A bed-ridden hacker is bound to cough

I woke up November 9, 2016 to see my visibly upset wife. I never shed a tear for Clinton's loss and its consequence. I was informed that many did. The nation was not doomed to failure, to a dark age. It was no doubt in peril, but I maintained a cautious optimism, always seeing the glass as half full. The Democrats would rise again, and they did.

A glib hot head of a man, trash-talking his opponents with school-yard appellations, an ego the size of Rushmore, no problem there. Was that presidential material? Okay, so this old grifter, this proven fraud with countless lawsuits pending, earned the right to be on a debate stage by the numbers, if nothing else. This, most inexperienced, incurious, incompetent, Manchurian candidate earned the right to flank some dangerous but competent senators (and an embarrassingly out-of-place doctor) on a debate stage.

Evidently, amazingly to his staff and the candidate himself, he won state after state to secure the Republican nomination. I think this was a man, a Manchurian real-estate mogul and celebrity, who was steam-rolled to the White House. Since the early 1980s, Putin groomed him as a “useful idiot.” He was filleted, played, tagged to be a willing pawn, manipulable cat-nip in Russia's aim to ruin the world for Democracy that is unfolding as I write.

The Manchurian idiot circles his presidential opponent like a vulture, or a dog who has caught his tail and has no idea what to do. He babbles incoherently as a polished debater serves him facts to which he has only glib answers. The Russians interfering in our election: “It could have been China, it could have been a 400-pound man in a bed.” And let's not forget the puppet debate, tossed like a volleyball. He is smart because he found a way to legally stiff the IRS; this is presidential timber? At times I got the feeling even the Manchurian candidate sensed he was in over his head, stuck, strapped to a run-away train speeding from Red Square to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

He won and became the most bastardized POTUS in history. Democracy, the middle-class, the true American spirit, are fighting (and frugally winning) for life. After watching dignity, civil liberties, parks, the environment, humanity, compassion, race tolerance, the constitution's basic precepts erode for the past two years, an idea for a book came to me one night. What culminated in the title To The Front of the Bus was an exercise, a knee-jerk response, a compromise, in a movement toward a fair Democracy.

The book recounts what is and has been the tapestry of America and its tempestuous relationship with basic civil liberties. The man who currently claims to be a legitimate POTUS emboldens some predecessors' illegal acts. From Nixon to Reagan to Bush II, the door for Democracy to be overruled was with each opened a little wider. The latter day LBJ, with Vietnam, began a trend that exponentially normalized the accessibility for the government to engage in deceitful and duplicitous behavior. This book comes as a reminder, a reflection, a contemptuous song for the ages, of what America was, has struggled to be, and might one day reach.

Following History's Rules (to win)

Anger, heartbreak, frustration, indignation. These are the emotions trapped in oscillation as I watch the very real news. Add disgust and embarrassment for good measure. I am embarrassed to live in a government that would allow such a hollow, racist, mean-spirited, megalomaniac to even have a shot at being the leader of a professed Democracy. The left is handling it as best they can, although I am not sure how much control they initially had over the situation in 2015. I see the potential for the worst re-visited events of history happening, coming haltingly to light. But they are for the most part at the end of the tunnel. I listen to my father, a German-Jew who escaped to America with his parents in 1939, tell me of the similarities, of the slow-burning away of Jewish rights that amounted to the Holocaust. To me, it is unimaginable. To him though, it must me all too real. He was an eyewitness to its tempered progression, beginning with Jews' exclusion from society and ending with Kristallnacht. With the recent ICE raids, and certainly with the call for active military not American born to leave, as much has happened. I must agree that all the ingredients for a Holocaust, or at least forced removal of an ethnic group are there. But I also tend to think there is some bias in my father, a proud and politically active citizen of these United States since 1945. A smaller part of me says it is foolish to doubt him, the rest says he is exaggerating things, and in a Democracy we will always have a fighting chance, always have an impartial day in a court, however appellate it is. And, I am pleased to say, so far this administration has been on the losing end of many issues, beginning with the poorly executed Muslim ban.

To the Front of the Bus: Movement toward a Fair Democracy began as a knee-jerk reaction to this administration. Its words, I hope, echo from where we've come as a nation, the tremendous hurdles minority groups have overcome in the courts and on the streets. I take great care, as did the likes of Truman and King, in tendering narratives that went toward a fair Democracy. I looked back at what I'd written with an overwhelming sense of pride, not for my writing, or the way I chose to tell it, but for the people involved; the Quakers, the abolitionists, the African-Americans, the women, presidents who chose to be on the right side of history, and the disabled who finally saw their chance for civil rights and took it. It was a pride in a democratic system at work, one that struck down unconstitutional state rulings, allowed federal enforcement of laws when needed, one that yielded acts and amendments that could be challenged even 50 years down the road. Back before real time could be altered, when all that was available to citizens was a court, a first amendment right and newsprint. When politicians had values, certain constants that were not blurred by the homogenizing effects of wire taps, and later, tweets. In To the Front of the Bus I briefly turn attention to the corruption of politics, the point in time where I feel warping doors were inconspicuously being planed down to be opened enough to let in someone with the vitriol and political ignorance, the obvious malicious intentions of Donald J. Trump. I point out the administrations that worked to normalize that sense of callousness, the irresponsibility, the self aggrandizing and lack of accountability.

Writing the book was a learning opportunity for me, with lessons that are applicable today. Democracy is amazing when it works, however it is tedious and painfully slow. When it does not work it is “back to the drawing board,” supplying the momentum to perpetuate itself again, again and again, until it does work. All the street and courtroom battles, protests, non-violent demonstrations I write about were carried out to the letter, honoring the words following WE THE PEOPLE. That's why they worked in the end, when they made it to SCOTUS or even a lower court. The current administration is recalcitrant with regards to constitutional law. They can't be bothered by such trivialities. This is why they lose. Court records are documented and hold up. A lawyer can argue a case and have even 20 year old statements, pronouncements, addendum or verdict to throw in the face of the opposition. I was dismayed at first, thinking “why is this dragging on and on while Trump is violating any number of clauses, getting richer every day.” It must be slow, precise, measured, to have a fair shot at winning in court. It is sometimes frustrating, agonizingly slow, but its the way a Democracy functions best. The victories are worth the effort. That is what I strive to reveal in To the Front of the Bus: Movement toward a Fair Democracy.

Isolating Monuments

“Our western boundary would be the Rio Grande. With such a barrier on our west we are invincible.” These were the words our seventh president (Trump's hero) in 1845 as the annexation of Texas was mulled. In the day's before the Mexican-American War (1846-1848)war was still something America did not see as a casual line of defense. It was not until May of 1846 that President James Polk informed Congress of the invading Mexican troops, of the violence and bloodshed. Congress declared war, as America was attacked, but many Americans were against the decision, seeing Polk's agenda to expand America.

Jackson, who emulated Trump in callous legislation that ignores humanity, spoke the aforementioned words in his final days on the earth. He had thought the natural barrier of a grand river was enough to repel intruders and infidels. The world is constantly changing. The case for the United States is forever in balance, trying to supply—or deny—the demand to enter. In  To the Front of the Bus: Movement toward a fair Democracy, I trace, I show the lineage of how and from where America came to change. I address, in scrupulous detail, why those changes were made and why they were so long in their legal and mindful applications.

Drawing boundaries, securing our nation, defending America for real or heavily exaggerated invaders is uniquely American. Building barriers; walls,fences, along a 2,000 mile border 50 miles at stretch, has become the new American pastime. One small section of America will let any injustice,any immorality, hypocrisy, or human suffering go on as long as a barrier is erected. The other, much larger section of America is trying to keep the barriers down to a minimum, to build physical bridges where they are best fitted. Therein lies the divide. The fuse which has been burning since anyone cares to remember. It's the 1% versus the 99% of America. In James Madison America was divided on the War of 1812, whether it was necessary on just how autonomous from England we wanted to be. The war was, in the words of historian Sam Eliot Morison, “the most unpopular war that this country has ever waged, not seen excepting the Vietnam conflict.” In Jackson's day America was divided. In Polk's day the nation was divided on the motives to wage war against Mexico. By the Civil War, America was questioning its ability to survive as a divided nation. The rest is history slated to repeat itself like a syndicated reality show.

To the Front of the Bus: Movement toward a fair Democracy drives to the root of that mantle of divisiveness,investigates where it all began, and cites the numerous times people have conquered it with or without the law on their side. I start at the embryonic America, the “new world,” the “passage to India” that Columbus stumbled upon. On October 12, 1492 Columbus first landed in the new world, on an island he named San Salvador, claimed for Spain, and set about creating barriers that would set America's course for centuries.

“More than two centuries before America declared independence from Britain, Christopher Columbus landed in what are now the Caribbean Islands. In 1492 he landed, narrowly avoiding mutiny from his crew, in San Salvador. He claimed it for Spain. Initially meeting the natives with a mutual friendly curiosity, Columbus soon exploited and decimated them. He enslaved the people, set fire to their homes, and instigated numerous atrocities. He and his crew introduced diseases on his first voyage to Hispaniola (what is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic), bringing influenza, smallpox and measles to the Taino people. He rose to power, governing the new properties. By 1503, when he was charged with tyranny, he returned to Spain. Among his dubious achievements was the creation of the transatlantic slave trade.

In 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon began Spanish colonization in what is now St. Augustine, Florida. The Spanish invaders experienced minimal resistance from Calusa, Timucua and Apalachee tribes. Leon built settlements and fortifications as far north as the Appalachian Mountains and as far west as Texas. Like Columbus before him, Ponce de Leon, justified by the Inquisition, coerced the tribes into accepting his God. To accomplish this, Leon established missions and churches as far north as South Carolina. By the end of the 1600s, Spanish Florida, particularly St. Augustine, faced failure as a settlement.

Conflicts of interest between the Spanish and the English, with atrocious acts and disease brought by the Europeans, nearly eradicated the indigenous people of Florida, a culture that had thrived for more than twelve thousand years before contact with the Europeans. Scholars have estimated the indigenous population of America prior to the Spanish invasion to have been as high as eighteen million. When the era of English rule began in the early seventeenth century, that estimate had shrunk to six million. When the colonies and territories the Spanish had established fell under English rule there was an exodus, a forced migration of African and Native American slaves south.”

The plundering, violence, decimation, the castigation left by the man America commemorates every October set scales of imbalance for America's destiny. From the slave trade to the movements to bring equal representation to the disabled, equal opportunity and accessibility in transportation, and all the abrogation in between, my book investigates the cause and effects of Columbus' savagery on America. To the Front of the Bus: Movement toward a fair Democracy motivates America. I throw the hurdles in front of the black race, in front of women, ahead of the disabled. I look at how and why they shall, and have overcome.

America in slow motion (to the front of the bus)

Imagine all the bus rides through history. The rides that brought us to today. Okay, bad example. All the rides that brought us to 2016. Even so, had it not been for all those bus rides, bus barriers, people refusing to give up seats on buses, America could not have maintained that distance gained in the current political climate. All these rides, motivations of people, all the willing (and unwilling) transports of people are part of To the Front of the Bus: movement toward a fair Democracy. The “freedom rides” of the early 60s were an early drive to end segregation in the Deep South. Black and white riders took their lives in hand for a cause, an end that impassioned them. Being of mixed race, I had an uneasy feeling on a visit to the Deep South 40 years ago. The South embraces diversity, perhaps only because laws for decades have made them. At the time, white southerners begrudgingly accepted them, at times requiring federal enforcement. Some 70 years later, each generation having become a little more tolerant, the laws were there in their time. They were necessary. Time has let most southerners embrace diversity—one can hope. I point these laws out in my book. I wager them, look at how they've stood in time, how they've opened future doors when litigated, how they've closed a few.

Detours

The bus boycotts in Montgomery, AL were done to desegregate municipal busing. Rosa Parks was one of many women who remained seated in the face of breaking an ordinance. They went to jail, paid court fees and fines, so future generations could sit where they wanted. It is worth noting, though, that economic had something to do with this particular win for Democracy. In the early 60s, blacks made up over 70 percent of the ridership of buses. If that much of your business is lost a company will eventually start losing money. I rarely discuss the motives.

Buses are powerful. They symbolize not just a kinetic force, but a spacial and figurative presence. They have been used as barriers meant to keep people out. In 1970 the youth of America were protesting Nixon's bombing in Cambodia. On May 7, White House advisor Edgil Krogh had the idea to corridor the White House off to the protesters with buses. He said “What's the worst that can happen, they puncture the tires, write graffiti?” If they do look over the buses we'll just “squirt a little tear gas.”

Transportation is vital. As America began to seriously consider the environment in the early 70s, public transportation became important. It needed to be accessible to everyone. On July 5, 1975 the group ADAPT (Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transit) staged a protest in Denver. They sat in their wheelchairs forming a human barrier to the movement of the buses. The members attained accessibility on Denver buses.

In the beginning

To the Front of the Bus: movement toward a fair Democracy is about the movements—literal and figurative—of people. It began with the most removed, ingested, but remembered (every October) movement to displace history. Columbus visited a murderous, proselytizing, disease infested on America. They moved Natives off the land. They laid inroads for a hierarchy, inbred a sense of superiority of a class that made things like the Trans-Atlantic slave trade a sustainable activity. Like a clock's pendulum is released, Spain's actions in America set a course for unremitting movement.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

How long will we play the game, by rules written over 200 years and 43 presidents' contrivances ago? They (GOP) has stopped playing by anyone's rules but their own self-serving ones. From the beginning of the Trump Administration, but in a larger sense since the mid-sixties, over two-thirds of America has placated, been a tote to a party who displays very little—in spite of their numerous pledges to the contrary—of what it means to be an American. Half in politics struggle to prove that they are compassionate human beings deserving of their inherent Christian ethic and will unapologetically conflate biblical passages to advance their own agendas.

A mutinous scenario has scuttled angrily past my eyes a few times. It took Trump to do it, to bring me to that level of chagrin, but many presidents in my lifetime have hovered over that button as though it were the one with which they were most entrusted. Few dare push it and it has stayed a point of negotiation, a lever, codes of leverage to cloister at least a third of the world in darkness. From the beginning strains of this country, from the trajectory set during the Continental Congress, with its convoluted decision to use a team of electorates to select a president, America has drown many times, many swallows, only to buoy itself repeatedly while drowning some more. It does sound similar to water-boarding.

Many, supportive of Trump, assure us there will be another Civil War if their pope were impeached, when the white smoke exhausting from the castle fades to black. Civil War II is worth keeping on a corner of the table. That is a war with which I would definitely want to be involved. A political war has been going on for decades as two parties struggle to do what's best for the majority of the American people. And that my fellow Americans, to a grossly obvious way on the right, beginning with Nixon and ending with Trump, is the greatest lie of all. Was their ever a vested, unconditional, rooted interest in what the real physical majority of Americans want. When has, after every person could vote regardless of race or gender, one man one vote amounted to anything that could begin to fit a Democratic schematic?

In my forthcoming book American Bus Ride: movement toward a fair Democracy I trace the lines of certain minority groups that were, and to a greatly lesser degree, still suppressed in America. I note how Democracy works, how it's worked to advantage the other 99 percent and also disadvantage that most lied to group of Americans. They played by the rules, while their adversaries used parlor games or stacked the deck when they sensed they were losing control of the situation. They unconscionably used violence when the other 99 percent remained peaceful. During much of the 20^th century pacifism was probably prudent. Today, however, in the 21^st century watching the unmitigated harm done to our Democracy, the utter ignorance for anything expected from a POTUS, the total disregard for actions perpetrated in the name of racism. . .I really question the very real option of a call to arms. For god's sake, it's a political game, derivative of a handful of mostly white old men who operate under the assumption that they are entitled to rule more than two thirds of the country.

The jig should have been up on Wednesday February 27 when Mr. Cohen presented the check signed by Mr Trump, his payment to hush Miss Clifford that violated campaign finance laws. It found its place as the first of many “smoking guns” yet to come. Face it, America pigeon-holed itself. A reprobate like your Mr. Trump got himself elected in part because this is America with an intentionally rigged system. He is allowed to prosper, to defile America because it is America. In most countries his acts of betrayal and obvious motives to enrich himself and his class would be kept in much tighter check. We got rid of Nixon, we got rid of LBJ when he lost his senses, and don't say Germany had a dictator follow a Democratic regime. The situations are different. Yes, a race of people is hated but keeping them out of the country is all that's being asked. No one is threatening genocide, no storm troopers, no secret police. America is not economically ruined to the point of mass starvation. People get health care, for some price. The right to own firearms is a constant in this country, baked in the red, white and blue cake, god bless us everyone. And that's where the rubber hits the road. As long as a government keeps a right to bear arms alive and well, it will have a very hard time getting people to fear it. Let's hope it does not come to that, to taking up arms against our aggressors, but the people, the NRA, the senators themselves, keep that option open.

I watched the Reagan show. I took note of the Bush double feature, the second much more damaging than the first. The Trump show tops them all. Each Republican president to set foot in the White House, each Republican majority to hold the middle-class is the pug who gets in the ring, gets knocked down, takes dives, floats and stings to get knocked down again. For decades those lower classes have been marching, sitting, standing singing “we are not afraid.” I think it is high time that such fearlessness manifest itself in more overt ways, ways that adversaries have not been conditioned to expect, methods that do not always follow the rules. The jig is up. As a sleazy mob boss, a real estate hustler, an incurious, uneducable racist looks to dictators as models on how to preside over a country, the jig is up. Is congress going to sit and hear the testimonies of 80 people, exhausting millions of dollars of Americans' money? Are we going to wait for a six figure Mueller report only to possibly see a much redacted portion? Time, human suffering and terror, destruction of America's interior, of its democracy, and money has been frittered away in the last two years; probably more than in the last five prior to that. In 1945 Harry Truman made a calculated decision that he thought would ultimately save blood and treasure. The Japaneses refused to surrender then, the GOP refuses to surrender, to dump Trump, now. They have stayed with their strength, the moral low ground, in the chaos that has followed the Trump White House from the issuance of Fire and Fury, from what now rounds out to 9,000 lies or untruths. “When they go low, we go high” is worn, hackneyed. The phrase has matured beyond all usefulness, fathomed its credibility. Democrats are playing by the rules, Trump does not know the rules, has not read the American constitution, and has no desire to learn anything. A second Civil War, hot or cold, is a distinct necessity.

POTUS pomps

John McCain had the foresight to exclude Trump from attending his funeral. Somehow I doubt he would have had McCain included him. If he had attended it would have been in extremely poor taste even for Trump who twice maligned him; once saying he was not a war hero since he was a POW and then by not immediately firing a low-level staff when she made a very tasteless joke about McCain's cancer. That was McCain though, the “bulldog” as he was called at the Naval Academy, decent grace in life, spiteful from the beyond.

Either George H.W. Bush had no resentment towards Trump for personal remarks, or it was an oversight on his part. At the funeral in D.C. (Bush probably traveled more in three days dead than he did in the last month alive) Trump and Melania took the end of a pew by the Clintons, the Obama's and the Carters. His oldest son and the 43^rd POTUS sat across the aisle with the family. It was evident how the arrival of the Trumps changed the tone of the funeral—on that pew—from somber and sad to somber and awkward. As Stephen Colbert later remarked Trump was the only man who could bring a funeral down.

Ruminations

George H.W. Bush got it, or tried to get what was humanly possible. He saw 1,000 points of light where most see half that. He saw the flaws in supply-side or “trickle down” economics. As a vice presidential candidate he called Reagan's plan “Voodoo” economics. His death marks the end of an era, a genre of Republicans who call out the fraud, the myth that tax cuts will pay for themselves and the surplus will eventually be seen by the middle and lower classes. Of course after the election, when showed footage of himself saying Voodoo economics, Bush told reporters he was kidding and supported Reagan's policy. In 1981, weeks into his presidency, Reagan passed an Economic Recovery Tax Act providing a massive cut to his voters. Sensing rising deficits, he and his administration soon began trying to roll back the cuts. A light point in the “Shining city on a hill?” So many symbolic metaphors to play ring around the truth.

