I will have to admit the truth — I am a klutz and someone who “loses” stuff from time to time. After 34 years of marriage, Jane has caught the malady and has managed to “lose” valuable possessions a couple of times.
You ask, “Why are you doing a True Confessions moment in a political entry on your web site? Instead of whining about your personal failures, those who read your screeds want some hard-hitting political and social comments!”
This, dear readers, is a combination of the two. The personal foibles of your faithful correspondent do intersect (note the politically correct terminology). We live in a blue state, but in the reddest county in that blue state of Illinois. Most of the problems our nation faces are centered in big cities and heavily populated areas of the East and West coast, as well as urban metropolitan centers such as Chicago, Minneapolis, Atlanta and others large places. These two very different sections of the nation also have very different moral standards, stemming from the basic ideas of religion and the Judeo-Christian traditions.
So, back to the slippery hands that have lost certain important items that belonged in my possessions. Just in the past year, my wallet somehow got out of my pocket and lodged itself on the grounds of a park in the Indiana town of Terre Haute. Now, Indiana is a very red state, but Terre Haute is a blue blot in that state. When the loss was discovered, we were several miles away from the park, but in the slim hope it would be turned in by an honest person, we returned to search for it. Lo and behold, there it was, laying on the ground on the parking lot which overlooked the Wabash River. All cash, credit cards and identification material were intact.
Another incident of not being able to keep track of an important item came in the same city. My phone, an iPhone, somehow managed to leave my possession. To me, the phone was more than just a means of communicating with others, many of those I did not want to communicate with. It has an app which remotely controls both my hearing aid (left side) and the cochlear implant (right side) for various programs, helping me to hear much better. So, the iPhone has become an integral part of my ability to interact with others. But on this particular day, it flew out of my hand when I was patronizing a convenience store along one of the main drags. Only when we got home, about 30 miles away in Paris, did we notice the phone was on the lam. Since the only place I had exited the car was at the convenience store, a phone call (not on my device, of course!) was made, and we found that someone had found it and turned it in. Another hour plus on the road reunited me with my iPhone.
My third recent encounter with a wandering possession happened, you guessed it, was in Terre Haute again. After a grueling session with my eye surgeon, a trip to purchase some stuff from Krogers and the obligatory stop at Chick-fil-A for lunch, it was discovered that my iPad had gone a wandering. I thought I had tossed it in the back seat in preparation for eating, but in a search which would be the envy of any forensic team, no iPad was found. Again, the only place I had been in was in the same convenience store as the one in which the iPhone went missing. Being of a suspicious mind, my thoughts were about a possible conspiracy about my belongings. Again, a stop at the store revealed that the missing device had been turned in by an honest Hoosier. Now I have all three vagabonds in my possession and we are happily coexisting here in Paris.
Jane’s experience with her purses also has a similar conclusion to her “losses”. Once, she had left her purse in the shopping cart at Wal-Mart. From home to that establishment is only a three minute drive, but who could resist so ripe a treasure just waiting to be appropriated by an unscrupulous citizen? Not so; by the time we had retraced the road to Wall-Mart, someone had found the purse, and took it to the lost-and-found and it was back to Jane forthwith. Another time her purse went AWOL was not in the U. S., but in Heathrow Airport near London. Waiting for our flight from London to Edinburgh, we had to shift places in the large waiting area. Her purse, with money, cards and other paraphernalia went missing. In a place with thousands gathered for the next legs of their trips, no hope was held out to recover the handbag. But an honest Englishwomen came up to Jane, after several moments of near panic on Jane’s part, and told her that it had been taken to the lost and found in the airport. All was intact.
Well, you ask reasonably, what does this have to do with the split in the American republic? Simply put, none of those would have been returned to us if they had been lost (or walked off) in any of the large, blue cities previously mentioned.
In fact, using the pretext of an unjust killing of a black person in Minneapolis, citizens in American cities marched, protested in masse and began rioting and looting. New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Seattle, St. Louis, Los Angeles and other locales saw burning buildings, attacks on police, and general anarchy during the ten days following the fatal incident. Several people were killed, several of them blacks trying to protect their businesses, and many more injured. In more than one place, the National Guard had to be called out to quell the unrest. One very bizarre rant was caught on video of a woman in Chicago who claimed loudly and profanely to the police that people guarding their stores were preventing her from looting those stores. She wanted the police to tell them to go away and let her steal.
How long would my wallet, iPhone, iPad and Jane’s purses have waited to be reclaimed if lost in those cities in the last two weeks? Not a chance would anything be returned to us, even though all the information as to who owned them was enclosed. What were the differences in the two areas of the United States? Virtually all of the places where riots, looting and assaults occurred were in places controlled by Democrats, some for many decades. Policies enacted by those regimes were such that effective control of the streets was ceded to the protestors, to the looters, to those who would “profit” from the mayhem.
But, even though the death of the Minneapolis citizen was condemned by all Americans, those in red states as well as the blue states, those in the red states kept order even though many places had marches and speeches condemning the death and calling for justice and reform. Those red splotches on the map were controlled by Republicans, who expected and received civil order in their precincts.
This does not mean there are no “good” citizens in the large metropolitan areas of America. But the pronouncements from Democrats seem to absolve the rioters, and just added to the melees. For any members of the American landscape who want to look at the differences between Democrats and Republicans, an honest, unbiased assessment of the past two weeks shows that those in red states really believe in the American values of law and order, honesty and integrity; a belief in the inherent goodness of others and respect for that which other people own; a belief in the words of the Declaration of Independence that all are entitled to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
Large cities have much to offer to many people. But I believe we have one of the best places to live, where such that happened in response to an unjust killing did not happen here. Fly-over country should not be denigrated by those who feel they are “elite” because they live on the coast or some of the great cities of America. We are the ones who truly believe in the words of our pledge of allegiance — “one nation, under God”!