If Healing is Needed, Whose Medicine Shall We Use? Because I’m tired of being called a racist, I offer the following three scenarios from my childhood and young adulthood. I doubt seriously that Trump-haters will believe them, particularly Wolfe Blitzer, Don Lemon, George Stephanopoulos, Joe Scarborough, and local commentator Oliver Halle. I’ve never been called a racist directly. Indirectly I have, because all of the Trump-haters, who pillory the President hourly, are automatically attacking those who support him. Their bile is spewed as much toward Trump’s 63 million voters as toward Trump himself. Think about it: 63 million Americans elected this “vile,” “deranged,” “unprepared,” “racist,” “mentally challenged” man. Smart people, those Trump-haters. With hateful words, they accuse others of hatred. The presidential election’s popular vote was almost evenly split. Consequently, close to half of America’s voters last November are charged with racism by sore losers. How self-righteous is that? And Trump-haters think they have the healing message and medicine we need? Anyhow, scenario one. While waiting for the school bus at age ten, I saw them coming. The black kids, I mean. Five days a week, ten to twelve black children and teenagers walked two miles from the edge of town out to a “separate but equal” shack down the road from our house. The shack was their school. It was absolutely separate, but not equal to the school in town to which I was bused. The town school had indoor bathrooms. The year was 1954. Things were going on that even a ten-year-old could discern. The black kids never looked at us. We didn’t look at them. Everybody looked down. Such was segregation. Tradition is strong. My father called himself a segregationist, but he wasn’t one. One isn’t a segregationist (or a racist) if he’s white, labors with blacks in cotton fields, invites them to his front porch and to his table and tells them he’ll try to do something about “that excuse for a school.” It was the sadness of scenario one and its racial divide that led to scenario two, thirteen years later. I was teaching at an all black school in Meridian, Mississippi, having responded to the superintendent’s request for teachers to teach at a school of a different race from their own. On the day of Martin Luther King’s funeral, we all gathered in the library and the gym to watch the funeral on television. I was the only white person in the school. When the white superintendent walked in to see how we were doing, one of my sweetest seventh grade girls turned and asked, “Mr. Hines, what’s a white man doing in our school?” Other faculty members laughed. “Mr. Hines, you’ve arrived. She sees you as one of us and Dr. Todd as the white man,” chuckled science teacher Ernestine Ross. I was 23. I knew for sure that the need of the hour was to promote integration every way we could – through interracial friendships and interracial professional relationships, particularly. Last scenario. After viewing the movie, “The Help,” my wife and I walked to our car where I began to weep and say, “That’s exactly how it was!” I have done all I can to oppose the racism I have seen, and I voted for Donald Trump. I cannot buy what his enemies are saying about him. Trump’s detractors are merely using the race issue to bring him down. As long as Trump opponents refuse to denounce leftist black violence (Ferguson, Baltimore, Black Lives Matter, Black Panthers, Antifa, etc.), they are totally without credibility. I say the president’s estimation of the media is accurate. The media and the Democratic medicine is to pull down and besmirch Robert E. Lee. What kind of healing measure is that? Even Grant respected General Lee. And just where was this fervor during eight years of Obama? Nowhere. Proof enough that the whole business is all about Donald Trump and the need to pin on him anything critics can find. Every week of my life I see good race relations everywhere I go. Yet, the media and Democrats are fanning the flames of race by reviving the Civil War. Television media stars wallow hourly in the very hatred they accuse me of. I do take it personally because I know my heart. The state where the black kids walked two miles to school now has more black elected officials than any other state. But that doesn’t matter to anti-Trampers. Their goal is to bring down a President any way they must. I predict they will fail. Their hypocrisy is too apparent. Roger Hines 8/23/17

           If Healing is Needed, Whose Medicine Shall We Use?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 8/27/17

            Because I’m tired of being called a racist, I offer the following three scenarios from my childhood and young adulthood.  I doubt seriously that Trump-haters will believe them, particularly Wolfe Blitzer, Don Lemon, George Stephanopoulos, Joe Scarborough, and local commentator Oliver Halle.

            I’ve never been called a racist directly.  Indirectly I have, because all of the Trump-haters, who pillory the President hourly, are automatically attacking those who support him.  Their bile is spewed as much toward Trump’s 63 million voters as toward Trump himself.  Think about it: 63 million Americans elected this “vile,” “deranged,” “unprepared,” “racist,” “mentally challenged” man.  Smart people, those Trump-haters.  With hateful words, they accuse others of hatred.

            The presidential election’s popular vote was almost evenly split.  Consequently, close to half of America’s voters last November are charged with racism by sore losers.  How self-righteous is that?  And Trump-haters think they have the healing message and medicine we need? 

            Anyhow, scenario one.  While waiting for the school bus at age ten, I saw them coming.  The black kids, I mean.  Five days a week, ten to twelve black children and teenagers walked two miles from the edge of town out to a “separate but equal” shack down the road from our house.

            The shack was their school.  It was absolutely separate, but not equal to the school in town to which I was bused.  The town school had indoor bathrooms.  The year was 1954.  Things were going on that even a ten-year-old could discern.  The black kids never looked at us.  We didn’t look at them.  Everybody looked down.  Such was segregation.

            Tradition is strong.  My father called himself a segregationist, but he wasn’t one.  One isn’t a segregationist (or a racist) if he’s white, labors with blacks in cotton fields, invites them to his front porch and to his table and tells them he’ll try to do something about “that excuse for a school.”         

It was the sadness of scenario one and its racial divide that led to scenario two, thirteen years later. I was teaching at an all black school in Meridian, Mississippi, having responded to the superintendent’s request for teachers to teach at a school of a different race from their own.

            On the day of Martin Luther King’s funeral, we all gathered in the library and the gym to watch the funeral on television.  I was the only white person in the school.  When the white superintendent walked in to see how we were doing, one of my sweetest seventh grade girls turned and asked, “Mr. Hines, what’s a white man doing in our school?” 

            Other faculty members laughed.  “Mr. Hines, you’ve arrived.  She sees you as one of us and Dr. Todd as the white man,” chuckled science teacher Ernestine Ross.  I was 23.  I knew for sure that the need of the hour was to promote integration every way we could – through interracial friendships and interracial professional relationships, particularly.

            Last scenario.  After viewing the movie, “The Help,” my wife and I walked to our car where I began to weep and say, “That’s exactly how it was!”

            I have done all I can to oppose the racism I have seen, and I voted for Donald Trump.  I cannot buy what his enemies are saying about him.  Trump’s detractors are merely using the race issue to bring him down.  As long as Trump opponents refuse to denounce leftist black violence (Ferguson, Baltimore, Black Lives Matter, Black Panthers, Antifa, etc.), they are totally without credibility.  I say the president’s estimation of the media is accurate.

            The media and the Democratic medicine is to pull down and besmirch Robert E. Lee.  What kind of healing measure is that?  Even Grant respected General Lee.  And just where was this fervor during eight years of Obama?  Nowhere.  Proof enough that the whole business is all about Donald Trump and the need to pin on him anything critics can find.

             Every week of my life I see good race relations everywhere I go.  Yet, the media and Democrats are fanning the flames of race by reviving the Civil War.  Television media stars wallow hourly in the very hatred they accuse me of.  I do take it personally because I know my heart. 

            The state where the black kids walked two miles to school now has more black elected officials than any other state.  But that doesn’t matter to anti-Trampers.  Their goal is to bring down a President any way they must.  I predict they will fail.  Their hypocrisy is too apparent.

Roger Hines

8/23/17

The Media’s Selective Rage: What Happens When Lady Justice Winks?

      The Media’s Selective Rage: What Happens When Lady                                                Justice Winks?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 8/20/17

Here we go again.  Have we noticed the pattern?   Store window bashing in Ferguson, Baltimore, and other cities was attributed to “years of frustration over racism and bigotry.”  In other words, it was excusable. 

