THE SILENT MAJORITY

How in the world did Trump win?

I know many of you are asking that question. It seems to come more from both coasts than anywhere else and maybe that explains a part of it. The wealthy, the celebrities, the media, the powerful all can’t understand how it happened and they vocalize that on a daily basis since the results of the election. What they don’t understand is that when you contain yourself in a bubble the only people you come into contact with are those contained with you.

You don’t realize that there are others out there who may not think like you do. That’s even more the case when you live such an elitist life that you have nothing in common with the common man. You consider anyone without a college degree ignorant and stupid while at the same time depending on things like your groceries being brought into the city by truck drivers, your electricity being given to you by men and women willing to lay electrical cable, the dish tech who installs your satellite dish, the internet provider who hooked up your internet or the farmer who grows crops that feed you. To you everything is just there without ever considering who makes it happen.

Or perhaps you’re a teen depending on your mom and dad to provide you with everything while thinking it is below you to work part time at McDonalds. Maybe you’re a college student going on loans, your parent’s money, grants or scholarships rather than having to work and save money to go. You feel like everything should be handed to you like a free education rather than having to earn it. Because you have little vested interest in your education financially it doesn’t matter to you if you show to class or don’t bother so you can be part of that mass of students protesting the results of the election because your person didn’t win or heading off to counseling because you were traumatized by the whole thing.

But those other people are why Trump won. Those workers who are tired of being called stupid, ignorant or deplorable. Those parents who have sacrificed to ensure your education only to see you squander it by skipping class. The people who were told they could keep their doctor and would see the cost of health care lower only to see the exact opposite happen. The ones who were happy because racial equality was finally here only to see that slapped down by race baiters who would portray someone as racists for simply disagreeing with a black President. The mothers who worked hard every day to take care of the house, the clothes, the meals and more only to be called losers by feminists because they didn’t toss it all aside for a career outside of the home. The people who had their rights trampled on in the cause of social justice to placate the few over the many. The people who have become sick and tired of political correctness that’s gotten so overused that you can barely breathe without it offending someone. Those were the people that voted for Trump. The silent majority that let their voices be heard.

In response what has happened? The powers that be that preached tolerance, inclusion and equality have suddenly changed. They refuse to include anyone that disagrees with them. They want anyone who doesn’t see things the way they do to not be tolerated or heard. They find that anyone who disagrees with them is not near their equal because they are superior, at least they tell us that. And while the majority of people who voted for Trump consider the election over and have gone on with their lives, a large number of those who didn’t feel the need to carry on about it a week after the election. They want a new election because the one we had didn’t end the way they wanted it to. They claim he will destroy this country while they are burning things and tearing things down.

They say that Trump should tell any of his supporters who have resorted to violence to stop. And he has done just that. Sadly CBS which had him saying that on Friday held off showing it until Sunday evening in spite of all the violence. And while they were screaming at him to call for an end to the violence…we heard nothing from our President to do the same. We heard nothing from his competitor to do the same. The end result is those that voted from him shaking their heads, knowing as they did before they voted that those protesters still don’t get it and then going on about their lives.

You want peace and no violence? Start with yourself. You want compassion and understanding? Start with yourself. You want to be included in what is happening and what is to come? Then be reasonable and act like an adult rather than a petulant child. Open your eyes to possibilities rather than mire yourself so deeply in your beliefs that you can’t understand how anyone could possibly think different than you. Once you make the decision to have an open and meaningful dialogue, a back and forth of ideas and concepts, rather than simply clinging tightly to your own, then you might begin to understand just how it was that Donald Trump became President.

NATIONAL ANTHEM

After dinner at my niece and her husband’s house with the family we had an interesting conversation that apparently began a few days prior between her, her mother and brother. From what I gathered it began with a discussion on Kaepernick’s refusing to stand during the National Anthem. The question was something along the lines of why should he be forced to stand? Now mind you, I’m not certain that’s how the conversation began and defense of his actions wasn’t there, but the question about the National Anthem was involved.

