
Sitting Here On Capitol Hill

It’s July of 1936 on Boston’s Revere Beach, populated with exuberant young people of presumably many different ethnicities and many immigrant groups. It should make you smile to see such joy. “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn” (Romans 12:15). However, with today’s skewed lens, it might immediately trigger folks who see too much white, lumping all of these faces into one category. Diversity is present in many ways. Retrain your brain to stop being offended. Stop being triggered. I thought judging by skin color was what we were trying not to do 60 years ago. I seem to recall a “content of their character” speech by an inspiring orator who would have been horrified by the present agenda, and how HARD IT IS TRYING to create more and more division. MLK wanted us to focus less on skin color, while today’s leadership wants us to focus 24/7 on skin color. Pedophiles, adulterers, rapists, terrorists? Turn the other way. But too little melanin? You’re the problem.
Frankly, I can’t believe this beach is even still called Revere Beach, since I’m pretty sure Paul Revere was white. His father was a French Huguenot, and that is precisely the kind of European white that you are not allowed to be. Perhaps one will soon be able to reassign or reidentify their ancestry, in essence, lie or pretend. You can imagine how hard this is on me, able only to celebrate my Cuban half, because being hispanic is celebratable, but not my Scotch-Irish half, because poor Irish folks were pink and clearly oppressors.
First off, the sins of your fathers are not your sins. Secondly, most of your fathers are being blamed for sins they never even committed, by folks who aren’t super clear on what a sin actually is. Thirdly, a father is different than a mother and has different roles to play because men and women are inherently different and balance each other out. No gender is better (out of the two that exist), and no race is superior out of the myriad that exist.
You can also imagine how hard this 2021 brainwashing is on me, knowing my love for Coke, oft-chronicled on this blog, while not endorsing their recent “be less white” training. It seems inconsistent in this world of, “You do you and let your freak flag fly,” but the truth is–only some of you can do you. And God help you if you’re a white man (I shudder to even type it) because you are exactly everything that was wrong with the former Mr. Potato Head. Maleness is shameful, and the neutering is going exactly as planned, Mein Führer. If penises are offensive now, which was only the implication of Mr. Starch Head, not the physical manifestation, then how long until the Berenstain Bears go the way of poor Dr. Seuss? After all, they DO DECLARE the reality of two genders.
At least they are brown and not polar white, like the Coke beast, which is polar-izing. Guess what, kids? Not everyone gets to be a mother, and not everyone gets to be a father, no matter how much you mutilate your body. Chromosomes tell the truth. Do we want to be authentic, or do we want to make up stories about ourselves and create “personal narratives”? Lies. How long before the cancel culture agenda takes out icons like Mr. Rogers and Bob Ross and Steve Irwin? Oh, it won’t be long, folks. History is being retold. So I’ll keep sharing these pics from the past with the reality of the circumstances before it is deleted or altered to fit the current PC agenda.
This is a picture of happy beach-goers smack dab in the middle of the Depression, trying their damnedest to enjoy life despite awful circumstances, kind of like what we’ve been doing for the last year. Most of them rented their swimsuits from the city, who laundered more than 100,000 suits that Sunday. Most of them descended from hardworking immigrants who came to this country, searching for freedom from socialist or communist or oppressive countries that devalued them. Actually, just posing for this shot was a new freedom, because even visiting the beach on a Sunday was, at one point, a crime. So just to be clear, this was not a white supremacist rally. It was not a group of Italians gathering to decide how to destroy their Polish neighbors. It was not insurrectionists storming the lifeguard’s chair. It was not a picture full of hate because most Americans do not carry hate in their hearts. Sorry to upset you, media, but we don’t. We don’t use hate speech and we don’t hate any skin color and we base our judgments on whether people are kind or whether they are jerks. Don’t fall for the pathetic attempts to divide. Don’t hate yourself for the way God knit you in your mother’s womb. He knew what He was doing when He made you, and that is nothing for which to apologize.
The calendar flipped, the digit increased, and here we are in a new year. But what will change? What will stay the same? We sit and wait with baited breath.
