More About Nursing Homes

Caring for our elderly in nursing homes has become a profitable and very expensive industry that few dare to talk about. It speaks to the resilience of some elderly who remain alive despite the abuse and neglect they experience in nursing homes.

Some nurses and assistants start out and remain caring despite the long hours, the low pay, the back-breaking work, and the unrewarding environment. Other staff members do not care and abuse or neglect patients in front of their loved ones.

Perhaps Americans don’t want to work as CNAs because the pay is low and the hours are long. Many immigrants, legal or illegal, are more than happy to fill the vacuum.  One thing is certain, as I’ve experienced for the last four years in a nursing home in Fairfax, the work ethic in this new wave of immigrants leaves a lot to be desired. There are always a few remarkable exceptions.

Recently one nurse’s aide dropped a patient she attempted to hoist with a broken device, the patient fell and was injured, but she never filed an incident report. She was hoping nobody would find out as the patient spoke only Spanish. The next day the patient was covered in bruises but without broken bones.

I arrived one day to pick up my mom for her doctor’s appointment. She was in wet socks, no shoes, her shirt was on backwards and food-stained, she needed a diaper change, and the male nurse handled her roughly causing her unnecessary pain and suffering radiating from the hip which had been recently operated on. And the nurse helping her did all of this right in front of me. Can you imagine what they do to patients in the absence of relatives?

There is an ombudsman in the nursing home to represent the patients but patients and relatives are afraid to report anything wrong for fear of staff retaliation. I learned the hard way that, every time I would report a bad incident, the nursing staff would treat mother much worse.

Many elderly are so sick, they never say ‘thank you’ or smile even though they may be grateful that they are being taken care of – they are in so much pain to remember to be polite. Other patients no longer know who they are.

Some elderly patients don’t have any relatives; others do but nobody comes to visit, life keeps them busy. Yet many have relatives who do come to visit but never bring as much as a warm blanket which they desperately need because the nursing home blankets are never warm enough in winter. A few only visit at Christmas time to make sure they are still in the will.

The elderly, who have their mental faculties but are immobile, are often depressed despite the bingo, occasional music, ice cream social, and other activities organized by the nursing home. Television becomes the only mental stimulation some may have. A few read Bibles and others wheel themselves in the hallway watching the world go by.

They cannot leave the floor without an elevator code and they have heavy alarm bracelets. Those with their mental faculties who are semi-mobile have hospital armbands with information which tells the outside world that they are patients in the nursing home. It is a loss of freedom that is not unlike being an inmate in a prison. On the other hand, a few patients do not have a clear legal status so they need these bracelets.

Depending on the time of day, there is always a permeating smell of urine and feces mixed in with the smells of food and disinfectant. Diapers, trips to the bathroom, and showers are never done timely because there are too many patients assigned per CNA. And if the CNAs do not take their jobs seriously, they compound existing problems in the quest of earning a paycheck.

Many elderly refuse showers for various reasons, the major one being that the water is really cold most of the time, making it a frigid and painful experience, particularly in wintertime. The elderly are usually cold and should be showered with much warmer water.  I had to shower my mom in the nursing home and the water was lukewarm even though I let it run for quite some time.

The lack of timely diaper changes and showers cause a lot of UTIs in the elderly female population. Cross-contamination occurs because not all of the staff understands bacterial transmission through contaminated gloves not changed between patients.

Other staff members are really hard-working but the job gets to them eventually after seeing so much pain and misery.  The last chapters of our human lives are not pretty and are made worse by chronic disease and pain.

The indignity of incontinence is very hard to deal with in a fully grown adult. It is difficult sometimes to change the diaper of a small baby, can you imagine changing the diapers of adults who cannot be placed on a changing table and are often combative?

Five star facilities can be abusive and neglectful too. Many reject people who do not speak English under the pretense that they cannot meet their needs. It is a subtle form of discrimination. 

Most people cannot afford the $7,000 per month assisted living fees or the $12,000 per month in-home care. Insurance does not even begin to cover such outrageous costs. Medicaid pays nursing homes a little over $6,500 a month for their patients that require specialized nursing care which is just about everybody already there.

The Alzheimer patients are separated in a locked area unfortunately called Arcadia. Many are ambulatory and would disappear without a trace if left to their own devices.

Western societies are supposed to deal with their elderly in a more humane way but, in the process of insuring that they are taken care of, the family may suffer terrible financial burden even with two income-earners. And they cannot possibly care for the really sick loved ones who need shots, blood drawn, emergency trips to the nearest ER, and other measures to save that patient’s life.

