Would anyone disagree that we are living in some troubling times in the United States of America? Issues of social justice erupt almost on a weekly basis. Our children and grandchildren are going unchecked and uncensored. In addition, if you live in states such as North Carolina and Louisiana, regulations are making us question who we really are.
Since January, Americans have added a few new terms to our lexicon such as alternative facts and alternative truths. When I was growing up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, my parents taught me to tell the truth. There weren’t optional truths. In other words, if I didn’t like the truth, I could always come up with “alternative truths.”
Can you imagine coming home from Atkins High School or any other high school in America and giving your parents “alternative truths.” The spanking you would have received would have been immediate. I can hear my mom saying to me now, “Boy, you must be crazy.”
We should have seen this coming last year. One of the presidential candidates said he was not going to release his most recent tax return and that was that, end of story.
How can a person be that much of a bully and we not offer any resistance? After all, we file our taxes each year whether or not we are running for public office. So now, he’s in office and controversy is all around him.
Recently, Ana Swanson of The Washington Post wrote an article in which she talks about what the president said during his inaugural address, which was to paint the economy as weak and bleak. Then a few weeks later, he uses a conservative website as a basis to say that job and employment numbers look great. It might be safe to say that, over the course of the next four years, the word misinformation will be used frequently.
Weeks before President Barack Obama left office, he said, “You are going to miss me when I’m gone.” Well, President Obama, I, along with millions of people around the world miss you. We miss your honesty. We remember the word honesty, don’t we? We miss your hope for America and yes, we can. We miss your humanity and your civility. We just miss you.
