Some of the Americans participating in the pro-Hamas protests/riots are certainly well meaning and well motivated, acting totally on their own but the tens of thousands of people in NYC and elsewhere who appear must be at least organized by a well supported group of activists. It takes money – lots of money- to support such activities. Whether this money is coming from foreign sources or from progressives here in the U.S. interested causing turmoil to enhance their own agenda is an important question that needs to be answered. Some home-grown participants have admitted they have been influenced by content on tic-toc and instagram. Who is generating all this?

For two years the Republicans have been trying to deal with the abortion issue. The majority of Americans think that abortion should be the right of a woman bearing a child but within limits. The Dems have been wonderfully adept at changing this into the message the GOP wants ‘no abortions’. Making this possible is the effort of highly conservative State Legislators to put stringent restrictions on the timing of abortion.

Even liberal voters who were interviewed often commented that they favored abortion but worried about the possibility of late term abortion. The law of the land is that abortion will be determined by each state. . . that will not change unless both Houses of Congress pass bill to affirm abortion rights nationwide. To me the problem with the national GOP is that they can’t come up with a message to attack the Dems national message.

The GOP has to become more willing to admit their regional restrictions on abortion are killing the party on the national stage. Come on people, look at the big picture or the GOP will keep wondering why they lose elections! Coming out strongly in favor of elective abortion nationally during the first and second trimester and permitting abortion later if two independent physicians (not practicing in the same facility) certify it is necessary for the life of the mother the majority of GOP voters and indepent voters would jump for it. If someone is raped and becomes pregnant they should be able to know it before the end of trimester two.

I’ve been a Republican since my early adult life. I grelive for the GOP after this 2022 generral election because I can’t figure out how they could have wasted an opportunity to totally shame the Dems for their policies over the last two year. The nation still is a fairly moderate one but the GOP empasised the far right message. They let the dems frighten the public over abortion rights as the Repbulican controlled State Legislators pushed total aborrtion bans, and rightfully so. The GOP has to listen, the people wannt abortion only during the early parts of gestation prior to the time the “human being” becomes a “human. perosn”. They bemoan crime but offer support for agressive police action when it occurs rather than accepting and working to prevent the fact that some police action is inappropriate.

The biggest problem they have is with the abortion issue!

It is now seemingly the rule, accepted by everyone at every level of government that prosecutors have total discretion on whom to charge with what crimes. I think that such discretion is a good feature of law enforcement but only when applied in specific individual cases. It can give protection for an individual who commits an act that could fall into various levels of severity and can take into consideration individual factors like mental state, other contributing features surrounding the act and such. Granted even this discretion can be used by prosecutors to bend the law inappropriately. For example, failing to charge a very wealthy individual or a political colleague. Presently it is being used to avoid charging people felt to be victims of oppression. We probably have to accept this undesirable possibilities that exist because of a failure in the morals of the prosecutor to enforce the law equally.

However, there is another feature which is relatively new in prosecutorial discretion. That is when the prosecutor, whether it be District Attorney, State Attorney General, U.S. Attorney or U.S. Attorney General announces that they will not prosecute anyone under certain laws. This has happened with the immigration laws when “sanctuary regions” were declared. The Biden administration has certainly used this in handling the border situation at our southern border. Various law enforcement officers have previously announced they will not enforce various gun laws.

Now, across the country, prosecutors a various levels have announced they will not enforce laws concerning limiting abortions that have been legally passed by state legislators and signed by the governor. This is not a discretion of enforcing a law in an individual case, it is announcing that the law passed no longer has any meaning. This is legislation by administration and should be horrifying to a country supposedly ruled by law. The idea, even promulgated by various politicians, that since the courts have no real ability to enforce their rulings, they don’t have any meaning if the administrative officers disagree. This basically destroys the separation of powers that are the foundation of our Republic and clearly formulated in the Constitution. It reflects a loss of virtue in our public officials who swear to uphold the Constitution. The loss of this virtue is the true basic problem in the U.S. John Adams rightfully observed famously: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Adams also wrote to the effect that the virtue of the officials of a nation only reflect that of the citizens. Now, how can a nation find and prioritize morality and virtue in its citizenry?