Because they do not want to be a burden on their loved ones, many choose to have a do not resuscitate (DNR) order in their wills and others move to countries that allow euthanasia. They prefer those measures as opposed to lingering in a nursing home and be forgotten, neglected, and abused while in pain.

Rhonda, not her real name, was blind, unable to talk, and on dialysis for several years before she passed in her sleep. She wailed from the top of her lungs all day long.  She was transported twice a week to have her blood cleaned. Her tiny bony frame was covered in large, purple bruises from the dialysis needles.  

Some societies use the entire tribe to care for the elderly in the last part of their lives. They treat them with love, dignity, and the respect they deserve.

A Nordic country allows students to live in a wing of the nursing home, rent free, as long as they adopt an elderly person and interact with them on a daily basis.

But many patients who still have their faculties prefer visits from and time spent with their loved ones. They don’t want much as they near the end of the lives, just their children’s, grandchildren’s, or siblings’ time.

Academic Indoctrination into Communism and Pinkoism

"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."

 ~ Albert Einstein

The latest main stream media apoplectic vilification of our President focused 24/7 on his meeting with Putin in Helsinki, what he should have done and said to Putin. People with journalism degrees are suddenly experts at everything.  Although the left’s deranged rhetoric against our President caused irreparable damage to our country, it might be the least of our worries at the moment.

The growth of domestic communism thanks to decades of academic indoctrination, the emergence of the racist BLM, and of the black-clad Antifa, disguised and violent snowflakes, emboldened by the manufactured crisis of invented fascism on the right are at the top of the list.

Under the banner of #resist, a banner that has suddenly appeared around the globe thanks to non-profits funded by the likes of Soros, the pinkos came out of their basements to protest with lewd language and behavior the loss of their favorite Maoist would be president and the potential loss of their right to murder their unborn babies.

Following sad and incomprehensible acts of domestic terrorism by mentally disturbed lone individuals sympathizing with the left, engineered protests suddenly materialized around the country to confiscate all guns. Paid professional agitators seemed to lead the crowds waving professionally-made signs indicating prior preparation for the event.

Witness the crescendo of young public unrest stoked by Organizing for America (OFA), Obamas’ organization.

Paid unemployed useful idiots around the country are now protesting ICE, including blocking traffic in Miramar, Florida, on the hottest day possible, by lying on the melting asphalt. 

The demand to dismantle ICE allegedly protects illegal immigrant families who have a right to be in this country against American citizens’ wishes who want their borders protected by a wall, just like Mexico’s. The left is even defending MS-13 gang members and other criminal illegal border crossers who are now registered voters in San Francisco.

Gaining the votes of illegals seems to be one of the goals of the Democrat Party. These are voters easily swayed as they do not speak English, do not know the history of our country, and have no knowledge of our constitutional republic as they hail from socialist dictatorships.

The lack of law enforcement for the elites and the lack of Democrat Party decorum have made our country look like a banana republic.

Watching the most recent hearing of the infamous FBI special agent was one pathetic exercise in watching Democrats in Congress obstruct the proceedings unlike anything that has ever been seen before. The Democrat representatives were not there to find out the truth but to assist the FBI agent being questioned, even proclaiming that he should receive a Purple Heart.

The main stream media has become a bad reality joke yet half of the country gets their news from the numerous alphabet soup channels that are busy manufacturing them to fit the leftist agenda. They have given up any pretense that they are objective journalists.

Millennials and other young Americans get their news from late night comedians and from those who write the script for theirs shows.

Hollywood commies come out in droves to give their “expert” political opinions they’ve learned from the roles they played in various movies.

Last but not least on the societal indoctrination ladder into communism and fascism are university professors, public school teachers, and administrators, including kindergarten teachers.

The fascist academic pinkoism is quite insidious.

I stumbled across the highly liberal page of an English college professor, who had a large following of sycophants having an "atta girl" discussion over her daughter's photo, an early and devoted feminist pinko like herself, who was holding a sign painted with bar cells and a place for the head with the caption, "your child's photo here," advocating that illegal alien families apprehended at the border should not be separated.

Photos dating from 2014 during the Obama administration were showing minors kept in chicken wire enclosures. President Trump was blamed for this even though the previous administration carried out the practice.

Nobody in this vitriolic group living in their small academic bubble, insulated from reality, was affected by illegal immigration and probably never analyzed the situation clearly, being that they were driven mostly by feelings and not rational thought.

How many have ever welcomed minor or adult MS-13 gang members into their beautiful ante-bellum homes with lush green manicured lawns?

