Monthly Archives: July 2016

I agree … to disagree!

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Sometimes I just don’t know what to say or where to start when I do figure out what to say. So I think that I will, in football lingo, just backup ten yards and punt.

I have been silent the last two weeks because I have been preoccupied with politics and the machinations of our political parties. I never cease to be amazed by the stark differences and how they can be construed as being so similar. This past week and a half has brought home to me what Mom said to me when I asked her what the difference was between Republicans and Democrats. I’ve shared this statement recently, but I will share it again here for purposes of clarifying what I’m about to say.

Mom said, “Republicans believe that the individual is better suited to make decisions about their own lives than government and Democrats believe that government is better able to make those decisions for us.”

In the intervening years I have seen nothing to change that understanding, aside from the fact that at times, some Republicans tend to behave and vote more as if they are smarter and more capable of making decisions that affect my life than I am.

Cases in point: The last Republican president that I felt had a genuine concern for my self-determination was Ronald Reagan. When it came to George H. W. Bush, a.k.a “Bush 41”, while I thought he was a decent man with the courage to confront Saddam Hussein he lacked the courage and conviction to confront the enemy at home. I read his lips as well as his subsequent excuse for backing down from confrontation with Democrats over taxes.

In subsequent elections I voted for what I considered the lesser of two evils when I voted first for Bob Dole, then George W Bush, although I felt after the fact that he did turn out to be the right man for the time … internationally speaking, though not domestically.

I held my nose when I drew the line on my ballot indicating my choice of John McCain and then overcame a case of the vapors in order to do the same for Mitt Romney. In each case I clearly understood that the “establishment” was not adhering to Mom’s definition of a Republican. But, I also clearly understood that the ideology of the democrat party was not even close to my belief in my own right to self-determination. And that brings me to our current national dilemma and its relation to my personal identity.

In a recent blog post I share the reaction of a woman I met recently when I told her I was a Republican. She was aghast because in her experience the Republican party had shunned people like me, and to a degree she was right. But … she was right only in the sense that certain individuals within the party were extreme in their “hyper-conservative Christianity.”

In the years since I became involved in the community of people who, when lumped together are known as “LGBT – Q,” I have come to the conclusion that a majority of the misunderstandings the rest of our society have of us is due to the fact that, for the most part, the “community” does not make much of an effort to blend. Instead they tend to pursue a policy of separate but equal with special consideration for their personal identity. They make their sexual and/or gender identity the primary identity ahead of their humanity.

My gender identity has absolutely no more to do with my politics than the color of my eyes. Right is right and wrong is wrong, or in this case, the Right is correct and the Left is wrong … at least for me.

I am simply not willing to surrender any more of my freedoms for the lip service support of the Democrat party and its leadership.

I am simply not willing to overlook the dishonesty and corruption at the head of that column for the sake of using the bathroom of my choice.

I am simply not willing to overlook the fact that if all the promises made by Hillary and Bernie were kept that our nation would be bankrupt before the next election.

I am simply not willing to overlook the fact that well-meaning people whom I love have failed to live up to their personal promises, such as “When I have the right to marry the person I love, then I will come to your side of the aisle.”

I am simply not willing to abandon my principles for the sake of a free lunch. I choose to work for a living and buy my own lunch, thank you.

When I state that I can find no Christian ethic in the progressive/liberal policies of today’s Democrat party the usual response is this. “Jesus told the wealthy to go and sell their possessions and give the proceeds to the poor.” That’s what the Democrats are trying to convince us that they are accomplishing by wanting laws that take money from the wealthy and dole it out to the poor.

That is not what Jesus meant at all. He didn’t demand that emperors and kings take money from the selfish wealthy and dole it out. He intended it to be a voluntary effort to show their “Christianity,” for lack of a better term in this discussion. I doubt that if Christ were alive today he would approve of society absolving people of personal responsibility to those less fortunate by voting for those who would “rob the rich and give to the poor.” Where is the virtue in that? There is none is there? It’s a simple fact that the more money confiscated by the IRS the less is collected in the plate on Sunday mornings, and that is where Christian charity lies.

If you are shocked by my political philosophy because my gender identity seems to dictate that I support a progressive/liberal/socialistic agenda consider this: in my experience, any attempt to share my political views, and reasons for those views, with members of the aforementioned group, generally leads to one of two responses. I’m either flatly informed that the person isn’t interested in my views or, “We’ll just have to agree to disagree.” That last statement would be reasonable enough if it followed an intelligent two-way give and take conversation … but it never does. It’s always a way to avoid reasonable discussion.

