A Tale of Two Americas

Today, I attended a funeral for a family member who served three presidents during his life as a physician. It's hard not to get a lump in the throat looking at the rows after rows after rows of tombstones honoring those who gave the fullest member of devotion.  It's hard not to feel a surge of gratittude to the selected servants who marched silently in unison to hoist the coffin from the hearse to the caisson.  The whole cememony draws one to silence, they walk in unison and in silence.  Even the horse drawn carriage is driven at such a speed to heighten the silence.  

It doesn't matter the weather, the rows speak to the heavens of their sacrifice and service.  The men shooting a 21 gun salute reveal a somber understanding that what we value, we must defend.   

A few miles away, people stormed the capital and they remain as of now, contesting the election of President Elect Biden.  People broke windows and left messages for congressmen for doing what they're elected to do, to represent the states and give a roll call of the electoral college votes cast.   

The President and the President Elect went on the news, I listened to both. President elect called for people to stand down, to calm down. He opted to not take questions and I thought that wise.  He did call on the President to also ask people to leave and calm down.  Minutes later, the President reechoed his claim that the election was stolen, though he ultimately asked people to leave.  

It wasn't pretty, it wasn't noble. It wasn't Presidential, but it was what was. 

Mercifully, people did begin dispersing. We must hope for something better than what we've seen up to now.   

Praying for peace is the first step, working for it is the second.   

The reality is, we need to be a country that can abide, and the behavior of those outside and inside occupying the captial does not indicate this reality. People who abide do not break windows of the government buildings, or threaten elected officials if the election does not go their way.   

I thought of the marching military honoring the dead.  I thought of the dead who thought this country was worth living and dying for...we need to somehow find a way to make our country closer to something worthy of such sacrifice for everyone from this day forward.    

“He’s human bro.”

The man asking the police to stop says, “he’s human bro.” George Floyd dies on the video with the policeman’s knee upon his neck. We can’t keep saying a few bad apples if three policemen watch while a fourth causes a restrained handcuffed non resisting man to die by his actions. That’s a bunch. That’s indicative of a barrel.

American society still lacks the will to admit there is something fundamentally wrong when we can witness the death of a person by another person while they’re running away or while they’re begging for mercy. No one wants to pause and recognize the innate wrongness of what has taken place. No one with enough heft demands that everyone stop and listen. Everyone needs to stop and hear that our black brothers and sisters “can’t breathe.”

Somehow our country lacks the stomach to say this is wrong. When we can see them dying and still some debate whether this is wrong, our whole capacity to identify good and evil is what needs adjustment. Our first reaction should be to seek justice for the blood of our brothers that cry out from the earth. We cannot be silent, or we tacitly allow for the sanitized phrase of George Floyd dying from the results of a “medical incident,” in a “police interaction" to persist.

Pedestrians pleading for him and his own words, brought no change in expression, no change in pressure, no change of action on the part of any of the officers. Eight minutes pass. 

He dies.

The four officers have been fired subsequently thanks to public outrage over the video, but no one has yet been charged with causing his death despite knowing who, when and how. Investigations on the State and Federal Level are ongoing. It’s true, we are a nation of laws and procedure and such things are important and even necessary to ensure due process is observed. Were there this reflective pause and hesitancy in investigations involving crimes the norm, George Floyd might still be alive.

When will our country stop pretending we don’t need some systemic reformation of how we want police to protect, serve, investigate and when necessary, arrest?

Answer: When we have leaders unafraid to hold all of us to a higher standard, a greater calling.

It should be unnecessary to say racism is always wrong, and racism is something we will always have to both be vigilant against, and mindful of, but it is, because too many people don’t think it’s real enough. 

How real does it have to get?

Too many people think if we talk about racism being a grave moral error that hurts all of humanity and continues to destroy the promise of this country, we’re somehow engaging in white hand wringing guilt or virtue signaling.

Racism is a toxic weed that poisons the garden of the American community. It hurts the children whose dreams die before they finish school when no one expects anything of them. It hurts the families of fathers and husbands and sons who might not come home. It hurts the mothers, wives, daughters and sisters who see the problem ignored time and again.

It hurts our government, schools, families, friends, churches, parks; it hurts our everywhere all the time. We’re all our brothers keeper. We owe it to our brothers, to love them better, to protect them better, and serve them better, in every arena of life. We owe it to ourselves and to each other because, “He’s human bro,” to come together and work to be part of that great coalition of this country that wants it to be good as it was meant to be, but never yet quite has been.

We owe it to our future, to make sure everyone in this country can breathe.