I have become increasingly curious about all the emphasis on diversity in the electronic media and the legacy press. Pictures of “America” seem to have to a mixture of races, sometimes, depending on the focus of the story, religions that don’t actually reflect the demographics of what we call the nation. I say that only because it seems like the “nation” is more a mere collection of tribes and victims.

Here we have a single, clearly Anglo-European girl, maybe one Oceanic girl and one SouthEast Asian girl. There are two blacks and one East Asian. Maybe I’m misidentifying one who is actually LatinX. I’m not sure what the guy in the far back is as far as ethnic background is. So is this America? Certainly each group, plus a bunch more exist living in the geographic confines of the United States. Is there a Native American? No Muslim? I always am impressed that the blacks chosen for these pictures are usually light skinned – – rarely the thick browed, flat nosed, real thick lipped people from middle Africa.

I rarely watch current TV drama or “sit-coms”. When I do I am impressed that the cast invariably has either a mixed racial couple, certainly an LGBQT+ couple, sometimes an idiotic fat stupid white man, and nearly all the successful people are of supposedly victimized groups.

I guess what I am saying is that the legacy media of all types is projecting the image that America is not Anglo-European, but predominately people of color, all of whom are described in other venues as victimized by the Anglo-European. It is a subliminal way to totally change the concept of what has been historic America.

Family Visits that are not visits

For a couple months my wife and I have been looking forward to a summer visit from our grandson and grand daughter. Various conversations suggested perhaps a couple weeks. The relation between grandma and grand daughter is very close and they have similar interests in clothing, sewing, cooking, and (currently undesirable) feminine activites. These grand children are junior and senior high school age. The girl is sophisticated, lovely and worldly, having spent time in England in school, and anticipates two years school in Rome. The boy is a more typical American high school senior.

The final visit arrangements were made, but to our grief were to be only 5 days. In addition, the visit was to include the grandson’s girl friend. This was a surprise, for not more than two weeks prior, they had “broken up”. Still, we welcomed the chance to strenghten bonds and learn more about them as they mature, especially after a year of little contact.

Greeting our progengy was wonderful, with hugs, smiles, joint declarations of love given with appropriate declenations to the girl friend, who is indeed a lovely young lady and welome for the visit. Each of these being raised in the south, responding with “yes maam” and “yes sir” to most questions and comments. So sad the “north” has lost this part of bringing up.

The sadness I have for our visit, not yet over, is that so much time is spent with them, and to a lesser degree us, with faces plastered against iphones, ipads, etc. Lunch today was striking to me. At least we had lunch together. Often meals when we would visit in the past in their own home would be individuals grabbing what they felt interesting at the time and then moving off to their own world. Today, everyone sat at a table and (hopefully) enjoyed cold cut sandwiches, fruit, beverage. However, each had a device at their plate. (Tooting my own horn, I didn’t). I tried to make conversation with grand daughter about a book she was reading. That lasted a couple minutes. The wondeful lady of the house was engrossed in a sewing web page. Grandson and girlfriend were in the midst of their e-devices, perhaps playing a game as a team with others on-line. Meal over. Clean up. Youth folk walking off to a local elementary school where “Daddy” attended to ride the swings. Grandma back in her sewing room, proparing and hoping to involve grand daughter in a project before they leave. Grandpa back in his library bitching about life.

My worry is that although our family is actually pretty close, we love each other and really do know about the lives of each, we have lost the ability to easily comunicate as once was present in people. I personally find it harder to have a conversation with someone although during my working life being able to communicate was the basis of it. We complain that the “social media” is impairing communication of political, social, etc. views but I think social media is destroying our ability to physically relate to other people, even those we most love. I must say that the family engaged, and is still engaged in playing Monopoly (day two), and during those times there was active person to person communication and emotional contact of a good kind. Joking, benign arguing, all those kinds of interaction. Leaving the board game changed everything into the e-life of what I have been concerned.

So, what to do? I am guilty as is the love of my life for having an e-life that we entered when seeing the youth in theirs. We should have locked up our devices and tried to kidnap them from theirs. How to do it? I don’t know. I do think that Facebook, Twitter, and similar sites are destroying us slowly, actually taking human contact and turning it into digits. As people we are losing a part of our humanity.

