Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Will any of us ever forget the plea for understanding and compassion uttered by that great humanitarian Rodney King? Thank heavens he isn’t still around to learn that the answer to his plaintive question is a resounding NO!
Will any of us ever forget the plea for understanding and compassion uttered by that great humanitarian Rodney King? Thank heavens he isn’t still around to learn that the answer to his plaintive question is a resounding NO!
The violence in Charlottesville and Durham, fomented by the self-righteous hooligans and their facilitators in the media, proves that America is more fractionalized than we were in the 1860s.
Everyone who isn’t in the Klan or one of its similar offshoots — and that includes nearly everyone in the country — despises them. But it shouldn’t require every pundit and politician passing a litmus test by voicing his displeasure in exactly the same words every single time one of the cretins does or says something stupid or vicious.
President Trump was right when he asked where the removal of statues offensive to some people would stop. So far, it’s been monuments to Confederate generals. But not all the generals owned slaves or even approved of slavery, just as not every Union general disapproved of slavery. I understand a few even owned them. And so did Washington and Jefferson. Are their paintings and statues and monuments to be removed from the nation’s capital, the nation they helped create? Are their heads to be sandblasted off Mount Rushmore?
I’m reminded that Joe Neuner let me know that his grandson has invited everyone who feels strongly on this issue to send him their singles and twenties, lest the slave owners contaminate their wallets.
Frankly, I’m curious when West Virginia is going to do its own mea culpa and remove the name of Robert Byrd from all the public buildings, roads, bridges and post offices the former Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan has his name smeared across.
Robert Byrd (D-WV) was an iconic figure in the Democratic Party, serving in the House from 1953-1959 and the Senate from 1959-2010. He was even the majority leader of the Senate. But if the schmuck had stood on tiptoe, he could not have reached as high as Gen. Robert E. Lee’s ankle.
The one thing that Donald Trump said about the events in Charlottesville that was wrong was when he claimed there were good people on both sides. There weren’t. On the one side were white supremacists; on the other was a mix of Never-Trumpers, communists and plain old-fashioned goons looking for a fight, especially one in which they greatly out-numbered their opponents.
Both sides were populated with punks, looking to bust heads, armed with clubs and baseball bats, fueled by ignorance, testosterone and hatred.
The only difference between the two sides is that the supremacists had a city permit and the right granted by the Constitution in the First Amendment to peaceably assemble. The fact that things didn’t remain peaceful is the fault of the fascistic mob that never even gave them a chance. It does, after all, take two to tangle.
Oregon has obviously grown tired of playing second fiddle to California and decided to strike out on its own. In their latest attempt to prove they can be even loonier than their next-door neighbor, Oregon’s legislators have agreed to use tax revenue to pay for every abortion in the state, including those for illegal aliens.
What’s more, the abortions may be performed as far along as the ninth month, even if the only reason for the procedure is because the woman (can hardly call her the mother) doesn’t happen to want a boy or perhaps a girl. But that seems a totally bizarre reason when those on the wrong side of the abortion controversy insist that gender isn’t set in stone but is solely a matter of opinion.
On a related subject, the authorities in Iceland are on their way to insisting that babies afflicted with Down syndrome be aborted, even in cases where the parents wish to have and raise the child.
I assume the Icelanders will claim it’s a medical breakthrough. “Look at us, world,” one can hear them saying, “we’ve found a sure cure for Down’s syndrome. Next week, we plan to announce we’ve rid the world of leukemia, Alzheimer’s and heart disease. Well, if not the world, at least Icelandic hospitals.”
Apparently, the Pentagon spends over $300 million a year on its military musicians. God knows I have nothing against music, but at a time when the Pentagon is claiming it lacks the funds to keep planes in the air and pilots properly trained, does it really need marching bands?
These days, you can’t turn around without hearing someone accuse someone else of being a racist. Frankly, I think that along with the N-word, we should get rid of the R-word. It doesn’t even mean what the people flinging it about pretend it means. These days, it merely indicates that you are Donald Trump; support Donald Trump; regard the Congressional Black Caucus as the biggest collection of nincompoops in a city teeming with nincompoops; and wish that the NAACP and the Black Lives Matter Movement would simply vanish with the morning dew.
Just for the record, an actual racist judges people solely by their color, recognizing no significant difference between Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Maxine Waters, for instance, and Clarence Thomas, Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell. A non-racist judges people by their values and behavior.
A subscriber, Sandra Duncan, shared her dislike of ObamaCare with me, complaining about the deductible being so high that unless you’re one of the slackers who is totally subsidized, you can’t afford to use it.
I replied that we keep hearing about 24 million Americans who will lose their health insurance if ObamaCare is repealed, but it’s a phony number, just like all the other numbers coming out of Washington. If you can’t afford the cost, there’s no difference between having health insurance and not having it. As things stand, the ones who don’t have to pay for it want it; those who do, don’t.
I keep hearing so much about George W. Bush’s bike rides with wounded vets and now about his paintings of wounded warriors, and frankly I’m sick of it. This is the same Bush who kept prattling on about what a great religion Islam is while at the same time its followers were killing and maiming our troops. This is the same guy who refused to bomb mosques in Iraq even when we knew they were being employed as barracks and armories by the enemy, forcing our men to conduct unnecessarily hazardous house-to-house combat.
Someone sent something out into the Internet that captured both my attention and my admiration: “Millions of Muslims are seeking sanctuary in non-Muslim countries. Doesn’t that make them Islamophobic?”
Someone else pointed out that the U.S. is third among all nations when it comes to homicides. But if you take Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, New Orleans and Washington, DC — the cities with the strictest gun laws — out of the mix, we suddenly become the nation with the fourth fewest.
Finally, while going through the checkout at the local supermarket, I discovered that not every newspaper has it in for Trump. According to the front page of the National Enquirer, “Obama is Out to Destroy Donald Trump with Lies, Leaks and Spying!”
At last, a newspaper with the guts to tell the truth.
Oh, and by the way, apparently black comedian Steve Harvey has walked out on his pregnant wife.
