I have been listening to people declare with deep passion that they want their country back, and for the life of me, I cannot figure out who it is they think HAS the country!

There is a Democratic president, African American. Is it HE that these people think has the United States captive?

All I see is a president who is trying to govern through an amazingly difficult time. There is a ridiculous deficit which he inherited. We are involved in two wars, one of which we got into because the previous president lied about there being weapons of mass destruction. Then there is this health care reform thing, which has Americans acting, frankly, like they’re mentally ill.

What in the world has possessed these shouting matches, where opponents are shouting down proponents of health care reform, going so far as to shout down a woman in a wheelchair who cannot get health insurance? Is this America, the country that so many people in the world thinks is so much better than other countries?

The spirit of this country right now is putrid; the stench from all of our “isms” is spreading. Talk show hosts are spreading hate, protected by the First Amendment. I guess they don’t know that some people cannot handle what they are saying, and will use the words of their favorite talk show hosts to justify horrible behavior. I have to wonder if that inability to handle their dee-seated resentments and biases is the reason a so-called pastor has the audacity to get in his pulpit and say he hates the president, wants him dead, wants his wife to be a widow and children to be fatherless.

All in the name of God, he wants that.

It feels like the American people are being manipulated by talk show hosts, by insurance companies, by news reports. And as I listen to people scream that they want their country back, I have to ask again, “Who has the country?”

It seems, from where I sit, that the Conservative Right has the country, that big business has the country … and that they are pulling out all the stops to keep it that way.

“Change” is seldom welcomed, but never welcomed if it upsets the status quo. You cannot mess with people’s money, or potential to make money, and be a “favorite son.”  It’s the fear of losing the “status quo” that has people frantic, willing to go to extremes to protect what “used to be.”  We bask in “the way we were,” forgetting that there were and are things that were not so good. Still, change is resisted. It is scary.

I was thinking about the Biblical story of how the Israelites resisted going through the wilderness to get to freedom. How many times, according to the Bible, did they rail on Moses and complain and say that it would have been better for them to stay in captivity and die than to navigate the wilderness?

Moses lost his opportunity to get into the Promised Land because he got fed up and disobeyed God. That’s the risk of any leader trying to effect change.

I am pretty sure that the underlying reason for the upheaval in this country is that there is too much change in our faces, coming too quickly.  The election of an African American president was good and all, but he didn’t have the good sense to ride the waves that were already in place. He wants to change some things, and that has scared people half to death.

He doesn’t have the country, for those of you who are screaming that you want the country back. The Congress doesn’t have the country. Big business, corporations … THEY have the country, and THEY specialize in getting their profit at the expense of those who can least afford to support them. They live good lives while the masses of people grope for crumbs of their bread.

If someone doesn’t tell people that Barack Obama doesn’t have the country, there’s going to be a heap of trouble. People are getting more and more riled up; the momentum is building like an angry, swirling tornado, and if the tornado touches down, I am afraid this country will suffer damage from which it will never be able to recover.

That’s a candid observation.

I am watching what is going on with the health reform town hall meetings …and I am wondering what is really going on.

America, the land of the free and home of the brave … is a smoldering volcano, ready to erupt.

I doubt it’s all about health care.

People are crying out, “I want my country back!” Their pleas are passionate and real, and I am wondering what they’re talking about. Back from what? Back from whom?

I read posts on Twitter and Facebook, and see outright anger, accusing the president of being a fraud. “A complete fraud” is how one person described him. I had an online conversation with a woman who refuses to believe that the president is an American citizen. Apparently, a lot of people believe that he is an African. CNN has shown his embossed birth certificate on television, but it is not enough.

A debate between a Democrat and Republican yesterday got heated; it was actually between Ron Reagan Jr. and Dana Loesch. In that debate, Reagan said that at one of the town hall meetings, a gun dropped out of someone’s pocket. Loesch was not disturbed or bothered; in fact, she quipped that he probably had a concealed weapon permit.

I could not believe her lack of concern for what could be a bad situation for a lot of people.

What is really going on? What are the people really mad about?

It feels like America is about to implode on her own unresolved issues. And I tell you, it is not about health care.

Someone said to me that Obama is playing the race card, and that’s why all this confusion is as it is. I was stunned. It seems to me that the president tries to stay as far away from race as possible. In fact, he has irritated me at times for not acknowledging more that racism and its attendant irrational hatred is America’s cancer.

What it feels like is that there is a group of people who are enraged that this African American man is president. They are angry and they are afraid, because all they have ever known about black people is what generations of black-bashing have taught them.

It feels like this group of people will do and use anything to get him out of office.

There was not this much antagonism against George W. Bush, who got us into the Iraq War on the lie of there being weapons of mass destruction.

All the Congress and president are trying to do is make sure more people have access to health care. Surely Americans are not against that?

No, I don’t think that’s the issue. I think the issue is fear of the African American, who he is and what he stands for. There is fear that he will make this a Socialist country. It feels like what I have imagined the atmosphere must have been like during the McCarthy era. People are as afraid of this president as they were afraid of Communism.

I fault people, talk show hosts and others, who feed into people’s natural propensity for fear and paranoia. They know what they are doing, and they are pleased with their work.

There is such a fine line between sanity and insanity. I have heard that there is a thin line between love and hate. It seems like, or feels like, insane hatred is growing in this country, spreading over the fabric of who and what we are like ink spreading over a piece of paper. It is uncomfortable.

I do not agree with everything President Obama does. I agreed with little President Bush did, and I thought he did an amazing amount of damage to this country and to its image. Not him personally, but his policies. But, the country survived, and even if people don’t like President Obama’s policies, the country will survive again. We always have…

What I am seeing, though, that is different than when Bush was president, is this insane hatred, based on racism. People are pushing and shoving and now, drawing swastikas. What does that say about what America is? Does anybody care?

It would be nice to get to know what is really in the health care reform bill. We won’t know what’s in it if we cannot get past our behavior at the town hall meetings … behavior which is not about health care at all.

America, own up. We won’t get well until we admit the illness.

That’s a painful, candid observation.

Two days ago, my daughter turned 23. I sat amazed at how quickly those years whizzed by. It feels like just yesterday when I was walking in Providence, RI, looking at those wonderful mansions, and realizing that I was going into labor. My then-husband and I, and my aunt, who was visiting, rode the 2 1/2 hours back to New Haven, CT. calmly, if somewhat stressed. I walked into Yale-New Haven Hospital at about 9:30 p.m. I remember that it was a Saturday, and “Golden Girls” was on when I left our apartment. At 1:38 a.m., Caroline Amanda Smith was born.

So, she’s a young woman now, “old” by standards of referring to one’s children, yet still in need of a parent. My son will be 21 in October, and both of them now tax me on the newness of parenting they need at this stage of their lives.

Because for sure, they DO need parenting,but the trick is, “how” does one do it? My daughter is parent-savvy, meaning, she knows how to filter my occasional forays into parental advice, tune me out and then back in when she deems it necessary. She knows how to give a polite smile, a slight nod, or an intensely interested look, though I am sure she wishes I would relax. For my part, I offer “parenting”  in small doses. I usually begin a conversation that I know she will not want to hear with a question of permission: “Would you mind if I am a ‘mother’ for 30 seconds?” I ask her. She will know that I am about to say something that she is most likely not going to want to hear, but the covenant I make, and keep, is that I will keep my “mothering’ to a 30-second sound bite. I will state what I observe, and what I advise, and then leave it alone.

It takes a lot of discipline.

My son is a different story. He is SO trying to find himself, and he SO does not want his mother in this phase of his life. He refuses to cut or comb his hair right now. I cannot stand it. In my mind, I scream,”I didn’t raise you like that!” but after noting, whenever I see him,that his hair is a bit “interesting,” I say nothing. He told me last week he was going to go get it cut, remembering how I commented on it, but then said, “no! I like my hair this way,” and the trip was trashed.