Were their state paychecks affected by unemployment caused by illegals overrunning our borders, or brought in on H-1B visas to take their jobs?

How many academics were affected by the trash, the violence, the theft, and their children infected by formerly eradicated diseases brought in by illegals and their coyotes who often abandoned them in the desert to the harsh elements?

How many illegals were raped during the arduous and long journey from Central America to the U.S. border? How many succumbed to the harsh elements?

None of the leftist sycophants asked the obvious question, what kind of parents would send their small children even toddlers, unaccompanied across many countries, to be used in the sex trade, abused, battered, raped, enslaved, and then discarded?

Describing Trump supporters with the vilest adjectives imaginable, professors and their sycophant friends and followers were laughing at conservatives, and how low their IQs must be.

In an academic setting, professors generally do not allow their children to play with legal aliens’ children because they are “different” and come from a different culture. Even though they are here legally and many are naturalized Americans, they are off the leftist plantation as proud, patriotic, and independent Americans who are working hard for the American dream.

Militant pinko feminists turn their backs on educated legal immigrants who love America and want to make it greater instead of sucking it dry of resources.

Spurred on by fake feminism and membership in the socialist Democrat Party, many academics have become defenders of the "downtrodden" from third world nations whose cultural “superiority” they admire from afar.  They embrace people they don't even know who are economic migrants and anti-America, desiring the generous welfare and jobs.

Hysterical rants, bullying, lewd and anti-social behavior are buying these crazed feminists minutes of fame behind a microphone in a public forum. They are threatened by smart, educated, classy immigrants who could possibly replace their cushy positions.

Leftists show generosity and grace to those illegals who take on menial jobs they will not touch. In their insane hypocrisy, they may feel good for their communist cause that is destroying our country.

Retired from academia, Pete G., a history professor, recounts how he was made to feel like an unwelcome outsider. “Besides the few fellow conservatives in my department, the only other faculty members who offered the hand of friendship were my foreign-born colleagues.”

Pinkoism and decades of successful communist indoctrination in academia has put our country at a crossroads – do we take the road to communist serfdom on the left, or do we keep the road to freedom and independence on the right?

The Sustainable Development Cabal of the United Nations is Meeting Again

“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work air conditioning, and suburban housing are not sustainable.”  - Maurice Strong, Secretary General of the U.N. Earth Summit, 1992.

 

The U.N. Agenda 21 adopted in 1992 and signed by 178 countries has morphed into Agenda 2030 adopted in 2015 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and 169 “specific targets.” As Alex Newman described it, it is a recipe for “global socialism and corporatism/fascism” foisted upon the world by the United Nations. https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/22267-un-agenda-2030-a-recipe-for-global-socialism

My 2012 book, “U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy,” explains the U.N. effort to rearrange the way we live, the way we do business, an effort to redistribute our wealth to all third world nations, friends and foes. https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=UN+Agenda+21%3A+Environmental+Piracy

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals can be found at this site which is labeled “post 2015” Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform. Indoctrination into global socialism may be subtle and euphemistic, but the message of controlling everything is clear. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld

SD is a U.N.-led effort to reduce consumption, force social equity (social justice), and preserve and restore biodiversity through economic, social, and environmental policies integration.

“Sustainablists” insist that every decision made in all societies must be made taking into account the impact on the environment. Global land use, global education, and global population control and reduction must be controlled and “harmonized.”

Social equity (social justice) is described as the right of all people “to benefit equally from the resources afforded us by society and the environment.” This includes redistributing wealth and treating private property and national sovereignty as socially unjust while seeking universal health care as a right.

At the local and state levels one organization, Local Governments for Sustainability, previously named International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), has been responsible for introducing Public Private Partnerships (PPP), special agreements between government and corporations that receive tax breaks, grants, and eminent domain through government’s power to implement sustainable policies.

Tom DeWeese described these public-private partnerships as “government-sanctioned monopolies.” Tom DeWeese, President of American Policy Center, has been fighting property rights infringements by ICLEI and their visioning committees for years.

Local sustainable polices include Smart Growth, Wildlands Project, Resilient Cities, Regional Visioning Projects, STAR Sustainable Communities, Green Jobs, Green building codes, Going Green, Alternative Energy, Local Visioning, regional planning, historic preservation, conservation easements, development rights, sustainable farming, comprehensive planning, and growth management.

Outside facilitators that no locals have ever met or heard bring “consensus” to a local government and the pre-determined “visioning” of the “visioning committee” and its invisible “stakeholders” is being imposed on the local population that has not voted on nor had it been informed of the plan and of its outcome.

In addition to ICLEI that some local communities and cities pay dues to, there are other groups that aid in the implementation of world-wide Sustainable Development:  American Planning Council, the Renaissance Planning Group, International City/County Management Group, U.S. Mayors Conference, National Governors Association, National League of Cities, National Association of County Administrators, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and official U.S. government agencies.

Executive Order  #12852, issued by Bill Clinton in 1993, created the President’s Council on Sustainable Development to “harmonize” U.S. environmental policy with U.N. directives as outlined in U.N. Agenda 21,” and directed all federal government agencies to “reinvent government” with the help of state and local governments. https://clintonwhitehouse2.archives.gov/PCSD/Charter/

Each year U.N. Agenda 21 which has morphed into 2030 Agenda is imposed on the participating countries, including U.S., at the local, state, and federal level under the infamous Sustainable Development (SD).

Wealth redistribution is not the entire U.N. Agenda 2030. They want to control population size, to engineer where we live through high-rise mixed-use urban settlements and forced mass migration (Europeans are already experiencing a dose of this forced migration and so are Americans), eliminating borders, and nudging governments to seize control of the means of production, directly or through fascistic decrees. U.N. is telling us clearly, “We commit to making fundamental changes in the way that our societies produce and consume goods and services.”

Who is going to decide what is “sustainable patterns of consumption and production” and what will the consequences of non-compliance be?

Alex Newman described Agenda 2030 as a “the UN plot …aimed at ‘transforming’ the world. The program is a follow-up to the last 15-year UN plan, the defunct “Millennium Development Goals,” or MDGs. It also dovetails nicely with the deeply controversial UN Agenda 21, even including much of the same rhetoric and agenda. But the combined Agenda 2030 goals for achieving what is euphemistically called “sustainable development” represent previous UN plans on steroids — deeper, more radical, more draconian, and more expensive.” https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/22267-un-agenda-2030-a-recipe-for-global-socialism

The “principal UN body mandated to review implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” is the High Level Political Forum (HLPF). HLPF examines every year the progress made. This year’s meeting in New York on July 9-18 will discuss SDG 6 (clean water and safe sanitation), SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy), SDG 11 (inclusive and sustainable cities), SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production), SDG 15 (life on land), and SDG 17 (partnerships for the global goals).

The meeting, “Transformation towards sustainable and resilient societies,” is co-organized by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. (FAO), the Geneva Water Hub, the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification, the United Nations University–Institute for Water, Environment and Health, and U.N.-Water, in partnership with the Permanent Mission of the Federal Government of Somalia to the U.N. Who knew that a country known for its pirates is now making policy for the rest of the world?

Discussion topics will include:

-          “Vanishing Waters and Drying Lands: Impacts on Migration,” focusing on “migration, environment and climate change nexus” – (even though the global warming/climate change has been debunked for its faulty data and lack of scientific evidence)

Policy responses will be drafted in regards to water, land, and migration.

-          “Migration Governance in the GCC: Towards Inclusive, Safe and Resilient Societies” will be hosted by Philippines and Bahrain Permanent Mission at the U.N. and Migrant Forum of Asia (an NGO) and explore “Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration as it intersects with Sustainable Development Goals.”

-          Launch in January 2018 of the Global Plan of Action for Sustainable Energy Solutions in Situations of Displacement – “130 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance due to conflict, natural disasters, and other complex global challenges.”  This global plan is “non-binding” but represents “concrete recommendations” to give “safe access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy services for all displaced people by 2030.” The western and developed world will no doubt foot the bill for this new third world bureaucracy and its “harmonizing” philanthropy.

As is always the case, the United Nations third world SD cabal includes third world governments, business, “civil society leaders,” private sector, academia, and other never named “stakeholders” which usually translates as Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), “non-profits” with a well-paid and well-traveled staff.

Assisting Member States to achieve the migration objectives of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs for a “dignified and humane migration,” the International Office for Migration (IOM) provided input to the 2018 HLPF. https://www.iom.int/news/migration-and-sustainable-development-goals-focus-2018-high-level-political-forum

If I Could Show You What Communism Is

Wikipedia Photo

This is a wake-up call for young and old Americans, wearing Che Guevara t-shirts, Mao’s hammer and sickle t-shirts, holding “I support socialism” posters, and proudly displaying Hillary and Bernie bumper stickers, the ole Bernie who hates capitalism so much that he accepts political donations from evil capitalists, drives expensive cars, and owns and lives in pricey homes most of his supporters cannot afford.

