Fundraiser by Georgia Lee McGowen _ Dear Mom and Dad professional screenplay
Click on this link to take you to the fundraiser sight for all the pertinent information and thank you in advance for your help.
The issue of fairness, specifically as it applies to gender identity has been front and center for the last several months. Two individuals in particular, have been the focus of a heated debate. And it’s a debate that should be heated. Nothing ever comes to a boil without being heated, does it.
Lia Thomas of Penn and Iszac Henig of Yale are the two most notable individuals to date who are creating a storm of controversy regarding their participation in women’s college swimming competition. Their presence in the sport, or more specifically their dominance in the sport has raised some major ethical and moral issues of fairness because what is fair is not always fair.
One thing I have never tried to kid myself about is that I am a real woman … because I am not a real woman; and I never will be. Anyone who knows me or has read anything I have ever written about me and my gender identity, knows that I have a very basic understanding of not only who I am but most importantly what I am … and what I am not.
An incident that occurred early in my transition has stuck with me like the indelible ink of a tattoo artist. I was leaving for one of the first Tri-Ess meetings after my second wife Marilyn had accepted me into her life. She wanted to check me out to make sure my appearance met with her approval before heading out the door. After a quick visual she said, “You look really nice Honey but, you’re still just a man in a dress.” And she was right. It was probably the most important thing she, or anyone could have said to me. It made me examine very carefully what being a woman really meant.
I didn’t arrive at an answer right away but when I did it was a hard pill to swallow. There are still times, over twenty years later that I am forced to accept that real women are never going to accept me as a “real woman”. So, what am I if I’m not a “real woman”? I am a person who was born male, a boy who grew into a man, who never felt totally comfortable in that role. I am more comfortable in the role of a woman but not totally comfortable in that role either. Why not?
Short answer: The body I was born with and the set of emotions I was born with are mismatched. That is just a fact and if I am to be a happy productive member of society, I have to accept that. The fact that I was born male but am living my life as a female does not make me a female. That is something that Lia Thomas and Iszac Henig have yet to realize. And apparently something that the NCAA has refused to acknowledge.
I don’t know for a fact if either one of them has done anymore than decide to live as female without benefit of hormone therapy or surgery. Having experienced both myself, and lived with the subsequent changes in my body, specifically muscle mass and body strength, I seriously doubt that either one of them has done anymore that state that they are female and that in and of itself should make them ineligible to compete in women’s sports. They are not female. They are transgendered, not transexuals. There is a huge difference, and the NCAA should never have allowed them to compete with genetically born women.
There couldn’t be a more authoritative voice on the matter than Caitlyn Jenner. She shared the same opinion in an interview with FOX News on Wednesday, January 19th of this year. Jenner stated that while she applauded the athletes for having the courage to live their lives in accordance with their inner selves she was firmly opposed to them being able to compete against “real” (my wording) women.
Gender Identity is a sticky wicket regardless of how you approach it, but this particular issue has been approached without regard to fairness to the women who by virtue of their genetic make up will never be able to match the physical makeup of a person claiming to be a woman who is in fact not a woman in any respect other than in their own mind.
I work in a very public world. I am a kitchen designer at Home Depot. If I have learned anything in that capacity, it is that while I am accepted as “Georgia” and treated with the utmost respect by everyone I come in contact with I will never be seen as a “real” woman. Do I think that’s fair? Fair isn’t the point. Reality is the point. The reality is that I was born in a male body with a given set of emotions, some masculine, but most feminine. Is that fair?
As I said … What’s fair is not always fair.
In the last two years, our world has been turned upside down. On that, I’m sure most would agree. Attention has been turned toward the pandemic and all the ills that have befallen people from every imaginable walk of life. The number of people who have been unaffected by disease continues to shrink with each passing day. Issues that used to be important to us seem to have moved to the back burner … that is, until something occurs to vividly remind us of an issue that used to be important.
Case in point: The alphabet soup that has become the designation for every single sexual or gender self-identification imaginable. When I first became involved in the transgendered community the designation was fairly simple … L (for lesbian) G (for gay) B (for heterosexual and either lesbian or gay…in other words, have your cake and eat it too) T (for transgendered or transexual). Then someone added a Q (for questioning). A few days ago I saw an article that referred to the LFBTQ??? Community. LFBTQ??? I inserted the question marks because I don’t remember all the letters of the alphabet that followed, but there were at least 3 or 4 more.