He keeps going from job to job. It is SO not the right thing to do. He is a bright kid, an amazing musician and actor, who is trying to find out his niche in the world. He keeps getting jobs at restaurants that I know are not going to pay him and which are going to quickly bore him, but far be if for me to try to push or guide him to a more plausible life pattern. No, he’s got to find out for himself that going from job to job is a bad way to live, and he’s got to pay the consequences of his decisions. Is it killing me? Yes!! Do I have private tirades toward him, when he’s not around? Absolutely! Do I wish I could shake him? How about yes! But I have to let him find his path.

Parenting at this stage of our kids’ lives is super hard. The difficulty really begins when they hit puberty, as they fight for independence though they are so dependent on us it’s not funny. I had a policy of letting them find their way, not expecting me to get them out of trouble, and demanding respect regardless of how angry they were. It worked. I found they came to me from time to time to talk, which was good. But I bit my tongue a whole lot of times.

My son has caused my tongue biting to become a tad lethal. I mean, I almost have no tongue left. I know instinctively that he will be all right; I have faith and confidence in him and in the way I raised him. I am a bit disturbed that his finding his way is taking longer than I’d like, and is happening via a circuitous route, which I despise, but deep within, I know he will be all right, in his own right, and on his own terms.

To keep quiet is a test for me. My 30-second sound bites for my son are harder to offer than are the same for my daughter, but I know doing things any other way would spell disaster.

If ever a kid needs a parent to respect and trust him or her, it’s now. They’ve got to learn the things that earn trust and respect and those things which repel the same. They cannot be coerced to obey us, and they cannot coerce us to trust and respect them. No, this is a two-way journey for parent and child, a journey which I do not like … but one for which I pine for a conclusion.

There now. I feel a bit better. I am able now to offer another 30-second sound bite and go on my way.

That’s my very personal candid observation.

The sickness that won’t go away has flared up with a fury.

Racism, that which Americans don’t like to talk about or admit, is not responding to treatment: that is, sweeping it under the rug. The feelings of people are spilling out all over the place.

It has gone so much further than Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. Crowley. Now, people are vomiting their toxic thoughts all over the place. Underlying all of the venomous talk are the fears and frustrations of two groups of people who have never reconciled.

A white Boston police officer has called Professor Gates a “jungle monkey.”

Glenn Beck, taking issue with President Obama’s remark about the police acting “stupidly,” has called him a racist, and an angry black man.

The story is growing, gaining volume like cotton candy being swirled on a stick.

Everyone knows racial profiling exists.  I don’t know that I think the Gates-Crowley affair was an example of racial profiling, but I do think it was a matter of two male egos clashing.  I don’t think either man acted as well as he might have, but in the end, it was a power struggle, and the police officer played his trump card.

That happens a lot, especially in the African American community. That’s why we mothers tell our sons to keep their mouths shut if and when they are ever stopped by an officer. There is a time to be macho; being at the mercy of a police officer who may or may not be racist is not one of those times.

But what I find interesting is the vomitus of hatred and frustration coming from white and black people, respectively. I can understand the frustration; I have seen white officers operate in black communities. I have never, though, understood the raw hatred of white people toward anyone who is not white.

Ever since Barack Obama was elected president, there has been a strange mixture of joy and caution in the air. Joy from both black and white people who think that his election heralded a “post-racial America,” a period of time where “the disease” can finally be called cured, and caution from a large number of people who do not know what a black man in power means for this country.

There have been outright horrendous statements made by angry white people, wanting the president to have his “Waterloo” moment, no matter how that may look or how it may come about. There have been prayers by both black and white people for the president’s safety.

God-loving Conservative whites have spewed hatred over the airwaves and television networks, responding to their own angst and feeding the angst and anger of their followers.

What did this Gates-Crowley thing do but let America know that it has not – we have not- reached Nirvana yet?

Today is the day of the “beer summit,” and while it is a nice gesture by the President, a meeting between Gates and Crowley is not going to fix the problem of angry white men in police uniforms doing what too many of them do in African American and other minority neighborhoods.

