RESPONDING TO THE NEW REAL

By Edwin Cooney

Back on June 16th, 2005, I wrote my first column under the private title I called “Cooney's Corner” which I categorized as my take on historical and current events as well as on the forces and tendencies that cause you and me to have our beings.

It was my private hope that some newspaper or publication might hire me as a columnist. That didn't happen, but I decided to soldier on because I enjoyed thinking and writing about current events. Also, although I had permanent teaching certification in New York State and temporary certification in California, I never attained a teaching position. Still, I longed to teach.

When I began writing these musings, I believed that I had a pretty solid idea where we were headed as a society. I continued to hold to that belief even in the wake of President Trump's election in 2016.

However, since his re-election last November, I've come to realize how little I understand my fellow Americans. The center of my belief has been that despite the inevitable peaks and valleys in future human events, the future always has an upward trend.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt made that assertion on January 20th, 1945, his fourth and final presidential inauguration. I heard Dr. Martin Luther King assert the same belief on Sunday night, March 31st, 1968, just four days before his assassination.

I've come to realize that President Trump is strictly concerned about his own personal ambitions and needs and the reality is that not even his fellow Republicans appear to assert their constitutional powers and obligations when and if they clash with the president's prerogatives.

Thus, I've lost my political, social grasp as to where America is headed. I find particularly frustrating those who claim that they held their noses and voted for Donald Trump last November 5th. After all, voting isn't a guess. It's an essential assertion of value and judgment.  Henceforth, these musings will be about our past as a nation. I abhor feeling about the current president the way I do.

The past, like the future, is loaded with people and events that invariably reflect on who we are, individually and collectively!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY