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
