Elves and the Day of Infamy

 

Jacob has Elf on the Shelf at home, but at my house he has Dinglebell, a deviant elf who was bequeathed to him by the friend who lived in the guest house a couple of years ago. Lately, Dinglebell has been back in the cottage with Chandry, but Chandry has moved to her new house, and Dinglebell flew himself back into the main house. Last night he got himself into a real predicament—flew into Sophie’s crate and locked it. Jacob found him this morning and was afraid Sophie would hurt him, but she had no interest.

I finally got started on wrapping presents today and did nine—which leaves a lot to go. Meant to do more tonight, but I am too tired. Did other household chores and found the more I am moving about the better my hip feels—but then when I’m on my feet much, my low back hurts. Went back to wearing the brace and am proud of what I accomplished today.

It strikes me as sad that on this day of infamy which FDR predicted would live in history we have heard little about Pearl Harbor and the valor of our soldiers in the Pacific during WWII. Instead we’ve heard a lot about Donald Trump and his idea of banning all Muslims from entering the country and Ted Cruz whose ideas are so crazy I can’t call one to mind. I guess my mind just cancelled them out. And I saw what’s-his-name LaPierre repeating his mantra is that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to give a good guy a gun.  It doesn’t seem to occur to him that the good guy might not win, and a bloodbath would probably occur.

How has our country gotten to this point? We seem to have lost all the values of our heritage, the courage of the armed forces of WWI and WWII. Instead of people who are willing to lay down their lives for their country, we have people who mock and bash our president. When we need to pull together as a country, which we do now in the face of terrorism abroad and at home (including mass shootings by apparently unstable Americans), we have people who stoke the fires of hatred and animosity. Congress is surely no help in unifying the country, but instead working hard to separate us into classes.

Congress voted to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood ostensibly because of their opposition to abortion. Don’t they even know their own laws? PP has not been allowed to use Federal funds for abortions for years—what Congress cut off funds for were vital programs such as cancer screening and contraceptive counseling.

Or then there’s Justice Scalia who dismissed the line in the Second Amendment about a well-regulated militia, calling it just a prologue. Justice Warren Burger, perhaps our greatest chief justice, wrote years ago that the gun lobby’s distortion of the Second Amendment was the worst piece of fraud perpetrated on the American people that he’d seen in his lifetime.

There, I did it—got on a rant again. But I am so concerned, so afraid for future generations, so heartbroken, that I weep for our country. And I understand the cartoons of a weeping Statue of Liberty.