Today I read an essay on the internet (American Thinker) that presented a critique of an article on the Guardian that Apple Pie is basically a racist legacy of Europeans, who brought apples to the Cental North America and “forced it’ on the indigenous people. The continuation of calling apple pie as American merely oppresses everyone except North European descentants of early settlers. I don’t know if this focus on food is only a feature of the United States or not but between concerns that people are oppressing others by giving them the opportunity to eat an ethnic food or on the other hand forbidding them to eat something else and by doing so they would be guilty of “cultural appropriation” I am overwhelmed by anxiety.

I really enjoy eating a piece or pie, whether it is a fruit pie, like apple, cherry, or especially black berry or whether it is a savory pie like a chicken pot pie, a Cornish pasty (my wife’s ethnicity), or an Amish peanut butter pie. I like them especially if the crust is well made; the best are still made with lard. However, I’m not sure if I might be “cancelled” for eating anything but a Schwäbischer Zwiebsearching German ethnic pie. As I looked at the recipe it seems to be a yeast bread crust with basically sort of quiche – – sounds good, as all ethnic foods seem to be. (ref: https://www.daringgourmet.com/zwiebelkuchen-german-onion-pie/) These Europeans didn’t seem worried about incorporting their neighbors recipes at all. I’m quite happy with my German Swiss ethnicity and like sauerkraut, but I like kimchee too.

So now, here in modern woke America we are told that apple pie is basically racist and it is hard to me to understand the number of “Mexican” restaurants around although some are worried about “them” taking over the country. Either the “Mexicans” must eat more than any other ethnic group or there are a lot of us “others” scarfing down their food without permission by the Washington D.C. beltway folks. The other curious thing is that there are so many Americanized Chinese, Thai and (too few) Korean restaurants. I just hope the food police are going to have to live with the world they seem to want to create. Where will it stop? Will I, as a native Ohion be forbidden to eat creamy grits even though both my sons decided to live in the south? When my one son fixes grits for breakfast must I politely decline and breakfast only on tea? Actually I make better grits than he does. If you like I’ll tell you how.

This country is just going to Hades, but that (I think) is a Greco-Roman place so we shouldn’t consider it. For me, the German, I will be assigned a “hall”, perhaps like that referred to in “Thanatopsis” or, less desirable, to be either confined to my grave under the earth (I like more space) or to wander about the land above, ok.

At any rate I hope to be able to eat, whether consumed in a wonderful local restaurant or made in our own kitchen, some great food originally from Mexico, China, Thailand, Korea, Italy, France, England, Germany, Russia, and maybe once in a while Greece and the Middle East. I don’t like African food for some reason, my bad.

I haven’t travelled the “friendly skies” or any other skies since the 9.11 attack on the U.S.  This is mostly because I think the nations effort to “do something” has been ridiculous and more costly than one can imagine.  However even before this my wife and I arranged a wonderful vacation holiday in Great Britain.  The holiday itself was indeed wonderful but traveling to it destroyed any future plans for travel.   Being a bit of a snob thinking that anyone would want to hear of our trip I wrote in a little journal about it.  I include my travel thoughts.

************

On June 13, 1998, we left XXXX by limo which took us to XXXXX,.  The car was a Lincoln towncar and was uneventful.   At Air Canada we asked to have our tickets reissued because the return flights had been changed.  This resulted in many problems, eventually resolved by the agent pasting stickers on them.  We sat about, confident and expectant.  The flight to Toronto was scheduled to leave at 5 pm., going to Toronto by 6 pm. then leaving Toronto at 7 p to arrive at London at 6:45 am. Jun 14.

As the arrival of our plane seemed not to happen, a vague sense of unrest developed.  5 pm. came and departed and we were told that our plane was to come in from Toronto but that Toronto was closed and the poor plane had yet to even take off.

The sense of unrest become worse.  The air plane people had no information about connecting flights but assured us since the Toronto airport was closed, the flights to England would be late.

