The Democratic and Republican political parties in America have, over the past few years, become caricatures in their almost comic and sometimes even grotesque posturing, one against the other. The two labels have taken on associations and stereotypes that border on the heart of comedy itself. Either word can now evoke gut reactions instantly of rage, revulsion, or a festival of other emotional upheavals.
The word Democrat and the word Republican have become receptacles of assumption and automatic insult, generally exaggerated and very often unmerited by the opposition.
In terms of politics, the HBO saga, Game of Thrones has nothing on us politically in The United States. Calling someone a Democrat or Republican can now be the most extreme affront one can summon, and there continue to be ridiculous and oversimplified associations that gradually lose their significance, rendering everything either black or white, with no middle ground left. What does it mean to “drive like a Republican” or “sneeze like a Democrat?”
We’re becoming essentially two separate countries, each looking down its nose at the other. No foreign and enemy power could so successfully have divided us in a conflict that has perhaps been bubbling since the end of the American Civil War in 1865. The once vibrant red, white and blue I remember from my childhood (1950’s, NOT the 1860’s, thank you very much), seem now to be fading to a dull, lifeless gray, where there is no more contrast or compromise. Our game has lost its once shared purpose or what’s best for the nation as a whole in favor of something like a sports event played for points and “winning” but from which no one really gets a trophy or honor for patriotism in favor of the country itself. JB
About John
About John
John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes.
Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018
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