TAKING BACK MY AMERICAN LAWN!

 Okay, here it is...the very first post from my new American Lawn Party! blog. So, what's it all about, you're probably wondering. Is it a blog dedicated to the art of hosting summer lawn parties? And what's with the picture of a decrepit lawn chair under the title? It all seems so bleak. Perhaps if I posted a recipe for Margarita pie, it would offset the fact that there's a toilet behind the lawn chair....

Those are all very good questions, my friend. Perfectly reasonable comments (except the last one, which is just stupid). But here's where I do my best to explain. Ready? Let's scroll!

I am a 55-year-old woman who grew up in an incredibly unique, wondrous and exceptional country called the United States of America. Even as a little girl back in the sixties, I was aware of the place my country held in the pantheon of world nations. I realized that, like every country on the planet, America had its flaws, its hypocrisies, its inconsistancies. I understood that the "inalienable rights" cited in the Declaration of Independence were theoretical, and that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" came easier to some people than to others. And even though many adults made a point of telling me that I could grow up to be anything I wanted, I knew that it wasn't a given, and that for every American success story, there was one of failure and disappointment, too. But the thing was...it was still America! Men and women fought and died to make it America. Millions more risked life and limb to leave their own oppressive homelands behind and begin new lives in the one country on earth in which they were officially guaranteed the chance to at least try.

Remember this? If Obama's administration is synonymous with "hope", I'd hate to see their take on "despair"!

 But, see, it's all different now.  Six years ago, the American people elected a president who represented many firsts for this great nation. Barack Obama was, of course, the first African American to be elected  to the office of President of the United States. As the granddaughter of a black man, I couldn't help feeling proud and even a little sentimental over the fact that, once again, America had shown itself to be a leader among nations. Unfortunately, that initial burst of national pride wore off pretty quickly as all the other Obama "firsts" began to float to the surface of an increasingly murky political cesspool. Not only did Obama turn out to be the first black American president, he has since stepped forward to become the first American Apologist president, the first American president who cannot prove that he was born in this country, the first American president to possess so little regard for the country that he only nominally grew up in that he thinks nothing of arbitrarily rewriting laws, disregarding the Constitution and lying to the American people about everything from healthcare to making deals with the Taliban. Hell, in retrospect, Richard Nixon looks like a saint, and the only two American presidents to have ever been impeached...Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton...seem to have really ended up with the fuzzy end of the political lollipop. I mean, Clinton got his rocks off and lied about it. Voila! He gets impeached. Obama pushed forward an illegal healthcare bill, violated the War Powers Act and refuses to enforce Federal immigration laws. What happens? He wins a Nobel Peace Prize and does a girly work-out at the gym.

This is what happens when you stop believing in something. It just fades away.....

I'm no political pundit. I'm just a writer who happens to remember what it was like growing up in America before Obama and his czar/thugs got hold of it. Before they started trying to turn it into their own little monochromatic serfdom filled with soulless worker bees too weary and disheartened to even put up a fight as Obama and his imperialist lackeys continue to systematically strip away our rights and marginalize our dreams. I remember summer nights on the little working class street where I grew up, and how my grandparents, my mother, and my brother and I would sit in the backyard,  our bare arms and legs  protected from mosquito bites by little green coils spewing citronella smoke, and that night's baseball game playing on the car radio several yards away. We didn't have much back then. Just that little house and accompanying patch of lawn. But it was our American lawn party. Now...all these years later...in Obamaland...all I can offer you is this blog. But I hope you'll come back. There's still so much to say.