From his years as the youngest wing-man in the U.S. navy, his service in WWII, to POTUS 48 years later, Bush has been described a a decent man who disliked the dirty side of politics. In 1967 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Houston's 7^th district. He was the chosen by Nixon to be Ambassador to the United Nations, a year as chairman of the Republican National committee, a year as the Chief of the U.S. Liaison Office to the People's Republic of China. In 1976 Bush was appointed by Gerald Ford as Director of the CIA. In 1980, Bush competed with Reagan in no less than 33 primary races, with Reagan losing all but four of them. By May, “the great communicator” had collected more than enough votes to win his party's nomination. His operatives wanted Bush to drop out. He refused to quit, hanging his hopes on being the only option as a running-mate. The rest, as someone said, is history.

Trump had a stunned and longing (as far as his ego could permit) if not soulful look. What good words, if any, would people say at his funeral. He couldn't even get half the Democrats in congress to come to his inauguration. Sure, Don, Eric, Ivanka, Tiffany, Barron, Jarrod, maybe even his ex-wives will have some choice words. I'm sure a Republican or two will remember him well. A few clever Democrats, former presidents, may find a way to wrap flattery into the truth as people do to eulogize people with absolutely no redeeming qualities. He will get the full treatment, the pomp, the circumstance, the flag he once hugged, out of the countries tradition for a passing president. He did look pensive though in that pew, inches from presidents who never would question such a thing, all of whom are secure in their legacy. Trump was the outsider and it showed. The juxtaposition was glaring. Inches in proximity on that front pew, yet a canyon between the two men (Trump and Obama) in their values, their integrity, their approach to and respect for the job. This was the first, and hopefully only, funeral for a former POTUS Trump attended. Frankly, I'm surprised and at the same time pleased that we went at all. It must, in the contemplative silence of his pew, rubbing elbows with those who have signed productive legislation, who have left balanced budgets, be awkward, even embarrassing. After all the narcissistic smoke clears and it dawns that he may not be pope, when Trump realizes that this is one event he can not turn into a me moment, he is left defensless; humble, human, receptive to epiphanies.

The timing is right. It is enough to almost make someone (not me) feel a soupçon of sympathy for the guy. It bears all the elements of a Shakespearian trragedy. Mueller is getting closer by the day as Cohen and Manafort sing their way to prison. With Democrats taking the gavel in January in the House of Representatives, Trump's legal prospects for 2019 won't begin well. At the funeral it sure looked as though he was visited by the ghost of memorable presidents, touching a nerve that he never knew existed. Now he is in that stage of Nixon's presidency where the talking walls are closing in, only Trump's don't talk because he does not drink, which may be listed as a redeeming quality.

Children of the Futures

I watched The Wonder Years. I liked That 70s Show. And now I watch The Kids are Alright. They remind me of my youth, of really the last generation to grow up without being able to communicate something in ways other than verbally. We did not have bike helmets or seat-belts or laws that dictated we wear one. I remember making our own games that weren't fixed on a video screen and conned you back to the store to buy the next level. I remember games that lasted until parents called you in for the night. They did not leave you addicted and a slave to a screen. We grew up riding our bikes, riding unbelted in the back deck of a station wagon, conquering things like fears. We were learning and discovering things that no video game has ever replicated.

The 70s kids weren't the rebels their predecessors had been, that they had to be. There was some hippie, counter-culture drippings, but I get the sense that 70s kids were not a shock and did not reject the status quo like kids of the early 60s did. By the time we grew up, the offspring of Boomers or—in my case—the preceding generation, the world was changed. In 1968, when many Gen Xers were toddling about, the country was bursting with violence and set on a course of change that would last at least until bumpers read that disco was dead and the doors of Studio 54 closed for good. Parents did not fight it, freak out when their child wanted to grow their hair or become vegan. Change was acceptable all through my generation, and some parents—more than others—even encouraged it. By 1965 it was pretty well known, at least in liberal households—that Vietnam was an unmitigated disaster, a moral detour. Unlike parents of the Boomers, who may have seen serving your country as noble under any circumstances, kids in the late 60s-early 70s were left to make their own decision. Many parents, even if not openly, hoped that there sons would not be drafted, have their lottery number called, or even pass the physical.