So was the blocking of traffic on major arteries and the vile mistreatment of cops across the country.  The “frustration” of black youths should be understood, we were told.

             The Black Lives Matter organization, though it chanted murderous things about cops, was also granted victimhood and invited to the Obama White House.  The Black Panthers, that aging group from the ‘60’s who stood just outside voting precincts to remind voters how they had better vote, went unpunished. 

            But in Charlottesville, Virginia the violence done by the KKK, the White Nationalists, and the neo-Nazis is tagged abhorrent by the liberal media, Democrats, and certain Republicans, none of whom were outraged by the violence of Black Lives Matter.

            Let’s call it what it is: selective rage.  As it turns out, Lady Justice is not blind after all.  In fact she often winks.  Media liberals wink at leftists when they commit violence.  They have strokes when so-called right wing groups commit theirs.  Why CNN, MSNBC, and all three of the old line networks can’t label it all inexcusable is beyond me.  Leftist violence on college campuses, for instance, draws a wink from the media.  It lays bare their bleeding hearts, revealing their long held belief that violence is ok when committed by minorities or precious college students. 

            The Charlottesville violence wasn’t committed by President Trump, yet the media blames  him.  Trump is faulted for not using the exact words of condemnation the media stars preferred.  A handful of Congressional Republicans, instead of defending themselves and their party’s duly elected president, rushed to the cameras to distance themselves from the KKK. 

Congressional Republicans should be angry that they are clumped with the KKK.  A good three quarters of them, however, are afraid of the media.  That fear explains the moral high horse they climb upon when falsely accused.

            Why aren’t Republicans quick to point toward former Democratic U.S. Senate icon Robert Byrd who was a wizard in the KKK?  Or to Arkansas Senator William Fulbright, Bill Clinton’s mentor and a staunch segregationist?  Or to Al Gore, Sr.?  Why not remind the nation who gave us Lincoln, abolition, and the Civil Rights Act?  It wasn’t Democrats.  They gave us abortion, same-sex marriage, transgender bathrooms, and Obamacare.

            Calling the KKK and the other vile groups at Charlottesville right wingers is an uninformed misnomer.  In no way are they philosophical conservatives.  Neo-Nazis aren’t right wingers.  The Nazis were socialists.  They promoted government takeover of practically every phase of people’s lives.  Adolf Hitler’s political philosophy lay nowhere near Jefferson or Reagan’s limited government views.  To be precise, we could call Hitler a Democrat as far as his view of the role of government is concerned.  No, not because of his evil! Because of his political philosophy, i.e., government, government, government, and centralized power.

            So the Caesar-like stabbing video of President Trump wasn’t violence.  I watched as CNN panelists said it wasn’t.  It was “art.”  Strange that Kathy Griffin’s bloody, detached head of the president got her fired from CNN, but the stabbing video of him was defended.

            The Charlottesville tragedy centered on the ISIS-style removal of Confederate statues.  To that, Condoleezza Rice, who knows prejudice, declared, “Sanitizing history makes you feel good, but it’s a bad thing.”  Black conservative Alan West added, “History is not there for us to love or hate, but to learn from.  A statue cannot oppress anyone.”

            As for hate, does anyone doubt that the stars of liberal media hate the president?  Their words for the President (a la Maxine Waters) are hypocritically hate-filled and disrespectful.  And we thought ABC’S Sam Donaldson hated Reagan and CBS’s Dan Rather hated Bush II!  

            For many Americans it’s painful to hear or use the word hate so frequently as I am doing here; however, our current national discourse requires it.  It would help if politicians and news people would give all hate equal footing and acknowledge that Lady Justice is blind-folded, that at Charlottesville it was hate versus hate.  On this, the president was right.

            It would also help if police would arrest more lawbreakers, no matter what side they are on.

            The media has moved from “not presidential” to “no moral authority,” as though they treasure truth themselves. Their own disdain for the president and their condescension for his unwashed 69 million supporters is blinding them.  Their rage is selective and always has been.

