This is a terrible time

This is a terrible time to be an American, as far as I can see. We all hate each other. My daughter told me that the country is more divided than any time since before the Civil War, and I believe it. Whatever else may be dead, tolerance is. No one likes anyone who doesn't personally subscribe to exactly the same set of values. Liberals don't like conservatives. Conservatives despise liberals. Women are seen as dangerous, sex-craving, baby-making machines, unless they're seen as vapid sex objects. But should they like sex? Sex is still an issue. (Not that I think we should believe, as the Europeans do, that it's all just good, clean fun, because that takes all the thrill out of it--but I don't think that we need to be 50 Shades of Grey-ing it up, either. Not that that was that much. But I digress). Abortions, aye or nay? Gun control? It would seem that there's absolutely nothing between Obama coming for all the guns (and every time they say that, I can see him, prim and stiff, knocking on doors, one by one, saying, "I've come for your guns") and everyone, and I mean everyone, open carrying. They used to just make fun of us for our gun fanaticism--and by them I mean the rest of the world--but now they think we're dangerous lunatics. And who can blame them? And it all seems to be so mutually exclusive! If Caitlyn Jenner is a hero (and may I add, I don't believe she called herself one, other people did that) that doesn't mean that someone else can't be. Soldiers. Kids with cancer. People who run marathons. They all get to be heroes, as far as I'm concerned. In fact, my main concern is, if we're all heroes, who are the regular people? It's like the Millenials--if we're all special, well, then, how can we tell? If you care that Cecil the Lion got shot, then you don't care about the abortion holocaust. (Not my term). If you care about this, you don't care about that. And if you're not black, then you surely hate black people. That's a given. Everyone assumes that! Other white people. Black people. Latino people? Or are they busy grinding their own axes? I don't mean to single out Latinos as axe grinders, because we're ALL grinding our own axes! There are more presidential candidates than I can keep track of. They come out of the friggin' woodwork. A lot of them actively frighten me, because I fear that they will in fact take away my freedoms. So where am I in all of this? Well, of course we should be kind to animals. Most of the domesticated ones we keep as pets love us. We shouldn't chain them up in the cold and the heat and we certainly shouldn't tape their muzzles shut or set off fireworks in their mouths, or purposely burn them, or....the list goes on. And it goes without saying that if we actually have few enough lions that we can name them, we shouldn't be shooting them. I feel like anyone can figure out that, yeah, we're killing off the exotic animals, let's stop doing that. Extinct is extinct. (Though....and I really don't know, this is a question--if we can bring back the wooly mammoth, which is apparently a thing, why are we not stashing DNA of endangered species? It makes sense, right? Just a thought and one I'm sure someone else has had). But back to the abused animals. I can't afford to pay for all their vet bills. Sorry. I got sucked in with Tiger Tim, and a few others, and now I'm done. Because, and maybe I'm just mean, when I was nursing Gracie, I didn't have my hand out for her. Not everyone is as lucky as I am, to be able to do that, but-- And health care! Contraception! How can the same people who are opposed to contraception be opposed to abortion? I know, we're all supposed to be abstaining. Right. I get it. And how well as that worked so far? Oh, and I have this to say about abortion. Opponents like to quote the horrific numbers of how many babies weren't born because of abortions. I understand that there is no way to find this number out, for various reasons, but I would like to know how many babies WERE born because of safe, legal abortions that preserved a woman's fertility, so that she was able to go on and have more children later on? Take one out, so to speak, but put in two. It happens. I also have this to say about abortion. When it was not legal in this country, do you think it stopped, or didn't exist? The hell you say, as my father used to say. Of course it didn't. It was hellishly expensive and hellishly dangerous, and just hellish--or more so--in general. And I have read that it is believed that one of the reasons that doctors are unwilling to learn how to do safe, legal abortions is because they never saw the consequences of illegal abortions. They don't know what happens when they're not doing it. I have always believed that a woman who is set on not having a baby is going to find a way to make that happen, even if she kills herself in the process. She's just as set on ending a pregnancy as a woman is set on preserving one she wants. So you may as well make them legal, and cheap, because as soon as something is illegal, there's someone making money off it. Which sort of brings me back to the animals. There are states making animal cruelty a felony. Okay. It might get a few future serial killers off the street. Where are we putting them? In with the three strikes and you're out drug criminals? Because prisons are full enough as it is. If you make it a felony and you send them to jail, they have to go somewhere. My husband once asked me if I thought I had negative space under the bed, because I wanted to put so much there, and it's sort of that way with jails and prisons. Do we think they're like black holes? They just suck it all in?