Will we get our piddly $600 stimulus checks? Possibly. Will Eygpt get 1.4 billion in aid from US taxpayers? Undoubtedly. Because isn’t that we why work a 40 hour week anyway, while businesses and restaurants around us go bankrupt, disappearing with each new week? Let’s hand oxygen masks to countries who hate us while our own are just out of reach. Seems like an elevated way to give the bully our lunch money. So we sit and wait. Wait on assistance. Wait on the numbers to go down, for the news to spout something encouraging, wait on the new regime, wait for the world to once again flip the CLOSED sign to OPEN.
Let’s hope the pessimistic leader-elect’s gloomy prediction of a dark winter proves false. Love him or hate him, all our leaders need our prayers now. Don’t we all want our country to thrive and be united? Seems like a pipe dream, but I believe many Americans are hopeful.
So we applaud the arrival of a new year, albeit with trepidation.
The vaccine is here, and I know several folks now who have received it, all of them working in hospitals. There is light at the end of the tunnel. There is hope. There is always hope.
Let me qualify that. Male Puerto Ricans. Puertorriqueños. From his bangs to his jaunty mustache, to his feminized clunky yellow sandals, to his flesh belt matching flesh socks, to his choice of stool, everything is wrong wrong wrong. Even 41 years later, his lady friend looks stylish and composed. But Enrique, not so much. I mean, look at his jean hem! Look at the cut of it!
I know Puerto Rico wants to be able to vote, and I don’t blame them. Really, the main barrier I can see is that we’d have to add another star to our flag, and OCD people would go nuts with an odd number of states. It wouldn’t line up correctly on the flag. We’d have to adopt yet another state to make it even. Or Texas could secede! Most folks my age still think we have nine planets; we’re not going to suddenly remember 51 states. Or we’ll say it with finger quotes, as if it isn’t real yet.
But maybe Enrique’s problem was that he was lit, juiced up on the rum for which he was plugging in this ad.
The thing is, they knew they were being photographed. Ingrid should have offered spously guidance. Could they even possibly still be married, after this atrocity? Or is the rum that good?
We didn’t know what to expect of our local polling place, a quick four minute drive from our home, when we stopped by this morning. Several cars lined the stretch of street up to the town hall, but to our surprise, no line existed. We donned our masks, went inside, handed them our registration cards and ID, used the touch screen in the polling booth, and were back in our car four minutes later. Add our names to the 21,500 early voters in our county so far. Easy peasy, life in the suburbs. Glad that’s done.
This billboard was situated on Elizabeth Street in Sydney, Australia, advertising Kiwi Shoe Polish, with an image of an unidentified man who coincidentally, bore a strong resemblance to the current president of the United States. Evidently, FDR had not authorized use of his likeness. I can’t imagine that a billboard in the US of an Australia Prime Minister would help sales of shoe polish over here. In fact, I doubt any of us could name one Australian Prime Minister.
This all seems fishy. Let’s print it!
Networks don’t care about accuracy. They want ratings. Unity doesn’t get viewers. So why not flat-out tell lies, “change the narrative,” incite violence and unrest, and frighten folks with the scariest topics we can find. Corona! Lockdown! Second wave! Riots! Wildfires! Floods! Division! Your neighbor hates you and always has! The economy is sinking! What about your 401K? And all this followed by that incessant Boy Scout rape commercial that lasts about four minutes. Wouldn’t it be nice to watch a Good News network? Journalists, tell us something positive!
Let’s call the editor and give her a piece of what for.
What’s that? A march for hope and joy? People lining the streets with smiles on their faces? What’s that? We have more in common with each other than what separates us?
Sure, 2020 sucks. No doubt about it. And it does seem to be getting worse–and getting better and getting worse. But, hey, you and I are still alive to blog. Most of us probably even had the virus by now. But, wait! You’ll have everlasting side effects that destroy your health! Maybe, but life is a crapshoot. Any day we wake up is a gift. No guarantees.
At least we can still spin some vinyl.
We can still dance, if only with one partner, or even by ourselves.
We can still buy hats–or even masks that reflect our political, religious, or social ideologies–if that floats your boat.
We can nap and read periodicals.
We can still drive.
And most of us can still eat out.
And guess what? When the holiday season starts in one month, we can start wearing festive Christmas sweaters again.
Who can be sad with reindeer on their chests?
So just remember, it’s okay to relate to this.
But don’t forget this: