No More Virgins, No More
Whores
When did we, the Boomers, loose our
political virginity? Was it that awful day when President
Kennedy was murdered in Dallas? I think it was, because that was
the day we realized that political figures were indeed just as human
as we are, they could be killed. I believe, up until that
day, we innocently believed that Presidents were special in that they
were guaranteed a long life and a natural death. Pop! A bubble
popped and we subconsciously lost some of our beliefs that politicians
were super people like the characters in the fairy tales we had grown
up with. It took us a while to absorb that and to follow the
line of reasoning that if they could be killed, what else was human
about them?
Then along came Richard Nixon with his
lies and his Watergate problems. Now we realized that not only
could political figures be killed, they could lie and actually be bad
people. Pop! Another bubble popped and this time we
were old enough to no longer be living in a fairy tale, we were young
adults and we caught on fast. This is when we started to
question politicians instead of just accepting that they were always
good and always looking out for us. We discovered that a
politician just might have his own agenda and that agenda might
not include what was best for our country. Our solace was that
the system could and would correct itself. Because of courts and
accusers, Nixon was eliminated from the whitehouse and we, even though
we no longer held our fairy tale fantasies, we held a true belief that
there could be bad Presidents but we would be able to expel them,
thanks to our tried and true laws.
When questions arose in the Reagan and
Bush Sr. whitehouse we didn't panic because we trusted our laws
to come to our aid and for the most part they did.
Now we felt we could take a deep breath and relax, because the
Constitution would snare anyone in the whitehouse who delved into
corruption. We no longer lived in fairy tales, but we felt that
we could rely on our fairy godmother, the Constitution of the
United States.
Then came President Clinton and for the
first time one of us was in charge. We knew the
experiences that he knew. He grew up when we did and we believed
he had also learned that politicians were just human, not super human.
He knew that we were aware that politicians could abuse their
power and he knew if he did, we would be wise to him. He knew we
had learned to ask questions and demand answers. We believed
that what we wanted for our country was what he wanted for our
country. And happily we were correct. President Clinton,
unlike Nixon, was in the whitehouse to look after us and put the
future of the country before anything else. Then he slipped, he
had a sexual experience and he lied about it. Pop! Another
bubble popped because now we realized that even a President can have
human weaknesses. Most of us weren't concerned because the lie
he told did not, in any way, harm the progress he had made during his
time as President. But we were about to experience yet another
popped bubble because we were about to learn that good Presidents
could be impeached, not for harming the country but for angering the
other political party. Our laws could be used for negative
purposes with negative results. Someone had figured out a way to
make our fairy godmother into a dangerous witch.
We began to get angry because now we
realized that the laws that we thought were there to protect us,
could be turned upside down and be used to harm us. That anger
built because we could see no way to avoid this happening again in the
future. We became afraid and distrusting of many of our old
comfort thoughts. We were confused but we still held out hope.
We believed our fairy godmother would come to her senses. We
believed we could rehabilitate our faith in her and our ideals.
The election of 2000 popped our last
bubble. Pop! We found out that elections can be
maneuvered. Our votes were no longer our sword.
We had been robbed of our voice. We had believed that no matter
what, our vote would always be counted. We knew we would not
always be in the majority, but we believed we had a fair chance to
express our opinions through our vote. When the Supreme Court
stopped the vote count in Florida, so many bubbles popped that it made
a terrifying noise. We saw that, even though we had cast
our votes, they didn't have to be counted in order to determine who
the next President would be. Now our anger had risen to an all
time new high. We were angry and we were frustrated. How
could this happen? Who had figured out a way to avoid electing
our President and why?
George bush took office and then it
began. We truly didn't believe we could be more angry, but we
were wrong. Now we had a President that we did not elect and he
was declaring wars that we did not believe in. We lost our jobs
and we lost our financial security. We lost so many things
so very fast that we became ill from the vacuum. We were woozy
because we were seeing our trust and our freedoms flying away at
an incredible speed. Where were we? What was happening?
Why was it happening?
We felt this had to be a bad dream but now
we realize that it isn't. This is a reality we would
have never imagined. We realize that the bush administration is
treating us like whores. They are taking our freedoms from
us and telling us that they are repaying us by guaranteeing us
our national security. They tell us that we should
give them whatever they want and be happy to be rewarded with their
generous lies. It has become clear that our fairy godmother is
being held hostage by the bush administration and she is allowed no
visitors.
Now is the time for us to think
back. Now is the time for us to look forward. Now we
have to regroup and become strong again. We will never be
virgins again and we must never again be treated as whores.
We have to realize that our strength in the future can be the result
of our lessons learned from the past. It's time for us to
clear our heads of the weight of the anger. It's time to
plan for the rescue of our fairy godmother.
The bush administration seems to think we
will, like in a fairy tale, cower and fear the ogre, that we will
quietely stand by and allow them to take away our freedoms and our
Constitution. Well, we aren't the silent generation and we
aren't the generation of quitters, we are the generation of
Boomers and if we stand together we can pop some big bubbles of
our own.
I am a mom to Murphy (my precious pup) and Fred
(my occasionally precious cat).
I share my life, my laughter, my world and
all of my love with my husband and have for 16 years.
I would describe myself as a very sentimental
and sensitive person who is forever willing to share my point of
view whether or not it has been requested of me. This
article is copyright by Patricia Ernest, originally published
by opednews.com Permission is
granted to forward this or to place it on a website as long as the
article is included intact, including this statement. New!
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