Have people become so desperate for recognition as being different from everyone else that they will search until they find a designation that doesn’t fit anyone but themselves, and then create a persona to fit that newly defined category? It would seem to be the case. To make matters worse, those in superfluous positions of authority, i.e. the NEA and its state affiliates around the country have been actively promoting gender identity modifications in children as young as nine and ten years old without, I might add, the parents knowledge or permission.
Why? I cannot imagine why any person with even a modicum of integrity or respect for the self-image of a young person would want to influence their natural emotional development in a way that could adversely affect them for the rest of their lives. When I think of the kind of person that would do that I am drawn to and image of the wicked witch in the original version of “Alice in Wonderland.”
Yesterday, on the radio I heard a letter written by a high school student that related her experience with looking for a group to be a part of. Athletics were not an option for her, and neither were the more common groups such as chess or debate clubs. Her counselor steered her into the LFBTQ??? Club. There she was encouraged to “explore” her gender and sexual identity. Luckily for this young girl she was intelligent enough to eventually realize that what they were encouraging was not natural for her.
I grew up in a totally different world. It was a world where the worst that could happen to me was that, had I been self-aware enough to question why I didn’t feel “normal”, was to have been told to grow up. Had I approached my high school counselor with anything resembling sexual or gender identity I’m not sure she would have had a clue what to say to me or my parents. That was probably a good thing considering the guidance that I may have received under the circumstances.
The basic issue of what role does public education have in the development of adolescents has been brought front and center in recent events in North Carolina as a result of two issues … Mask mandates and Critical Race Theory. Although these two issues are seemingly unrelated to the gender identity influence in elementary and secondary schools, they are part and parcel indicators of what our educations system has become … a petri dish for state control of what our children are taught and how their life choices are being influenced without parental knowledge or input.
I don’t want to sound like an “I told you so” but the fact is that even as long ago as my sophomore year in high school I be came aware of the dangers of the state having six to eight hours a day five days a week to influence the way the way the youth of our country think and process information. I even went so far as to suggest in one of my debate topics that all teachers be required to pass a stringent psychiatric evaluation before being allowed in the classroom. This is most critical when it deals with influencing how young people perceive themselves, their sexuality and their gender identity. The majority of educators in this country, I believe, do not sign onto these absurd policies but enough of them do subscribe to them to be a danger to our society.
It’s bad enough for public education attempting to make skin color an issue in young people who don’t see their fellow classmates in terms of their skin color. But gender identity is such a complex issue that no elementary or high school teacher has any business attempting to advise or influence a student on actions that will have lifelong effects on their future happiness or ability to live a productive satisfying life.
Wanting to fit in is a normal thing, but not being “normal” makes “fitting in” difficult at best and impossible at worst. We don’t need people with a political agenda making it more difficult with absurd notions of their idea of what’s best for another person’s child.
What you are about to read has absolutely nothing to do with gender identity other than to make clear that whatever a person’s gender identity, life takes on its own direction, irrespective of that identity. Suffering is no respecter of gender.
Years ago, when I suffered a stroke at an age that things like that weren’t supposed to happen to me, I came face to face with my own mortality. As it turned out it wasn’t an end-of-life experience, even though it felt like that, as I was losing control of the right half of my body. When I regained full consciousness and began reliving the experience, as I lay there in the University of Utah Medical Center, and wondering what, if anything, was going to change in my life. As a result of what had just happened, I found myself thinking about the times I had wasted watching television. Oddly enough it was one of those wasted moments, that brought everything into focus.
I don’t even remember the name of the show, but I do remember that episode vividly. Ronny Schnell played the role of a radio DJ and Goldie Hawn had figuratively cornered him into being faced with having to propose marriage. Schnell’s out was to say that he couldn’t do that because his doctor had told him he didn’t know how long he, Schnell had to live. However, that ploy backfired because it only stiffened Goldie’s resolve to get married. Finally, Schnell confessed that what the doctor had actually said was that he didn’t know how long Schnell had to live … he was so healthy he could live to over a hundred.
