I can’t recall another time in my seventy-five years when I felt so utterly separated from other people, partly due to the pandemic, but even more so due to political division. The great divide we’re experiencing in America now has not been seen since our Civil War of the 1860’s. It is a political and social phenomenon that has been too underestimated by profiteers and political hacks who wish to downplay a division so wide and deep that narrowing it will take all the guile, compassion, honesty, and common sense that we have left to do battle against a smug rancor that has not even been imagined since Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy of the 1930’s. The past year has brought into clearer focus the terrifying greed and self-aggrandizement for a maniac of mammoth narcissism, who in the eyes of his willing worshipers, seems to be God Himself, who can do no wrong.
Facts no longer mean anything to too many (especially Republicans) who insist upon downplaying the violent coup of January 6, 2021, that very nearly turned our nation into a Nazi dictatorship with absolutely no regard for law or our Constitution and the peaceful transition of power by American voters. The main figure of this despicable disruption and the creator of the pack of lies that almost destroyed democracy was none other than Donald Trump, who makes even Benito Mussolini look like Mr. Rogers. Now too many continue to wear blinders to this man’s two-faced criminal behavior, who lives in terror of having to pay back many millions of dollars he has borrowed over several years, money that he was able to borrow only through lies about his actual worth. The presidency means little more to him than a safety net in which he can feel protected against any form of justice that has been pursuing him for quite a while. This tower of narcissism will remain a very dark spot on our national history if his armies of gullible worshipers don’t wake up soon to make things right. 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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