For better or worse, Democrats are “in power” at this time, which has left a bitter taste in the mouths of Republicans, many of whom have become bad sports and poor losers in the game of politics thanks to their former leader. Their principal cry seems to be “You can’t tell me what to do!” as though the political landscape has become something of an absolute monarchy. This point of view comes into frightening focus when we look at the Covid vaccinations, but if we go back in history, say to the America of The German Measles epidemic of 1918 or the plague of Polio a bit later, people still believed in medical science as an aid to avoiding illness and death. That faith saved millions of lives.
It wasn’t as much a contest about personal choices, because we still believed in science and medicine as bulwarks of safety in the face of any pandemic, instead of the suspicious hunches, called “American Rights” by too many of the untutored. This alignment between medicine and politics has created an aura of suspicion that has already cost millions of lives, because too many people have become hand puppets of their political leaders, almost as though the whole problem has become some kind of national sports event between two teams, each trying to win kudos…one side based upon ego, the other side based upon a true desire to save lives and protect the nation from destroying itself through its own unbending egotism.
Wearing sparkling blinders instead of masks has created another civil war, but the soldiers on one side are dying upon the crumbling principle of being politically loyal to their party. Even their children are paying the ultimate price for this self-righteous egomania.
I wonder how history books will describe the past two years in terms of deaths and political posturing. It’s not going to be pretty. 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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