Three weeks ago, today I woke up with a nasty dry cough and feeling rather puny. By midafternoon, the next day the Blue Magnet insisted that I go to urgent care. My vitals were not what they should have been, and I just assumed that I had contracted a dose of flue since I hadn’t had my flu shot yet. However, as a precaution a COVID swab was done and the next day my doctor notified me that I had a breakthrough case of after vaccination COVID-19. The doctor suggested that I consider a monoclonal infusion. She sent me the official information on the procedure and after reading it thoroughly I decided that the potential side effects weren’t worth the risk. In retrospect that might have been the wrong decision.
In the meantime, the Blue Magnet was tested with the same results. Her symptoms were minor, and she continued to work at home. I, on the other hand, was not so fortunate.
By the end of the first week, I was in such bad shape that Blue loaded me up and drove me to ER. I was miserable, and in a room full of miserable people, although in my opinion they weren’t in as bad a shape as I was. I genuinely felt that dying would be easier than getting well.
After waiting 4 hours I approached the desk to find out how much longer I would have to wait and was told that they didn’t know since I wasn’t considered an urgent enough case. The Blue Magnet, who had been waiting in her car the entire time decided to take matters into her own hands and drove to Walgreens for fluids and electrolytes. When she returned, I went to the desk and told them to take me off the list because I could get better care at home.
The next morning, I was still dehydrated, and my oxygen count was hovering between 87 and 90. Blue insisted on taking me back to the ER. This time I was immediately ushered to an exam room. Lots of tests and an IV later I was sent home. Two days later the scenario repeated itself. That time, after more tests and isolation ina totally separate room, I was given the option to check into the hospital for 24 hours for observation. I chose to return home again.
I was finally beginning to recover bit by bit, but after a conversation with Home Depot’s Covid response representativ Andrea, my leave was extended another week and a half and I will return to work on the 18th. As of this writing the only residual effect is shortness of breath and thus I tire easily.
The upshot of all this is a loss of faith in our government’s ability to be honest and forthright in the information they feed us via a media that has built a pedestal for Dr. Fauci to rest on. It’s obvious that the lockdowns don’t work anymore than the protocols that have been forced on us for the last 2 years. Yes, I’m aware that what I suffered, even after both initial vaccinations, might have been much worse without the vaccination., But that doesn’t keep me from being high suspicious of any pronouncement coming from CDC or any other government entity.
I am by now totally disgusted with the Biden administration and anything that comes out of it. We have been lied to, locked down, lost jobs and lost faith in the very institutions that are supposed to protect us from all enemies, foreign and domestic. The current resident of the White House is an incompetent human being whose sole interest is his perceived legacy. God help us and save us from people who think they are the only smart people in the room and therefore must direct every minute aspect of our lives, and the people who think that since every aspect of their lives needs to be controlled by government that the government should control every aspect of every life without regard to how long that life may have left.
The last sentence of the first chapter of Dear Mom and Dad and the last sentence of the book end with a quote from a Hank Ketchum’s classic comic strip character Dennis the Menace. “I wish I was three again knowing what I know now”. The idea being that I would have made different decisions about my life’s direction. I don’t think there are many of us in this world who wouldn’t agree with that statement. We all wish from time to time that life had a rewind button. I bring this up because of an article I read recently in Hillsdale College’s publication Imprimis.
The article was written by journalist and author Abigail Shrier and titled Gender Ideology Run Amok. Naturally, when I saw the title, I felt compelled to read the article in its entirety, something I don’t often do with any article in any publication. But this one I did read all the way through and I’m glad I did because it raised some serious questions about the way decisions are being made on how gender identity is being addressed in our country’s mental health community today.
Shrier points out that in 2007 there was only one pediatric gender clinic in our country. Today there are hundreds. Her question is: How did we get to this point? It’s an important question. The fact that she says gender issues have become a big issue in our schools doesn’t really address how and why it has become a big issue, just that it has become a big and destructive issue which it is. I have my own theory and ideas about it which you can, no doubt, imagine.
