Marj-at-Large: News &Views
  • News & Views
    • About the Author
  • Right Now
    • What Do You Know >
      • What Do You Know - Answers
    • What Do You Believe? >
      • What Do You Believe? Analysis
  • My Take
    • Bright Spots >
      • Where Has All the Kindness Gone?
      • A New Day on the Way: Jan. 3, 2019
      • Blessed Are the Peacemakers
      • The Audacity of Hope
      • Issues >
        • Budget and Taxes
        • The Environment
        • Guns
        • Health Care >
          • Statistics
      • The Purity of It All: LLWS
      • The Polling Place Adventure
      • July Potpourri
      • The Unexpected Bison
    • State of the Union >
      • 12/5/18: The Best of Days, the Worst of Days
      • 7/17/18: Deals With Dictators, Episode 2
      • 5/17/18: Suffer the Children
      • 4/7/18: Never Let a Crisis Go To Waste
      • 12/6/17: The Centre Cannot Hold
    • Saving the Children and Other Living Things >
      • Saving the Elephants
    • Taxes, Broadly Speaking
    • Health Care
    • Presidential Malpractice >
      • 6/22/18: Gratuitous Brutality
    • The Political Parties >
      • 2/2/18: GOP: The Cabinet Chorus of Praise
  • Marj-inized
  • Readers Write
    • Your Turn

Back to the Distant Past                                                                         _______________________________________________________________

7/24/2017

0 Comments

 
A couple of years ago, I had my granddaughter all to myself while her parents were at work. We live on opposite sides of the country so this was a special day. While she was in the bathroom, I turned on the TV to get a news update, and Madi returned just in time to hear it: shots fired in a high school in the state of Washington.
 
“Another school shooting,” she said, shaking her wise little four-year-old head. She knew it was bad news, but the resignation with which she spoke told me that, in her world, it was also sadly unremarkable.
 
Children assume that the world as they see it in their earliest years is normal. Imagine. If you were four—or five, or six—and your earliest memories of a president were of Donald Trump. What would you think? About him? About government? About the country? About grown-ups?
 
For awhile, it seemed Trump and many other Republicans were determined to drag us back to the 1950’s, a time when we gave lip service to equality while we practiced precious little of it. That’s bad enough, but if Trump’s behavior is any indication, he aspires to take us even farther back than that—to a prehistoric time when civility and civil discourse were perhaps a gleam in some dreamer’s eye. But here's a telling update from the The National Geographic about the Neanderthals:
 
“As modern humans were first migrating out of Africa more than 60,000 years ago, Neanderthals were still alive and well in Europe and Asia. It seems that our ancestors met, leaving a small genetic trace of these ancient relatives in our DNA.”
 
Elsewhere we're told this DNA affects us in various ways, ranging from skin and hair quality to mental health and susceptibility to various diseases. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Following Barack Obama, one of the most articulate, intelligent leaders in our country's history, Trump makes a mockery of the office of the president and turns the White House into a circus tent. The contrast couldn't be more stark.  
 
I’d like to think we’re strong enough to right the ship after Donald is deposed, whenever and however that occurs. Meanwhile, the danger is that not only our kids, but we ourselves will come to accept this White House spectacle as “normal.” We can't let that happen.
 
Vigilance, people, vigilance!
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Thoughts for Our Time

    “Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.”
    ~Benjamin Disraeli

    Archives

    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017

    Categories

    All
    Candidates
    Civility Or Lack Thereof
    Civil Rights
    Congress
    Constitution
    Elections
    Guns
    Immigration
    Justice System
    Privacy Issues
    Reflections
    Reproductive Rights
    Satire
    Taxes
    The Economy
    The Political Parties
    Trump

    RSS Feed

Copyright © 2017