Pledging Allegiance to a Flag that Has Not Pledged Allegiance to You

In 1965, author James Baldwin debated Conservative writer and political commentator William F. Buckley at Cambridge University. The event took place not long after Baldwin, residing in France, had recuperated from an illness that had sapped him of his strength, but he was well enough in February of that year to make the trip to Cambridge University and face Buckley.

The subject that they were to debate was “The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro.” Baldwin went first, and he spoke with a quiet fire, clarity, and passion in a way that seemed to hold the roomful of students spellbound. He had no notes. He merely spoke. His words were riveting and biting at the same time; he shared the raw truth about being Black in America and that experience, in all of its fullness, did not require notes or a script to make his points.

He said many things in that speech that hit hard but his description of what it was like to grow up Black in America was particularly powerful. He said that it was a unique experience to realize as a child “that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance… has not pledged allegiance to you,” to be shocked to discover that “although you are rooting for Gary Cooper “ as he kills Indians, the Indians are you.”

I found myself wishing that I could have seen Buckley’s face as Baldwin spoke. The truth he was sharing was as raw as it was painful. Baldwin continued. “I picked the cotton …under someone else’s whip for nothing. For nothing!’

We can all remember saying the pledge, putting our hands over our hearts and pledging fealty to this country and therefore to its flag. I realized that in my own mind we all pledge allegiance to a country and its government that has not pledged allegiance to us. The flag is a symbol of a country whose leaders have felt little compunction over the course of its life to create policies that respect the full humanity of all who live here.

I can remember, as a child who sang in a district choir in Detroit singing “pro-America” songs. I still remember the lyrics of one:

I love the United States of America!

I love the way we all live without fear!

I like to vote for my choice, speak my mind, raise my voice

Yes, L like it here!

I like the United States of America

I am thankful each day of the year!

For I can do as I please ‘cause I’m free as the breeze,

Yes, I like it here!

I like to climb to the top of a mountain so high

Lift my head to the sky

And say how grateful am I

For the the way that I’m working, and helping and giving

And doing the things I hold dear!

Yes, I like it! I like it!
I like it here!

All of us in that integrated choir sang our hearts out – with all of our songs – but there was a special and unique energy that I can remember when we sang the songs about “our country.” We sang the songs. We pledged allegiance to the flag. And we believed that this country was a safe place that afforded liberty and justice to everyone.

I didn’t know – nor did my choirmates know – that this was a country that denied rights and equality to many who love it. I had not witnessed the evidence of racial, ethnic, class, and religious bigotry. I did not know about buses that made Black people sit in the back, neighborhoods that were manipulated to be all white or all Black, and I did not know that Black people who had served in this country’s wars did not earn a place in the line for benefits for veterans once they returned home. I had no idea that Black soldiers were too often lynched – while still in uniform – when they returned from those wars. They were fighting for their country, but it was not enough to dissolve the curse of racism that was baked into the foundation of this country.

When Baldwin said that we pledge allegiance to a flag that has “not pledged allegiance to you,” I felt myself take a small gasp. I had never thought of the plight of so many people here for whom that sentence holds true. It is such a simple truth, but we don’t often think of it that way, with those words. It is a jarring truth.

When Baldwin finished his side of the debate, the roomful of students – a group that looked to be all male and all white – stood on their feet and applauded for what seemed like 3-5 minutes. When Buckley took the podium, he opened by commenting of Baldwin’s “British accent,” suggesting that it was probably fake – but nobody responded. He made his points, not nearly as eloquent as had Baldwin, concluding, of course, that the American Dream was not created on the backs of Black people. When the camera panned to Baldwin’s face to catch his reaction, it was clear that he understood that Buckley did not have a clue as to what he had presented. Buckley received a polite round of applause when he was done – and he lost the debate: 184 votes to Baldwin’s 544.

The people who are in this moment fighting to dismantle the government are those to whom the country pledged allegiance. I don’t understand how one can call oneself a patriot while working to take one’s country down, but I do know this: This country has never pledged allegiance to the masses of Americans who need policies that help them. It has pledged allegiance, however, to those who have money, who make money, and who will continue to make money for themselves. All who are ignored or passed over will still be expected to pledge allegiance to the country that has not and will not pledge allegiance to them. Those who have been pledged the least will be those who fight the hardest to save what rights they have; those who have never worried about having rights as American citizens will continue to bulldoze over them and not realize the truth of Fannie Lou Hamer’s words, “Until all of us are free, none of us are free.” Many people will find out the hard way that the American Dream has been created at the expense of the Negro, as Baldwin said, but at the expense of every person who has done back-breaking work of building this country.

