I am a native born American. I have some Native-American blood that runs through my veins but not enough to claim to be Native-American. Still, I was born in Oklahoma and grew up in the USA. Many times I have been proud of my heritage and my country, and a few times I have been ashamed. Does that make me unpatriotic or un-American to be ashamed of this great nation? Perhaps but I don’t care. My world view sees way beyond these shores to the hunger, starvation and dying children in South Africa and the millions of refugees fleeing places like Syria, thanks to religious extremism that brings violence and hatred instead of peace and love to third world countries in the Middle East.
I have seen several presidents come and go in my lifetime; the first one I remembered was John F. Kennedy and I was about nine when he was assassinated. I know the sadness and the tears it brought for many, though I didn’t understand at the time. JFK was a great man and a great president, and there are few that could claim such greatness.
I also remember the shame Richard Nixon brought to the White House because he sought to cover up the Watergate break in (What a crook!). I also remember how many looked up to, and even admired Ronald Reagan, though I was not one of them and I’m still not. Part of that had to do with the fact that I am gay and it was during his presidency that AIDS first ravaged the gay men’s community, where thousands became deathly ill and died without a hope in sight for a cure, and many of those who died were my friends. So yeah, it was personal. I also remember how he ignored it because it was a gay men’s crisis and not prevalent to the heterosexual community at large and no federal dollars were allocated at that time to what had become an epidemic of huge proportions. Those who were dying didn’t matter to a man who spent most of his presidency playing marionette to a bunch of rich puppet masters.
Yet it was not only the AIDS crisis that formed my opinion of Ronald Reagan but it was also because for part of his presidency, I was involved in a homeless shelter in Los Angeles. I witnessed firsthand what his policies did concerning many of the elderly who were mentally ill and in institutions because they were unable to care for themselves. His desire to cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy put many of those people on the street to fend for themselves, and become a large segment of the homeless community, as he looked for ways to cut social programs to pay for those hefty tax cuts for his wealthy benefactors.
I was also thrilled when Bill Clinton moved into the White House and our economy improved, thanks to balancing the federal deficit that left us with a Social Security surplus. Certainly, I was ashamed of him for his dalliances with Monica Lewinsky and other women (what a sleazebag) but then, he still excelled at working with and standing up to a disagreeable Congress to fix the economy and at fulfilling his duties as president.
Then George W. Bush moved into the White House after being awarded the presidency by the U.S. Supreme Court, and again tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy took center stage, along with two wars, one unjustified and built on lies, thanks to an administration overzealous to bring down Iraq’s then president, Saddam Hussein. By the end of his presidency, any surplus had been depleted by tax cuts for billionaires and millionaires and Bush’s “home ownership society” went belly up along with the nation’s economy.
Oh who to blame. I know, the new president, Barack Obama. Somehow the deep recession that the Bush administration left us in, became his problem, and as the economy continued to tank with a huge bailout provided to the big banks and financial institutions, which had played fast and loose with Americans’ money as though it was their own to spend like compulsive gamblers at a roulette table.
No, it didn’t take long at all for those on the right to forget all about how bad things were before Obama took office, suddenly it was his fault that things didn’t improve and that we were trillions more in debt. Even now, after millions of jobs created and with record highs in the stock market, Obama is somehow at fault for all the ills of the nation, and the world.
For me, Barack Obama is a great man, as great as I remember any president to be in my lifetime. No, he didn’t fix everything as he is only part of one branch of the federal government. There are two more. One of those branches, which is the branch that creates law and passes laws that supposed to help America, Congress or the legislative branch; was controlled by the GOP for most of Obama’s presidency. Except for the first part in which he and a Democratic controlled congress passed America’s first actual universal health care program, something that needed to be done for decades, but past presidents and congresses failed to do so, mostly because it was an issue that would put political careers on the line. In other words, it took courage, something rare in any politician, Democrat, Republican or Independent.
Once the Republican Party swept up enough seats during the mid-terms to take control of Congress, it became the party of no compromises and the party that was set on making Barack Obama’s presidency a failure, even at the jeopardy of the nation’s well-being. It was easy to do by playing to the bigotry and ignorance prevalent of the base of the Republican Party. Those same people who could be counted on to pour out in droves during a midterm election, stirred up by politicians and right-wing pundits spewing nonsense about the current president’s birth place and religion.
For six long years the GOP has stomped on anything that Barack Obama has tried to accomplish. Its members even spent a great deal of their time just trying to rollback his greatest accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, not caring what it did to the millions who finally had health care because of it. The Affordable Care Act definitely is not perfect and needs fixing but it’s the best thing we have gotten since the New Deal by FDR. Its support has been tough from both sides, with Republicans wanting to repeal it completely and Democrats wanting to add a single-payer option, which to me is the right thing to do because cutting out the middle-man, the health insurance industry, will make health care a lot more affordable – a shout out to Bernie Sanders on that one: Medicare for all.
And now here we are in the final year of Obama’s presidency and Republicans once again want their hands on the White House, along with continued control of our congress. To do what, you might ask? Always the answer is the same: cut taxes for billionaires and millionaires, cut social programs for everyone else to pay for those tax cuts, along with more promises to repeal the Affordable Care Act and again put the working poor, back in to long waits in the emergency rooms across America, and only after they have finally grown so sick that they’re knocking at death’s door, with no place else to turn to. Been there, done that.
The man to lead the pack for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump, himself one of those billionaires that will stand to profit if Republicans get their way, has made it clear his intentions when it comes to Hispanics, Muslims and anyone else who does not fit into the Republican Party’s idea of what some of them are calling the party of inclusiveness. If that’s inclusiveness, I’d really be curious to see what exclusiveness would look like.
The second in line isn’t much better, Ted Cruz, who also is calling for the end of the Affordable Care Act and no breaks for undocumented immigrants, even though he himself wasn’t born in America. Where is the birther movement now? Double standard, or is it just about the color of one’s skin?
And, if any of these two men can get elected by enough Americans to put one of them into the White House: it’s not my America anymore. Is it yours?