ELECT A VETERAN

We all know that things aren’t working right.  In so many ways.  Our politicians refuse to compromise, our young black men are being shot down by police or arrested in alarming numbers for minor offenses, our poor are unable to find life-supporting work, our sick are in need of better health care, our women are not valued, our mentally ill seem to run rampant in the streets… Well, I guess we all know the list.

What’s the answer?  Is there an answer?

After World War II our soldiers returned and built a nation.  Many continued their service locally all the way to the top of the political ladder.  Many served in Congress.  Maybe that helped keep us out of so many skirmishes and conflicts; they knew about war and its effects.

They didn’t become “the Greatest Generation” for nothing!  They were working to make America a great nation, at home just as it had been abroad.

So now what?  It would seem that greed is uppermost on the minds of many of our elected officials.  They don’t buck the big banks or the gun manufacturers or whoever else is paying for their campaigns, etc.  Maybe, if some of our returning veterans – those who volunteered because they wanted to make a difference and serve their country – would step up and serve again perhaps we might get control of our out-of-control country.

If not, there is always that limited term idea, but there we lose the value of those elected legislators who provide continuity and history.

Surely there is an answer to the violence within our country, Americans killing Americans.  Americans hating Americans.  This is not the land of the free and the home of the brave.  It appears to be more like a third-world country.  Our gentle, treat-others-as-we-want-to-be-treated ways have disappeared.

Somebody help!

My Bleeding Heart

I guess I am one of those bleeding heart types.  These are folks who hurt over all sorts of injustice… We hurt for people who are accused and mistreated for no reason at all except for the color their skin or their religious belief or the origin of their birth or because they have brown eyes or whatever.  How often we retell the injustices of Hitler’s Germany, and yet, his separating of the masses into different groups and singling some out for hatefulness is just what’s happening here in the U.S.

Well, in the case of black people, that’s been going on since the beginning of this country.  With the anniversary of the March in Selma just behind us, so, too, is another shooting of a black teen.  My heart goes out to those parents and all the others who have lost their young sons.  How frightful it must be to take aside your young boy just entering his teens and tell him how he must behave while out in public so as not to bring attention to himself or give cause to be arrested for a ridiculous offense.  Whites tell their sons to behave in public, yes, but don’t need to bring  up the idea of not wearing a hoody, or a cap, or to look up or to look defiant or run or just generally behave like a teen-aged boy.  Actually, I cannot imagine what all is included in “the talk.”

I have a son and I did not fear that he would be shot by the police every time he left the house, and for that I am very grateful.  While the Justice Department did not find Officer Wilson guilty of murder in the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, it did find the police department guilty of discrimination and racial profiling.  And this has been going on for quite awhile.

Recently it seems as though other discrimination is on the rise.  The politician who killed himself over rumors that he was Jewish… Didn’t we overcome anti-Semitism?  Is there still an active “Gentlemen’s Agreement”?  If so, how could I not know this?  Am I naive or just not keeping up?

Oscar Hammerstein II wrote a song about the subject in South Pacific… “You have to be taught.”  When we hold hatred and anger in our hearts we spread it to our children and they to theirs.

My bleeding heart believes it would be a more perfect world if we actually practiced what we said in our Constitution, that we are “created equal.”  This goes for all minorities – all are equal – and yes, this includes women!