Let’s get to the root of the problem, which in my opinion is our educational system and the group that has the biggest influence in in it … the teacher’s unions in general and the National Education Association in particular. The last year and a half of the Corona Virus epidemic has brought that groups true colors into focus. It’s my belief that while a large number of teachers really did want to be teachers with the best interest of the children they teach at heart, there are just as many, if not more who have become teachers with ulterior motives at heart.
A teacher who is not mentally or emotionally capable of addressing the mental or emotional issues they are confronted with in the classroom will inevitably look for a scapegoat to deflect attention away from themselves. Enter into the classroom a child that is struggling with their personal identity. Instead of taking the time to really help the child and the family it is far easier to pin the problem on the current hot button issue … gender identity. That way the problem for the child becomes a way for the teacher to avoid looking incompetent and instead look like a pioneer in childhood gender identity solutions, which of course the teacher is not.
The fact that I refer to wishing I was three again does not imply that I wish I could have lived my entire life as Georgia. It does imply that I wish could have understood why I didn’t feel “normal” much earlier than I did. The fact that I struggled with feelings of unease in being who I was does mean that in many was I going through what most adolescents go through. I feel for the children today because they are not being allowed to be children. They are not being allowed to develop their own self-image. At the first sign of an identity issue, it’s not being treated as part of the normal growing up process. No, it’s immediately identified as a gender issue that must be treated with the current fad treatment. They and their parents are instantly steered into mostly irreversible decisions.
When I made that decision to transition it was with an adult mind and after more than a few years of self-examination. I could never have made that decision intelligently or with a clear understanding of self as a teenager and I sincerely belief that scant few, if any at all, teenagers today are any different.
In my presentations to college classes about gender identity I try to make a point of saying that gender identity is a matter of learning to know who you are at your core and that transitioning isn’t going to solve any problem that isn’t solved beforehand. I liken it to something I heard repeatedly in AA. Alcoholics have a phrase for people who think that if they just change their location, move from New York to Los Angeles, it will solve the problem that caused them to drink. It’s called “a geographical”. It never works and it doesn’t work because the problem is not external… it’s internal. All you do is drag the issue along with you to a different location. Fix it where you are before moving on.
I think the same principle applies to gender identity. Adolescents are historically known for emotional issues. Encouraging them to believe that it’s because they were born in the wrong body is like a geographical. Psychologists and educators need to understand that they must quit looking to gender identity as the root of the problem. That solution will ultimately create even worse problems in the years ahead. All the gender identity solution is, is today’s way to deflect from a problem as old as mankind … adolescence.
12:25 PM August 1, 2021
I would have normally been on way home from worship service at the home of one of New Foundation’s Pastor’s. But not today, and more than likely never again. I have had few things sadden me more. The natural and immediate reaction to the events of the last few months leading to the last 2 weeks is to point fingers and cast blame. While there is plenty of that to go around that is not my purpose here. My purpose is to look back over the last 12 plus years and record events and actions, of the people I have interacted with as a result of my participation in the decisions and actions of the leadership of New Foundation. If that is taken as finger pointing, so be it. But if we are not honest about how we got here then we learn nothing and we are left with nothing.
I wrote about my introduction to New Foundation in very last couple of pages of my memoir. I had been bitterly disappointed in the results of ego driven performances of the leadership of my previous church Healing Waters Ministries and had finally walked away. It shut down shortly thereafter. Two of the people I had known there had persisted in asking me to visit the new church they had found when they walked away. I finally agreed to attend one service.
As I said in my memoir, one look at the face of Jabowa Whitehead and I felt I knew why God had closed Healing Waters. I felt it was because He had been holding open the door of New Foundation Christian Fellowship all along.
It must have been several months before I was invited to the Society of Sipping Saints. Being a recovering Alcoholic who worked weekends in a bar I had no issue with going to a bar with a few of the congregation and the pastors. I enjoyed the social atmosphere with the people I had just worshiped with. It became a regular occurrence. I had never had a social experience like that at any church. It truly gave meaning to the term church “family”. Since Jabow had asked me to take over the communication I found that time a good time to text all the people who hadn’t been in service that morning.
I had some disagreements with Jabowa, most of which were political. For instance, it was about that time when the issue of gay marriage came to the fore in the news and commentary sections of the various media. In a phone conversation with him I voiced my politically conservative opinion on the issue. He quickly informed me that it was extremely important to so that he could marry the man he loved, Pastor Juan.
