USA! USA! USA!

I’ve never been a “doom and gloom” person. I’ve done my best to be positive in my work and home life. In return, life has rewarded me with blessings and happiness. Until recently. Recently there seems to be a dark cloud hanging over the USA and over Iowa, and I fear it could be infectious. I feel

motivated to say and do something, partly due to a conversation with a young mother the other day. She is 35ish, married, and a mother of 3. She is civic minded. She wants to help make her community better and does so at every opportunity. She told me she, her husband and kids recently got passports for the first time. Just in case. Then she ticked off a few very good reasons that a young family might want to be ready to flee the USA. Flee the USA? That makes the USA sound like one of those shit-hole countries our president is so fond of disparaging. One where masked federal police snatch women and children off the streets, or worse yet, execute them on the streets, in broad daylight. One where the ruler of the country controls everything, including the judges and the lawmakers. One who proclaims that all who oppose him are lunatics and radicals who should be punished or imprisoned. One who builds his house of gold and proclaims his health while his subjects live unhoused and unhealthy.

Now before you brand me un-American and start with the Love it or Leave it crap, know this, I miss Ronald Reagan and G.W. Bush. I fly the stars and stripes and the Iowa flag. We have four sons who served, one of them interred in the Veterans Cemetery near Omaha, one left the Marines after 12 years and joined the Air Force, he is currently deployed to the middle east. I will, therefore, say what I wish and expect you to defend my right to say it. And to the fake king and those who still bow to him and his ilk, I say America, Love it or Leave It!

Oh, and if the term shit-hole country offends you, it should!