If I could show young people today what communism is, those clamoring for socialism and communism to be brought to American shores,  those who are tired of capitalism because they are so fat and happy, they want the challenge of poverty and want, the challenge of the communist code-speak of “social justice” and “egalitarianism,” I would send them to Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea for a few months so that they could experience first-hand what the utopia they see as paradise is like.

If I could show young Americans the rotten socialist countries that illegal aliens have fled, the same illegals who are now giving us the finger, burning and stomping our American flag, boldly waving their flags, the total disaster they have made of their countries, while demonizing our successful America that generously put them on welfare ahead of our veterans, perhaps you might see reality.

I would ask them to come with me to see where I grew up, the cinder block grimy apartments that are still standing today.  The entrance and stairwell are unchanged; the damage from the 1977 earthquake is still visible, reinforced concrete pieces dangling on the side like loose teeth. The lives of ordinary people, the proletariat, are mostly unchanged too.

I would ask them to come shop in the same neighborhood shopping center now overrun by small individual shops looking like an ill-planned bazaar, with walls that have not been painted inside and outside for decades. The poverty and scars of communism are hard to erase by time when neglect is perennial and nobody cares about the proletariat poor.

The community organizing apparatchiks lived well then and the global communist elites live well today even though communism officially “fell” in 1989. Communism has morphed into a more powerful and insidious global movement that attacks and brainwashes the population through schools and bogus global warming.

I would take them to the city hospital with its dirty wards, broken cement floors, cracked walls, unused shower stalls, with blood and other bodily fluids staining the beds, the walls and the floors, and slimy smelly bathrooms that seldom see any disinfectant.

If they want Bernie’s socialism so badly, I would take them to Venezuela, formerly a well-off country with rich oil reserves, brought to bankruptcy and penury by the lying socialists who gave the poor a dusting of free food and basic medical care but when the money dried out due to gross mismanagement and theft of the economy by the ruling communist elites, the handouts disappeared. The incompetence of socialist and communist community organizers brought the country to its knees, with inflation exceeding five digits.

I would show you, dear Millennials aspiring for Bernie’s manufactured Socialist Democracy, Venezuelans standing in long lines for basics that you take for granted, food, toilet paper, diapers, detergent, or digging in trash cans for scrap food. I would show you Venezuelans having to kill zoo animals because they could not feed them and then cooking them for their families.

Perhaps you would be willing to be injected with medicine by doctors and nurses in dirty white coats using the same syringe and few needles, boiled in rusty pans because the clinic or hospital cannot afford autoclaves and disposable medical supplies, everything is rewashed and reused. Maybe you are willing to have root canal and surgery without local anesthesia?

Liberal women demand free birth control and menstrual pads because they are too entitled to take responsibility for their own existence and basic expenses, they want daddy government to take care of all their needs from cradle to grave while they stay glued to their social media profile on Instagram or watch with bated breath how many new fake friends and likes they may gain on Facebook. Be careful what you wish for because welfare dependency on government for all needs is a grave disease which is very hard to cure if ever.

Socialist countries, not the Fabian variety, cannot even provide such items for sale in the empty stores because they mismanage everything so disastrously.  They are excellent speakers and community organizers who draw naïve and ignorant progressive fools into their ideological “everything free” fantasy.

You Millennials are not even sure which bathrooms to use or what gender to call yourselves, but your list of economic demands gets larger and larger every day; everything is a right in your brainwashed minds muddled by smoking too much pot; you listen to cunning communist teachers who have never traveled to, nor lived under a communist dictatorship but you believe them nevertheless.

Millennials should learn the facts of real historical events under socialism and communism from those who have experienced it and escaped from it, not the revisionist history in textbooks and the lies spun by the communist academia and financed by globalist billionaires who have made their fortunes under the much maligned capitalism.

Bernie Sanders is selling socialism to you, young and old Americans, a failed ideology of violence, confiscation of property and land, starvation, poverty, political oppression, and loss of freedom.  There is no equality, compassion, and social justice under socialism and communism. There is no social justice at all, just exploitation of the weak and disarmed. The tyrants like Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Ceausescu, and Stalin, who had previously sold socialism to the masses have killed millions of their own people once those oppressed woke up and refused to follow the vicious path that destroyed their freedom and their lives.

 

 

My Latest Story

Read my latest story at The Epoch Times:

https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-warm-day-brings-back-memories-of-summers-under-communism_2582514.html

Hysteria, Hate, and Histrionics Defines the Left

Narrenschiff - Woodcut

Lacking any substance and sinking deeper into the abyss of irrelevance, the Democrat Party’s platform seems to be defined by the cause of defending illegal aliens over Americans, invaders who have broken our laws by crossing the border illegally. Mexican officials and liberals claim that immigration of any kind is a human right.

Going a step further, Democrats are defending MS-13 gang members who have terrorized Salvadorans, robbing and stealing from ordinary citizens who are so scared for their lives, they give them everything they want – clothes, money, chicken, food, and anything else they demand.

Now these animals who maim and kill for ritualistic sport are coming to our shores among unaccompanied minors housed on our military bases and in church-run shelters. The President was right about them.

The Democrats defend the children who are separated from their parents, sometimes desperate parents who send them alone on foot and on a train called the Beast, sometimes opportunistic and irresponsible parents who send their young with a coyote to the border.

In the case of the woman who crossed the border twice with her child, she left her husband and other children behind. Her asylum petition does not seem like such a sure case if the other children left behind and her spouse are safe. It did not stop Time magazine from running a cover with her crying child and a towering Trump, implying that Trump had separated the poor toddler from her mom - they were together.

But the Border Patrol told Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA in an interview that unaccompanied children are not like ordinary American children of that age, they are “hard core.” They have organized hierarchies even as young as five, ready to “take your lunch money.” They take cookies from the weaker ones. The older kids, ten to thirteen, engage in sexual activities through the chicken wire fence that separates girls from boys. When the agents put up plywood on the fence, they drilled holes in the plywood in order to continue their sexual activities. https://www.facebook.com/turningpointusa/videos/1718816781500364/UzpfSTEwMDAwMDAxOTUyNjA0ODoyMDIyODY4MDUxMDU3MTU5/

Why do Democrats and their socialist ilk hate patriotic Americans who love their country and want the best for its citizens, including border protection and sovereignty? Because Democrats have been successfully brainwashed and indoctrinated in public schools and have become strident and militant proponents of the new world order, of global communism, and of open borders. Anybody else who believes differently is a threat which must be marginalized and eliminated. And the money coffers are full; there is enough to go around for many years of social unrest and societal disruption in the style of their socialist guru, Saul Alinsky, the author of Rules for Radicals.

Every day another famous or infamous Democrat celebrity is taking the stage to vilify, misrepresent, and threaten the opposition with disrupting their lives, their peaceful access to grocery stores, gas stations, movies, restaurants, or just walking down the street.

Public officials of the Trump administration are being stopped and harassed in public places by unhinged liberals triggered by speeches of Representative Maxine Waters who claims that she has a right to peaceful activism. Calling for violence publicly is not peaceful. When you restrict someone’s civil liberties in this manner, it is not peaceful activism.

It is a mass hysteria, hate, and histrionics stoked by the MSM, reading their marching notes from the Democrat Party. The western world is shaking its collective head as to what is happening to our country.

The more successful the Trump economy becomes, the more strident the Left becomes. And the “Right Wingers,” patient and tolerant group that they are, keep their silence hoping that the insanity of the left will die down and everyone will go back to the hole they crawled out of. But, since they have nothing else to offer their voters and supporters, they offer childish tantrums unbecoming of adults.

You would think that all political groups would get behind a good economy even though they may hate our President, because a good economy benefits all Americans. But that is not what the left is about. They show their hateful colors every day by projecting it onto conservatives.

Four years ago, Nancy Pelosi riled Berkley graduates in her commencement speech by urging them to be disruptors. As some on the left followed her advice, now Pelosi has changed her tune and warned people to be civil. Civility is a rational direction but the radical left is still sore and bruised from their election loss two years ago and they are not going to accept Trump ever as their president. They are certainly entitled to free speech as long as it does not incite mass hysteria and violence. http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/206417-pelosi-tells-grads-be-disruptors

Speaking to a criminal justice organization in Los Angeles, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said about the critics of the administration’s immigration policies, “The rhetoric we hear from the other side on the issue, as on many others, has become radicalized. We hear views on television today that are on the lunatic fringe, frankly.” http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sessions-downtown-20180626-story.html

As one reader, Mike F., put it, “Liberals have never been on the right side of anything. What they touched ended up corrupted, tainted, deluded, diluted, compromised, unworkable, overly expensive, and unwieldly. They started the KKK, the Jim Crows laws, used fake news, and photo shopped pictures to incite hysteria in their base.”

We learn Civility as toddlers and in kindergarten. Civility has a different definition for liberals. Civility for them is harassing our Press Secretary so much that she now requires Secret Service protection 24 hours a day. Civility for Democrats is bringing mobs at prominent Republicans’ homes and disturbing their peace with offensive chants and drums. Civility is throwing the carcass of a charred animal on the front porch of a Republican with small children. Civility is harassing administration employees in restaurants, cinemas, and at gas stations.

 

The 1970s America Is Gone Not by the Tides of Change

The Swamp
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

The first Americans I’ve met, Pam and her husband James from Chicago worked with my dad at the refinery.  He was an engineer from a small family and she followed him to this God-forsaken country where everyone seemed to be a prisoner. They appeared friendly in a plastic way, smiling all the time for no apparent reason, totally unconcerned about the misery of the oppressed Romanians around them, barely surviving under communism.

The couple relished in their monthly shopping trips – it was their escape from the depressing life around them. They would fly to places in the West that were forbidden to us, Hungary, Austria, and Germany. She would come back each time with expensive gifts for herself and her family. She could not wait to return to the land of plenty, far from “this dirty, drab and awful country where nobody smiled.”  

Insulated from reality, shopping at their special stores, treated by American doctors, Pam never really understood the pain and suffering white-washed by clean streets, summer flowers in well-manicured parks, and beautiful monuments erected to the dear leader.  The long lines for food, she said, must have been because the cashiers were really slow and ineffective. Americans did not stand in line for anything except tickets for games and rock concerts.

John came for the opportunity to share his skills in a communist country and to meet new people. In our conversations in English (they never tried to learn Romanian), the word opportunity seemed to crop up all the time. I did not understand what opportunity meant because such a word did not translate exactly into our vocabulary and into our lives, literally and figuratively. You were born in the proletariat class and that is where you remained for the rest of your life, no chance at anything else. The communist elites had any opportunity they chose to take for themselves by force.

America is the land of opportunity where immigrants dream to find success through hard work and a lifestyle with a picket fence, a nice home, plenty of food, and a traditional family comprised of mother, father, and children. Nineteen-seventy America was still the land of opportunity where, if one worked hard, one could reach whatever he/she was willing to sacrifice in order to achieve their goals. But Christianity, God, faith, and family were at the center of a successful life.

There were no pedestrians in the southern town where I lived. Americans were trapped inside large metal gas guzzlers that drank gasoline like water. Nobody strolled outdoors except in the square downtown. If anyone saw you walk on the side of the road, since sidewalks did not exist except in large cities, they would stop and offer you a ride. It was done from a sense of pity as well as concern for your safety, walking in 90-degree oven-like heat coupled with unbearable humidity that kept everyone’s face looking young and shiny.

Many foreigners who dared or were allowed to travel to America came by boat as it was still much cheaper than flying. Once here, some took the Greyhound bus across the U.S. and others, like me, flew everywhere or crisscrossed the country by car or truck, seldom taking the train.

In a very small southern town of 3,000, church was the center of life for young and old. I counted over 100 churches stretching as far away as a ten mile radius in the county. Many youth trips, activities, and summer camps were sanctioned or sponsored by the church.

There was a drive-in theater, and one grocery store, locally owned and operated. The closest chain grocery store was over 60 miles away. A tiny mall with boutiques and a Sears store is where people bought their washers and dryers, TVs, lawn mowers, bikes, toys, Christmas gifts, and clothing. Fancier TVs could be purchased in a Curtis Mathis store. There was no Super Walmart, Target, or such retailers.

Some cross-roads had a small convenience store that the local farmers frequented for their daily necessities, milk, bananas, ice cream, and candy bars. Americans of all ages consumed, I thought, way too much sugar then. The owners knew everybody and, if they just came from the field and did not have their wallets, the items purchased were put on an account which the farmer could pay later.

There was a level of trust that I have never seen anywhere else – nobody needed a credit card. People did not dare write bad checks and credit cards were hard to obtain and seldom accepted. My Egyptian friend Lula remarked that we bought everything with checks, not cash. She did not understand the western concept of banking.

People dressed simply, the local seamstress made a good living with Simplicity patterns and fabrics purchased by the yard at Hancock’s Fabrics. She charged $20 to make a dress at a time when minimum wage was $3.10.

The local beauty shop was a wooden building on the side of an empty highway, no sign, every lady in the county knew where it was, just big enough for a couple of chairs, a sink, and the window air conditioner. A southern belle dressed in jeans and a country shirt did her hair on Friday for $10 and then went to the grocery store and bought the week’s $20 supply of food for the family. Americans could buy a lot of food for $20 in the seventies and still only spent about 15 percent of their income to fill their refrigerators.

