Public Health Decisions

Georgia currently has no statewide mask mandate.  The governor, Brian Kemp, as corrupt as they come in regards to science-denial, racist/racism and Trump surrogate, wants the good people of Georgia to make up their own minds about whether or not they need to wear a face mask.

Prior to becoming Georgia's governor, Brian was the Secretary of State there, in charge of voting and little things like denying voting rights and access to ballots to blacks, gerrymandering, and so on.  

So, yeah, he's a real stand-up guy.

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In Some Cases, Such As A Public Health Crisis/Pandemic, You Have To Give Up Some Personal Liberties For The Good Of Everyone.

A national health emergency, such as the current Covid-19 pandemic, needs to be addressed by public health and government officials.  And YES, some of the decisions those groups or individuals make WILL EFFECT the population… such as wearing a protective face covering like a mask, covering the nose and mouth.

When that same government official (governor, deputy governor, assistant governor, and so on) mandates something like a mask, YES, we the people of that state have to abide by those directives.  Again, for public health safety.

So, when a high school principal makes a remark like, “Class changes at the high school level are a challenge when maintaining a specific schedule.  It is an area we are continuing to work on in this new environment to find practicable ways to further limit students from congregating.  Students are in this hallway environment for just a brief period as they move to their next class. … There is no question that the photo does not look good. ... Wearing a mask is a personal choice, and there is no practical way to enforce a mandate to wear them."

Read that last line again, slowly.

Astonishing, right?

NO. You have to GIVE UP that “personal choice” in order to keep yourself and others safe.  Period.  FULL STOP.

There is no personal choice involved here, but there most definitely should be discipline or punishment for not adhering to the state mandates. 

Maybe that’s where a lack of leadership comes in.  Maybe the governor doesn’t believe in science and public health over public safety.  In that case, heck, it’s an easy decision.  Go back to school or lose funding. 

Sure put the lives of these young people at risk.  They’re expendable, right?  You betcha, they are!

Here’s the picture, which clearly shows most of the students not wearing masks or other face coverings.   

Yes, teenagers do have many rights and are afforded many personal choices and liberties, even in a school setting.  They have rights and responsibilities, as well, and among those are being educated in a safe environment.

This is a situation where, try and weasel out of it as they may, the district and school board will be hard pressed to come up with a logical explanation as to how they can 1) Justify suspending a student for pointing out gross negligence on the part of the school and its board members, 2) How not wearing a mask is personal choice and not a requirement.  (Not to mention, appropriate social distancing.), and 3) How this is not a public health emergency situation.

We've seen time and again as businesses reopen after months of closures, that because this is so important to them and they desperately want to get it right, many are going above and beyond state guidelines and mandates to protect not only their staffs but their potential customers as well. 

They need to be thanked graciously and applauded for their efforts.

Schools, as we've seen,  have to go above and beyond.  

Our children's lives are on the line.

We Have 4 Centuries Of History To Rewrite In Order To Correct The White-Washing Of The Past

Keystone, South Dakota, in the shadow of Mount Rushmore, President Donald Trump on Friday, July 3, 2020, railing against what he called a "merciless campaign" by his political foes to erase history by removing monuments some say are symbols of racial oppression.

"As we meet here tonight there is a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought so hard for," Trump warned.  He added, "Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children." 

Seriously, dude? Do you really want future generations or even the current one, to continue to live with the white-washing of the United States?  400 years of slavery, denigration of indigenous peoples, that’s not enough?  Really?? 

Have you not been paying attention to the Black Lives Matter protests in May, June and July 2020?  That’s a rhetorical question, since, of course he doesn’t pay attention to anything not related to Him looking good. 

Just a reminder – Our first President George Washington was a slave owner while in office; Thomas Jefferson was also a slave owner while in office; Theodore Roosevelt believed Asians and ‘colored people’ were immoral, among other things; Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, although committed mass murder of indigenous people. (Yes, it’s a very brief history lesson.)

And for some reason, President Donald Trump wants to remember and celebrate those events. 

He couldn’t understand why fireworks have been banned at the monument for the past two decades.

“It’s all stone.  Where’s the environmental impact?”, he told a radio host recently.

Meanwhile, the entire state of South Dakota is on high alert, firefighters, paramedics and all, just for a few hours of incredibly stupid, arrogant behavior on the part of the leader of the free world and his minions, er, faithful followers.  How does that saying from the Bible go, “Like lambs to the slaughter?” 

Yes, yes it IS pretty re-donk-ulous.

One of the problems here, and there are many, is that with this particular monument (on Indigenous land) it’s description of who our founding fathers were needs a serious edit in order to point out and call attention to the contributions of Blacks, Asians, Hispanics and Indigenous peoples.  With other much smaller statues and monuments, most can be removed and replaced with more current people or symbols that represent our current, updated, upgraded history.

That’s a long, local level, state-by-state endeavor that should happen before the end of 2020.  Otherwise, it will absolutely get swept under the rug because that’s what lazy white people do… procrastinate… among other things. 

This one quote in particular stands out as strikingly misinformed:
"Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children."

No. No one is talking about “wiping out history”, only editing it in order to reveal the stark, ugly truth:  Slaves were introduced to America in 1620.  The history books tend to gloss over that part because, again, it’s a painful truth.

“Defaming our heroes”, well, I’m not sure how heroic it is to own slaves in a white controlled government and country. 

“Erase our value”, ugh…. This is becoming repetitive, but necessary.  Slavery, enslavement, etc.  Is that really a value you want to project, protect and own?   No need to answer right now, just maybe take several hundred years to do nothing and think about it. 

“Indoctrinate our children”, again, we’re pretty good at that.  Been doing it for 400 hundred years.  And not only with politics and daily life – what about religion?  Seems pretty tame there, right?  Think about that one for just a moment.  Regardless of which religion you subscribe to, aren’t you learning and passing along those beliefs to your children?  

*loud gasps from the crowd* 

I know. I know.  Yes, that sacrilege.  But is it?  If we’re so afraid to even talk about religion, we need to think about why that’s a bad thing.  Indoctrination is embedded into who we are in America. 

“The American Dream”, two cars in the garage, 2.5 children, a home, a wife and a dog.  A white picket fence, Formica countertops, plastic wrapped sofas… you get the idea.  It’s an antiquated, pipe dream of an idea from the post-World War II era that never included or considered Blacks, Asians, Hispanics or Indigenous people.  It was never their dream.

Right now in 2020, 20% into a new century, those old thought patterns need to change and be replaced with the here and now, reflecting the multi-cultural, multifaceted people we’ve evolved into, for future generations.

And, yes, some of those old antiquated institutions need to go as well:

The KKK, the NRA, White Supremacists, hate speech, and on and on.  (I’d actually love to hear about more groups that you feel belong on that list.)

Inclusion, not exclusion.

Free speech, not hate speech.

Progress, not perfection.

This is not about erasing any history, only correcting and editing history to reflect the facts about how those groups were actually treated by White people.

25 Years Ago This Summer

This was our home from 1990 - 1996.

It was 25 years go this summer, 1995 that I came out as gay to my friends and a few co-workers.   They were mostly supportive and even a few were happy for me.  A quarter of a century.  Wow, how time flies. 

As my ex-wife used to say, “Time flies like an arrow, but, fruit flies like a banana.”  That is so true.

We’d gotten into a rather loud, very pointed argument the previous December, 1994, in regards to discipline with our young son.  One thing led to another and out of the blue, this came out of her mouth, “Are you gay?” 

“No. What?”  I didn’t want to be associated with that word.  “No, I’m not gay.  Why would you say that?” 

I don’t recall the specifics of the conversation after that, but a couple of things happened later that week. 

1)     I did some serious, introspective thinking about myself and my life at that point, and realized that, yes, it’s true. I am gay.  And it wasn’t fair to continue a charade with my wife and son.

2)     My wife said to me, “It must be hard having those feelings and not knowing what to do about it.”  We talked a little more and decided that yes, we needed to get a divorce and sell our new home of 5 years.

We both still had our jobs to focus on and our son to attend to.  By June, I decided that since I’d be going back to school in a few weeks and seeing my teaching partners, I’d better be proactive (a favorite word of our current principal at the time – see "Being Proactive Does NOT Mean Telling People What To Do!", April 2016, for more about him) and share some news with a few of them. 

I’d invited a couple of them over to my home and sat down to have the “coming out talk”.  It was amazing to me that as I spoke to each of them, they both said the same thing about me:

“Oh, yeah. I’ve known that for a long time now.  You did this, and this, and then of course, this.  Oh, and the way you looked at this parent and this one.  Yeah, this isn’t very shocking or surprising.  I am surprised though that you took so long to realize it yourself.”

The subsequent conversations that I have the following day and then at school during in-service week were almost the same verbatim. The maddening thing from my perspective was how I didn’t see any of that when it was taking place.  Totally oblivious. 

Initially those first several years were horrible for me because I knew that inside, in order to feel whole and complete and not just moving around in some zombie-like state, I knew I had to have a boyfriend in my life.  My personal relationships, including with my own son, suffered the most.  I was not a good, decent, loving father to him during that time and it scared me because that’s exactly how my relationship with my father had been so many years earlier.  History was repeating itself in a very bad way.

Several years later, I was diagnosed with a persistent depressive disorder, called dysthymia. It is a continuous long-term (chronic) form of depression, whereby you lose interest in normal daily activities, feel hopeless, lack productivity, and have low self-esteem and an overall feeling of inadequacy. These feelings last for years and may significantly interfere with your relationships, school, work and daily activities. And they did interfere.

It’s no excuse for some of my behaviors at the time, but it is a reason for them.

Over time, now, during the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s a perfect time for self-reflection and looking back at our lives.  Not necessarily making peace with things, but in order to see what we can learn and perhaps grow from moving forward.

No, at this time, I am still single and still very much interested in having a husband in my life.  Absolutely.  As I am writing my final chapters, living my life in the best possible way that I can and the best possible ways I know how, I am saddened for the many missed opportunities on which I’ve missed out.  Many regrets.

I know that I am not perfect – people point that out to me daily.

And likewise, I know I’m not the bad, evil monster I was portrayed as once upon a time, either.  I can’t be that person, nor do I want to be him/it.