It is not going to assauge the frustration of African American men who have been profiled, harassed and arrested by men in power, with police departments all over the country taking the side of the officers time and time again.

The shame is that not all police officers are racist, bigoted, angry white men. There are some officers who “get it,” who know the history of whites against blacks, of injustice toward blacks, and of how it has damaged police relations with a whole community.

There are too many instances of police officers not protecting African Americans or even respecting African Americans. That is the history. That is the truth. That is the reality.

But we in America keep wanting to wish it away. Blacks and whites alike do not want to talk about it, deal with it, identify the weaknesses and cut them out of our American culture.

And so we sit here today, in 2009, with tempers flaring and vomitus spewing out all over the land, as we deal with our sickness that just won’t go away.

It’s a candid …and painful …observation.

It is so interesting.

On the one hand, we get news reports almost daily about how one of the major American health threats is obesity. We see a doctor on a news program giving the grim news …and then the network cuts to a commercial pushing a jusicy hamburger with all the trimmings, an order of fries and a sugar-filled drink.

Or, we hear about how bad the economy is, how Americans abuse credit, how everybody overspends …and then comes the commercial telling people who do not have money to go to a legal and legitimate predatory lending company to get a loan. The commercial features smiling, friendly faces, something the poor or “in trouble” don’t often see, inviting people into the bowels of hell …aka, debt.

There are scores of commercials that seem to denote a schizophrenia in American culture: in one breath, we are presented the sordid facts of what is very wrong with us …and in the very next breath, we are encouraged to engage in the very behavior which makes us not so well in the first place.

The reason is simple: the insatiable quest for money. In order for capitalism to work, people must spend money, even if they do not have it, and even if it means the demise of their personal health. Commercials specialize in capitalizing on the weaknesses of the human spirit. We like to eat. We like things …and so we are lured and spend money on things, to our own destruction.

It seems that all is fair in the quest for …money.

I just finished reading John Grisham’s book, “The Appeal.” It made me sick. No, not the writing, but the storyline. In that book, a corporation knowingly dumped toxic waste in a poor community rural Mississippi. The people were deemed worthless; the quest for money was deemed most important.

People began to get sick and die, and a widow finally files a lawsuit against the company, which blatantly lied about what it was doing, bribed or got rid of potentially damaging witnesses, and got angry that it had even been called on its actions.

The company lost the lawsuit which would have cost them millions had the ruling been upheld. Of course, it wasn’t. People … with big money …manipulated the system and paid big money to make sure a sympathetic judge would be seated on the state’s highest court. They got their guy in, the appeal was overturned, and the company went back to making millions of dollars.

Damn the people.

That’s what it feels like to me, watching these commercials. It really doesn’t matter that the fast food restaurants, which cater to everyone but which unfortunately become the primary food sources for too many poor people, are  making foods which make people obese. The restaurants are making money.

And it doesn’t matter that once a person borrows from one of those predatory lending companies, he or she cannot get back on their feet. They keep spiraling downward into debt, while the owners of the companies get rich.

Are we a nation that stands for justice or are we not?

We speak out of both sides of our mouths, espousing one ideal value but then working another value, set quite apart from the ideal.

It’s capitalist schizophrenia. It’s dishonest, and it is manipulative.

There is nothing wrong with making money, but when one will stoop to any level to make it, keep it and multiply it, something is amiss.

The commercials manipulate everyone -from the very poor to the very rich. One of the members of my congregation once said to me, “There is a lot of money in poor people.”  The marketing experts know that. How better to get poor people to make them richer than by putting a sports icon on a television urging them to rent furniture at some ridiculous, weekly rate.

Or how better to get a “wanna be” rich person to buy a luxury car he or she cannot afford by suggesting that only the most sophisticated person can …or even qualifies … to drive a vehicle such as this?

It is not right. This capitalist schizophrenia is killing us, even while some people are making a lot of money.

I guess they forgot that rot starts internally and makes its way to the surface eventually.

That’s a candid observation.