I was mesmerized how homes in the middle of a pasture had running water and a septic tank. In my Romania at the time, country folks still had smelly and unsanitary out-houses.

Eating out was unheard of unless you counted going to the Rexall Drug counter for a soda float or getting a Mickey Mouse ice cream bar at Vaughn’s country store. The small town had a Sonic drive-in but no McDonalds and no pizza parlor.

Locals bought their blue jeans at Varney’s Department Store on the square and Elegant Ladies, each the size of a master bedroom today, or at the Co-op store where you could pretty much purchase anything you needed to run a farm, including the tough Wrangler jeans for $10.

If you were willing to drive over 60 miles to buy food in a chain grocery store, you could also shop in a real Sears or J.C. Penney store, today’s dinosaurs. Catalogs came in every year but ordering by phone and receiving packages in the mail took time and effort and the shipping and returns were costly. The post office was not conveniently located either. Walking in the heat and the unforgiving sun to retrieve packages or mail from the mailbox on the side of the country road, far away from any farm house, was a sweat-drenching proposition.

Homes were sprawling and comfortable, simply decorated, with A/C units in the windows or the occasional central air heating and cooling. Poorer folks lived in trailers who rocked, rattled, and shook during the frequent Tornado Alley storms that seemed to crack the sky in two with thunder and lightning.  Powerful winds whipped and ripped old and venerable trees from the roots and occasional tornadoes demolished and flattened the forest, ripping anything else apart that stood in its path, and sending cows and humans flying through the air.

People dressed in their best for Wednesday and Sunday church services, followed by picnics and potluck suppers when everyone brought their best dishes to share with the congregation. And during football and baseball season, people attended the high school games and prayed before each game, cheering for the home team.

A stream of friends and acquaintances visited my in-laws to meet the Romanian girl who was lucky enough to escape Ceausescu’s communism while the Romanian was bewildered by all these well-meaning strangers who had no idea what kind of world she had left behind.

Without a myriad of TV channels of today, the drive-in was the only cinema that offered the latest movies. If your car broke down in the middle of the road, kind strangers stopped to help, change a tire, give you a lift home or to the nearest garage.

Cell phones did not exist in our bucolic lives and land lines were expensive. Many country folks had rotary dials with four parties on one phone line. You had to wait your turn to make a call or, in an emergency, ask the other parties to get off so that you can make the call. Everybody knew anybody else’s latest news and gossip as it was easy to listen in on conversations, intentionally or not.

Foreigners like me, an oddity from the communist world Americans despised, were a rarity in the South and Americans opened their homes to them but did not really accept them as part of their social milieu, they kept them at arm’s length and on the fringes because communists were not to be trusted. Yet foreigners like me learned the language and integrated into society, and became naturalized Americans who were contributing to its well-being and paid taxes.

Today’s Americans embrace communism and desire to change their society to that utopian failed state. They take in with open arms the real flotsam and jetsam of the third world who are often anti-Christian and unwilling to ever integrate into society, learn English, and assimilate. They are only interested in the generous welfare.

In the 70s, it was a shame to accept welfare. You had to be really down on your luck and prayed to improve quickly so you could get off welfare. There was shame and dishonor associated with accepting handouts. Today that shame is gone and it has morphed into an entitlement to everything other people own and had worked hard for.

The local high schools would invite foreign speakers who survived and escaped oppressive regimes to educate young Americans about the evils of totalitarianism/communism and how dear leaders like Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro, and Ceausescu have tortured and killed 100 million of their own people, citizens kept prisoners in their own countries and often starved to death.

After decades of telling teachers and students that one cannot mix Christian religion and state, the k-12 Common Core curriculum adopted is indoctrinating students into Islam and into sexual deviance. It is sad to watch today’s public schools, some private schools, and many colleges in the U.S. preach communism, intolerance of everyone who loves America, the pillars of Islam, and anti-Christianity even though many well-informed parents object.

And those who object to this indoctrination are labeled immediately – intolerant, xenophobic, sexist, homophobic, racist, bigoted, anti-Semitic, islamophobic, misogynist, or whatever “hate” label the Left has chosen for the rest of us who fell in love with 1970s America.

With a few areas here and there, small towns that did not have enough money or resources to accommodate the welfare-seeking invasion of illegal immigrants and government-allotted mostly male refugees, 1970s America is unrecognizable today. The rule of law and borders long forgotten, is the country still yours?

Say good-bye to what you grew up with and hello to 2018 America altered not by the normal change that the passage of time creates but a socially-engineered globalist entity spawned by the communist Left over the last five decades.