Let the Dead Past Bury It's Dead

"Let the Dead Past bury it's dead!  Act--act in the living Present!  Heart
within and God o'erhead!       Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The past two weeks have been fraught with emotions from all sides.  There
have been protest marches in major cities and small towns across the globe
in sympathy with Black Lives Matter here in the United States.  The approval
rate for BLM has risen to over 70%, even amongst those who feel the president
is handling the protests correctly, there is a dichotomy if there ever was one.

I, for one, agree with the majority of the demands that are being made, and I
agree that changes must be made.  Even if it is only the outward appearance of
fairness, since I don't believe you can legislate morality.  You cannot tell a bigot
that he must love his neighbor, but you can tell him it will cost him money and
jail time if he discriminates against him.  In other words, you don't have to do it
with a smile, just do it!

There is one thing that I am very much opposed to though, and that is the demand
that statues and representations of Civil War veterans be removed.  You cannot
change history nor erase one evil deed by denying that it ever happened.  Having
lived in the South for a number of years, I am familiar with Confederate Flag Day,
Robert E. Lee's birthday, January 16 - Martin Luther King, who is he - Decoration
Day and a host of other days set aside to remember the 'War of Northern Aggression'.
I am not talking about that, that will never change until the old guard is long gone,
and perhaps not even then.

I am talking about the current spate of wanton destruction of memorials and statues.
They are being defaced, and in many instances, torn down from their foundations.
And not just in this country, but in the UK also.  In the town of Bristol, the statue
of Edward Colston, a slave trader, was defaced, torn down and dumped into the
harbor.  In Poole Harbor, England, activists attempted to tear down the statue of
Lord Baden-Powel, the founder of the Boy Scouts, because he was a supposed racist
and supporter of Adolf Hitler.  Several adult Scouts surrounded the statue and preserved
it.  And to those of you who remember the Beatles fondly, will remember their hit song
"Penny Lane".  When I was in Liverpool, I walked down Penny Lane from the famous
bus stop to Strawberry Fields.  You will be sad to hear that there is a movement afoot
to change the name of Penny Lane, why, because it was named for James Penny, a slave
ship owner.  Tell me, will that make one bit of difference to those poor souls from the
sixteen-hundreds who were captured and sold , to change the name of that street?

In Madison, Wisconsin there is a section of Forest Hill Cemetery called Confederate
Rest, it is the last resting place of the 140 Confederate POWs who died at near-by
Camp Randall.  It was their resting place, at least, until 2017 when some people
thought it wrong to honor them with a plaque commemorating their service, so the
plaque was removed, and if that wasn't enough, the cenotaph with their names was
also removed.  It appears there is no forgiveness even in death.

Did removing those mementos erase the fact that there was a war that nearly tore this
country asunder?  No, it only means that in the future years, we as a nation, will have
forgotten those who gave their 'last full measure of devotion'.  Right now, there are
nine statues in Statuary Hall in the United States Capital Building depicting 'heros'
of the Confederacy.  Nancy Pelosi wants them removed; it is not up to her.  Those
statues were donated by the states that they represent.

Our National Cemetery at Arlington was part of the estate of Arlington House, which
overlooks the cemetery.  Arlington House was the home of Robert E. Lee.  Want to
change that name also?  Ten prominent military bases in America and overseas are
named for military personnel from the Civil War.  There is a hue and cry to have them
renamed.  And for once - oh god - I agree with president 45.  It was there that the 'Worlds
Greatest Army' the one that saved the world for Democracy, trained.  The names did not
diminish their resolve, not the resolve of the thousands of troops who followed in their
footsteps over the years.

Let us say we take down these representations of what we consider nefarious infidels.
Once we start, where do we stop?  Our founding Fathers were all slave owners, do we
take Washington off the dollar bill?  What of Jefferson and his slave mistress who bore
him several children, do we strip him off the two-dollar bill?  It wouldn't matter much
as no one uses a twoie anymore.  When they drafted the Constitution, they said all men
were created equal, and they meant men, and only white men.  Do we strike such language
from that document?  Yesterday, a mob took down the statue of Christopher Columbus,
and in UK they took down a statue of Sir Winston Churchill, he saved England from the
Nazis for goodness sake.

At what point do we say that the good that a man does outweighs the evil, or is there no
balance to the scales of justice anymore?  And who is to judge?  Let him who is without
sin cast the first stone.  Who of us has not crossed the street to avoid a group of young
black men on a dark night?  Did we make a moral judgement there?  And the bible says
that because Eve tasted of the fruit from the tree of knowledge, all men born of women
will be born through pain.  That's a long time to hold a grudge.  Sorry, but that doesn't seem
too fair to me.