Through the various items involved this led to a larger discussion among all of us that afternoon. It was thought provoking and interesting. It was exactly what an after dinner conversation should be. It never resulted in fists being thrown or threats being issued. It got heated at times based on passion for the topic but never in an insulting or disrespectful way. More often it was in one of us trying to make a point while at the same time being questioned about the one we just finished. LOL. But that’s what lively debate and discussion is all about. The end result is a better understanding of the topic at hand.

All of this led to my thinking about what we discussed and most importantly the difference in generations that I saw that afternoon. My father, in his 70s; my sister and I in our 50s; and my niece in her late 20s/early 30s (that’s called covering your butt by the way). Roughly 20 year gaps between each of us. The amount of history involved in those gaps is more than you would think. And when you add to that the larger gap of what has been seen by my father as a child to what my niece has seen as a child, consider the amount of history from when he was a child to her today.

All of that has to be taken into account when it comes to the focal point that began the discussion, the National Anthem. And that topic itself is inclined to involve not just the song itself but what it and this country represent. That’s what the course of the conversation included.

Let’s begin with the first thing most of us agreed on. Kaepernick had every right as an American citizen to refuse to stand for the National Anthem. That’s part of what being an American is, the freedoms that we have. It becomes a sort of catch-22 though in that we have someone disrespecting a country that gave him the right to be disrespectful. Just because you have the right doesn’t mean the best path to take is to do so.

In addition to that as we discussed for the most part we agreed. His refusal to stand accomplished nothing for the cause he claimed to support, violence against blacks by police officers. In fact his act took attention away from the topic and forced it onto his actions instead. He made the story about him rather than about the topic he was angry about. In addition to that it made it apparent that he was buying into the whole false narrative that there is a plague in this nation of young black men being killed by police. The actual numbers show a completely different story, but you rarely hear them because they don’t fit the narrative of a press eager to cause more problems and thus create more stories.

We discussed the fact that by making a scene on national television it had side effects that were negative rather than positive. As a man making millions of dollars to play a game, he has the chance to help in so many other ways. Rather than live a lavish lifestyle he could take a large portion of what he is paid and invest in the communities that are hardest hit. He could fund schools, could work in a food bank in his spare time, help with community centers or even make a point of visiting all of these same locations in the hopes of inspiring young people to make their communities a better place. By being on national television he could lead by example the thousands of kids watching. Instead he taught them to be disrespectful and accomplished nothing.

Has anything changed as a result of his protest? I mean other than to inspire other athletes and protesters to do the same thing? And for each of them that protests by refusing to stand or to take a knee, has it accomplished anything? Not at all. And most importantly while he acts so outraged at the false claim that police are killing black men across the country he continues to ignore the largest cause of homicides among blacks going on now, black on black crime.

Take Chicago for example. As of today (10/17/16) the number of blacks killed in Chicago has surpassed the previous year.  3,475 people this year compared to 2,441 shot by this time last year, an increase of 1,034 people. Included in that figure are 595 homicides as opposed to 409 last year, an increase of 186 dead. But where is the outrage over this? Where is the cry to stop black on black crime? It’s a less easy target so it doesn’t get the attention. It also doesn’t fit the political narrative that actually ties into the reason for the whole BLM movement.

All of this is a part of the story. But it still doesn’t tell it all. It doesn’t talk about the song, the National Anthem, and the views of young people today. They don’t understand the importance of the song or of national pride or of patriotism. They don’t have the love of country that many older people do.

In part I think that the reason for this is the way education has handled this country in the last few decades. More and more scandals involving politicians are coming to light. Where they were swept under the carpet during the years of JFK and LBJ they suddenly became the main topic when Nixon and Watergate came to light. Afterwards journalists stopped being reporters and wanted to become stars like Woodward and Bernstein. Journalism changed from reporting the story to being a part of the story.

