My Grandmamma taught me, we mustn't allow America to pay the ultimate price of the distortion of once upon a time. Touching my forehead like ET, she'd add, the Good Ol' Days are the devil's trick on those who live looking backwards.
It's easy to keep the faith, hope and love in your heart and cherish all, when all is well: plenty of friends & money, bright future, fulfilling occupation -- that Joie de vivre, when you feel you are the positive difference, embellishing the inhalation of every living thing. However, the character & temperament, courage & strength, stability & security and even power & might of a nation is translucent in how its people treat one another.
My first NYC employer, Holocaust survivor, Mr. Weinberg, was forced to divide masses of incoming Jewish prisoners by deciding who went to the workers' barracks, and who entered the line for showers. This is the Good Ol' Days for people like David Duke, Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn.
Will this Thanksgiving remake America First into Restricted skyscrapers hotels & clubs, like the good ol' days of Jim Crow & Operation Wetback?
College degrees don't make elitists, but degrees of greed do. Not having a university education doesn't make one uneducated, but following someone just because, he speaks his mind, defeats freedom as much as, The Patriot Act.
Potentially, We the People are the sum-total of the biblical Abraham & Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul & all the forgotten African-American suffragettes, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Tammy Duckworth and all those male, female, gay and straight people who, in uniform, preserve, protect and defend the future of education, equality and justice for all -- the very freedom for which we stand at Standing Rock.
Yes, it's easy to create a registering system for keeping an eye on those Muslims. Just follow the well documented example set by 1930's Germany, or ask Carl Higbie or for an insider POV, George Hosato Takei.
We are not the divided nation Media & GOP preach: the popular vote elected the first female President of the United States, Democrats narrowed the GOP obstructionist margin, and, the sun rose on Wednesday November 9, 2016, with Trump still facing multiple lawsuits.
With American optimism, let us move our nation and national mind-set, forward, as the right direction avoiding man's inhumanity to man, knowing common sense and common decency require more than emailing, tweeting, blogging and carrying protest signs.
While street violence is illegal, every American has the right to peacefully assemble in the office of federal, state and local elected officials -- to petition government.
It's not just the bigotry, misogyny, islamophobia and homophobia -- it's the ineptitude around which the inept surround themselves in times of mass hysteria. Towering misinformation feeds desire for revenge in those for whom seeing beyond their back porch is neither a manageable feat, nor feasible concept. You do the Hokey-Pokey and you turn USA around, is what the good ol' days are all about.
Sadly, minds closed by the good ol' days, need another trip down short-term memory-loss lane, chocking on America First, blinded by the smog of climate denial, before realizing, there is no greatness in a me first nation.
The only wall we need focus on preventing, is the wall of bluster the self-absorbed have built between themselves and what's best for all. Even primetime television, fueling our soul with humor, reflects greatness in America's diversity -- but freedom's oxygen, is action.
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