MOVING ON.....2024

A Note From The Author: Jacqueline E. Hughes

I am so happy to welcome in the new year, 2024!!! My Blog is changing-up a bit....mainly because I am evolving. Travel will always take precedence in my life and, my journeys will be shared with you. This 2024 version will offer a variety of new stories and personal ideas, as well. This is all about having fun and enjoying this Beautiful Journey called......Life!!!

Thursday, December 15, 2016

THE TASK OF MAKING AMERICA SMART AGAIN.....?



A series of essays.....






.....as seen through my eyes!




By: Jacqueline E. Hughes
 


To make America smart again, you would have to assume that it was smart to begin with.

And, it was....before Washington D.C. became 'the swamp' following the November 8 election, it was known as a fair and balanced ecosystem that incorporated all people, faiths, and ideologies within its borders. It was quickly drained of its kindness and left vulnerable and open to greed, fear, and foreign influence!

As a young child living with my parents, older brother and, eventually, my two younger brothers, I was young, naive, and authority figures surrounded my everyday life. They wore grown-up clothes which included suits and ties, long black 'habits' that covered everything with the exception of their face and hands, and high-necked dresses adorned with silver chains from which a studious-looking pair of eyeglasses dangled from, often resembling an awkward piece of sculpture resting on their bosom. Authoritarianism.

This doesn't include the male authority figure who would preside at daily mass and then hide in a small cupboard as he listened to our sins, offered the forgiveness of God, and then sent us out of the cupboard to pray for that forgiveness. I can recall being on the playground when this holy man would stride through us kids on his way from the Rectory to the school building. We would all silently pray that he could not recognize our voices, connect them with our faces, and know what we individually confessed to him during the week! Humbleness.

Our respect for policemen went without saying. They were there to protect us from evil. Although, at such a young age, I really didn't know what that evil consisted of. Those were the days, as well, when the family doctor came calling at our house to check my throat and take my temperature before telling my parents that I had strep throat.....again, and would have to bed rest and take his prescribed medication. Consolation.

Growing older, my world greatly expanded and my own thoughts, lifestyle, and habits began to mold and shape my individualism and formulate my ideas as an adolescent and young adult. Maturity.

Fear was an obsolete term for me as I approached adulthood. I may have only applied it to the fact that I feared losing my parents one day....the only authority figures who, whether out of love or heavy doses of pure guilt, would always have the power to affect my life like no one else could. Loyalty.



I am, significantly, older now. I have lived through so much while making many decisions along with minor/major life changes. I have become book-smart, responsible, commonsensical, often goofy and carefree, with one of my greatest attributes being the ability to listen. It has always been a pleasure of mine to listen to what others have to say. Everyone is important and everyone has something they need to tell someone else. But, not everyone has the patience to just.....listen to them.

Aging and living a full life has taught me how important all of life's lessons are, whether good, bad, or indifferent.

Now that I am older, the level of my intelligence, I've determined, is not measured by an I.Q. rating or how many Facebook quizzes have been aced recently. Rather, it is based upon the observance of what is going on and being said and being acted upon (or not) within this amazing world we live in. 

Admittedly, we now live in a world of massive doses of positive and negative stimulus, mainly due to social media. Does having all of this information, literally at our fingertips, make us smarter? Or, is it information overload at its most ineffectiveness? Having graciously earned senior adult status, I have a few things to say about this.....

While I was living out my childhood under the thumb of the authority figures who impacted everyday life, I, more than likely, was making mental notes about what was going on within my own small world. Did I know or care about who the President of the United States was, what his job or purpose was? No.

What I did note was what influenced me the most at the time, which included how my parents treated one another, what my closest relatives (including grandparents) taught us about the world and the people around us, the importance of an older brother obtaining a college education, and the unimportance of girls, in general, achieving that same goal. How all young girls needed to protect their innocence, remain chaste, and never give in to their instinctive feelings or emotions. And yet....a boy wasn't considered a man until he had had sex for the first time! No double-standards here!!