Roger Hines

8/16/17

            

Trump Supporters Cling While Congressional Republicans Shrink

     Trump Supporters Cling While Congressional Republicans                                                  Shrink

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 8/13/17

The vilification of a duly elected president continues.  Never in our history have losers of a presidential election been such cry babies.  Never have they been so intent on overturning the will of the people. 

            There are proper actions for those who lose presidential elections.  The first step has historically been for losers to turn their attention toward the midterm elections.  In 2018 one-third of the Senate – 33 members – will be up for re-election.  In the House all 435 seats are up for grabs.  If the losers want the reins back, re-capturing Congress is their logical first step.  That potentiality lies only 15 months away.

            The next step is the 2020 presidential election season.  This election season will allow Trump opponents to pick their nominee for president and then work for his or her victory.  But no, President Trump’s opponents won’t wait for the constitutional path to take its course.  They will, as is their habit, use the courts to help them bypass the constitutionally ordained method of choosing presidents.  They will speak of impeachment and keep certain things astir (Russia, Russia; the President’s family, his use of social media, etc.) in order to stymie his efforts to govern and implement what he promised during his campaign.

            Speaking of family involvement, the media had no problem when Mrs. Clinton was in charge of President Clinton’s healthcare reforms, or when Rosalyn Carter participated at cabinet meetings, or when child Amy Carter was consulted by her father on foreign policy.  (I personally believe President Carter was dead serious when he stated he often talked to Amy about decisions.  Apparently like many other liberals, he viewed children and youth as possessing a “glow,” a wisdom, an untainted “blank slate” perfection of sorts that adults should honor.  Read Rousseau, the “blank slate” romantic philosopher, and you get an understanding of how this view has negatively affected education, parenting, and politics.)

            Consider the following wins for President Trump.  The recent unanimous vote of the United Nations Security Council to place economic sanctions on bellicose North Korea illustrates the effectiveness of U.N. Ambassador Haley and of Secretary of State Tillerson, a cool head who is as “non-politician” as Trump and who sounds like he might have come from where I grew up.  Like Trump, he is different.  And he is effective.  He had already talked with most world leaders as a businessman.  Of course the Democratic media will never give him credit for pulling China and Russia to our side on North Korea.  They think he’s doing everything for Exxon.

            Consider the President’s strong stand on sanctuary cities and the Attorney General’s recent warning to them of withholding federal funds if they continue to break the law.  Though he knows he is breaking the law harboring illegals, the Chicago mayor, who would rather fight Trump than fight crime, says he will sue the Justice Department for such action.  See?  When the ballot box doesn’t please you, find a judge to turn it upside down.  The mayor’s expression, “a welcoming city,” (for illegals??) is an example of Rousseau-speak.

            President Trump is not without compassion.  His call for $639 million for the starvation crisis in Africa illustrates as much.  Neither is he without support of the middle class.  In the election, Trump received 69.4 million votes.  Do “reporters” (I use the word loosely) and panelists on CNN, MSNBC and the three major networks feel about the 69 million voters the same way they feel about Trump?  Of course they do.  They believe the 69 million are America’s unwashed.

            One thing Mr. Trump does glaringly lack: the sure, audible support of a Republican U.S. Representative or Senator.  Any approving words he has received have been tepid.  Congressional Republicans are not with the people.  We dream if we expect from them a Capitol steps affirmation of the man whom their constituents placed in office.  I doubt that even a million or two of the 69 have defected.  If I’m right, the timid Republicans will be hearing from a substantial number of their constituents in November of 2018 and 2020.

            The media’s double standard for Trump is appalling.  One of Trump’s chief opponents is Democratic Senator Bloomingthal who falsified his record about service in Vietnam.  Even so, he is as much a darling to the media as is the undependable, irascible John McCain.

            Elections are clarifying, purifying events.  Since Trump’s supporters are holding strong, we should expect both clarification and purification, come November of 2018 and 2020.  Congressional Republicans will feel it first.  And well they should.