Over the next few years our congregation grew quickly, and we soon found that we needed a larger facility. I, along with a few others, put in many hours making the necessary modifications to the new facility and soon we had moved from the small second floor rooms across the street to new larger free-standing building with a large parking lot which we needed with a growing congregation. We had room for Children’s Sunday School, and it too was growing.
But a change began to take place in the spiritual environment. I was still happy with all the people, new and old. Pastor Jabowa began adding people to the dais behind him and soon the front of our church began to resemble a holy roller church. I have to admit that I didn’t think some of those he chose should be up there. But I also felt it wasn’t my place to say anything. In addition to that change Pastor Jabowa abandoned his nicely but casually dressed appearance and started wearing a black robe. But we continued to grow.
Then one morning Pastor Juan wasn’t there. At the end of service, Jabowa requested all the leadership to stay behind for a private meeting. He informed us that he and Juan were separating, and that it was the result of 8 months of counseling. Pastor Juan was visiting family in Alaska.
I was personally in tears and stayed behind to tell him how heartbroken I was. I asked him at the time there was someone else in either of their lives. He said, no. I took him at his word. This all occurred in either late February or early March.
It may have been a couple of weeks, but no more when Jabowa told me he was seeing someone else. When I look back on it, I see it as the moment before the fall from grace. I reminded him of what he had said about Juan being the love of his life. He denied having ever said it.
Pride weekend and Sunday morning, when he should have been at the church preparing for the service, he wasn’t there. No one knew where he was, and no one had heard from him. He didn’t respond to text messages or phone calls. Pastor Cherry grabbed her laptop and pulled up a sermon.
The next week half of the congregation was absent. And the week after that half of those were not there. I had the opportunity to ask one of the men, someone I admired for his faith, if he was going to leave too. He responded with, “Yes, God has withdrawn his blessing from New Foundation.” The downhill tumble had begun in earnest. It could have been avoided if Jabowa had only offered some kind of apology and committed himself to a renewed commitment. But he never did.
The church was moved from that building to a conference room at hotel. That lasted for a little over a year. Then we found ourselves meeting to a bar. One of the last times I saw Pastor Cherry she said flatly that “we’ve got to get out of this bar”.
Just before Covid hit Jabowa and his next husband Pastor Freddie announced that we “would be meeting at their home. And that’s where we have been until a week ago when none of the pastors, including the one who was supposed to give the sermon showed up.
I have put all this down because I want to emphasis the importance of a pastor’s devotion to his duty and while no person is perfect, using the excuse that “I’m only human, is merely a way of self-justification for failing in one’s duty. Sadly, I have to say that I heard Pastor Jabowa use that very excuse on a number of occasions.
The word pastor is from the Greek word “poimen” which translates as “shepherd”. I came from an agriculturally oriented family background. My dad had a favorite saying for situations like this: “You don’t go to town when the ox is in the ditch”.
Unfortunately, just as the shepherd who puts his own desires ahead of his responsibility to care for the sheep in his charge, New Foundation has suffered entirely too much from personal priorities been placed ahead of the Shepherd’s duty. Sadly, for all Jabowa’s good intentions and amazing concept for a church configured like the early church before Constantine took over, that original concept of welcoming “all people” and giving them a family that maybe many of them never had, was lost in personality flaws of leadership.
A recent communication from a good friend pointed out that a description of some people, in my last blog as “stupid” was probably not the best choice of words and as a result somewhat detracted from the point I was trying to make. In retrospect he was probably correct. I undoubtedly could have been a bit more, well considerably more, diplomatic.
When I was in early sobriety and learning to assess my previous behavior in an honest and forthright manner, I was told in confessing my transgressions that when I followed up my confession with, “but” such and such or so and so did such and such to cause my behavior that I totally negated my personal responsibility in the interaction. So, no “buts” here.
I am angry. And I feel justifiably so. I will apologize for using the term “stupid” but not for the assessments that followed the term. I know that I am only a single voice in the choir and that I have, in that respect, a total inability to carry a tune. But I will not let that keep me from singing as loudly as I can.
