Introduction to Freemerican

Where to begin? My earliest recollection is me asking "why?" A good example is found in a chapter of my yet-to-be-published book "Memoirs of a baby boomer".

Since my first memories I have always been curious, some would say ‘to a fault’.

I have always thought of myself as a philosopher. I was just born too late. I would have been comfortable walking around in a robe and sandals, and just contemplating, why? This has gotten me into trouble more than once.

Here is one of my earliest ‘collisions with curiosity’ from a chapter in my unfinished book ‘Memoirs of a baby boomer’:

When I was almost four, I decided I would venture past the property line to see what I could discover. We lived in Arlington, a subdivision in Jacksonville, Florida. Pauline’s yard was back, on the left from the rear of our property. My mother had no reason to suspect I would go anywhere, as I had always been content to stay within the yard. Pauline had a washing machine in her utility shed. I heard the rhythmical incantations and was drawn to the sounds of her clothing swishing back and forth, back and forth… I have always heard my name “Mark” in the strangest of conditions. Crows say “Mark, Mark” instead of the customary “caw, caw” that most of you hear. Well, Pauline’s washing machine was calling my name. I sat and observed it for a while before noticing the clothes wringer attachment. You see, in 1954 a washing machine was a round tub that sloshed your clothes around in soapy water and to wring out the water there was a device consisting of two powerful rubber rollers. The garments would be fed into the rollers and squashed thus removing most of the moisture. I found this most interesting. I climbed up to the wringer and first pushed my fingertips into the exiting side of the rollers. Nothing very exciting happened and me being “Charlie-curious-Brown” had to try the other side. When I put my fingers in there, the rubber rollers grabbed them and would not let go. The pain shot through my hand as the bones were crunched and all I could do was cry loudly. I am not sure how quickly Pauline came out but she was able to separate the two rollers by unlatching them and my hand was freed. This traumatic moment was one of only a handful that I have had in my semi-charmed life. I think this experience shaped a philosophy that has guided my later years. “No matter what the consequences always do what you think is right.” Many much more intelligent observers would beg to differ with this credo but it was law for me. My curiosity has been both a godsend and curse all in one. At the earliest of ages, we all make decisions and some are made for us. I could have become a mass murderer or a priest, but as most of us do, by the laws of nature I landed neatly in the middle. My mother loved me dearly…

That’s just a taste of my book. I hope to complete it one day. Perhaps these Substack postings will hasten my progress on my book. Writing is synonymous with a muscle, as the more you use it the better results you can expect. Politically speaking, I have been a Democrat all of my voting life, that is until 2016.

I grew up on Walter Cronkite and swallowed the party line hook, line and sinker for the ‘sixties’, I was a ‘hippie’. I lived in a small commune in Ocala, FL. It consisted of the entire staff of the radio station WWKE, and all of their girlfriends. That needs to be a bulky chapter in my book.

But I cruised through the seventies, eighties, nineties, and caressed the new century still pulling all-blue levers! Sixteen years in the 21st century, I finally had had enough! It seemed to me that nothing was getting better, and I wasn’t going to waste my vote expecting any different outcome on the blue party.

I mean I voted in the first black President, and he promised to be everyone’s president. Each successive speech became more exclusionary, and more divisive. By the end of his second term, (I am now embarrassed to admit I too voted him back in, in 2012!), he was showing outward resentment for three-quarters of America!

No one likes to be excluded. Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, Caucasians, Jews, Christians, and on and on… Obama got me thinking. There was a chance for a black man to mend America, to offer a path forward for everyone, and he frickin’ blew it. No animosity toward a race, just toward a leader that I had had high hopes for, squandering a once-in-a-decade chance to finally make some real progress.

I began digging into the Internet to see if there was a viable solution and found a stacked deck! Nothing on the Democrat side looked any better, Hillary was promising to keep moving in Obama’s footsteps, and to be honest having to vote Republican at that time left a bad taste in my mouth.

Honestly, the more I dug the more the red and blue party seemed the same! Both spent too much of our money and nothing really changed. I’m a liberal at heart, but a pragmatist in my soul. I would take painful tax debt if there was a finite and clear path to a solution.

But ‘polits’ of each color were mostly concerned with getting re-elected and secondarily, uh tertiarily, probably worse than quinarily, cared about seeing timely change through to a finish. I think either side would rather ‘kick-the-can-down-the-road’ to the next election assuring campaign funding and my ‘carrot-on-a-stick’ voting.

