There seems to be a gene inside of every human being that yearns to look backward, to a time when all the best things in our lives happened, as well as an aversion toward looking forward, into the dark place where anything and everything bad and evil lurks, waiting to happen. I admit it, I also suffer from this fear of the future, and I believe it is what gives us the ability to go ahead every day, knowing that whatever happens, we still have our memories.

So here is a look back at all the wonderful things that made the world of yesteryear so much better than today!

Yes, for White folks it was a happy time, when they could use their God-given Constitutional rights to repress people who were of a different skin color, hang them for being uppity Black Folks who demanded the right to vote, or callous chinks who wanted to start their own business, or smelly beaners who had the audacity to try to make a better life for themselves. After all, considering the latter group, weren't they all wet-backs?  Didn't John Wayne and his gallant Americans kick all the Mexicans out of the country at the Alamo?

It was, as we White folks remember, a time when no Mexicans lived here, when blacks were happy, dancing as they worked the cotton fields, and Chinese were busy cooking rice and doing our laundry. What a time that was!  Aren't you sad that such blissful times are now gone?

 And let's not forget when jobs were reserved for the "right people", leaving those who were shiftless, lazy and disinclined to work aside.  After all, was it not the White, Protestant work ethic that made this nation great?  No Catholics need apply, no Irish need apply.  No Blacks need apply, no Germans need apply. No Jews need apply.  Whites Only!  Oh, such a happy time for everyone I knew!  Of course, we only knew other White Folks!  As for the others? Well, we all knew secretly they were not like us, and of course, as one famous politician said, and we "all" believed, "They don't feel pain the same way we do."

So, we were content to let the Mexicans pick our vegetables, the Blacks pick our cotton, and content to allow these lesser people do menial jobs around the yard.  Remember that happy time?

And how could we forget the wonderful time we had informing on neighbors we just knew were secret Commies? According to Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy, they were everywhere! My God, our schools were indoctrinating fellow citizens into being 5th column fellow travelers! We had to do something!

So we decided to follow Joe's advice, rip out pages from local phone books and declare them as lists of known Communists! And, of course, as long as we carefully avoided tearing out the pages with our own phone listing, we were right to do so! And we got quite a crowd behind us, all of those whose pages weren't yet ripped from the phone book, screaming for their safety from the millions of secret enemies right here beneath our noses!

God Bless you, Joe McCarthy, and I hope that in heaven they have a bar! You deserve another drink after you brought the idea of fear to a whole new, terrifying level that kept us all in line!

No one of my generation can forget the wonders of the A-bomb, sitting silently waiting to be launched into the atmosphere, to come back to Earth and kill those nasty Commies! Of course, the Commies also had their A-bombs, so we had to learn to duck and cover! That was great advice, kind of right up there with plastic wrap and duck tape of a future time.

People, great leaders like Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater told us it was better to be dead than Red, so we obeyed and made ready to join the future dust in the atmosphere, ready to bombed to atoms ourselves, rather than live a life they threatened was soon to be upon us!

My God, we were so willing to be vaporized rather than submit to the mindless, Godless Commies who were our neighbors! How could these folks do that to the country we all love so much? Maybe we could just bomb ourselves and take out the Commies with us! We were, after, super-patriotic in those times, not like now, whimpering sell-outs who gave in to mindless Commie, Socialist, Fascist, Evil, Un-American, Satanic propaganda and voted for one of those uppity black folks as our new president! Damn him and his Commie, Fascist, Socialist, Evil, Un-American, Satanic friends!

I am willing to bet there are some folks whose patriotic hearts are beating just a little faster right about now, remembering the glorious past, when all was right, God ruled America and school children of all kinds and religions were shown the proper way to pray in school. These folks are also wondering why we just can't go back to those wonderful times when dad ruled the household and had the right to beat mom and the kids, when mom baked cakes, cleaned house and wiled away her hours in blissful housework, and well-dressed children sat studiously in school, never misbehaving, never sassing back, never speakin gunless spoken to, and kindly old matrons peeked out of windows to catch the local neighborhood Commie in the act, her finger already on the phone dial, FBI telephone number burned into her fading memory.

Well, the truth be told, there were no good old days. While you may remember some time long past as glorious, believe me, there are plenty of U.S. citizens who remember things quite differently. Take those two unfortunate black men hanged in that tree (and thousands of others like them who were hanged by lynch mobs).  I am quite certain their last thoughts were not, "Oh, what a lovely and proper nation we live in!"  And those kids in the iron lungs.  Were they thinking, "America is ranked 37th in the world in health care, aren't we so lucky?"

And dare we not forget the people "black listed" for some imagined Commie activities, such as protesting, or using their Constitutional rights to speak out against injustice.  Injustice?  Here in the good old U.S. of A.?  How dare they!  Only Communists would dare lie like that!  Hang them!

Yes, yes, I know that some people were actually Communists. Some were also Fascists, you know, Nazis, like the kind against whom we had just fought a war to stop, but why didn't Tail Gunner Joe go after them?  Well, partially because the Right Wing wanted to ally with the Hitlerite government before WWII.  There were plenty of people on the fringe Right who actually thought Hitler's fight against Communist Russia was a holy crusade!  Those people later made pacts with Right wing dictators all over the world, and see how wonderfully that turned out?  Just remember that we were for Saddam Hussein before we were against him.

On this day, September 11th, 2009, before you let your passions carry you away into anger,

                                                          THINK.

God gave you a brain and a life-time filled with experiences, eyes for seeing, ears for hearing and a brain for thinking. Do not act upon your gut instinct and

                                                          PLEASE

stop seeing the worst in those who hold differing ideas than you do.  Our nation has undergone many changes, some of which were predicted to bring about the End of Times for us all, and which failed to materialize.  The coming of the Germans, the Irish, the Chinese, the Italians, the South-Eastern Europeans, the Mexicans, the Puerto Ricans, the Vietnamese, etc., etc., the freeing of the slaves, the vote for women, the vote for Blacks, were all frightening events for those used to the "status quo" of the times.  Yet America is still here, still great, and still chugging along in spite of our many failures, and because of our many successes.

Instead of predicting gloom and doom, spreading lies and making something out of nothing, be a real patriot and remember that America is born of better stuff that we are showing today.  Our ancestors would be appalled at how divided, rancorous and bitter we have become.  Both Left and Right.  Bush did not bring about the end of times.  He has come and gone.

In spite of your fears, your cause is not the most important one.  Obama is no Communist, Socialist, Fascist, Evil, Un-American, un-Godly Anti-Christ.  He is just a man, voted to be president, and you, as a citizen of this great nation, have had your voice counted either in electing him or voting for his opponent(s). You either won or lost.  Now shut up, roll up your sleeves, and make this nation great again, or it will dissolve and become just another foot-note in the long march of nations that once populated the Earth.

The choice is yours, and your action will determine the outcome.