Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

I guess maybe I am a bit behind in current events, although it is more likely that I tend to try to keep my head buried in the sand when I see stupid things going on in the world. The latest head scratcher is the push by the folks on the coasts to get Oprah to run for President. Now, before any of you book club fans of hers get all up in arms, I’m not saying she wouldn’t do a good job, but I wonder where this sudden excitement about celebrities being leaders comes from?

We can probably blame this all on Minnesota, when if you think about it seems to be an easy target for most everything that is wrong these days. It was the friendly folks of ten thousand lakes that brought Jesse “the body’ Ventura from wrestling bad boy into the governor’s mansion and set forth this weird relationship that we normal citizens have with celebrities. We had Sonny Bono for a time, Al Franken and even John Walton himself serve their respective constituencies and those of us in Iowa can’t look that far down our noses either. Remember the ill-fated attempt by Gopher to run for Governor of this state?

Perhaps we brought this on ourselves. We elected a Hollywood actor as President in my lifetime and even though there were times that we all wondered aloud if he was really all there, Ronald Reagan turned out to be pretty high up on the chart of favorite past presidents. Maybe we thought that somewhere in the world of glamor and glitz there was another Gipper who would bring us back into those glory days? Unfortunately it seems that we instead ended up with a fellow who probably should have been sent to the corner a time or two by his mom for acting out and tends to twitter before he thinks.

I’m all for electing someone new, but if the Hollywood elite think that trotting out our beloved queen of day time talk television is the answer they still don’t understand the real question. Come on now folks, I will say that I voted for the current occupant of the White House, only because I didn’t trust his opponent and there are more than a few times I wished that the Democratic party would trot someone into the limelight that was a little more Harry Truman and a little less Nancy Pelosi to swing my vote the other way.

In the current Hollywood fad, the phrase “Me too” and “Not anymore” are bantered around in the similar context as “Black lives matter” which is doing a great disservice to either of the causes that are important enough that they should be an open dialog to find corrective and long lasting solutions. But when the same ones who are standing up throwing men under the bus for deplorable behavior are the same ones who kept quiet in order to further their careers or worse yet, championed the fellow from Arkansas who couldn’t define what “is” was and took liberties with a female intern, well, that just like rubbing a cats fur backwards. I won’t for one second say that sexual harassment doesn’t exist and that there is way too much quid pro quo in to many important places. But what about every young man who has been teased by a girl for how he looked, or what he dressed? Who was made to feel like no one liked him? And what of those females who have used the system to further their careers and line their pocketbooks by false claims against innocent men who lost jobs because of it? It happens more than you or I care to believe, and yet I don’t see anyone standing up saying that behavior is wrong either. I don’t condone what has occurred in the seedy backrooms and on casting couches, but there has to be a middle line where a compliment is a compliment and not some sexually charged advance.

Maybe we need to start talking about the things that connect us, rather than concentrating on those which divide us right out of the gate. You will never get very far in understanding someone else’s position or motive if your spending so much time flapping your gums trying to shout over someone else. I can’t learn from you or about your issue, if you aren’t willing to let me know who you are, and aren’t willing to do the same in return to me. Oh yes folks, there it is again. It always seems to come back to the Golden Rule doesn’t it? But then again, it probably is pretty hard to ever get your way if you actually have to treat people with decency and respect. It’s been proven time and time again that the best way to afford a change in people would be to brow beat them and only take part of an issue in your argument. Dr. King certainly would be ashamed of us wouldn’t he? Seems like we could all use a little more of him these days. See you next week…remember, we’re all in this together.