They say wisdom can be found in the humblest of circumstances. My eyes were just opening when “Ye” (the artist formerly known as Kanye West) made a volatile remark about the longevity of slavery. Something about you could be blameless to find yourself in chains for maybe 100 years or so, but when you are still ‘in chains’ 400 years later, you aren’t trying to get free, (or certainly you are doing something wrong?) Deliberately I am not using his exact quote as the purpose of this is to demonstrate what I got out of it, not to argue its correctness.

Again, I was searching for solutions, not perpetuations, we have an abundance of those already! Me, the great philosopher? I never asked myself what was important to my life? I always looked out and questioned, “Why?”. Once I began listing my values, I saw Constitutional-style freedom took the top spot.

Immediately I noticed the blue party sets limits. The red party limits too, but their platform promises to reduce government. But while the Democrats promise minority advancement, little has been accomplished. Minorities are still waiting for even a little progress from the same party that spawned the KKK and objected to integration, and from a current President that held some of those same views as can easily be documented in videos of his interviews and friends in those chaotic times.

I still could not bring myself to vote for any long-time D.C.-type red or blue! Then I heard about Donald J. Trump. He was NOT a D.C.-type. He was a businessman. I flirted with the idea of Ross Perot back in the day as I know Washington D.C. is filled with people that think it’s all a big game and they are spending ‘play money’, but Ross kind of flaked out at the last second. A President has to be good with money and show strength and conviction.

Donald has his haters and his fans. What I find hilarious is many of his ‘haters’ of today have invited him to their parties, interviewed him on national TV and even suggested he run for President in years past! And the strangest part is Donald’s answers in those interviews was remarkably the same as what he is saying today!

“I didn’t leave the Democrat party, the Democrat party left me.”, is a common theme found in nouveau-conservatives. In fact, it has minted a full-blown movement! From the “Walkaway” movement started by a very liberal blogger Brandon Straka, to Candice Owens, ‘still in the oven’ are Tulsi, Joe Rogan, and even Elon Musk!

As you can see in this tweet from Elon, he is mapping a scenario where he is now much closer to the right than the left, without moving his position even an inch! And the left is flogging him towards the right almost daily in the media.

So, I decided I would make a ‘protest vote’ for Donald J. Trump. I wasn’t sure how that would turn out, but both my brother and I were sure even if he failed miserably Washington D.C. would see the handwriting on the wall and some good change would come from it.

If 7-Up was the ‘Un-cola’, Donald was certainly the ‘un-president’! Although many on the far-left would agree with that narrow remark, it was meant as a compliment. In his four years, with every swamp creature on his back about EVERYTHING from private conversations years ago, to telephone calls with leaders, to 100% fabricated dossiers partially paid for by a Democrat’s campaign, to being wholeheartedly pursued by ‘top brass’ of ‘legitimate?’ three-letter agencies, (and way more than I could write here), he still accomplished more toward real change and progress than the last four Presidents, and he would be the first to tell you!

Donald has an ego the size of Texas, and the stamina to keep working when the headlines every week read, “We finally got him!”. He put together a mandate that demanded every new regulation passed requires removing two. His strong stance caused allies to pay their fair share, China to level the playing field in trade, there was a worldwide-stability through strength, our borders were being hardened and we were nearly energy-independent! He had made deals with Canada (for a mutually beneficial pipeline assuring low-priced and abundant energy for both countries), and Mexico (to keep the overwhelming caravan of migrants south of the border until time to hear their plea for ‘asylum’.) He had an open-door policy and would see anyone that needed help. Although buried with no mainstream press, he had black educational leaders come in to discuss ways to help advance that system of learning.

The un-President did what four previous Presidents promised and never did, negotiated for peace in the middle east (through of all people, his son-in-law!) and moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, something the last President (Obama) promised and never ‘got around to’.

Even with all the negative press, you could see things were getting better. My black friends were feeling progress, the stock market was bonkers! We would discuss penny stocks that had real chances of quick growth as the mood of business was way up since a businessman was at the helm. As most plants need CO² and water to grow, American business needs deregulation, opportunity, and spirited employees driven by a dream (and an owner or manager to supply said dream). All the products were in place, and we were all growing.

Then Covid hit.

Your guess is as good as mine about when we should have finally stopped believing the CDC, WHO, and Fauci. Baked fatality numbers, (proof is coming out daily now), designed to scare us into complicity. Phony claims the vaxx prevented infection. (I refuse to call it a vaccine, as it does not meet the definition until the CDC changed that definition.) Obviously, no trials were conducted, or they would have known that was not true. False advice given at highest levels… Cleaning surfaces have no effect on aerial viruses! Neither does any consumer made mask.