All that being said, I need to express an opinion regarding gender identity politics and what I see as a major flaw the thinking of many in our community. That flaw is the idea that everything we express must be expressed from the platform of our gender identity.
When I first became involved the activities of the world of the transgendered, I of course was primarily concerned with being an accepted part of the community. Having always been outspoken about my political views, which by the way included my religious views, I saw no reason to suppress those views just because I was wearing a wig and a dress. I immediately found that, for many in the organization, I was a heretic. After all, conservative religion and politics were joined hand in hand in the denunciation of the transgendered community.
While that was true to a certain degree it was definitely an overgeneralization of the situation. If you have followed my blog over time, you know that I certainly have not let the opinions of those I disagree with stifle the expression of my views. If I had a bigger following, I would probably be banned from Facebook and Twitter, but so far, I have not.
Enter stage right, Caitlyn Jenner.
She is the embodiment of what I have felt and expressed in the past. She is what the transgendered community needs badly because what she is saying, to me at any rate, is that gender identity is not going to keep her from expressing her conservative political opinions. To date I have not heard anything from her that reflects her gender identity. She has been strictly focused on issues that have nothing to do with gender; issues that affect average people in her state. If her gender identity is brought up it’s the interviewer who brings it up and not her. So, what if her transgendered status draws attention. It has nothing to do with what she feels the people of California need from the point of view of a very successful businessperson.
She should be an example to the transgendered community to put gender identity aside and be a contributing member of society … like any “normal” person would do without making gender the issue.
My parents never expressed an opinion of anyone based on issues they had no control over, ie … skin color, sex, physical handicaps. As a result, I learned to look at the character of people in my life. Did Caitlyn have a choice to visibly express her gender identity? Absolutely! But she had no choice as to the set of emotions she was born with and that is what she is expressing in her appearance … and to my way of thinking, an expression of her character.
In closing this blog entry what I want to say is, to our transgender community, stop with the gender identity excuses for not living up to your potential. Stop with the gender identity excuses for thinking you are a victim. Stop parroting the opinions of those who are telling you that you are a victim. There are no victims here, only people who have been convinced they are victims by those who need victims to support their own self-centered aims of controlling other’s lives … since most of them, from what I see, have had trouble controlling their own.
When I was much younger than I am today, I lived with the sense that even though I didn’t agree what many people felt or believed about what our government should or should not do for us, I felt the best interest of our country and the freedoms it represented were their primary intent. If I hadn’t been disabused of that naïve belief before, I certainly am now.
What is happening in our country, in our capitol, in the hands of our elected leaders, (and I’m not referring to the ones that fall on the “red” side of either branch of our government) is nothing short of the worst possible scenario any screen writer or novelist could conceivably come up with. When I listen to the promises and the proposals that are being foisted upon us with regularity, I can come to only one conclusion. There is now a total lack of morals in the democrat party, with damn few exceptions.
Why on earth would anyone with a conscience want to burden future generations with the astronomical debt that congress has now saddled the country with? Why? It certainly isn’t because they sincerely want a better life for future generations. It is economically impossible for this country continue to add to our debt load without totally destroying an economy that has, up until now been the envy of the world.
It has long been said that people vote with their pocketbooks in mind. Well, how stupid can people get? Do they really think that all that money is going buy them more than what they can by today? Apparently, they do. You would think that if the average citizen had even a modicum of understanding of principle of supply and demand that they would soon figure out that what makes a dollar worth more is not having more of it. It’s the exact opposite. The supply of any commodity, including the dollar directly affects its value.
The democrats know that and that, to my mind, makes them criminals. They don’t care about anyone or anything that detracts from their power to control the lives of anyone they consider less than themselves or their ability to enrich themselves at the expense of the very people they claim to represent. So, how is it that supposedly educated people fall for the obviously wrong-headed ideas?
They are in fact, obviously very uneducated. Sure, they have college degrees of every sort, but the degrees are absolutely worthless when it comes to an understanding of real economics. The result is voters who buy into the notion that free college education, free childcare, free everything is actually free. That is what our education system has given us … a country filled with educated stupid people. And the democrats know it.