About 7:340 pm. we left XXXX . At the gate as we left we were told we would not make our flight to England.  They put us on standby for a flight scheduled for 10:45, already overbooked.  Then the agents computer screen changed and yet another person put us on a flight to Glasgow.

We travelled along.  In Toronto we found we were indeed going to Glasgow, Scotland, then to London arriving there about 12:15. June 14.  We asked where the luggage might be.  We were told to go to another area.  There a helpful man called the back room and assured us it would be on the 10:45 flight direct to London and we could pick it up there.

Time goes by.   The plane to Glasgow is roomy.  We have 3 seats for 2 people.  We eat, we drink, we get tired, we do not sleep.  We worry.   I worry a lot.  It is June 14.

In Glasgow we wait, then board a plane to London.  The immigration people stamp our passports but do little else but produce lines.

London has the largest international airport in the world.  We walk over much of it.  A bus takes us to another terminal where an Air Canada agent assured us our baggage would be.   At terminal 3 however, our baggage was not.   We then found that it had not left XXXXX (our site of original departure).

(snip….. we reached our hotel) .   We tried to sleep.  In the evening we met the tour guide, a rather bubbling lady and the other tour folk . We then joined a couple for what was to have been a very light snack, but turned out to be a 2 1/2 hour meal at a nearby restaurant.

We found most people on the tour had been in London 1 – 3 days already and were rested, had seen the Queen troop the colors, had visited the nearby Herrods store, looked at the flower gardens and had received the luggage.

ON June 15, I woke about 3:30 am and spent the next couple of hours watching the crack of light in the drape get brighter.  Brightness occurs slowly and the rosy fingered dawn of Homer is not seen in London.

*******

It took two more days before our luggage found us.  I must admit that the tour of Great Britain was superb and remains a wonderful memory until the trip back to the US.  Then we boarded a plane and I was seated with my wife on one side of an aisle and myself on the other.  We were surrounded by many people from many countries who seemed to reek of smells from their bodies, their breaths, and Lord knows from what other part.  My wife and I kept exchanging scented wipes to hold under our noses for the flight.   Not surprisingly our luggage didn’t quite make it back to the US for two days.

So although I would love to visit international places like the Balkans, Constantinople, Greece, Egypt and Asia, I’ll just have to look at videos and imagine being there – – it’s  close enough for me.  Actually we did a cruise once – – another total disaster but that’s another tale.

Unfortunately our government continues to ignore the crisis that is immigration into this country except to bemoan the problems of handling illegal immigrants.    The problem is that there are multiple conflicting aspects of immigration.  Firstly is that there is a need for more workers.   I believe  Americans are unwilling to actually work in the agricultural fields, the meat packing plants, be hotel workers and the landscapers and other difficult and unpleasant jobs.  These jobs are worthwhile, can provide an ability to support one’s self and family but too many Americans are lazy.   We therefore need immigrants.

Secondly there should be a need to prevent those who attempt to come here to further their own agenda rather than melding into our country.  Those who attempt to enter because they are felons in their own country,  those who wish to destroy the existing culture and replace it with theirs should be excluded.  This is a very complex problem because the Hispanic population is Christian and could easily become included into our society.  However, their culture is more Southern European and subsequently Central and South American rather than the North European culture that has been the historic culture of the United States.

An easier question is the introduction of Muslims to the United States.  The culture of the middle east is one of tribalism and subjection of the individual to higher authority.  The north European culture is more Greco-Roman where individual rights and freedom take priority.  Then there is the problem that the world of Islam claims that any other should be killed and destroyed.  This is publicly said often in the present times.  Some have even said that their proclivity to reproduction will be the key to overcoming the non-Islamic peoples.

Next is the problem of poverty stricken people who look at this country as being able to give them —  give being the operative word – – education, basic support, health care and the ability to bring their relatives into the country.  These people are a scourge to our society.  Certainly these are merely a portion of those arriving at the borders but presently they represent a large group at the southern United States.

The southern border should be closed and Congress must address this “asylum” issue where tens of thousands can show up and claim “asylum” because they are poor.  1.6 billion people in the world are poor.  Should the United States welcome them into our country?  I say a resounding NO.