I have found it far easier to have a reasoned discussion about gender identity with a hyper-conservative Christian than I can a reasoned discussion about politics with a progressive/liberal/socialistic democrat. So with that said I will involve myself in activities of groups like the Log Cabin Republicans, the Tea Party and with the majority of conservatives who I have found to be willing to accept me for who I am rather than what I am.

Dirty Diapers? … “Oh Poor Me. Ain’t it Awful!”

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Okay so I’ve been thinking it over, you know all the things that have been going on in the last few days, and even though I’m still upset I think it’s time for me to state my case. But, let me review couple of things first. In my early childhood in Oklahoma, there was no such thing as integration; equal rights, integrated schools, and integrated neighborhoods. The schools I attended through the fourth grade were strictly segregated. From a child’s perspective that’s just the way things were …That’s the way things were always going to be.

I don’t recall thinking that anything was wrong with it any more than I thought anything strange about where different people went to church on Sunday. That’s just the way American society was … That is until “American Society” began to change to “The Great Society” as a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which by the way, would have never passed without a lot of Republican support since a lot of Democrats were dead set against it..

Up until that point in time, two parent homes were the norm. Divorce, though it happened wasn’t a common occurrence and to tell you the truth, I have no memory of any child I knew living in a single-parent home. Off hand, I don’t know the exact percentage of marriages which ended in divorce in what we call today, white households. There were very few families I knew in which the parents were in their second marriage.

The limited exposure that I had to black families, the story was pretty much the same. On one of the broadcasts of the recent week I heard one statistic quoted that said at about that same time 70% of black households were two-parent households. So what happened?

Today, fewer than 50% of marriages in general avoid divorce. The statistic quoted on black households does not address divorce. It simply states that fewer than 25% of those households are two-parent households. Again I ask so what happened?

I can tell you what I think happened, and it all started with the Great Society. The Great Society ushered in an era of over tolerance. In other words, while the Great Society did make society aware of past intolerances that were unacceptable, it opened the door to what my grandmother and mother would call “Oh poor me. Ain’t it awful!” That was her way of pointing out to us that we were feeling sorry for ourselves and not accepting responsibility for our own actions and situations.

What the great Society did was to institutionalize and legitimize “Oh poor me, ain’t it awful!” In other words, it became legitimate to feel sorry for yourself and not accept responsibility for your own situation. This was followed by a certain segment of our political society; liberal senators and congressmen specifically, and gutless Republicans in name only, (Rino Republicans), guaranteeing their own reelections with Great Society handouts.

So what we have now is a whole segment of our society that believes they are not responsible for their own situations. They are being told by the media and liberal politicians that it’s not their fault; that it’s society’s fault for not nursing them properly. To be blunt about it we have a whole segment of our society which is still in emotional diapers and they are waiting for the rest of us to change their dirty diapers.

And that brings me to the events of this past week. While I do believe that there are a small number of good honest people involved in the black lives matter movement, I am convinced that the vast majority of them are waiting for someone to change their dirty diapers. They accept no responsibility whatsoever for their situation. To make it even worse the liberal progressives in our country pander to them by telling them it’s not their fault, that the Republicans are supposed to be changing their diapers for them.

Something I learned from the late Dr. Wayne Dyer years ago, was that what ever situation I found myself in at any given point in time was that if I tracked my own actions back far enough I would eventually come to a situation where by my own free will action I was led to the current situation. In other words, whatever situation I find myself in I am ultimately the one responsible for being there and no one else.

While those same politicians, pundits, civil rights advocates are not specifically responsible for the deaths of the five policemen in Dallas they most certainly set the stage for it. How is that you say? When people feel absolutely no responsibility for their own actions they become terribly suggestible and prone to doing whatever their particular segment in society encourages them to do. The vast majority of our news media are the ones who are doing the encouraging by broadcasting every stupid and violent act committed in the name of civil rights while airing more “Oh poor me. Ain’t it awful!” interviews with protesters.

What it’s come down to is this; the lie begun in Ferguson, Missouri that a man was holding his hands up and pleading “Don’t Shoot!” has been perpetuated as a truth by both the media and liberal politicians alike, irrespective of the irrefutable evidence to the contrary. That lie has spawned the notion that black lives matter more so than other lives.

So now we have hundreds of angry people parading up and down streets demanding that their dirty diapers be changed. And five policemen who were out there protecting all those dirty diaper people are dead. And they are dead because the liberal press and liberal politicians have refused to condemn the people who won’t change their own dirty diapers.

In closing, I only ask the following question of the protesters, who in my opinion are indirectly responsible for the death of those policemen, because after all if you hadn’t been out there marching those men would still be alive and with their families today; is it really equality you want or payback? If it’s payback you want, exactly what coin do you want that payback in? If it’s equality you want why don’t you act like you deserve it? Maybe you would feel that you have achieved that equality if the 136 black people killed by police in recent history, compared to the 275 white people killed by police in the same time period, had been killed by black police officers. Which is it?