Fishy Thoughts on My Soap Box

There are many ways to express one's opinion: yelling at a congressman, writing an op-ed, throwing shoes at a President, patronizing movies that satirize the opposition. What all of these things do, is not address issues, but release pent up emotion about a state of things in general.

As cathartic as it might be to some to yell or to take pleasure in watching legislators squirm, (and I conceed, I've done my fair share of snarking because it is catharitc and fun to feel terribly clever for a moment) it does not address the actual issues that should be carefully considered and actually discussed. Part of the fault lies in the way Congress goes about its business and has as of late with a breath taking speed. When you race through bill after bill spending money hand over fist without stopping even to read what you are voting on, people who voted you into office start to feel that even if they offered reasoned discourse, it wouldn't matter. The rubber stamp from the party in charge would be all that determined if a bill became law.

Also, some people who (yes, their side lost), have no voice in any part of the legislative process feel powerless and thus angry that they are being force fed tax after tax, bill after bill, and while some good may come of the laws, much mischief is also afoot.

No one can say honestly that 1.7 trillion without reflection is without tremendous waste. But no one believes that this Congress, having had a taste of Wagyu beef type spending on a daily basis, won't find throwing trillions around much less scary from now on. Everyone talks of how we need to control spending; no one cuts one damn thing. No one wants their sacred cows turned into hamburger, only someone else's.

Here are my questions for our leaders from my blog. Please understand I know the facts about health care are not set, as the bill has not been passed, and that the numbers also jump from one day to another. I will try to use only the numbers and statements issued by official sources.

The White House said we won't lose our doctors or our coverage. I believe they believe that to be true. I also follow the logic of economics. Public schools versus Private schools seems like a good comparative.

There are public schools. There are private schools. There are some families that sacrifice to send their kids to private schools, but those who can't afford it, must contend with public schools. Within those public schools, the kids don't get a choice as to which one they attend. Some of the schools are admittedly, not very good, but there aren't many options or alternatives. Homeschooling has cropped up as a counter to the public vs. private dilemma. But this too has an operating cost of time and expertise, no everyone can manage it, and places like California are trying to limit one's ability to take it on, even if the results are stellar.

So I follow the pattern. There will be public care and there will still be private care which some sacrifice to hold onto, but some of the public care will be less stellar. I'd rather fight insurance companies than the federal government to get a "yes" when the bureaucrats say "no." So I worry about the lack of options. Also, home doctoring doesn’t seem like it would enjoy much success.

Here is my second problem. We currently have Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP. None of these are fully funded, and that causes some seniors that currently rely on the government programs, to not get the care they need. Doctors will refuse to take Medicare/Medicaid because it pays so poorly. Medicare and Medicaid are not fully funded because it would be too expensive.

So...I want to understand how it would be less expensive to pay for 50 million or 43 million or 15 million or whatever the number is that actually would be supported under this omnibus health care bill, than to fully fund Medicare and Medicaid and SCHIP? Or is that next? Why aren’t we doing this first? It would be less contentious.

Then there is the issue of waiting periods. Britain, France and Canada all have Universal Health Care. The lines are long for basic services. The waits are long. Many of them come here if they need something more immediate and can afford it. When I was at Children's for my son, people flew from the United Arab Emirates to have their kids treated here. Here is honestly, the very very best for medicine in part because it is so very very swift. How can we guarantee this swiftness won't be lost, when we don't know how this will work?

"Don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good." the President has said. It's a good line; a pithy way to dismantle legitimate objections about the inability to anticipate or control costs or ensure quality.

Now I want the mother who opted to keep her Down’s Syndrome baby despite pressure to abort to be able to get the life saving heart surgery at Children's from the doctor who does this routinely even if she doesn't have my health care plan. I get it. I'd pay for that because it is the right thing to do, to care for the sick. (So shouldn't you be in favor of this health care plan?).

No. I'd rather the government go and purchase those health care plans from the private insurers with my tax dollars. Then, tax the profit from those plans at a higher rate to recap some of the tax money. (I'm a pragmatic Republican).

Why? Because I distrust giving government ownership over our health care program, and I haven't seen this Congress or this administration (or any for that matter) show prudence or restraint or wisdom in its stewardship of all our interests or income.

Don't make the good of this country, the enemies because we have legitimate concerns about a policy or patterns of policies. Don't demand silence just because some people shouted. Don't let the legitimate good of caring for the sick result in allowed evil. There are concerns about funding abortion. There are concerns about rationed care and the possible push of assisted suicide as a form of medical treatment. These ethical and moral issues need to be addressed and expressly denied in the legislation itself to ensure such fears are unfounded. The people who shout are some of the people who will be paying the taxes to fund this program should it pass, and they ought to be granted more deference than to be simply branded Republican shills and lobbying hacks.