The democrats know that and that is why they are getting away with things like “woke” culture, whatever the hell that is. It’s supposed to mean that “woke” people have “woke” up to the injustices of our culture and history. In my opinion, it primarily means that they have “woke” up to one simple fact. With control of the media, career government employees and now congress and the white house they have “woke” up to the fact that they can lie about history and get away with it. If that isn’t a lack of morals, I don’t know what is. There is absolutely no moral basis for anything “woke” culture has produced. “Woke” culture is totally and completely void of any moral compass.
So, what is the solution for those of us who still have a moral compass? Maybe we need to follow Maxine Waters advice and “get up in their face”. The conservative moment has been too complacent and tried too hard to maintain a sense of decorum. Look at what that has gotten us.
We as a free people are at a precipice in history and if we don’t step back and take a few pages from the play book used by the democrats and their socialistic progressive allies we will be beyond redemption and our grandchildren will never know the promise of the United State of America.
A lack of morals? Without a doubt.
So, how did we get here? How did we get from the nation that I grew up in, a nation full of promise, a nation capable of landing a man on the moon, a nation that looked at its faults with an eye toward actually correcting the faults and not perpetuating the faults? How did we get from a nation of hopeful high school and college graduates whose worst crime might have been hanging a disagreeable professor in effigy instead of reality, from a tree in the center of the campus? How did we get from there to a nation where students march in masse protesting something, they have no actual knowledge of, while cheering the burning of our flag and destruction of the dreams of small business owners in the name of racial justice?
On the flip side, how did we go from nation of law-abiding citizens who identify themselves as conservatives; from a nation of people who accepted the outcome of an election regardless of who won because we trusted the system that counted the votes to do it honestly and let the chips fall where they may. How did we get from no need for conservative voters to gather in-masse, to support a president who, in spite of all the good he did, was not re-elected under a cloud of suspected corruption of officials in 5 states?
We didn’t get here overnight. We didn’t get here in a year. We didn’t even get here in a decade. We got here after years of careful and deliberate efforts of groups who had a fear of individual accomplishment. People who achieve through individual effort are feared by others who only find comfort in group think and group function.
When I was on the high school debate team one of the questions was “Should the federal government aid in funding public education?” (I paraphrase that question). One of the primary arguments on the negative side of that question was that local education systems would become too dependent on that source of funding and the result would then be encroaching federal control of the school curriculum. In other words, if you’re going to accept our money then you must accept our directions on what to teach and what not to teach. What was never expected was how non-government entities would eventually have far more influence than state and national government edicts.
It wasn’t the fault of politicians in spite of what we have come to think of them. It was the realization by non-governmental entities that what they had in their possession was something far, far more powerful than any government. Think about it … Who were the majority of those marching in support of Black Lives Matter and the call to defund the police? They were students. Black, white, brown; the color didn’t really matter. They had been conditioned by 12 to 20 years of sitting in front of “educators”; a group that had under their influence, as Rush Limbaugh would say, “young skulls full of mush” for a minimum of four to six hours a day. How many hours a day does the average parent spend on the mental development of their children? One? Two, maybe?
So, what kind of ideas are being stressed during those four to six hours a day? Well, as I noted in my last blog, 96.1% of the political donations made by the NEA in the last fifteen years have gone to democrat candidates. What kind of world to democrats want for our children? The last ten days should be your answer. They want to squelch any form of dissent to their ideas and their ideas are based on their belief that the average person is not capable of making rational decisions about their own lives. In addition, to that arrogant opinion of the average person’s intelligence is the belief that anything, and I do mean anything, they have to do to gain and hold that control is justifiable as evidenced by the obvious irregularities in the election results in five states during the last election. They have no moral compass whatsoever.
If you want to know then, how we ended up with such corrupt victors in our last election, look not to the politicians, look to how the people who elected them and the people who got them elected arrived at their justifications for their behavior. Those were arrived at through years of being under the influence of educators who themselves spent years under the influence of those who went before them.
I ask myself how did two educated conservatives such as my parents raise two broad minded conservatives, my brother and me, and then a decade and a half later a relatively narrow minded extreme liberal like our sister? It was a matter of how we were educated, when and where. Our parents didn’t change, the education systems changed.