When you stop to think about it, children growing up in the 1950's were primed and in full acceptance of their beliefs and experiences that were to follow in the mid-1960's. 

Simply stated....we had had enough!

We evolved into free-thinkers with an education and the ability to discuss with our peers the challenges, insecurities, and inequalities that made-up our lives, including the working establishment that we knew we could not avoid if we were to survive in this world. We remembered how many of our Mothers had been treated as second-class citizens by our own Fathers. How our relatives preached white supremacy under the guise of self-protection from the Negros that could do us bodily harm. And, how, as a young woman, we were guilty of 'leading men on' by the style of clothes we wore, if we filed our nails in the public eye, or if the kids we hung around with lived on the 'wrong side' of the tracks. Ah! No bigotry or racism there!

Sitting here pounding the keys of my i-Pad today, having already lived through many Presidents, some bad and some better than most, it's difficult to wake up in the morning without thinking about what is transpiring on the political scene today, in this case somewhere between Washington D.C. and a golden tower on Fifth Avenue in New York City. I, literally, attempt to suppress my feelings of fear and anxiety about the future by keeping myself away from cable news and Facebook. How's that working for you, kid? Admittedly, not very well. 

Always questioning what is going on around me, I decided to analyze the slogan made famous on the 'chapeau rouge' worn by this President-elect throughout his campaign. "Make America Great Again!" Thinking back far into my own childhood, I tried to recall what made America great back then and for whom was it so great and wonderful? 

Certainly not for many females, especially when, even in the mid to late 1960's, they were told that sending them to college was a waste of time and money. Certainly not for the poor who earned minimum wages while attempting to put food on the table each day. Certainly not for a person of color who had to fight for his/her equality every waking moment and were chided and controlled by a military force known as the local police. And, certainly not for the lonely, oppressed Mother who made the decision not to have more children even if it meant bleeding to death by a wire coat hanger knowing that this was the only way she had control of her own body......

Basic control over what others may say and do.....is that what this new administration believes will make America great again? 

In Baton Rouge, Louisiana earlier this week, after having recently won the title of Person of the Year by Time Magazine, the President-elect was openly complaining to his constituents that this title used to be called Man of the Year before adapting to the (in his words) politically correct version of 'Person.' Evidently, making America manly once again by not acknowledging the hard work of women or the presence of strong women within our society, will aid him in making America great again!!!

Being a woman and having two strong woman as daughters who, in turn, have introduced to the world three amazingly intelligent daughters of their own.....  I REFUSE to go backwards into the future. Especially, not back into the dark ages of our country's history where equality among people as a whole was non-existent, most men and women had no designs on their own destiny, and absolute power was in the hands of a few rich, mature white men.

The definitive progress made by mankind in the last several decades that was guided by mutual respect and understanding for one another is about as far back in time as I choose to go. Most of us have worked way too hard to have all of our long fought battles reversed by people who just wanted to shake-up our government, take back jobs that have been mechanized and are non-existent, who failed to understand that lies and deception are the new rules and guidelines set-up by the very person they voted for, and taking the benefits of a decent life of education, health care, earned rights of Social Security benefits and Medicare back into the dark ages.

If 'The Dumbing-Up of America' serves the handful of filthy rich and greedy characters that desire to deny Americans their basic freedoms, then hope will go by the wayside. The once great United States of America will tumble into a heap of rubble that cannot and will not be respected by the rest of the world. That decline has already become evident to many of us.

Is it too late, fellow Americans, to 'Make America Smart Again?' If it isn't, we had better get our act together NOW and do something to renew our Hope and Faith in a nation that is quickly melting into the hands of foreign powers, unhealthy greed, and the frigid bonds of dictatorship.


Copyright © 2016 by Jacqueline E. Hughes
All rights reserved
                                                                                  









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