No Answers

I cried this morning.

Briefly.

I sat beside the bed and cried.

Mike Pence. My GOP has abandoned me. Over 300 people killed and maimed in Nice, France while celebrating Bastille Day. Last night, my birthday, a shaking episode so bad that it took me down and out lying face down on the bed listening to my parents’ voices on speaker. The country firmly divided between Black and White, Red and Blue, Gay and Straight. Letting men into the Women’s Room and women into the Men’s Room. Children and teenagers who can buy cigarettes, get a tattoo, or drink deciding to switch genders. Celebrating Bruce Jenner. Sit-coms applauding women for ‘taking control” of their sexuality and sleeping with multiple people. Children without shoes or water being left in the desert in 95 degree weather for punishment. A veteran taking his own life every day. Politically correct emoji’s making the Washington Post’s Top Stories. Safe Places where no dissenting opinions can exist. Trigger Warnings to warn the read and/or student that I am going to talk about God in the context of The Crucible. I give up.

I spoke to a highly intelligent and erudite man last week—a Reverend and a Doctor of Theology. Preacher Swede (my politically incorrect pseudonym that he’d appreciate) said that things were simpler 70 years ago. Not easier, but simpler. People knew what roles they were supposed to play and the world was not operating on a 24/7 information, news, entertainment over-load. Preacher Swede was taught in a one-room school house for grades First through Eighth. One teacher. He and his classmates went on to be farmers, doctors, lawyers…no Common Core or Trigger Warnings needed. GASP! They prayed in school!

That is what is missing today: morality. Yes, 70 years ago minority and women’s rights were greatly restricted, and kids were still getting and dying from Polio. Preacher Swede is a Polio survivor. He walks with two canes. The country doctor came to his parents’ farmhouse when he was 14 and said, get him to the city hospital now. No co-pay required. So yes, 70 years ago stuff was still shitty. But there was, I think, a sense of morality. There was right and a wrong. Diamond Whatever couldn’t live-stream her boyfriend dying in the seat beside her while she blamed the Evil White Racist Cop.

Were there immoral people 70 years ago? Of course. But as a single woman I didn’t fear through my neighborhood at night. We didn’t have to explain to our children how Bruce became Kait. Or why George, now Georgia is using the Girls’ room at school. We didn’t have to answer the question, “Mommy, are the police going to kill me?” It was okay to talk about God and Patriotism and Family.

I know all the bad stuff that went on 70 years ago.

But we didn’t even have the power to unite the entire world as one people, like we do today with the advent of the Internet, International Cell phone G4, G5, and whatever connection.

When I can talk to someone in Russia using my computer; use my phone as a flashlight find the keys I dropped; hear Siri take me turn-by-turn to the closest Starbucks; check the weather and the stock market in real time; pay for goods with an app on my phone; order anything and everything from ice cream to tires on Amazon; on my phone see my house via my security camera for 50 bucks a month; and have my phone read my fingerprint—you would have thought that things would be better, wouldn’t ya’?

In those days people like me were just crazy. Not mentally ill. Just crazy. I would have been given Laudanum instead of Xanax. No, I wouldn’t have disability income. My first suicide attempt would have probably worked.

All I ever wanted to do was be a wife. To love and be loved. To care for and be cared for. Shit, I can hear the feminists at the door now.

We have come so fucking far to realize that we are right back where we were.

Honestly, I believe a sense of personal responsibility and common-sense morality would make a huge difference.

Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. God bless.