MY CONFESSION!

I was born in 1954.

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, I was nine, and horrified beyond belief. When the Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan, I was almost ten years old, and I was mesmerized beyond recovery. Then came Martin Luther King's murder and Robert Kennedy's murder, when I was fourteen. I was stunned at the obvious deliberateness of the killings. At fifteen, I wanted to go to Woodstock, but my parents wouldn't hear of it. So, I never stopped worshiping the event and its participants.

Yet, contrary to what you might think, when I became part of the first generation of 18-year olds who had the right to vote in 1972, I voted for Richard Nixon. I admit it. I voted for Richard Nixon! I confess.

Why? I was scared by the killings I'd witnessed on the news, and Nixon was (ironically) the "law and order" candidate, and I started undergraduate school as an accounting/economics major because my father was a Republican businessman.

And I was a kid.

BAM!

By 1976, after Kent State and Watergate and Cambodia, and a few years of actual living under my belt as a young adult, I joyfully voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976, and again in 1980. But when Ronald Reagan was elected that year, I was so totally, completely shocked that I dropped out of politics for the next 28 years, realizing that I must be on some other planet in terms of my understanding of events. I honestly couldn't believe it. Ronald Fucking Reagan?! A man so simplistic, so inane, so living in a Hollywood fantasy where John Wayne and Rock Hudson weren't gay, where Americans never committed atrocities against African-Americans or Native-Americans or women, and where Gordon Gekko was a hero? Were you kidding me?!

Why am I writing about this? Because I need to clarify that my positions on the matters that I write about on this blog aren't rooted in "politics." I trust myself and my assessment of the Truth, because I do not have an ideology that I've always blindly adhered to. I am in search of the Truth and I have evolved as such. And some of the Truth is that the the "pro-life" movement is anti-sex and anti-women. The NRA is rooted in paranoia and racism. Racism is in itself a psychiatric disorder. The AMA is the author and perpetrator of some of the most heinous scandals of the last two millenia. Three-quarters of those in the media are prostitutes to corporate interests. And on and on.

We are not all the same, folks. We are not all sane. In fact, most of us are not nearly sane at all. But if you are sane, and you know who you are, stop pretending. Step up and be the adult that you know you should be. Stop drugging yourself to get through the horrors of everyday life. Stop placating others in order to be liked. Stop distracting yourself with electronics or work or over-indulging your kids. Clear up your consciousness and be yourself. We need you. The world is crazy. Help.