A virion can pass through a cloth mask like a grain of sand gets through a chain-link fence! The size reference is actually inaccurate as the grain of sand is too big by several orders! This madness went on and I’m sorry to say Donald went along for the ride. Some believe for profit, I am not one of those, after all remember, he donated all of his four years of salary to charity. Okay, fact-checkers, he did not donate one penny of his salary to charity as that is not allowed by law. After being paid his presidential salary, he then donated a like amount to various charities. But does that sound like someone licking their chops for a kickback from big pharma? I think not.

Donald’s pride is his Achilles’ heel. With all the evidence, he should come out with a statement that he made mistakes during the ‘Pandemic’ which without gross manipulation arguably may not have qualified as a pandemic. What do I mean by ‘gross manipulation'?

1. Being told to stay indoors when clearly sunshine and fresh air boosted your immune system.

2. Cheap and readily available deterrent medications were restricted and vilified preventing early curtailment of the virus.

3. Falsely lured to masks (almost useless), and an untested vaxx from which we are still finding adverse effects!

4. Intimidating doctors and nurses from entering adverse effects into the VAERS system designed for that purpose!

5. Little or no attempt to tell the public to beef up on vitamins known to boost our own immune systems!

6. Implementing a six-foot rule that did absolutely nothing for an aerial virus that travels the length of a room as easily as six feet!

7. Not choosing to restrict/protect those with weakened immune systems (and letting the healthy to stay working, and unincumbered.)

8. Not only blaming Covid for any deaths where a virion was present but encouraging hospitals to report more fatalities for financial gain!

9. CDC advised that everyone must take the experimental vaxx or face consequences.

10. The mainstream media both news and social, ostracized anyone questioning this ‘pro big pharma’ mandate.

The federal government overstepped its bounds and infringed upon our rights without justification by mandating shutdowns, destroying businesses crippling education and causing a spike in mental health cases. Arguably, they have the right to mandate if there was a real Pandemic. If these top-ten things had not occurred, we may have just had a really bad Flu season. A few years before the pandemic, America lost 80,000 (uninflated numbers) just to the Flu!

Who knows how much faster, easier, and healthier this ‘Pandemic’ would have been if all the doctors and medications were in play? And if it ever would have ‘leaked’ if not funded by American money funneled to Wuhan after this type of research was BANNED in the United States! You can’t make this stuff up! I had to spend some time validating that claim. It sounded so outlandish I refused to believe it!

I don’t know for sure the name of the next presidential candidate I will vote for, but I know they will be the opposite of the far left. I know from my experience helping the elderly with computer issues that they are way more vulnerable. My oldest brother now deceased after countless warnings ‘NOT to trust ANYONE that calls to help you with your computer!!’ I ranted, not Cox, AT&T, Comcast, Microsoft, FBI, CIA, or IRS, NO ONE will ever call to help you with your computer! Well, he got a call from ‘Microsoft’ and let a bad hacker in and had compromised financial accounts.

I think Joe Biden is in that vulnerable state, and we don’t know for sure because there is a network of staff giving him things to say and do. I have heard him say more than once something like, ‘I’ll get in trouble if I do this or don’t do that.’ He often seems lost unless someone is there to take his hand. He has not had a no-holes-barred press conference since the election. We see scripted questions and answers on a ‘cheat-sheet’ indicating he is either playing a part in the ‘Wizard of Oz’, or is not capable of answering probing questions?

I am sure I sound like a far right ‘Ultra MAGA’ Joe is always warning about and I’m sure I have offended some readers, but I just want what is best for us all. A real permanent solution to inequality. I want exactly what MLK wanted, for everyone to be judged by their character, not the color of their skin. Achievement of equity is a pipedream. In my own family of four (myself, one sister and two brothers) we did not arrive at equity.

It would be crazy to think that the brother that put in the hard work, did a tour in Vietnam, finished his education, found a good solid job in construction, married, and has two boys which are married with Grandkids galore, should get strapped to the same level of equity of a struggling alcoholic with a broken marriage and two kids he could never support. This is life. It may be sad, but equity is not the answer. If you gave the second brother the same wealth as the first brother, he would have most likely destroyed his liver even sooner!

I love(d) both brothers and my sister with all my heart, but all my emotions do not change reality. Equity is a pipedream. Equality, on the other hand is a God-given right only reaffirmed in the Constitution. I am open to respectful discussion of facts, data, and even feelings as long as I have a toe still connecting with reality.