country, is getting rid of some of that sense of fear, want and competition. 

Good education for all in whatever the individual shows an interest in.

Good healthcare for all so that no one is pushed out of the goodness by illness or injury of mind, body, or spirit.

Good water for all.
Good nutritious food for all.

Good, safe places to live for all.

Good paying jobs for all that want to work.

Good access to transportation.

Good parks, wildlife preserves and libraries, museums, recreational areas, and art exploration facilities that all can access, enter, and enjoy at their leisure.

Good music access for all types of musicians playing all kinds of music.

and good people, caring people, people that just want to live and let live, learn a little, see a little, share a little and leave something for their own descendants to also enjoy when their time arrives.

Is that too much?

Or is that "good".





About making the promises real for all.
About the importance of transparency.