So back to my original point referring to the number of households with two parents back then, compared to the number of homes with single parents now. Just a question and a thought; what percentage of those people out there marching the other night do you think came from two-parent households that taught personal responsibility? It’s not such a great Society anymore is it? Don’t cry on my shoulder until you’ve walked a few miles in my high heels.

I’m done.

The 4th of July … What it means to me!

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Yes, it’s the 4th! The 4th of July! July 4th! July the 4th! Independence Day! For me it’s a day filled with memories and meanings. Great events have unfolded for me on July 4th. My most joyous and happiest 4th was the 4th of July 1952. I wrote about it in “Dear Mom and Dad.” That was the day that my old gray mare Ginger, presented me with a colt which I subsequently named Skyrocket. I think that from that day on I always expected great things to occur on July 4th. There were times when that did indeed happen.

In the early ‘50s do-gooders hadn’t yet stolen much of the excitement of American childhood by banning the stuff of a real 4th of July like real firecrackers, M-80’s, bottle rockets and the like. Of course that was supposed to protect the children, right? No, that was to absolve inattentive parents from the exercise of prudent judgement. But before that came to pass, there were battles along the shores of Kiddy Lake which involved small battlements of dirt and sand on which bottle necked bear cans were propped up. Then with the added assistance of small rocks and firecrackers those beer cans were converted to cannons. The battles would rage on for a couple of hours a day until that year’s supply of firecrackers was spent. From there we would move on to the latest model of sling shots or pea shooters.

The second greatest 4th of July event would of course happen 12 years later when I stopped for a midnight hamburger at the “Frostop” drive-in where I met the woman who would become the mother of my first 2 children. Although that memory does recall moments of joy it also recalls moments of hurt, betrayal and sadness.

Sadly, though the memories of 4ths of years past remain in vivid recall details, the meaning seems to have faded; not for me but for entirely too many of my fellow citizens. Without fail, there will be people like Jesse Watters of FOX news, interviewing what I can only classify as moronic products of an education system which has degenerated into a politically correct, though historically and educationally impotent production line which is aimed at determining time spent at a given level of education rather than lessons learned at a given level of education.

The question you might well be asking yourself is, why am I talking politics and education instead of gender identity issues? That’s a fair and reasonable question, especially on the subject of the 4th of July. I must admit that I think that answer should be fairly obvious. The independence declared on this date two hundred-forty years ago was a declaration of belief in the right of self-determination. Nowhere is the right of God given self-determination more infringed upon than the right of people like me, to determine to live lives that are congruent with our emotional and mental makeup as opposed to a life that is congruent with society’s norms based on the combination of 2 chromosomes.

Those 2 chromosomes are necessary for one simple reason … procreation. That’s it. They are not a determining factor in political outlook, who you love, where you live and who you associate with … and at the time the founding fathers stepped up to the plate and signed, what in many cases was the equivalent of their own death warrants, no one even knew how our anatomies would be determined. Furthermore, I don’t think they even cared. They simply wanted the freedom to determine the course of their own lives and the course of the lives of generations to follow.

The next question that’s asked of me is why would I choose to align myself with a political opinion which, on the surface is the very antithesis of the decision I’ve made about how to live my life? Another good question. The answer is just as good.

I’m not aligning myself with personalities. I’m aligning myself with a set of principles. It’s personalities not principles which condemn my choices. The principles of self-determination and personal freedom don’t give a damn what’s under my skirt. The principles of self-determination and freedom dictate that I make a careful examination of who in the government, established as a result of the declaration of July 4th, 1776 is going to best defend my right to self-determination and freedom.

It’s been my experience that while a certain segment of our political spectrum relies on a few biblical verses to restrict my freedoms, the other end of that spectrum demands laws which purport to defending me, i.e. hate crimes bills which are totally unnecessary if existing laws would just be enforced. In general, with each and every law passed another of the freedoms envisioned by the founding fathers all those years ago is eroded just a little bit further. And with each of those laws passed under the guise of helping the less fortunate, the people who are willing to work to achieve the results alluded to in “the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”, another chunk of our freedoms is taken away.

For me … what I fear is that the same freedom eroding efforts of the people we elect to protect those freedoms; those efforts will eventually be turned against my community when our votes are no longer needed. Those same people who seem to not care what goes on in my bedroom want total control over everything that goes on in my life the minute I step out of my bedroom to, oh say to buy firecrackers, bottle rockets and M-80s. That is not what our founding fathers had in mind … at all.

What the 4th of July has come to represent for me is a time to re-commit to the principles which allow me the freedom to be … me.