Roger Hines

8/9/2017

           

           

            

Waitin’ on a Woman … the Girl in the Door

              Waitin’ on a Woman … the Girl in the Door

         Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal August 6 2017

            In the summer of 1965 six college guys and their supervisor walked across the grounds of a youth camp in northern Wisconsin.  Their supervisor, the camp director, had just said to them, “Would you like to go meet the girl counselors?”

            On this first day of camp, excited campers were getting settled in, admiring the camp that was nestled in beautiful woods 90 miles north of Green Bay.

            As we approached the girls’ dormitory, I saw a beautiful, college-age young woman standing in the door.  It was obvious she was a counselor since several “junior high” girls stood around her vying for her attention.

            We are now 20 yards from the door.  I know because I measured it on the last day of camp.  While my colleagues walked on, I stopped dead in my tracks.  Boy Scouts honor and hand on the Bible, three words bombed my very consciousness, shattering all reality except for the girl in the door, and rendering me a 6-foot-2, 194 pounds of mush.  The three words were “There she is.”

Yes, there she is, and now I can stop wondering why those nice high school girls and those hundreds of Dixie darlings at Southern Miss never interested me.  How could they not?  They were pretty, kind, mature, smart, fun, and … but it doesn’t matter now because there she is.

            Flashback.  I was old when I was young, overly serious in just about everything.  For instance, I started praying for the right girl to come into my life when I was 15.  Caring little for dating, I wanted God to parachute into my life the right girl so that we could get on with it.  Back to Wisconsin, was this now happening?

            That evening I learn that Nancy Milligan is from Murfreesboro, TN and is a senior at Middle Tennessee State.  I was a senior at Southern Miss.  She’s dairy cows; I was cotton and corn.  She’s an English major.  Me too.  Her parents are salt of the earth, steady as a rock country folks, unshaken by what life hands them, toughened by the Great Depression.  Mine too.

            Uh-oh, she’s been a delegate to the National 4-H Congress in Chicago.  This scares me a little.  She’s obviously smart and endowed with some special skills.  I’m a pretty ordinary guy.  But we’ll see.

            Murfreesboro, she says, is just 30 miles south of Nashville.  That excites me since I’ve never been to the Grand Ole Opry.  Maybe … no, that’s not smart figuring the Grand Ole Opry into a possible relationship.  Better keep things a little more elevated.  She might not even know who Minnie Pearl is.

            She milks cows, she says, and … carries butter to the bottom of a deep spring where it’s kept refrigerated?  Yikes !  I’ve wrung the necks of chickens in order to have fried chicken for supper, but taking butter down into what amounts to a cave in your back yard?  That’s not country; that’s primitive.  Makes me feel better about never having been a delegate to the National 4-H Congress.

            Her lips are wine-colored, but her parents wouldn’t want me to use the word “wine.”  Mine wouldn’t either.  Her eyebrows are exquisite and she seldom plucks them.  They’re just … that way.

            She has one brother and three sisters.  Boy, did she perk up when I told her I had six brothers and ten sisters, a fact that would give her mother pause when Nancy tells her about me.

            On the last day of camp, I muster the courage to get Nancy Milligan’s address.  Two states apart, two country kids couldn’t afford to visit each other very much.  That explains why our wedding two years later was only the tenth time we had seen each other.

            This month marks my 50^th year of marriage to this Tennessee milkmaid.  She who could run the world.  She, a talented college graduate who stayed home to raise four children, who loves babies, old people, and life.  She whose children have risen up and called her bless’ed.

            For 50 years the greatest joy of my life has been watching as others also get to meet and know this girl in the door, watching as she has brightened the path of all who meet her.

            I knew I would meet her some day, knew I would wait as long as it took.  Not once during or since that Wisconsin summer has waitin’ on a woman bothered me.  Rather, it has reminded me that good things still come to those who wait.

Roger Hines

8/2/17