I said in my last blog that if we are to effect lasting change in our country it has to start in our schools by getting involved with the local school board and administration. Weed out anyone who believes that their job is to shape minds. It isn’t; it’s to teach the basics not the morals of the teachers. It’s the parents’ job to shape the minds of their children.
I recently referred to our not-over-yet election period as the silly season. It wasn’t silly at all. It was tragic. As a person with a gender identity at odds with much of society I am supposed to be a liberal democrat and I am supposed to stick to gender identity issues. I’m sorry but that’s just not me.
I have been berated and chastised by many in that group referred to as LGBT, and whatever other capitalized letter of the alphabet that people choose t0 attach to their personal identity. I suppose that would be appropriate if I chose to make my gender identity the major issue of my life, my interests and the north pole of my political beliefs. But I don’t. I am a human being first, a Christian second and a conservative third.
Regardless of whatever point in my life I have found myself at, I have always had very specific beliefs and understanding of what makes a society great or not so great. President Lyndon Johnson ushered in what was referred to as “The Great Society”. A society that was supposed to cure all the ills of our republic; eliminate poverty, equalize outcome regardless of effort or ability. In case you haven’t noticed, all the things that “The Great Society” was supposed to cure, have for the most part remained. Why, you ask, is that the reality of our nation?
The reality is, that whether or not the intention behind that effort was to actually improve lives it actually perpetuated the very ills that it purported to eliminate. So, how did that happen?
I am not an expert on the subject, but I am a keen observer. Part of what was included in the Great Society was a program championed by Johnson’s wife, Lady Bird. It was called “Headstart” and to my knowledge it persists today. The idea was to help the less fortunate children get a leg up on the rest of the education that lay ahead of them in the normal public education system. I can’t give you any statistics that support my theory, but from the current condition of the communities it was intended to help I would venture a guess that it has been a near total failure. Before you jump to point out some successes of the program, accept my acknowledgement there have certainly been some successes, albeit few and far between. Otherwise, the overall success would be shouted from the roof tops of Washington.
If one could point to any success in that program it would be the success of beginning the conditioning of young minds to accept whatever ideology was headed their way once they entered the remainder of their educational process. That primary ideology is what is on full display in the Democrat Party and the people who adhere to the principle that government is more suited to making decisions about the lives of the people it claims to care so much for.
The continuation of shaping the minds of the youth of this country is the sole aim of the National Education Association. And their goal is not the goal of teaching our youth to think for themselves. If it were, their contributions to political candidates would be evenly split, which they are not.
In the last twenty years, the NEA has donated in excess of $153,000,000 to political causes and candidates. Of the at amount 96.1% has gone to Democrat candidates and causes. A mere 3.9% has gone to Republican candidates and causes. Is it any wonder, then, that the vast majority of the marchers in last spring and summer’s demonstrations were, from casual observation, under the age of 30? Is it any wonder why the politicians from Democrat cities and states feel justified in enacting ordinances limiting the activities of the people they are supposed to present, but feeling above adherence to those same edicts?
Our education system, with the support of Democrat politicians, I believe, has intentionally dumbed down the last two generations in preparation for what our country is now facing in Georgia. The last two generations of voters don’t have a clue what Obama meant by “It’s time for a change”. I don’t have to be a mind reader to realize that what he meant was that it was time to change from a nation of self-sufficient freedom to a nation of people who want to live with their hands in the pockets of others.
There is no moral compass left in the hearts of Democrat leaders. The country I grew up in is no longer a place of opportunity for all. It’s become a place of equal outcome for all regardless of contribution or effort. The mere fact that Democrats, liberals and progressives are so close to destroying what so many have died for in the last two hundred forty-four years means that all of those lives will have been in vain. The country they sacrificed for will cease to exist. It is a hopeless feeling for those of us who love our heritage.
If there is any hope at this point it is that ordinary people who have a moral compass get involved, beginning with the school board, local city elections, county elections, state elections and finally national elections. We didn’t get here in one generation and we certainly won’t get back to our roots in one generation, but we have to start somewhere.
And when your children come home with some stupid pronunciation that socialism is better than capitalism do what my mother did when I came home with the stupid notion that communism was good for some countries, a statement from my history teacher. She set me straight immediately. We need more parents like her.