Generation X (1965-1981) succeeded the Baby Boomers (1943-1964). The millenniels (1983-2001) succeeded Gen X. It stands out to me, to be glossed over by history, that the Boomers first implanted a counter-culture in society. They changed politics, they won civil rights for blacks, for women, for 18-year-old people to vote. In more recent history, it was the millenniels who got out the vote, who backed Bernie Sanders by the thousands in the 2016 primaries. My generation, X, is not known for civil action, for working within or without the system to change it democratically. Certainly a large part of the generation laps over, touching either end. But, as a whole it is never noted in the scripts that report the way change has unfolded in America. Perhaps this is a reason I've heard us called the “slackers.” The millenniels gathered up the slack—that we left—with their technologically advanced culture, with the technology we lacked, rejected, or still choose to reject. The time frame of births from the mid 60s to the earl 80s was known in much less explicit terms as the “latchkey Generation.” There wasn't the zealous parental monitoring that was dolled out to millenniels like pez. Mothers were going back to work as the second wave of feminism was taking root. I remember my sister and I literally wearing keys around our necks in junior high school. In kindergarten, in 1970, when I came home I was instructed to go over to the neighbor's to wait the few times my mom's and my day didn't sync up.

Biology and religion

The average family in the 1960s had 3.7 kids, marginally bigger than the 3.14 in 2017. One of the innovations to come out of that decade was the birth control pill. Women could have a career ad a family. The pill gave them a choice in the situation of being denied or terminated from a job because of being pregnant. The Kids Are Alright portrays a strict Irish-catholic family in the 70s, having begun their family in the 50s. Over the course of two decades they had a total of eight kids. Obviously that matriarch dose not and can not, bound by religion, use the pill. Expained in the pilot episode is that the oldest son “came home from college.” One can deduce from this that he avoided the draft with a college deferment. In liberal circles, the longevity of the war, the uncertainty of a future, was alone a motivator to work to end the war. Mothers did not want their sons to have to deal with that, coming of age and having an imminent notification to serve in an immoral war predicating their futures. The father on the show often talks of his service in WWII as though it was a rite of passage. The Catholics are a dedicated bunch and, with the powers of Christ in their corner, almost robotically, without logic, go wherever their government asks them. All wars had conscientious objectors, resisters, and those who just plainly chose the latter of the Darwinian concept of fight or flight. None so much, though, as Vietnam. From 1960 to 1975 roughly 170,000 men received CO status from service in Southeast Asia. The decisions the Xers had to make are often brought to the table, portrayed in television. On a episode of All in the Family, also set in the 70s (made in the 70s), Mike brings home a draft dodger who moved to Canada. The ultra-conservative, Christian Archie can not comprehend this level of disrespect, of questioning of the government. He and his friend served in WWII. Archie's friend, however, lost a son in Vietnam. He could live with Mike's friend's decision. I think the gap that fought “policed” in Korea made questioners out of the next generation. War, the eternal aggression and need to show off our military might in the world, was vested. The game was over and then the papers were released. In '71 a generation read how its predecessors had been lied to since 1945.

Catholics, strict ones, must have only believed in procreational sex in the 70s. Consider the mother on The Kids are Alright. With as many crosses and crucifixes on walls as some Jews have Mezuzot on door posts, any bedroom will have the fear of God judging your every move. She procreated at least eight times before her biological clock detonated. So am I to believe that the Catholics of the old school just prayed the woman was fertile when the did the deed, got pregnant, abstained for 9 month, and started the process again? A process hat continued until God shut down the oven for good, “divine sterility.” Do the math. Figure a woman in the 1950s gets married, a virgin, at 17 to 18 years old. Her first night puts a bun in the oven, breaking the seal. The irony here is that 50 to 60 years later a liberated woman may take a while to break the seal on an actual oven. Figure the biological clock is ticking and those Catholics, God love 'em, are making all the hay they can. Let's say until age 41. That's 23 years of procreational sex back in the day. No surgeries, no prophylactics. Its all about the unborn child, the next generation. And that is how you get .5 of a kid.