                                                               I am just sayin'

But I Remember...

They say if you remember the sixties you weren't really there.  Well
I was there and I remember them very well.  I remember them because
my husband was a police officer at that time.  I remember well the
ten-hour days and the seven-day weeks.  I remember him coming home
exhausted, and in tears some days because of what he had seen, and
what he had to do.

We lived in the Chicago area at the time.  It was a hotbed of racial inequality,
redlining was the norm, and public housing - read hi-rise ghettos - was
being touted as the answer to poverty and homelessness.  Believe me, you
would rather live in the subway than Cabrini-Green; it would have been
cleaner and safer.  At the time I worked for a company located right on the
border of the city of Chicago and the town of Cicero.  Racism in the North 
was for the most part, covert, not so in Cicero.  There it was practiced openly 
and with malice.

There was a simmering undercurrent of civil unrest in 1968, it was bound to
come to a head when the temperatures warmed up, and the tempers heated up.
It didn't take long.  On the evening of April 4th, 1968, the Reverent  Martin
Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis Tennessee.  That was just the
beginning, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June and the culmination was
the Democratic Convention in August.

There appeared to be the perfect storm, civil, racial, and political unrest came
together and erupted in a fire storm at the Chicago Amphitheatre.  Americans
were sure the country would be torn asunder.  The unpopular war in Viet Nam,
the civil rights movement, and the deeply divided Democratic Party dominated
all of 1968 and ushered in the 'law and order' president, Richard Nixon.

In the manner of deja vu all over again, we are once again caught up in the perfect
storm.  The world is gripped in the throes of a pandemic, the worst since the flu of
1918.  Millions of people world-wide have been stricken, with close to two-million
cases in the United States alone, and over one-hundred thousand deaths here.  A
number that experts say may be grossly undercounted.

The economic shut down caused by the pandemic across the globe, as nations try
to stop the spread of the virus, is precipitating a recession worse than 2009. The
outcome of that is the World Bank has predicted negative growth for 2020 and
most probably 2021 also.  The United States Congress has authorized over
three-trillion dollars in relief money for individuals and businesses alike.  That is
in addition to the four-trillion that the Federal Reserve is spending on QE.  And still
the unemployment rate is higher than it was during the great depression.

Americans have been locked down, and told to shelter in place since the middle of
March, and for many this poses a significant hardship.  They have lost their job and
it is the first time they have had to go to a food pantry for help.  They are afraid to go
outside and yet desperate to leave the house, torn between safety and freedom.  They
fear losing their homes, and they are struggling with children underfoot, who don't
understand what is happening.  Children who have been locked out of school for
weeks.  Tempers are short and many people are suffering from depression.

And into this volatile situation, was introduced a video of a police officer kneeling on
the neck of a black man, who was obviously already subdued.  For eight long minutes
the man, George Floyd, was begging for his life.  He was crying out that he could not
breathe, he was crying for his late mother's help.  To look on this and not be deeply
disturbed, one would have to have no conscience what so ever.  But to have this death
come on the heels of two other recent deaths of black citizens by white police officers,
finally tipped the scales.

Demonstrations have broken out, first in Minneapolis, where the incident occurred, then
by weeks end in 244 cities across America and finally across the globe.  People marched
in solidarity with America's black population.  It was gratifying to see.  If it were
possible to ease the grief and suffering of Mr. Floyd's family, this should have gone a
long way to do that.  To know that he did not die in vain; that his life meant something
if only at the end.

However, just as the pandemic demonstrated how totally unqualified our president
is to lead the country, these demonstrations doubled down on his ineptitude. Instead
of calling for peace, unity and healing and offering comfort to a nation reeling
in despair, the president called for the military to take control of the streets.  He
called governors weak and 'jerks' and promised to take control of their states if
if they did not.  He called on federal troops to disperse peaceful demonstrators so
that he could walk across the street and pose for a photo-op, holding a bible, in
front of a church that he has never attended.  This photo will probably be part of
his 'law and order' re-election campaign.  But it will also be fodder for those who
thought his actions were sacrilegious. He hides from his people behind a twelve-
foot fence and a phalanx of armed troops in battle dress.

Yes, the country recovered in the 70's, but it took the resignation of a president
to avert a constitutional crisis.  But the country never did heal, under the scars
were festering wounds, that someone just needed to rip off the bandage and
expose them.  That someone was Donald Trump, and now we are reaping the
seeds of hatred and division he has sown for the past three years.  This time
we cannot just apply a temporary bandage to cover the wounds, we must
incise the infectious hatred, we must expose the awful truth of racism to the
sunlight for all to see.  Only then can America begin to heal...all of us.

                                                                          I'm just sayin'