Political views and their values are some of the most difficult things for me to understand. Their furor is almost religious in many of those who are displaying signs on front lawns but also their establishing social systems with mentally locked gates designed to keep out poisonous thoughts of the opposition. There seems to be an adrenalin rush in unsympathetic views of the opposition’s “other party” that gives people a false idea of loyalty based upon almost black and white interpretations of good versus evil more treacherous than facts.
Looking at Democrats and Republicans reveals a staunch kind of loyalty sometimes going back to parents and their own family members in a sometimes clan-like loyalty from our parents and other family members in a feud that epitomizes the “us versus them” ethic, going back hundreds of years in an almost hereditary acceptance of social superiority over factual data.
Emotions and facts too often wage war against each other in what would otherwise be comic shenanigans on Gilligan’s Island, maybe because self-righteousness is one of the oldest sources of true comedy.
I remember family gatherings when I was growing up that, among thirty guests, would occasionally find one uncle or aunt stepping on a political comment that in the group was like stepping on a landmine. Vocal volumes would rise until Grandpa would take out a brandy decanter to calm the men down while the women rolled their eyes in almost a comic despair.
The rancor always subsided by the wee hours when we were all prepared to face the cold winter air outside and return home to our warm beds and the fact that we had once again survived another familial bout based upon American politics. 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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