There was also a change in what was being taught when it came to history as well. While we had history classes that focused on the founding fathers through World War II the new history classes seemed intent on discussing things that were more recent while ignoring how we got there. I recall a grade school class where my son was being taught about the Civil Rights movement and amendment while never having learned about the Constitution or Bill of Rights to begin with. How can you understand an amendment to a document you have no concept of? I remember a grade school teacher requiring him and his fellow students to write a letter to the Canadian government protesting their treatment of Native Americans there. Grade schoolers asked to write letters about something they have no clue about?

Schools also stopped teaching about the good things in this country and where they came from, how they came to be. While capitalism is slammed and discussions of land barons took center stage there was little talk about how the railways transformed this country, opening it up for populations to rise in the west. Edison is no longer a hero for the inventions he made, discovered or advanced and instead is destroyed as a patent abuser and the eliminator of his competitor Tesla. Even the discovery of this country by Columbus changed from the achievement he made, sailing across unknown waters and finding a route to this country is a story now about what a tyrant he was, how he enslaved noble Native Americans and how his coming here brought nothing but disease and destruction to those in the new world.

The history of this country as taught in schools has changed from a positive perspective to a negative one. No longer is it the story of a country that developed a new form of government unlike any that has come before, how that for the first time in history the people of a country had the ability to make decisions about how things were done, were given a vote to change things if they chose to do so the next election and how this system has lasted more than any other and inspired others to attempt the same. Instead the flaws are highlighted and those doing so report that with glee rather than encourage young people to get involved and find solutions. As a matter of fact some of those teaching the negatives do so with the hope that those young minds will aid and abet the fall of the system.

The National Anthem. With so many attacks being made on this country from within and directed at the young people is it any wonder that they don’t understand what patriotism is all about, what that song means? They don’t get that this country offered more to many than any other country in existence. It is why so may try to come here, to experience freedom for the first time, to have the opportunity to create a better life than they could ever hope for where they were.

My sister made note of the fact that they didn’t grow up during the Cold War when the only battles being waged for all to see were those at the Olympics where the best of the world faced off against one another. When the American hockey team beat the Russians it was amazing. It wasn’t a moment where folks rubbed it in, it was a celebration. And the teams that both did their best also paid respect to one another afterwards.

Today they don’t get the words of the National Anthem or any other patriotic theme. The words are just stupid and spoken in the dialogue of the time and mean nothing to them. They’re too engaged with their own small worlds and not the big picture, a country that allows them to live in their small worlds. They take for granted the highways this country has, the water that comes from the tap with ease and the electricity that powers their gaming systems and big screen TVs. They can’t comprehend places where a transistor radio is a luxury and roads are dirt when not changed to mud. Places where sewage runs down a ditch next to the road rather than through pipes. They take for granted all of the things that are here because for them they’ve always grown up with it. It is the norm, the standard they are used to.

And on that note consider the changes that have happened just in the last 50 years of our 240 year history. Blacks can vote, own property and sit where ever they choose. You can use a phone kept in your pocket rather than attached to a wall. On that same phone you can access more information than an entire library would have contained a few years prior. You can travel by plane where once only the wealthy could. You can drive from one city to another on paved roads in hours rather than days. You can eat an affordable meal in minutes rather than spend an entire day preparing one. And you can apply a form of protest that actually accomplishes something or you can instead make a symbolic gesture that accomplishes absolutely nothing.

I could end here but instead I want to attach one last thing, a sort of explanation of this whole thing. Red Skelton was a comedian and movie star from way back. During the sixties he had a weekly television show. He did a piece there about the Pledge of Allegiance that always stuck with me and has stuck with so many others. Not only did he do it on TV but it was recorded and sold as a single (like a download for you young people). The words he chose to use meant so much and explained the concept of patriotism best for me. So let me just leave it to Mr. Skelton and his words to explain:

I remember this one teacher. To me, he was the greatest teacher, a real sage of my time.
He had such wisdom. We were all reciting the Pledge of Allegiance one day, and he walked over.
Mr. Lasswell was his name.
He said, "I've been listening to you boys and girls recite the Pledge of Allegiance all semester, and it seems as though it is becoming monotonous to you.
If I may, may I recite it and try to explain to you the meaning of each word?"