Last question to answer for those who are thinking....Sherry...this is a humor blog...why are you being so darn political? Well, this blog is many things, an outlet for humor and for thought, and since I can't make it to a town hall, here is also my personal soap box.

Also, this week, my kids have all been good, so there's been no story for a few days. So maybe they're getting sick...or I'm in really big trouble because they're colluding on something big.

Been Talking to Mother Teresa about Many Things

Thursday is my Rant day. Last Thursday, I got an Annoymous comment where the person told me "Shame on her and Shame on me." for supporting Sarah Palin. She said we should be ashamed for the lies she tells and that I apparently support. The person did not state the lies, nor what I should be ashamed of, nor have the courage to give their name and thus I declined to post the comment.

Now I like healthy debate, so I agonized about not posting it. There were people who disagreed with my politics and did so with great respect, and I did post the one that I received in this vein. But the idea of having engaged in unfair censorship bothered me. Granted, this is my soap box, but I dislike when one side just shouts down or shuts out the other, so I worried I was committing the same fault. Having felt lately to pray to Blessed Mother Teresa, I asked for guidance.

Immediately, my kids interrupted the prayer with a fight. "MOMMM...She called me Stupid!" my son cried.

Reflexively, I responded. "It's never nice to call people names."

The immediacy of the wisdom of the Holy Spirit never ceases to amaze me. The fact that I did not publish the ugly response troubled me no more.

Speaking of Mother Teresa, here is a letter she wrote to the Supreme Court --I only just found out about this and felt compelled to post it here. It is the year of Paul, people are much less afraid to speak out on important issues like Abortion.
People like Mother Teresa however, never lacked courage to say what was true.

Mother Theresa of Calcutta’s Letter to the Supreme Court (1994)

Here is the letter that Mother Theresa wrote to the Supreme Court for reconsideration of Roe v. Wade.

This amicus brief was filed before the U.S. Supreme Court in the cases of Loce v. New Jersey and Krail et al. v. New Jersey in February 1994, by Mother Teresa.

I hope you will count it no presumption that I seek your leave to address you on behalf of the unborn child. Like that child I can be considered an outsider. I am not an American citizen.

My parents were Albanian. I was born before the First World War in a part of what was not yet, and is no longer, Yugoslavia .
In many senses I know what it is like to be without a country.
I also know what is like to feel an adopted citizen of other lands. When I was still a young girl I traveled to India .
I found my work among the poor and the sick of that nation, and I have lived there ever since.

Since 1950 I have worked with my many sisters from around the world as one of the Missionaries of Charity. Our congregation now has over four hundred foundations in more that one hundred countries, including the United States of America .
We have almost five thousand sisters.

We care for those who are often treated as outsiders in their own communities by their own neighbors—the starving, the crippled, the impoverished, and the diseased, from the old woman with a brain tumor in Calcutta to the young man with AIDS in New York City .
A special focus of our care are mothers and their children.

This includes mothers who feel pressured to sacrifice their unborn children by want, neglect, despair, and philosophies and government policies that promote the dehumanization of inconvenient human life. And it includes the children themselves, innocent and utterly defenseless, who are at the mercy of those who would deny their humanity.

So, in a sense, my sisters and those we serve are all outsiders together. At the same time, we are supremely conscious of the common bonds of humanity that unite us and transcend national boundaries.

In another sense, no one in the world who prizes liberty and human rights can feel anything but a strong kinship with America . Yours is the one great nation in all of history that was founded on the precept of equal rights and respect for all humankind, for the poorest and weakest of us as well as the richest and strongest.

As your Declaration of Independence put it, in words that have never lost their power to stir the heart: “We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…” A nation founded on these principles holds a sacred trust: to stand as an example to the rest of the world, to climb ever higher in its practical realization of the ideals of human dignity, brotherhood, and mutual respect. Your constant efforts in fulfillment of that mission, far more that your size or your wealth or your military might, have made America an inspiration to all mankind.

It must be recognized that your model was never one of realized perfection, but of ceaseless aspiration. From the outset, for example, America denied the African slave his freedom and human dignity. But in time you righted that wrong, albeit at an incalculable cost in human suffering and loss of life.

Your impetus has almost always been toward a fuller, more all embracing conception and assurance of the rights that your founding fathers recognized as inherent and God-given.
Yours has ever been an inclusive, not an exclusive, society. And your steps, though they may have paused or faltered now and then, have been pointed in the right direction and have trod the right path. The task has not always been an easy one, and each new generation has faced its own challenges and temptations. But in a uniquely courageous and inspiring way, America has
kept faith.

