“Don’t pick up other people’s candy from the dirt,” “Look both ways before you cross the street,” “Wear your seat belt while driving.” Like millions of other mothers, the messages I spoke changed as my children grew, but the concept was the same. I want you to be safe.
I still want my children to be safe, which, especially for two of them right now, puts me at odds with President Obama. Our son is an emergency room doctor; one of our daughters is a nurse. Neither of them will heed me if I ask them to stay away from patients with fever who are vomiting.
My powers of persuasion are limited. I can no longer confine them to their rooms, limit their allowance or send them to bed early. Truthfully, they are both doing what their father and I raised them to do. They are using their talents and time to help others, taking their place as productive members of the community. We are proud of them.
This leaves us disgusted with an American president who places no value on their lives. It compounds a disgust we have long felt at his lack of care for those troops whose Commander in Chief he is. The media who adulated him, the Democrat Party and those who voted for him certainly share blame. Republican politicians who think that holding hearings is a sufficient response are failing us as well. In the final analysis, though, the buck stops with the president.
I don’t know what his motivation is. Is he anti-American, naïve or incompetent? I don’t know into which category those who make excuses for him or refuse loudly to condemn him fall. I do know that my children and the children of all American citizens are being treated as unimportant political pawns. In 1980, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) was founded by Candy Lightner after her thirteen-year-old daughter was killed by someone who already had been arrested for a DUI. The group helped cause a culture shift making drunk driving less socially excusable. Is it time for MAAN-UP (Mothers Against anti -American, Naïve and Useless Politicians) to mobilize?
I recently reviewed our audio CD, Tower of Power: Decoding the Secrets of Babel. I was amazed how much it explained about the Obama administration and the left-wing in America.
Truly “there is nothing new under the sun.” Do you also see the similarities?
Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels once stated that ‘a lie repeated often enough becomes generally accepted as truth’ or words to that effect. Is it not appalling that the Party in power is actively using Goebbels’ principle to achieve its ends?
“the surrounding stated” => should read “the surrounding STATES’ – Sorry ’bout that. The point is not that Ebola is like the Plague, indeed far from it. But viruses are far more mutable (and quicker) than the bacteria. The sinister point is: once the virus is here on the loose, WHO can predict WHEN and in WHAT form it might show up years and years down the road? And why introduce that hellish X-factor when one can quarantine NOW?
Thank you for this info, Jean. I feel more educated.
A meme is a short sound byte that is repeated often by those seeking to promote a particular agenda and soon becomes “common wisdom”. The meme that Sarah Palin was a dunderhead is one of the best examples – seems that today, former W.H. insider Van Jones admitted that she was sharp enough to cause certain Dems. to quake in their respective boots, so she had to be destroyed. The meme worked like a charm after Tina Fey’s line about “seeing Russia from my house” became part of the dialogue and forever attached to Ms. Palin as “fact.”
James, you have really piqued my curiosity. I need to learn about this.
Thanks, Kristy. I had to pick my adjectives by their first letter, but I thought it was eye-catching.
Love the acronym MAAN-UP! If only I did social media to pass it on! I agree completly with you!
Hi, Ms. Susan, hope you guys had a fine holiday…
The reasons for our Government’s lack of genuine quarantine, i.e. banning flights from West African nations where the virus is endemic and epidemic, are far from clear. But the attitude clearly filters down from the Propagandist-in-Chief. Perhaps Mr. Limbaugh most correctly traces the roots of the refusal to quarantine, to the Progressivist liberal posturing that “our country is no better than any other in the world” or “refusing entry to inhabitants of these countries, is cruel, mean-spirited and racist.” This is unfortunate and may turn catastrophic, because those African nations now free of the virus are those that have instituted full quarantine.
A little tale from history deserves repeating. During the 19th century the port of San Francisco harbored ship(s) from the Orient, infested with rats carrying Bubonic Plague. The jobbing Mayor of San Francisco did not want to sully the reputation of his port and harm business, so he refused to institute a quarantine, posturing ‘nothing wrong here, business as usual.’ As a result, the Plague (Yersinia pestis) spread and people died. Even when the plague was subdued and conquered in San Francisco, the infested rats spread out from San Francisco into the deserts of the surrounding stated, where their infected fleas jumped to infest other species. This story was printed in National Geographic over 15 years ago.
For this reason Bubonic Plague is endemic in Western desert states today. Just a very few years ago a young lady in the desert of a Western state halted to pet a prairie dog. She was bitten by a plague-infected flea riding the prairie dog and upon coming home to South Carolina, came down with flu-like symptoms. The medical personnel treated her for the flu and sent her home. By the time the characteristic bubo swellings in the groin appeared, the diagnosis was revised, but for the young lady it was too late. Isn’t this an apt parable of what happens when panderers refuse to quarantine?
Hanna, No holding breath here – too hard to pray that way.
Lora, I’m not even sure what a meme is, so I think you should be advising me, not the other way around. I do know that we cannot give in to despair and that we have to keep on trying to make a difference.
Susan
Hi Susan, I could not have said it better my self, but, don’t hold your breath, Hanna.
Susan,
My problem is that as angry as I get for the sake of my children, I am often torn between the parenting of them and the reprimanding of our politicians. The ones who see it in the trenches, so to speak, are so busy and tired from the trench war to really launch a really effective strategy at the generals in their limousines. I only say this in general terms. It sounds like a great idea to organize and make public accountability a real weapon, not the flimsy and deceitful weapon we often see through the media. In the meantime, my kids need me every day, and sometimes during the night. They are my best hope in many ways.
I also fire off letters to my reps in D.C. I have found that with the turn over of editorial staffs on local papers, my letters no longer get printed there. Maybe I need to learn how to make memes and circulate those around the internet.
Have you got any specific tips on how to personally make those small steps that can become larger leaps and trends? I could use that.
Thanks for your many thoughtful posts, by the way. You both support me in my attempts to parent responsively, and answer lingering issues that I sometimes haven’t managed to even verbalize yet.
-Lora