Hello Friends,
How far will this go, the tearing down of statues, history, America. The other morning I put on the television and I heard that we no longer may refer to those entering this country without “signing in” as illegal aliens they will now be referred to as non citizens. Apparently the way to make America great again is to ignore any part of the past that is offensive to anyone and rename it so it will no longer be offensive.
What makes something offensive? I find vulgar language offensive, the use of unacceptable expletives that were never considered acceptable in mixed company but now have infiltrated every day speech. I was always told the use of “curse words” were a sign of a weak vocabulary, I have heard children in grade school using some of the most offensive language speaking to their mothers. Sadly the use of such vulgarism has become a common part of what used to be known as discussion and debate of social issues. Political humor is filled with not only vulgar language but vulgar and disgusting images. Whatever happened to respect and pride in our ability to express an issue with acceptable intelligence?
Bigoted terms and prejudicial language should not be acceptable no one should be insulted for their religion, skin color, ethnicity, or choice of political views. What happened to coming together as one people, Americans! Why does it take a disaster to bring us together? Our Revolutionary War for freedom from English rule, our War Between the States, World Wars (I and II) that threaten a free world, Korea, Viet Nam, and our wars since 9/11, Katrina, Tornados, Hurricanes, Wild Fires, frozen black outs, this is where we see true Americans working together. We will soon reach a year since this pandemic shut down our country, not the first time a virus has struck with such devastating result, 1918 the Spanish Flu shut down all public meetings, mandated private funerals (our great grandmother spoke to us of horse drawn wagons coming down the street at night to pick up the dead), visitors to hospitals were limited, soda fountains were closed, you could only order pie or ice cream (desserts) with a meal to limit large gathering. Schools were closed and students and teachers were to continue classes by telephone. Unfortunately less than 35% of homes had a telephone in 1918. Yes some people wore masks but it was not government mandated. So this is not new and if anything it should have been easier to handle, 1918 there were no “all day” reports of how many have become infected, how many have died, there was no television, very limited radio, and most newspaper circulation dropped off. For the most part husbands/fathers went to work and wives/mothers stayed home with children. America worked together and we survived. Shouldn’t we be handling this round better? Apparently not, how can we, when every day we are bombarded with news of how bad this virus is. Worst of all we have such diversity on a government level as to the truth of Corona Virus/COVID 19 that we have been divided in what to believe.
So how far will we go in rewriting and tearing down the past? If we don’t soon realize that our history has been and needs to continue to be a journey of growth, of building a better, stronger, more united America that will only happen when “we the people” learn from history and stop believing that by tearing town and denying history we are building a better country. I fear the day the “United States of America” will become the “Oppressed States of America.” God help us all.