A Crack in the Mirror

Every once in a while I suppose just about everybody needs to vent his or her frustration and dismay by kicking a chair leg, throwing a rock into a pond, or screaming into a pillow. Some folks even get drunk. So many on Facebook have been doing just those kinds of things regarding politics lately, mostly those whose lives seem tied up in (by) our current president, who is still trying to convince us that meanness of spirit along with cheating are strengths that must be honored instead of dismissed. Everyone else is a “loser.” My release of pent up ire or disappointment is generally letting it bleed all over typing paper in a storm of words this afternoon that need not worry about stepping on anyone’s toes, mostly because the words don’t fret about anyone who stepped on mine, politically, emotionally, socially, or personally during the past four years.

I’m dismayed, (shocked) by and ashamed of the clueless, misinformed, narrow-minded posts (“thoughts”) concerning the recent national election. Facebook acquaintances, and even a couple of friends and relatives have managed to leave me in a state of shock at how apparently gullible and self-righteous people can be, people who don’t even have horns, fangs, or poison arrows.

I’m really talking here about people who are far enough to the right to make William F. Buckley, Jr. look like a screaming liberal. They usually see their own personal views as heroic in their amazing veneration of a president they worship blindly, believing somehow that wisdom pours from his lips like a fifth Gospel, instead of the greedy, narrow, mean, vengeful, lunacy it really is. I will never comprehend being dazzled (hoodwinked) by him, though he certainly knows the right buttons to push in order to activate floods of rage and indignation in his wide-eyed, adoring hand-puppets.

Isn’t it time to admit that we need to reunite our country, leave the dirt and slime behind us and stop making cruel, narrow rhetoric sound like some elixir that will save us from destruction? When and how did we lose our way? Our current president has the same effect on his star-struck base that Benito Mussolini had on too many Italians of the 1920’s and 1930’s. Our nation doesn’t have to be ugly, smug, and cruel to be respected on the world stage. News flash: Neither do people.

Almost all the criticism I’ve seen on Facebook against “the liberal left” has been manufactured (by God knows whom), stuff that is cunningly designed to push the right (far right) buttons to raise the adrenalin of self-righteous folks who enjoy having targets (scape goats) for their being pissed off at the world in general… not from respected, impartial sources, but from those that resemble the worst excesses of tabloid trash, like The National Enquirer.

Isn’t it time to stop being poor losers and begin showing some level of respect for the nation itself and its history and laws, instead of manufacturing bloodcurdling scenarios in a crybaby way, denying truth and the history of our Constitution and every other law that has kept us as ONE nation? It’s almost 2021, NOT 1862. We are not, or should not be, at war with one another, the flames being fanned by voices from sources I suspect aren’t even American ones. Our laws and history are more important than the whims and ego of a crybaby golden calf that has become a thing of blind worship rather than the dangerous, egomaniacal distraction he really is. He and God are lightyears apart, and no amount of wishful thinking is going to change or disguise that ugly fact.

Fox News and other twisted, adrenalin-raising sources of heavily tweaked information, continue to intoxicate the unwary, even though the wool has not yet been pulled over everyone’s eyes. Senators on the far right whose backbones have been lost or hidden during this administration, oblivious to the needs of our country, and those who have followed their lead, will be judged much more harshly by history than they have yet been able to imagine. The cult they have protected and nurtured over the past four years will be seen in a much harsher light as time passes. Money and power may look quite different in retrospect. It’s not going to be pretty.    JB

“Never be so focused on what you’re looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.” Ann Patchett

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 View all posts by John →
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2 Responses to A Crack in the Mirror

  1. Allan Dewes says:

    I just love taking the time to read your articles. As always, they are well written, thought provoking and inspiring. Can’t wait for all the Covid joy to be over so we can be social creatures once again.

  2. Austin Lee says:

    A good read. Sadly, admitting that we need to reunite our country is likely an aspiration for only 60-70% of the U.S.

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