The Height of Moral Degradation in Gods’ Own Country.

“The Strawberry letter” segment on the Steve Harvey Morning Show is one of my favorites. Every morning, people write letters to the show, baring their souls on some very personal issues. Some listeners are of the view that the letters are fictitious. But the presenters and, especially Shirley Strawberry, have often stated that the letters are real. And I believe them.

Today’s strawberry letter was a two-handed, heart-wrenching type. A man ( the letter-writer) wrote to say that he loved his wife (to whom he has been married since ten years ago) but that at the moment, he was at what I would describe as an emotional cross-road.

On the one hand, he started an affair with a sibling of his wife about three years ago. The sibling in question however was the twin brother of his wife. Now, the lover is threatening to inform his sister about the affair unless the letter-writer divorced her. Here was a guy desperate enough to break his sister’s marriage just so that he and the letter-writer could continue their gay relationship without hindrance.

On the other hand, the letter-writer wanted to justify the affair with his brother in-law by disclosing that his wife had cheated on him shortly after they got married. And guess who she cheated with? It was the letter-writer’s father. In fact, the woman got pregnant and had a baby boy for the older guy. The little boy is now being raised by the letter-writer. In view of this cheating issue therefore, the letter-writer believed that he had the moral right to comply with his gay lover’s demand.

Tommy Nephew’s response to the bundle of absurdities was the best in my view. At a future family re-union, Tommy gave hints about the way principal characters in that letter would be introduced?  To start with, the man’s wife would simultaneously be seen as his wife and as a step mother. The man’s gay lover would be introduced as his brother in-law and as his “significant other”. And the letter-writer’s hapless son could also double up as his brother. What a spectacle that family re-union would exhibit?

And I thought I had seen and heard everything about moral degradation in God’s own country. But that strawberry letter on the Steve Harvey Morning Show has since convinced me that I “ain't seen nothing yet"

Gun Control and Life in the United States.

Nowhere in the United States is safe from gun violence. Not fast-food restaurants. Not movie theaters. And not churches and elementary schools! No one, not even little kids are immune or considered sacred any more. No thanks to the availability of guns to every Tom, Dick and Harry, some of whom, in spite of mental sickness, still have easy access to guns, especially the very sensitive assault types.

Fortunately however, the Federal and state governments are not folding their arms in submission to this problem. As part of the measures aimed at curbing this national menace, a gun control legislation requiring background checks for all prospective gun owners was proposed by the Obama administration. But it took just one organization, the National Rifle Association (NRA) to hold the entire nation hostage over the issue.  As usual, the NRA employed its usual arsenal of stupendous wealth and political machinery to defeat the proposed legislation.

While the rest of us regular folks (majority) worry and lament over the now frequently ravaging gun violence in the society, the rich and influential NRA with its supporters (minority) is more concerned about the possible fall in their gun sale revenues if “stringent” rules are applied to gun ownership.

In their constant bids to arm-twist the conservative segment of the American society, the gun-toting NRA ideologues always rely on the following hypocritical factors, among others:

i.                     The right to bear arms as enshrined in the constitution. This is one of the most over-flogged issues traced back to the founding fathers that were actually referring to the threats of invasion by the then British colonists.

ii.                    Moral posturing against homosexuality and abortion. Yet, recent disclosures of people coming out of the “gay closets” all over the nation have included several members of the so-called conservative Americans while abortion has since been discovered not to be a monopoly of the liberal Americans.

The question now therefore is when the majority of us folks in this great country will “wake up” to exercise our constitutional rights to vote out all the senators and congress men/women who have been compromised (one way or the other) by the obnoxious NRA?