Until All of us are free…

One of the most gripping scenes in the movie “The Color Purple,– the original and the makeover – is when Celie faces her oppressor – her husband – angry and tired at the way she has been treated for much of her life, and, while holding a knife, says to him, “Until you do right by me, everything you even think about is going to fail.” (https://fb.watch/pAS7-C4Iza/)

A sentiment attributed to having first been expressed by Emma Lazarus in 1883 and repeated by others, including Maya Angelou and Fannie Lou Hamer: “Until all of us are free, none of us are free,” carries much of the weight and meaning of Celie’s statement

These powerful words are ignored by far too many people. People who oppress others, who lord power over others instead of treating them with love and respect, will eventually always be defeated. They will feel the defeat in themselves and/or will see the defeat in the world or atmosphere they tried to create.

Creating a toxic atmosphere is apparently not that difficult; we have seen cults form and grow under talented and bigoted leaders throughout history.

But they cannot last – because the human quest for dignity, freedom, equality, and equity is ultimately stronger than the faux strength projected and practiced by those who think more highly of themselves than they ought.

I keep listening to and reading people say that they want the former president to be re-elected because they like his policies. I don’t know all of the policies they’re talking about, but some sources break them down. (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/01/18/trump-presidency-administration-biggest-impact-policy-analysis-451479)

But the policies people like that seem to be resonating most strongly are those that denounce the idea that all people are created equal, endowed with “certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” People love that the former president vows to either deport or detain immigrants. (https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/11/politics/trump-stephen-miller-immigration-detention-deportation/index.html)

I am presuming that policies they love also include refusing federal funds that would be used to help feed poor children. (https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/summer-ebt-republicans-child-poverty-b2477996.html) (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/12/us/school-lunches-assistance-republicans.html)

The policies they like, again I’m presuming, include watching people drown at the border while at the same time refusing federal funds that would help give border policy the resources it needs. (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/3-migrants-drown-near-shelby-park-eagle-pass-texas-soldiers-denied-entry-federal-border-agents/)

They are overjoyed that Roe v Wade was overturned, and like policies that make it a crime for a woman to have an abortion – even if that abortion comes as the result of a naturally-occurring miscarriage. (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-increasing-risk-of-criminal-charges-for-women-who-experience-a-miscarriage), or because of being raped.

These culture-war policies that so many people like are abusive; America is in an abusive relationship with its own government. It is inconceivable to me how anyone who calls him or herself “Christian” can be okay with the rights of so many people being ignored and trampled upon.

I keep asking what happens to us – the people – if these people get more power. What will happen to old people if Medicare and Social Security end? What will happen to poor children who will not be able to eat without the funding allotted to states for them to have food over the summer? What will happen to immigrants if they are forced into internment camps? What will happen to the small amount of justice Black and Brown people, the poor, women, and other non-white, non-cis-gender individuals receive?

Those who are abused will take it for so long – and then they will rise up. Those who want this to be a Fascist country are not thinking about how a government like that will affect everyone – including them – and their lack of understanding and insight will be their loss. But people will only take abuse for so long before they rebel. The human spirit longs for and demands to be free. The ways of the past as concerns Black people are not something we will ever adhere to again. We will not be forced to look down when we pass by a white person. We will not be silent when we are being cheated of our economic earnings. We will not be silent when the justice system refuses to give us justice. We have “been there, done that,” and the people who want us to go back will learn that their desire is untenable and unrealistic.

On this Martin Luther King Day, we will hear over and over excerpts from his “I Have a Dream Speech.” The most rabid racists will quote the one line he said in that speech that fits into their white supremacist ideology – that he dreams of a day when his children will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

They will lift those words as some sort of justification for their being against civil and human rights for all people, including Black people. They will nod their heads at his words as support of their belief that there is too much attention paid to racism – while they continue to exploit Black people based on the color of their skin. They will use those words to bypass the rancid racism that makes them say that some people are presidents of prestigious universities or justices/judges in America’s justice system, or some students are in colleges, only because of Affirmative Action and the color of their skin.

