There is a lot of talk going around about taking things back.  Take our country back.  Get back to values.  Go back home. Get back to better times.  It all seems so silly to me.  Most things seem silly to me lately.

The people talking about taking their country back annoy me the most.  In the first place who says it is, or was, theirs?  Maybe it’s mine, our yours, or I get it, ours.  All of us.  Well actually this land was occupied long before the wing nuts who are making noise about taking it back were an itch in their daddy’s britches.

Here’s another thought about that.  Back to what exactly?  What I am hearing is wishful thinking for an imaginary  time and place where the people were pretty much alike.  I think they long for a nation of Mayberry RFD style towns where all the people are white, go to the same church and always say please and thank you. What the gobackers want Is not real and never was.

I lived in that place they think they want to go back to and it was not great.  The small town school offered us a limited education at best.  No music or art. We had two kinds of people; white and colored and the two were expected to stay in their place.  We were taught to be nice to the colored kids at school but don’t bring them home. There were probably homosexuals but they certainly were not acknowledged.  I remember five churches none of which were Catholic.  I was twenty years old before I met a Jewish person and did not even know Islam existed until I was out of high school.  It was a place that left one feeling ignorant and small.  It was dangerous on a somewhat smaller scale from more sophisticated cities just because of the smaller number of people there.  I witnessed a robbery and murder on the street outside my house before I was twelve.  I knew kids at school who were abused at home on a regular basis.  There was a preacher who had an affair with his neighbor and more than our fair share of drunks.

Count me out of going back to a fantasy better time.  I had rather go forward.  The future interests me more than the past and I prefer improving to regressing.