Politics in The United States is almost tribal in its reluctance, in many cases, to accommodate differing views. The distance between Democrats and Republicans can often be measured only in light years, because each side has its own view of the world that we all inhabit. The illusion that each side can protect its earthly claims to its way of governance and make it shine like a religious beacon is achieved by billions of dollars being spent upon tearing down the opposition through often massively tweaked claims of the other side taking a bigger slice of the pie than it merits.
Those rare instances of both parties joining forces for the good of the populace need to be expanded into a way of seeing all Americans as one huge family with differing needs but with equal rights that provide hope and substance under the same shared flag of a nation admired by many of the oppressed dictatorships in too many nations across the globe.
I often wonder what our founding fathers would think if they could visit us today and have access to all that goes on in politics. They would probably be pleased that we as a nation still exist with great importance upon the world stage, but the rancor (which also existed in the 18th Century) has grown with the population and the greater variety of citizenry and the ways in which we can keep it together as one nation. Every country has its problems in and out of politics, but The United States of America is still growing into new sets of clothing for more groups and more needs than in 1776. Looking at troubled nations in other parts of the world, however, gives me hope that we as a multi-cultural nation will somehow be flexible and concerned enough about human needs of us all to continue with our long- term experiment in caring for one nation and its many people. 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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