They will ignore the fact that many white people are in positions and are in colleges – because of the color of their skin.

In using those words, they will conveniently forget how they have tortured, beaten, and robbed Black people just because they could. They will forget how they destroyed Rosewood and got away with it, how they destroyed the Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921. They will call you “woke” if you remind them of the coup that took place in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898 because white people decided that they would not allow Black people to “rule over them.” They will ignore the atrocities they have committed and continue to commit on and against Black people – just because they are Black and have been characterized by a narrative that can only be called “fake.”

Dr. Martin Luther King said a lot of things that most people do not know – and don’t want to know. Among the things he said was that white people “made God a partner in their exploitation of the Negro.” (Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community, p. 79) Many who call on the name of Jesus in their claim to be Christian believe that Jesus was a white man. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/06/25/how-an-iconic-painting-jesus-white-man-was-distributed-around-world/) (https://voices.uchicago.edu/religionculture/2017/06/26/the-klan-white-christianity-and-the-past-and-present-a-response-to-kelly-j-baker-by-randall-j-stephens/)

White smugness that their adherence to white supremacy cements and justifies their hatred, violence, and injustice for African Americans fuels their arrogance and power; like abusive husbands who use the precepts of male superiority to justify the beating and sometimes murdering of their wives, believers in white supremacy lord their power over people whom they think of as being less than human, and therefore, less deserving of being treated with fairness and dignity.

But they forget that the abused and oppressed will one day rise up. They will fight for their dignity, even if it means they might die in the process. Humans were made to be free.

And the words I think of, when I think of the state in which this country sits, are those uttered by a tired but empowered Celie, who tells her abuser that the abuse is over: “Until you do right by me, everything you even think about gonna (sic) fail.

A candid observation.

Humans in the Hands of a Silent God

Any more, as I hear about the bad and violent actions people take against other people, I shudder.

I held onto a naivete about how “good” people – i.e., those who believe in God – were somehow better, that their relationship with God would guide their feet and their actions. They would see other human beings as just that – human beings – and treat them as they would want to be treated. For Christians that principle is actually in the Bible: “In everything …do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Matthew 7:12)

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But it seems that Christians, and others who have professed a belief in God, have ignored that precept in far too many instances. My awareness of this was probably brewing throughout my youth when I watched some of my Christian friends be mean to others, but it reached a peak when I read about one Sam Bowers.

In the 60s, Bowers was the imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and he was also the leader of the Mississippi White Knights, a secret division of the KKK. In the 60s, the Mississippi White Knights claimed a membership of over 10,000. The FBI attributed nine murders and 300 beatings, burnings, and bombings to this group led by Bowers. He was the mastermind behind the killings of three civil rights workers in 1964 – Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman – and led the group in 1966 in the killing of Vernon Dahmer, a Black man who helped register Black people to vote. (https://www.clarionledger.com/story/journeytojustice/2014/07/09/sam-bowers-mississippi-burning-christian-identity/12394409/).

What got to me is that Bowers was a devout Christian. At the time I learned this I did not know – and did not know there could be – a Christianity without Christ and without God. According to reporter Stuart Wexler, Bowers, as well as many others, “embraced a Godless ideology and relinquished God’s grace.” Because of his Christ-less Christianity, he enveloped and embraced parts of the practice of Christianity with which he was familiar, including prayer and fasting – but he led people to pray and fast as they prepared to conduct murderous raids on Black people in the South. (Charles Marsh: God’s Long Summer)

Brutal violence carried out by humans who profess to follow God against other humans is not a rarity. From street murders to domestic violence, to wars – humans murder and maim others and still profess a belief in God. The spiritualist Howard Thurman, noting the ferocity of the hatred and violence carried out during war wrote, “During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even as it has to masquerade under the guise of patriotism.”

people gathering on street during nighttime — Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash

It is because of the human capacity to feel and act upon hatred that resides in the human spirit that violence is so common and so brutal. I cannot understand how Europeans who said they loved God were able to carry out genocide of non-white people in the lands they “discovered.” I cannot understand, again, how religious, church-going people were able to brutalize the Congolese under the direction of King Leopold II of Belgium and think nothing of it, nor can I understand how the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II is still regarded as an act of heroism. Neither can I understand how religious people seem to take as a matter of fact – of righteous fact, if the truth be told – the genocide of Native Americans in this country, and the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany, and I cannot understand why the world deems it to be OK for the Israeli government to be destroying the Palestinians en masse, when it is Hamas they are seeking to annihilate as a result of that group’s terrorist attack on innocent Israelis.

