Jonathots Daily Blog
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A wake-up call.
When I traveled on the road, I frequently requested one from the front desk clerk at the motel. He or she punched a few buttons, and sure enough, the next morning at the specified time, my phone rang.
It was startling—so loud that I decided to purchase a small traveler’s alarm clock, which could still awaken me but without a heart attack.
The only problem with this new apparatus was that it was gentle and had a snooze button, which permitted me to rob ten more minutes of sleep. Sometimes I just didn’t get out of bed on the right schedule.
A wake-up call should be alarming.
It should sound the cry: “WAKE UP!”
So what happens when you don’t permit a wake-up call, or you’ve deafened your ears to such an extent that you no longer find the sound alarming?
I don’t know which one has happened. But there are certainly things going on in this great country—things we all share—which would have alarmed us at one time, and now have been relegated to the status of background noise or surrounding scenery.
I, for one, think we once thought it alarming for people to treat one another without civility. We were cordial, even to people we didn’t like. We chose our words carefully.
Perhaps there was more gossip because true feelings were being uttered behind the backs of our enemies, but “a hospitality of congeniality” kept us from being openly hostile, on the verge of rage.
I am alarmed that we’ve lost our civility.
Likewise, it stands to reason that a faulted people should be served by a faulted leader. So what happens when the leader of the nation no longer believes that he or she has any faults? Won’t all the citizens want to imitate such an arrogant profile?
“If it’s good enough for the top dog, why don’t the little puppies get to bark at will?”
It is alarming to me that we seem to have lost the awareness of our own fragility and consciousness concerning our weaknesses.
Killing used to bother us. It really did.
Many years ago, when four students were murdered at Kent State University during a Viet Nam War protest, the country was stunned. Now I’m not so sure that four victims destroyed during a shooting would even make it into the second news cycle before disappearing into the past.
Once killing gains acceptability, it no longer matters who, and unfortunately may someday not matter how many.
I am extremely alarmed that the term “socialism” is being bandied around like a cultural volleyball by those with little awareness of the horrors suffered by souls in the Eastern Bloc of the European continent, or the stunted status thrust upon the good folk of Cuba.
Especially alarming is tying the word “socialist” to the adjective “democratic,” or harkening back to FDR and the New Deal.
Socialism has no place in our country’s governing.
And concerning programs to help the aging and poor, we must realize that as a nation, we have historically been able to come up with such plans and opportunities without ever having to wave the banner of socialism.
Then finally, I am alarmed with bias.
Whether it’s the religious right continuing to hold women in subjection to men or the liberals celebrating culture, only to further focus on our differences instead of our similarities, or just trying to keep all colors, mindsets and religions seemingly revered, but banished to a distance—it is alarming.
We’ve lost our way.
Our nation is sleepy.
We’re waking up intoxicated by our own foolishness, yearning to snooze, ignoring the need to rise up and make a difference.
How loud would the alarms have to be to awaken us from:
- following a leader who thinks he makes no mistakes
- supporting a Presidential candidate who dubs himself a socialist
- joining into a general national nastiness that puts us at continual odds with each other
- permitting a bloodbath of treachery and murder that leaves us baffled but unmoved
- or supporting an ongoing bias against gender, race and religion?
It is time to wake up.
It is time to sound the alarm, hear the alarm and be alarmed.
G-Poppers … June 29th, 2018
When G-Pop was growing up, the mayor of his small town had a young daughter named Jeannie.
Jeannie was smart.
Nobody liked Jeannie. The reason the students did not like Jeannie was that their parents did not like the mayor. So over supper conversation, it was made clear to the children that Jeannie was a problem.
Not much could be done by us young’uns during school session, but at recess, everyone got together and ridiculed, attacked, criticized and ostracized Jeannie. Matter of fact, one day it got so bad that our whole class had her cornered, trying to push her off the playground.
We didn’t plan on hurting her. We just wanted to make it clear that because of her father and the politics that made our parents angry, we were going to get her out of there. Three teachers came running up, and when they understood what was being attempted, the whole class was punished and we were not allowed to have recess for two weeks.
Jeannie was permitted to go home and be comforted by her parents. They were so shocked they put her in a private school and we never saw her again.
This came to G-Pop’s mind when the Little Red Hen–just as in the old tale–became fussy again. People took a thirty-five-year-old woman who was on “recess,” simply trying to enjoy dinner, and asked her to leave a restaurant simply because they did not agree with her politics, and did not appreciate her being the press secretary for President Donald Trump.
Unfortunately, the end result of this tale, unlike the story of Jeannie, is that Sarah Sanders was punished, and the “students” were made to believe they were merely exercising their First Amendment rights by getting rid of something unpleasant.
G-Pop has a question: If it’s wrong on the playground, why isn’t it wrong in the restaurant?
If we expect our children to be tolerant enough to share a space of land and get into their games, why is it ridiculous to think that grown people can’t sit at the table and enjoy a meal with someone in the room who doesn’t meet their favor?
Kicking Sarah out was not a symbol of the resistance.
It’s not a stand against tyranny.
It is an attack on a young woman who’s trying to do her job. What G-Pop thinks about her job can be penned in an editorial to the newspaper–not with a snarling contempt, demanding she be removed because her presence is intolerable.
She left.
She did not stand and fight. And when she left, all the liberals got together and decided it was a good thing to remove her from the restaurant. Matter of fact, one black Congresswoman suggested it should be done more.
Because G-Pop loves his country, he is choosing to believe this was a temporary lapse of judgment.
Just as the kids in his small town had no right to push Jeannie off the playground, no one has the authority to ask Sarah to leave the restaurant.
G-Pop will not return to an America where signs are posted everywhere that say: “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”
We all knew what that meant. We all knew who was not going to get served.
Let us not return to such insanity.
The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this inspirational opportunity
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Tags: Congresswoman Waters, First Amendment, G-Poppers, insanity, liberals, Little Red Hen, mayor, Mike Huckabee, ostracized, parents, playground, politics, President Donald Trump, punishment, refuse service, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, tolerance