I: me, an individual, a committee of one.
PLEDGE: dedicate all of my worldly goods to give without self-pity.
ALLEGIANCE: my love and my devotion.
TO THE FLAG: our standard, Old Glory, a symbol of freedom.
Wherever she waves, there is respect because your loyalty has given her a dignity that shouts freedom is everybody's job.
OF THE
UNITED: that means that we have all come together.
STATES: individual communities that have united into 48 great states.
Forty-eight individual communities with pride and dignity and purpose, all divided with imaginary boundaries yet united to a common purpose, and that's love for country.
OF AMERICA
AND TO THE REPUBLIC: a state in which sovereign power is vested in representatives chosen by the people to govern. And government is the people and it's from the people to the leaders, not from the leaders to the people.
FOR WHICH IT STANDS
ONE NATION: meaning, so blessed by God.
INDIVISIBLE: incapable of being divided.
WITH LIBERTY: which is freedom, the right of power to live one's own life without threats, fear, or some sort of retaliation.
AND JUSTICE: the principle or quality of dealing fairly with others.
FOR ALL: which means, boys and girls, it's as much your country as it is mine. 

Since I was a small boy, two states have been added to our country and two words have been added to the Pledge of Allegiance: UNDER GOD 

Wouldn't it be a pity if someone said, "That is a prayer," and that would be eliminated from schools, too?

THE THINGS WE TAKE FOR GRANTED

With all the talk about the problems in the world and who is denied this or that I wonder if people ever really consider just how good they have it? Protesters recently complained when police had Chik-fil-a was brought in to feed the police doing their job. They felt they deserved it as well. My guess is if they had bothered to order it and pay for it then it would have been delivered. But they wanted it free. College students think they’re being overburdened because they have to pay for their education, ignoring the fact that if you want anything in this world you have to pay for it. In an age of free cell phones from the government how can a rational person not think they’re entitled to everything free?

This is not to slam those who take advantage of the free items out there. That’s a great thing, to have access to so much for free or little costs. But those items were placed there as a means of helping people move forward not to contain them there for the rest of their lives. Odd to complain about slavery while making yourself a slave to whoever is in control isn’t it?

But all of this talk leads me to something else that bothers me. While we worry day and night about those who are disenfranchised we rarely ever hear anything about the elderly. While some claim to be the most ignored group on the planet how often do we consider the plight of the elderly, their needs both physical and mental? I’m guessing not one of you has had to consider it of late.

Consider a woman in her 90s whose husband has passed away and who took care of her all those years. Maybe she took him for granted and expects someone or everyone to fill that void. It’s not a reasonable request. If she were willing to look at things from other’s perspective she might realize that she needs to do for herself more. Then again there will be times where she needs help. Assisted living comes to mind. But what about those who can’t afford that? What about the many who are unable to afford just taking care of themselves be they elderly or disabled? What about the many who never made plans or just put things off to do so just one more year only to find themselves in a predicament made by that error?

I’m there now. I see the mistakes I made. None of them were anyone else’s. I own them completely. And yet I never demand anything from anyone, no call to arms for the government to give me an outrageous sum to suit my every whim. You deal with what life delivers, even if the mistakes made were yours, and you carry on. You hang on to your faith and seek divine providence and if it doesn’t come when you want it to you don’t hold God accountable, you carry on. Day by day.

You begin to realize the things you took for granted for so long. I wonder how many reading this realize the number of things they take for granted on a daily basis. Consider a normal day start to finish. If it’s summer you probably have the air conditioner going through the night. What if running it that much made your electric bill too high so you had to resort to the old days of open windows? A shower? What if you had to haul your water in rather than indoor plumbing, the same with that initial trip to the toilet, indoor not out? Not to mention using the cheapest toilet paper you could afford. What if you couldn’t afford toothpaste and had to go with the old baking soda routine? You also have to bend down to rinse because you can’t afford those cute tiny cups for water. How about just shampooing your hair? If you couldn’t afford the numerous shampoos the world offers and had to use a bar of soap could you? And not any bar of soap but the least expensive kind.