The number of people killed because of violence is staggering. It is estimated that 100,000 Native Americans were forced to walk the Trail of Tears and that about 15,000 of them died. Between 1500 and 1866, it is estimated that 12.5 million Africans were transported from Africa to the Americas and that about 1.8 million died during the Middle Passage. Data shows that about 6,500 Africans and African Americans died due to lynching carried out between 1865 and 1950, and during the Civil War, 620,000 were killed. In World War I, 21 million people lost their lives, including over 9 million military personnel. In World War II, 38 million people were killed, and in the Vietnam War, 3.8 million died. I could go on, but I think the point has been made.

I cannot believe that any of this is OK with God, yet God lets it happen. In our creation, God apparently included a spiritual path toward hatred and violence, a path that allowed us to think that hating and killing what God had created was OK. To me, that means our creation is or was flawed – if we are to believe that our assignment in life is to follow God. If it is OK with God that people bypass the religion taught to us that said God is good and that God requires us to live in harmony with each other, then there is something wrong. We are – or people like me are – looking for a God that does not exist.

Please understand: I am not saying that looking for a God of community and love is the only way to practice religion, nor am I saying that anyone who is looking for that kind of God is successful in meeting that criterion all of the time. We fail miserably as humans. But it seems that a belief in a God that disparages evil and hatred of others, and outright violence – including murder – is a problem. I yearn for a divine intervention in which God says to those who live in violence and hatred “Enough!” I yearn for a God who sits heavily on the shoulders and in the hearts of those who profess belief.

God’s silence in the light of the inhumanity we as humans practice against each other is troubling, more so because those who have no trouble fighting against, taking away the rights of, or murdering those whom they dislike for one reason or another profess belief in that God.

Sam Bowers had prayer and fasting for his murderous lynching crews; people who stormed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, stopped while in the Congress building to lift holy hands and pray. In the 18th century, Jonathan Edwards preached a sermon entitled, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” I would challenge Edwards and say we are humans in the hands of a silent God, one who is permissive of the evil we are prone to practice against each other.

Any more, as I read and study the violence we perpetrate against others, I shudder. My God is silent and unavailable or unwilling to stop our destruction of each other – actions that we take based on hatred, greed, or the lust for power – or of all of those issues. Why the silence, God? Why?

A candid observation…

America, We Hardly Knew YE

It’s hard to comprehend, understand, and accept what is going on in this country.

I keep going back to the movie, “The Sound of Music,” where in the last scenes, Christopher Plummer, who played Captain von Trapp, sings “Edelweiss” as his family makes its last appearance before they flee Austria. He has decided not to give in to pressure being put on him to join the navy of Nazi Germany.

I had no idea about what Edelweiss was; I only knew that he looked very sad and was singing it as a tribute, to his beloved country, which was being taken over by the Nazis. The flower was and is known to be strong and able to survive in the harshest of Alpine weather. Perhaps he was stating that his beloved Austria would likewise survive.

As he chokes up toward the end of the song, his entire family comes out and joins in, and prompts the audience to join in as well. The song ends, the family leaves the stage, and then begins its trek out of Austria. Everything that they have known has changed; the Edelweiss will remain the same, and that brings some degree of comfort, even in the midst of von Trapp’s profound sadness.

America seems to be getting to a state where many Americans will fall back on memories of a country that changed right before their eyes. It seems that we are being led into an exile of sorts; it seems that we, like the Israelites in the Hebrew scriptures, will sit on the banks of our own River of Babylon and weep as we remember this country when there was a semblance of civility and a commitment to democracy, even though the promises made in our founding documents were never realized.

As much as I think of “Edelweiss,” I think of Psalm 137, where the psalmist writes:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and there we sept when we remembered Zion.

