Here’s a post I started about 5 weeks ago. A little out of date but still relevant!

SOME THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

I hear all the ranting and raving about our President’s executive orders and healthcare legislation and everything else he has done or said since he started his campaign. Let’s take a real look and maybe we can learn something.

1. Travel ban. Not a bad idea when you look at it from the U.S. point of view. If we can stop just one bad dude from entering this country to do us harm I’m all in. Now I have heard all the Muslim ban talk but just because someone is from Somalia doesn’t make them Muslim. But a Somalian can certainly be a bad dude. (Of course dude can be gender neutral).
2. Immigration reform. Great idea. Make people come in to our country legally. Why should we have to support all the ones that don’t follow the rules. After all if I wanted to immigrate to, say, Somalia do you think they would let me just walk across the border? And then if I got sick do you think I would be taken care of?
3. Marriage rights. Why should the LGBTQ community have special rights? Why should there have to be a special law just for them? I’m straight and I don’t get my own day in court.
4. Climate change, global warming. Just because you say it doesn’t make it true. Maybe we’re just going through a natural change in weather patterns
5. Cutbacks to National Parks. Look, there is still plenty of land out there that doesn’t need our protection. Just protect the areas that people go to see. I would venture a guess that at least 90% of all federally protected lands have never been seen by anyone in this country.
6. Healthcare reform. What’s wrong the rich getting richer? If premiums go down count me in. No president, senator or congressman would let someone lose their life savings or their life just because the get sick.

So that’s just a few of the wonderful things that our President has either proposed or actually signed. If it wasn’t for the insanity of everything I just wrote maybe I could believe my own words. Everything above is outrageously stupid! How could one man even come up with so many bad ideas? It’s like he opens his mouth and absurdity makes an appearance.

There are so many causes we need to fight for. It is almost impossible to keep track of them all. Pick one or as many as you can handle and take them as far as you can. There as good organizations out there fighting for our rights. Help them out. Do what you can. Let your voice be heard. You don’t have to be out in front, you can quietly support what you believe in.

America has always been a violent country. From the beginning of the caucasian invasion we have slaughtered our way to supremacy. For a society that was founded on personal freedom we certainly have found ways to limit that freedom. The relentless quest to wipe out the buffalo population, the systematic killing off of the Native American population and the eventual confinement to reservations, this is how our country began. Slavery, guns, the lawless west, we have always used violence to silence the voices, lives and souls of those we found to be different. When the white Christians came to settle this land they came to escape religious persecution. What they found was unacceptable to them. These were puritanical people. And while they wanted to practice their own religion they did not believe the savages (as they thought of the Native Americans) had the right to live their lives their way. This is how our nation was founded. All men are created equal as long as they look and act like us.

Most of the second half of the twentieth century was buried in race violence. We had our moments of peace, love and unity in the sixties but that was just a  blip on the radar.

Today we find ourselves hating everyone. Violence is on the rise throughout the country and this time is isn’t only whites versus everyone else. The tables seem to have turned. Now we fight amongst ourselves. Petty little battles over airline seats, the driver who cuts us off during the commute, not enough espresso shots in our Frappuccino. The list is endless, full of frivolous attempts to make ourselves better than the other person.

We have larger issues also. We all know what they are. But it’s these small skirmishes that alarm me. The total lack of respect for our fellow humans. This isn’t about race or religion, it’s not about class or culture. Yes we have race anger, yes we have religious anger and yes we have class and culture anger. This has been very apparent during the presidential campaign and subsequent first term of our very angry president. But this isn’t what I am talking about.

Why suddenly is there so many people being taken off planes? Is it the airlines fault for over booking the flights? Is it the passenger’s fault for not knowing the rules? I know I wouldn’t be happy if I was told to give up my seat, in fact I would be angry. Would I start a fight? I don’t think so. But in the moment maybe I would. I don’t think airline seat rage and traffic rage and coffee rage is about the incident. It’s about our sense that we are losing control over our lives.

As Jeffrey Kluger wrote in June, 2016 “Anger is a lazy person’s emotion. It’s quick, it’s binary, it’s delicious. And more and more, we’re gorging on it.”.

As we see more and more people angry, the anger becomes more and more acceptable. Then the acceptable becomes the glorified. The glorified becomes the norm. When anger is the norm common sense is lost and social mores become silenced. That’s when society is lost and the population looks to be saved. I believe we have seen the beginning and we must fight to reverse the trend.

 

Time Magazine published an article about the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The article states how they upheld the 1964 Civil Rights Act as it applies to LGBT employees. Please read about at the link below. Eight of the eleven judges were appointed by Republican presidents.

http://time.com/4726040/civil-rights-act-lgbt-workplace-discrimination/