Reflections

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, education, guns, History, Personal, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

As I take a quick glance through the news, here are just a few of the stories I see …

  • Bill would ban use of certain personal pronouns in ND. The bill has since been rejected, but it would have allowed fines of up to $1,500 for a trans person referring to themselves or others with gender pronouns different from the ones they were assigned at birth.
  • Indiana GOP Introduces Two “Don’t Say Gay” Bills. These bills would prohibit all Indiana schools and their third-party vendors from providing any instruction in kindergarten through third grades with the intent to “study, explore, or inform” students about six topics: gender fluidity, gender roles, gender stereotypes, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation.
  • Illinois Judge Blocks Ban On Sales Of Assault Weapons. An Illinois state judge temporarily blocked the state’s assault weapons ban, signed into law on January 10th, that would prohibit the sale and distribution of assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and parts that convert handguns into assault weapons.
  • FL Defends Ban On African-American History Course. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis attempts to justify his ban on the teaching of African-American history.
  • TX Youth Pastor Arrested In Mass Sex Trafficking Bust. Self-explanatory
  • AZ Senate Advances Anti-Trans Pronouns School Bill. More of the same.
  • WI Catholic School Teacher Gets 6 Years For Child Sex. Self-explanatory

And there’s more, but you get the picture.  More and more with each passing week, I wonder what kind of world we are living in.  How did we get to this point where guns are more highly valued than humans, where skin colour and gender identity matter more than intelligence or compassion, where sexual abuse by those in the most trusted positions is now the norm?

America, the land of opportunity, land of freedom, a nation that opens its arms to refugees in need of a new homeland.  The country where, as I was often told when I was a child, you can be anything you want if you work hard.  A land of justice and equality.  I have trouble equating that land to the one I see today.  Was that ever the reality, or was it always a myth?

As children, my generation were told so many lies … we were taught that the first European settlers made nice with the Indigenous People, when the fact is those settlers committed genocide against them.  And today?  There is a growing movement to hide the facts from the days of slavery, and later Jim Crow, where in one sense Black people were still enslaved.  We manufacture lethal weapons by the thousands, even ones made especially for children.  We teach our children to hate, and label it ‘Christianity.’ We hide the reality that not everyone is exactly the same. We build walls to keep people out, rather than bridges to welcome them.

Lee Greenwood famously sang a song, Proud to be an American.  Once upon a time, I would have agreed, but not today.

41 thoughts on “Reflections”

  1. Greed, where money trumps humanity. It’s everywhere. I watched the news tonight (Canadian) and they were talking about the endless shootings in the US and said there is no other country in the world with this constant behavior with too many permissable guns. Your NRA and its kickbacks to all your repugnant politicians allow this. Hopefully, Americans are getting fed up and fearful for their kids, enough to vote against them so the democrats could get enough votes to pass such laws. Hugs xx

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    • Recently, a poll found that 86% of Americans support more restrictive gun laws, including gun owners. However, Congress listens not to We the People, but to their wealthy donors, including the gun manufacturers and their lobby, the NRA. I would seize and destroy every gun in this country if it were up to me, but with more guns than people in the country, it’s not likely to happen. And sadly, people have short memories. Two mass shootings inside of three days will be old news next month as they move on to something more ‘exciting’. Sigh. Hugs to you, my friend. xx