Yet there has been one infinitely tragic and destructive departure from those American ideals in recent memory. It was this Court's own decision in Roe v. Wade (1973) to exclude the unborn child from the human family. You ruled that a mother, in consultation with her doctor, has broad discretion, guaranteed against infringement by the United States Constitution, to choose to destroy her unborn child.

Your opinion stated that you did not need to “resolve the difficult question of when life begins.” That question is inescapable. If the right to life in an inherent and inalienable right, it must surely exist wherever life exists. No one can deny that the unborn child is a distinct being, that it is human, and that it is alive. It is unjust, therefore, to deprive the unborn child of its fundamental right to life on the basis of its age, size, or condition of dependency.

It was a sad infidelity to America 's highest ideals when this Court said that it did not matter, or could not be determined, when the inalienable right to life began for a child in its mother's womb.

America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships.

It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society.
It has portrayed the greatest of gifts—a child—as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered domination over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters.

And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners.

Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign.

The Constitutional Court of the Federal Republic of Germany recently ruled that “ the unborn child is entitled to its rights to life independently of acceptance by its mother; this is an elementary and inalienable right that emanates from the dignity of the human being.” Americans may feel justly proud that Germany in 1993 was able to recognize the sanctity of human life. You must weep that your own government, at present, seems blind to this truth.

I have no new teaching for America . I seek only to recall you to faithfulness to what you once taught the world. Your nation was founded on the proposition—very old as a moral precept, but startling and innovative as a political insight—that human life is a gift of immeasurable worth, and that it deserves, always and everywhere, to be treated with the utmost dignity and respect.

I urge the Court to take the opportunity presented by the petitions in these cases to consider the fundamental question of when human life begins and to declare without equivocation the inalienable rights which it possesses.

***********

Lastly, her most famous quote on the matter, "It is poverty to say that a child must die that you may live as you wish." is one that no one has ever been able to refute.

For those who say, it's been over 30 years, get over it, "No." We must never tire of speaking out against injustice, against wrong, even if no one seems to be hearing the message.

I always wanted to tackle this issue with humor. But How?

Well in Houston, there are no Zoning laws. So I always thought the perfect solution would be to open up a daycare and a maternity store and a baby clothing boutique all next door to every clinic that provided abortions.

Personally, I'd have lined up the babies to play outside all afternoon everyday as part of the business and have piped Twinkle Twinkle and Rock A Bye Baby outside the store just to make sure the message wasn't missed. The name of the materinity store, "Unexpected Joys." The daycare, "Mommy's Little Angels" and the baby store, "Best Baby Gifts."

Yes, I know I don't fight fair.

It's probably why God didn't allow me to become a business major. Too much mischief.

Lead us not into temptation.

As American As...

Baseball, Mom and Apple Pie...

I debated leaving out that phrase to let the reader fill in the blank as part of the conceit.

Everyone and their dog has used this cliché to describe some aspect of life in America, from illegal immigration to massive credit card debt to the latest model SUV with extra cargo space, a DVD player and heated leather seats. Googling the phrase to discover its orgin only muddied the waters of what it means to be “as American as” that game with a stick and nine players, your biological maternal unit and granny smiths chopped and mixed with a good heaping of sugar and tapioca baked to gooey perfection.

The web search for “American as…” lead to Music, Drugs and Movies, a tag for a Flowmaster Exhaust system and a What kind of Chocolate Pudding are You quiz that I refused to investigate. There was an ad for Jim Salestrom, a musician who someone loved as much as…you guessed it. I also found a screed on how politicians HAVE to like baseball, Mom and apple pie, as though those were bad obligations. Though I suppose cherry lobbyists would appreciate slight modifications, not to mention Hockey Players or for that matter, Dads.

Even old Bartlett Quotations let me down as I could not trace the source of this tried and true phrase that has been used to describe so many and so much while revealing so little. These words have been used to justify cookies and milk at snack time for kindergartners from super unctuous nutrition police in Lembke, though I don’t actually think Lembke is in America. Money management used it to describe the need to save for retirement. Five pages back in the Ask Jeeves search, were sites dedicated to both love and hated of all things Walmart, and a promotional page for a Portland Oregon Radio Station. Ten pages deep into Google, there was a scary website I also wouldn’t visit, hotboxingnews. I'm sure it's very heart warming and patriotic though.

I guess the need to equate one thing with another and ascribe virtue and appeal is very American. Think I’ll grab a pizza, watch some football and call my Mom.
What can I say? I’m still something of a traditionalist.