On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land” If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I don’t set Jerusalem above my highest joy,

Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites, the day of Jerusalem’s fall, how they said, “Tear it down! Tear it down! Down to its foundations!” (Psalm 137:1-7, NRSV)

Those who despise democracy are working intentionally to tear this government down, and while they say that there exists a “deep state” (which is true) what they are proposing is not the end of the deep state but the creation of a new deep state, a state in which the freedoms that Americans have enjoyed will be stripped away. Already, we see the freedoms being attacked; we see state governments imposing rules and making laws that make it difficult if not impossible for teachers to teach what they want; we see politically irate parents bombarding school boards demanding that the history of some groups of people not be taught; we see people burning books like the Nazis did as they destroyed the German government as it had been. (https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/pithinthewind/theyre-burning-books-in-tennessee/article_1f8c631e-850f-11ec-bc9f-dbd44d7e14d7.html) We hear the former president saying things like military generals who oppose him are treasonous and should be executed (https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/28/politics/milley-donald-trump-execution-comment/index.html) and we hear him say that if he is reelected, some news operations will not be allowed to be on the air.( https://thehill.com/homenews/4221310-trump-pledges-to-investigate-msnbc-parent-for-threatening-treason/#:~:text=Trump%20pledges%20to%20investigate%20MSNBC%20parent%20company%20for%20%27threatening%20treason%27,-by%20Rachel%20Scully&text=Former%20President%20Trump%20pledged%20to,%2C%20things%2C%20and%20events.”).

America was never all it claimed to be. It was built on a broken foundation, one that pushed capitalism by using and exploiting people brought to this country for that reason alone. The country was built on a broken obelisk, which meant from the beginning that as the country grew it would not be able to withstand the pressure and the weight that comes with growth. (Ancient Egyptians refused to continue to build the obelisk once they discovered it was cracked. It sits unfinished to this day. https://mymodernmet.com/unfinished-obelisk-aswan-egypt/)

America had chances to correct some of what was wrong and what would continually weaken it, but reneged. It forged ahead, giving in to greed and the raw desire for power, ignoring the creaking of a government that was not able to withstand the seedbeds of racism and sexism. While it touted its “democracy,” the whole world watched and knew that America was not all it claimed to be. Other democracies imitated America’s racist practices; the Nazis actually studied America’s race laws in the creation of their own.

What this country failed to embrace was the impossibility of a country built on a cracked foundation being able to withstand the winds of bigotry, enmity, and greed as time went on. When the former president was elected, I remember being shocked when one of my social media friends said “Democracy needs to end.” I was stunned.

But it is a fact that there are groups of people working to do just that – end democracy. Big business is running the country and the politicians are allowing it – and some appear to be actively participating in the process.

I keep seeing Christopher Plummer singing “Edelweiss,” and I keep referring to Psalm 137. It seems that we are on our way to the shores of a river in a country we once thought we knew – and I say “we” in a pejorative sense, because many Americans were never included in the benefits of being American. They were not even considered to be citizens…yet, they held onto hope that one day this country would be what it professed to be.

My thought is, though that none of us really knew the real America at all, and are about to be made to reckon with that. Maybe, in spite of all the warning signs and flashing lights that have been a part of our government for hundreds of years, we will learn the hard way that silence is complicity, and for that, we will be forced to sing an “American” song in a strange land.

A candid observation …

kids committing suicide: what can we do?

Kids Committing Suicide: What Can We Do?

I learned this week that a young man committed suicide, and I crumbled.

Suicide committed by anyone gets to me, but when it’s a young person, with his or her life in front of them, I lose it.

I remember my mother saying when I would say I was tired that that couldn’t be true – that all I did was go to school. Her saying that always made me feel kind of bad but regardless of that, I still felt genuine fatigue.

She also told me that being depressed was selfish. When you’re depressed, she explained, all you think about is yourself, and that’s selfish.

I didn’t know what to do with that, because I was honestly depressed. I was an outlier in my family, and I felt that, but it wasn’t new. I had lived in foster care for some years as a toddler, up to the age of 4, and was always reminded that I didn’t belong. I don’t know why I was in foster care or why it was necessary, except that my mother was away for long stretches of time, and I only got to spend spates of time with her.

I learned how to be alone with myself. It felt safer than trying to fit in with the new family or be accepted and coddled by my mother.