      Liked by 1 person

  2. when I first read this post, particularly the story about Iowa and it’s new bills, I wasn’t going to reply as it doesn’t seem my comments really generate any discussion here anyway so I thought, why waste the effort?
    But then I thought about it and felt I should ask a question, even if it might be met by silence at best or inward derision at worst, which I wouldn’t know about since I’m not a mind reader.
    Why do elementary school children even need to know about “Gender affirmation” anyway? It’s not like they’re naturally inclined to want to be curious about this in the first place. Middle school, sure, I can see that to a degree. The only reason that elementary scchool aged children even care about this is because they’ve been told to care about it by other figures of authority who, likely in a lot of cases, aren’t their parents. let kids be kids, they don’t have a lot of years for that until they’re teenagers, why do people want to influence them to care about things that don’t even matter to them at this tender age? I just don’t get it.
    That’s what I want to say, so go ahead and respond how you’d like.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Your question is a good one, Scott. Why indeed? Well, I’m sure others could give you a better answer than I can, but offhand the thing that comes to my mind is the young child whose parents are LGBTQ … say both males. I have a number of friends who are gay and raising a child together. Can you imagine that child’s confusion when all they hear, see, or read is about families with a mom and a dad, when their own family consists of two dads, or two moms? There are many kids in that situation … doesn’t it make sense to address those issues? No, we don’t have to teach them about ‘sex’, but gender issues are a part of every life … it’s better not to sweep them under the carpet, but to educate.

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  3. “Was that ever the reality, or was it always a myth?” ~ that’s a question I’ve been asking myself quite a bit lately.

    I also ask myself what balances are actually necessary for social survival in the realities of our world as it is, and as we have had a large hand in making it.

    I take hope from potentials which seem as unimaginable to us as did the wonders of electricity before the wiring of the world.

    In the end, there’s much we cannot know. We reach for the highest we can see from where we are, and go from there, eh?

    Thoughtful post ~ but then, that’s not unusual on this site 👌

    Liked by 1 person

    • I think it is only human nature to ask ourselves that question and others. Like you, I look around at all the people doing good things for humanity, the ones I write about every Wednesday, and they do give me hope for the future. I don’t find much inspiration from technology, for it seems that humans spend more time trying to figure out how to use it for evil than for good, how to use it to make money rather than solve the world’s problems. But, then I see the greed and arrogance of humankind and wonder if we aren’t on a path of self-destruction with denial of climate change, our refusal to make sacrifices to safe the planet and ourselves.

      Thank you, my friend! I’m glad you find my posts to be thoughtful … most of the time they do reflect my thoughts and views of the world.

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        • I’ve had the exact same thought! I’ve often said I think the human species is on a path of self-extinction and that in the long run, it would probably be better for all the other species. We have all these tools, scientific tools to tell us the ways in which we’re destroying the earth’s atmosphere, but humans deny the science, for to admit to climate change would mean a lifestyle change, and they don’t want that. Science developed a vaccine to counter Covid, but people prefer to engage in conspiracy theories. Humans! Bah!

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          • I like to think that soon we’ll realize we f*#d up badly, and that will be the time we’ll let our galactic brethren (and sistren! haha!) land without waging instant war on them. Pretty much guaranteed some of them know more about solving some of these problems than we do, when we settle down and engage in some rational dialogue…

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            • Ahhhh … you have more faith in the human species than I do, then. I hope you’re right! Rational dialog? I don’t think that at least half the people in this country even know what that is.

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              • I was just meditating on this discouraging truth this very morning.

                We do, however, have a brightening Sun and a meandering pole ~ both factors in the theory mentioned.

                I espoused it originally because (a) I see no other potential solution to planetwide extinction, (b) there’s a lot of head scratching going on in the scientific community around these phenomena, (c) our worldwide web indeed runs on information programmed light, (d) grow lamps work, and (e) the visioning of this possibility can only uplift individual consciousness, doing no harm.

                At this moment, however, I see within the plan a brief period of utter chaos accompanied by crowd control the lines of which we can only imagine. My own message in this hysterical context can too easily become counterproductive, and I am now contributing my willing and affirmatively meditative silence as the most nondivisive contribution I can make. I believe we will all come to it, and soon ~ it’s only a matter of our own appropriate time.

                I also believe that afterward, in the new light, and with the new help, we will all, without exception, be seeing things much more clearly. Some of us will be very confused. It is then that our words will again be considered as valuable, much more so than they are now.

                It’s only a belief. And I could be wrong. But what a beautiful possibility, right?

