Governor Rick Perry-A Man Of The 19th Century

Governor Rick Perry-A Man Of the 19^th Century

     Elena and I live in a house built in 1941. I often picture in my mind what it was like on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor. I can imagine that the occupants of the house had come back from church and were sitting down for lunch. The radio was on and they were listening to music. All of a sudden the shocking news came that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Their whole world changed.

     When I listen to 1940’s music I imagine an alternate universe. Elena and I are the occupants of the house on December 7, 1941. I still graduated from Tulane but not in 1972. Rather I graduated from Tulane in the 1930’s. Elena graduated from Stanford Medical School in the 1930’s (An incredible achievement in those days for a woman!).

    The next morning I go down and join the US Navy. I’m sent right to Officer Candidate School in Newport Rhode Island.  Ninety days later I’m commissioned as an Ensign in the US Navy and assigned to an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. Elena goes to work at a US Navy hospital.

    The war years are hard and dangerous for us. We get little time together. But we survive the war with our health and marriage intact.

    Now it’s 1946. The United States is literally “on top of the world.” We have won a world war. We are the only country in the world with nuclear weapons. We are one of the few major countries not devastated by war.  Our country is rich and prosperous beyond our wildest imaginings. Life is so sweet for people like Elena and I here in Pacifica, California. Oh if only I could get in a time machine and go back to 1946!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Now in the real world of 2011, Elena brings reality to my fantasy. She points out that medicine was so crude some 65 years ago. A simple heart attack that can be treated today with a few days in a hospital was a fatal event then. The list goes on. Women were second-class citizens.  A white male like me was “king.” Minorities were treated awful! The criminal justice system was brutal, etc.

   Ah well, we all need a fantasy every now and then!

   Governor Rick Perry is a man who lived through a good part of the 20^th century. But he doesn’t believe that the 20^th century happened. He’s a man stuck in a cowboy fantasy of life in 19^th century Texas where “a man was a man and a woman was a woman.” If he could, he would carry the Colt .45 “six shooter.” He would be sure that right and justice would prevail for the white male.

   This man’s fantasies are very dangerous. They do not belong in the 21^st Century. Such a man cannot lead a country in need of uplifting in the 21^st Century. Send him back to the ranch and let him enjoy his cowboy fantasies; but not at the expense of the rest of humanity.