After she got married, she spent much of her time trying to be accepted by the new family, which didn’t like her. I don’t know why they didn’t like her, but I remember saying that they all had college degrees and she hadn’t graduated from high school. That made her “less than” in their eyes – or so she believed – so she worked hard to fit into the family. She worked full-time but eventually decided to get her GED and apply to college. She was accepted to college and was an all-A student, but the year after she began college she died.

I was depressed all through middle and high school, but I didn’t say anything about it except that one time when I shared I was depressed with my mother, who told me that being depressed was selfish. So, I carried my scarred soul quietly, saying nothing to anyone. I was an emotional wreck and actually tried to commit suicide once by taking too many aspirin, but one of my sisters saw me and my mother got me to vomit them up.

I remember those days. My depression ebbed and flowed; sometimes it was worse than at other times, but it was always there. The worst part of it was feeling like I couldn’t talk to anyone. I remember truly wanting to die, but I didn’t go through with it. I know the pain, though, and when young people commit suicide, their agony crawls into my soul.

I think I know why I was depressed, but I wonder the reasons why kids are depressed to the point of suicide now. Is it because of the rancid political climate? Is it because they do not feel safe going to school and are reminded of their fears every time a crazed shooter bursts into a space that is supposed to be safe and fun and mows their friends down like they are inanimate objects, not worth thinking about or protecting?

Is it because so many kids struggle with their sexuality and have parents who would kick them out of the house if they knew? Is it because they feel like they are not enough – just as they are? Their thoughts of suicide exist in spite of them going to church. Are they drawn to suicide because they cannot find peace or honesty or love or compassion anywhere – not even in the church – but instead find an ethos of domination and authoritarianism that is killing their spirits?

When two young social justice activists committed suicide here in Columbus some years ago, I ached. I felt that familiar pain and wondered why they felt so bad, so hopeless, that they took their own lives. I wondered if we who worked with them had missed signs that they gave out, albeit subtly. I wondered if we should have had sessions after fighting over some issue to debrief, reassess, recommit, and refuel. These two young people (their suicides were about a year and a half apart) were shining stars. They looked like they had it all together, but they did not. More recently, a young man, a brilliant scholar, killed himself. He was always quiet and stayed to himself; he struggled because he was gay and his parents could not and would not accept him. But he wouldn’t talk about it, except in small tidbits.

We are living in such a volatile environment. The guardrails to protect us and what we have always believed have all but disappeared. The things we used to be able to believe in – democracy, civility, and the desire of elected officials to protect us, we can no longer trust. When I was little, I never worried about the country falling apart. There was the Cuban missile crisis, but it wasn’t an ongoing issue, spewed out over the airwaves day after day. I never worried about people with guns coming into my school or anyone else’s school for that matter and killing my friends. We had air raids (the result of bombs dropped in other countries during the country’s two world wars), where we were made to go into the hallway and stand close to the lockers for a set amount of time, and we had fire drills, which I loved because we got to go outside – still in lines – so we would know what to do if the school were ever on fire.

But those drills were fun, perfunctory. Nobody was really scared, not like kids and young people are today.

There were social problems, yes, but for some reason, they seemed workable. It didn’t feel like everything was falling apart at the same time. When I was growing up, neither political party wanted to be “friends” with countries that meant us no good. When I was growing up I believed that though lower courts could not or would not listen to the cries of the people, there was the US Supreme Court and I believed that it was truly “supreme.” I believed that our systems demanded truth in journalism and that there were penalties for spewing lies.

And I believed in God, not “a” god that supported hatred and bigotry, but a God who demanded that we treat each other as human beings worthy of respect.

So much of that has eroded in recent years, and I wonder how the youth and the children are dealing with it, and how the adults are supposed to help them – or if they can.

Anyone committing suicide should bother us, but young people committing suicide should give us pause and force us to rethink what we are and are not doing. It seems that we have displaced God in preference for power and money. Some want this country to be run by Christians. What is a Christian in this day and time? And there’s this: a theocracy is not going to stem the tide of distressed and depressed children and youth. It is not going to stop the hatred, bigotry, and greed for power and money that we are experiencing now.

I hope we realize that before too many young people give up trying to live. If being depressed is selfish, I would bet that there are a lot of selfish people walking around but not talking about their pain. I would bet that there are a lot more people on the brink of suicide, or who are drowning in addictions to try to feel better. That possible reality should bother everyone.

A candid observation …