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                • ana, I’m seeing the same thing, a lot of people are awakening to new possibilities and higher consciousness, though you won’t hear about it through mainstream media, their business model is fear which drives their profits so I don’t listen to a single word they utter as they clearly don’t have our best interest in mind.

                  But there are many who hold to the notions of moving into a higher space, some have even suggested that we’re growing as much between 2020 and 2024 as we have in the last 100 years.

                  Even though I’m probably more melancholy than a lot of people and appear to be a pretty dark person, particularly when you read some of my commentary, there’s an optimistic part of me that believes the best for mankind and that there is redemption coming. The theme is explored in a lot of my music, particularly the concept albums that address social issues and matters around mental health concerns.

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                  • You’re a musician! Me too. Yes, there are new lights in folks’ eyes, in the grocery aisle, behind service counters, in the service professions, and our government and law enforcement are not lacking them.

                    Sometimes when I think my job’s too hard I think about some of theirs. Balances I could never keep.

                    Nice to make your acquaintance in the rising Light 🙋✨

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    • Indeed it is. That’s the exact analogy I used back in 2016/2017 when Trump was running and first took office … it was as if he gave the vermin permission to slither out from under the rocks, and we’ve never yet found a way to get them to go back under the rocks.

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  7. As an outsider looking in, your question about America, and the myth of America, are topics non-Americans have wondered about for years.
    1. you can be anything you want if you work hard
    True under specific conditions. It certainly helps to be white, straight, male and Christian, AND if you are willing to sell your soul and talents (and sometimes your body) to the highest bidder. The part about “hard work” always seems to have strings attached if you are not born privileged.
    2. the land of the free and the home of the brave
    Freedom has set boundaries, and bravery is specific to fighting for the correct team.
    The more money one has, the more free they become. The less money one has, the more the boundaries are tightened. It takes money to be able to do anything you want, whether it is your own or someone else’s. If you have no money and cannot get someone to support your needs, you go nowhere.
    And for bravery, that mostly takes being on the winning side of a conflict. The irony of the word brave was when it was used to designate indigenous soldiers, or braves. No matter how hard a brave fought against white settlers, they were always savages, and the white men were the brave ones for fighting them with superior weapons. The “braves” could win battles but never the war, and the brave white soldiers could lose battles but the war was decided before the first battle was ever fought. Winners were considered brave, while losers were just losers.
    I’ll stop here. I took up too much space already.

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  8. Sending another gentle hug and I sit a little with you in the rabbit hole. After all, the year of the rabbit just started. Would you like a guiness, glass of malbec or a cup of tea? We can also go through all of it if you like 🤣 take care of yourself my friend. That seems to be the only thing we can do right now 🤗

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  11. “Illinois Judge Blocks Ban On Sales Of Assault Weapons.”

    As an Illinois resident, I expected this. We now wait for a Supreme Court decision on the matter. Given the record of the current supreme court, I do not have high expectations.

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  12. The focus of many is too much on themselves and not on the greater context. Most of all, when it comes to people who have a strong influence. Power and money talk loud and still blind so many others.

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  14. Jill, in a country and planet where we have real problems, the list you made of proposed laws is a lot of ado about nothing. And, one judge’s ruling goes against the grain of helping fewer Americans get killed in mass shootings. I have written before how my former party before I became an independent has fast made themselves irrelevant. I recognize fully that through opinion hosts and slanted social media, too many people believe the stuff being espoused, but more and more are seeing the Republican Party as adrift, untethered to the truth or seriousness of purpose. The conservative leaning Wall Street Journal just referenced Republican legislation as “masochistic.”

    And, while I continue to ignore when I can what several Congress people, select Senators and the former president say as it is just inane or mean-spirited or both, I have noticed their comments or appearing more below the top of the screen. In fact, it is only news when certain folks tell the truth and act like the incumbent is supposed to act.

    Democrats are imperfect, but I see them talking about issues more than I do the Republicans. I see what is going for governance in various states and in the House and I just shake my head. Plus, this nonsense fills the void of things that should be talked about.

    Keith

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