Breakfast would consists of eggs if you can afford them but maybe you save those to cook with. You either cook on the stove or eat cereal, but only the bagged cheap brands because the name brands are outrageously expensive. Do you combine milk and water on that cereal to save money? No orange juice, it’s too expensive. You can’t go anywhere because you can’t afford a tank of gas. If you could where would you go? Everything costs money to go to. Maybe a walk in the park or just a drive. But again the price of gas.

Lunch is an affordable meal, a cheese sandwich. It is your lifeblood next to the ever popular peanut butter sandwich. And neither one hurts your teeth if you have dental issues you can’t take care of because you can’t afford it. Another treat, instant drink mix. Why? Because it taste better than water and it’s affordable when placed next to cola. Speaking of you don’t drink Coke or Pepsi because it’s too much money too except on those wild days when it’s on sale and you have a coupon as well.

So you’re stuck at home with nothing to do but watch TV. There you have a grainy picture that features only the local channels. All those complaints about 500 channels and nothing to watch fall by the wayside when you can’t afford cable or dish. You sit and wait for someone to visit but chances are they’re at work and can’t stop by. Even after work the odds are slim because they have lives of their own to deal with as they move forward to the same spot you are in right now.

Dinner is the same as lunch unless you bought enough things to make something that will last for days like a pot of chili or maybe soup beans and cornbread. But meat isn’t often because, again, it costs too much. And why does the issue of costs continue? Because the money you have coming in, most likely social security, isn’t much. Maybe $1,300 a month. From that comes rent, utilities and food. You applied for food stamps but the average amount people get is $16 a month. Even though you always hear about how welfare cheats are making sometimes $200 a month on food stamps and trading them for cash to buy cigarettes. You have no idea how to take advantage of that and are too proud to do so anyway. Not to mention too old to start having several children that you can then ignore.

Nigh comes and you watch TV in a dark room, trying to keep your electric bill down. You sleep on a sagging mattress because you can’t afford a new one. You sleep alone because your spouse is no longer there. You don’t have a pet because you can’t afford the vet bills or to even feed one if you had one. You lay there at night and life has changed. You went from a vital person who went places, who did things, to someone along that no one wants to take anywhere or comes to see. Life has boiled down to just counting the days until you die. And if you haven’t already made plans for your death you’re handled by the state. If you did make plans your heirs discover that the plans you made and paid for are now more expensive and they have to pay the balance. And anything you save to leave them is taxed so they get less than you wanted to leave them. Odd since the money you earned was taxed once to begin with.

Depressed? Well imagine if you were that person I was talking about. We tend to ignore of forget the elderly these days. Where there was once a time when they were revered and cared for after they stopped working we now push them aside and hope someone else takes care of them.

So how about this. A challenge since I love to issue those.

If you have an elderly relative go and visit them. Don’t do it once, do it periodically. See if they need anything and if you are able, help them with things they might need. Imagine the joy nothing more than a tube of their favorite toothpaste might bring. Invite them into your home for family gatherings. It might be a pain in the ass for you but I’m betting just the ability to be among family means the world to them. If you can afford it or have the ability let them live with you. They provided for you for so many years, why wouldn’t you want to do the same? Look back at all they did for you that you took for granted all those years ago as a child and consider what they gave up for you to have things. Give them love. It is one thing they need more than anything.

The elderly are ignored because they don’t matter to those who should take care of them. Politicians don’t care about them because they aren’t a big enough voting block to make a difference to them. But they should matter to you. Remember that your children are seeing how you treat your family members. They’ll learn from that years down the line.

Like I said when I started, put yourself in their shoes for just one day. Consider the things you take for granted that they either can’t do or can’t afford. Could you give up those creature comforts? A single cheeseburger and a Coke at McDonalds? If not then consider how much so little could mean and pass a small token to those who cared for you.