Who Stole My Country?

For many adults, the pains of childhood create an impenetrable thick fog. I once felt that having an eidetic memory was a blessing. As the years have passed, however, it has become more a curse. One day, in winter 1944, I sat with my mother in a darkened movie theater watching a delightful film called White Christmas. At some point, Bing Crosby’s voice was interrupted by what was then called, MovieTone News. In those days, movies had intermissions.

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I distinctly remember a frightening scene in that black and white news segment, of a war ship sinking. The announcer’s voice rambled on about the loss of American sailors. My mother held me close as if to shield me from the horror. During those dark days of war, my parents covered the windows each night with black cloth. Then candles were lit. Americans living along America’s coasts were forbidden the use of electric lights at night for fear that an enemy submarine might see it. It was all far beyond a small boy’s understanding. I can, however, easily recall the days of joy when that Great War was finally over. I was soon a boy of eight. I’d lie in a wild strawberry patch in the middle of a field, making dragons and flowers out of billowing, while clouds. Occasionally, a large four-engine airliner would pass overhead. It was headed to dreamland and I longed to be up there, watching that innocent little boy eat strawberries far below. But, of a sudden, I was forced to grow up. My mother got sick. Bedridden most of the time, I had to run errands and rub her back, and do all the other parental things a child shouldn’t have to do at that age. And, I fed the farm animals. In the spring of 1951, I was an energetic boy of ten. Returning from a school trip to the Statue of Liberty and a few other less memorable sites in New York City, I was hit by a drunk driver after embarking from our bus. I was so dead that, upon admission to the hospital, I vividly remember watching from above as doctor’s worked on my body. I don’t remember much after that, except that I was unconscious for fifteen hours. Weeks later, I was able to finish Fifth Grade, but my mother was now in the hospital. It was a long summer. In late August, she died. I remember the day she lay in the casket. For a long, long time, I stared at her lifeless body. I silently prayed that she would lift just one of her fingers. Just one, to let me know she wasn’t like the rats I’d shot with my .22 in the barn. Or the groundhogs I’d killed with a shovel. Innumerable nights were spent staring out my bedroom window into the night sky. When I saw what I believed to be a star twinkling more than all the others, I’d go back to bed knowing that my mother was watching me. In the middle of my junior year in high school, I began taking flying lessons. I soloed in just six hours time. As I climbed in the cockpit on that cold January day, Johnnie Chalka, my flight instructor, said, “Don’t go above 2,500 feet and not more than a few miles from the airport.” That was all the encouragement I needed. When I buckled the seat belt in that beautiful J-3 with those huge yellow wings, I began to feel that freedom was but a moment away. The airfield was several miles out of town but as my ticket to freedom raced down its grass runway, I knew my destination. Within no time, I was surveying familiar countryside at 5,000 feet altitude. God, this was heaven. There was the cemetery where my grandparents are buried; there’s the road I run every afternoon as I practice for cross-country. Soon, I was circling my favorite aunt’s farm. She was the one who listened to all my feelings in those dark years after my mother’s death. I was somehow pulled there by the distant smell of her pies, made especially for me. That was about the time I fell in love with Stella Dallas. Two weeks after graduation, I loaded my meager belongings into my 1953 Plymouth and escaped the horrors of my first seventeen years. I didn’t know if I’d make it, but I was headed for San Francisco. If the country had been a thousand miles wider, I would have pushed onward. Not long after getting there, my wanderlust spirit carried me back and forth across this great land five times. I had incredible adventures as I hitchhiked with old women, Mexican families migrating across Nevada with pet chickens, a Calgary businessman who’d gone to Detroit to pick up his brand new Ford, and farmers on their way to town. My longest walk was in the middle of the night, between South Lake Tahoe and Reno. A frigid, full moon on snowy fields made me recite The Night Before Christmas over and over to fend off the night air. Somewhere south of Reno, a couple of drunks picked me up. Several scary laughs later, we made it to Harrahs. I decided that, as I criss-crossed the United States of America, I would stop and visit as many monuments and famous attractions as I could. My eyes filled with tears more than a few times as I stood overlooking Little Big Horn, the Alamo, Gettysburg, the Dakota Badlands, Arlington Cemetery, Mt. Rushmore, and the Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma City. I quickly inherited a heart-pounding sense of pride in my country’s sacrifice. I was doing what people in other countries may only dream of doing, if it ever crossed their minds at all. In the fifty long years since, I never lost those feelings. I’ve always stood up for the little guy. I guess that’s what mature people are supposed to do, as they learn from the mistakes of life. As such, I’ve appeared before state legislatures, city committees, and written hundreds of letters, all in an effort to thwart the greed and selfishness of those we elect. As a parent, I taught my kids to be the best they could be; to work hard for what they have, to be honest in their relationships with others, to pay their bills, and learn to love and be loved. Today, I turn 69 years of age. It is two days after the 2008 election. This is the saddest day of my life. It surpasses the loss of my mother, my once-perfect eyesight, my best friends’ deaths, my health, my lost hopes and dreams, even the murder of a President. The America I have been so proud of for all those years is now lost. Lost to a minority who feel the need to be nurtured and provided for by something bigger than their own sense of self-accomplishment, their immature sense of value. They’ve sold their souls to those who will, in turn, lay the lamb of America on the altar of an impotent United Nations, an International Court, a World Trade Organization, and Shariah Law. Today, I have lost my country. I pray in silence that my children and grandchildren will forgive me for not giving more to protect them. I, like so many others, once believed that America’s best would never let us down. I was wrong. I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for every legislator who bows down to The One. And, this is not unlike the hoards who hailed a house painter more than seventy years ago. Within fifteen years of promising hope and change, his country lay in ruin. Those brave men who died by the thousands on Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the Soloman Islands, Pork Chop Hill, Gettysburg, and Trenton, must be rolling over, face down in their coffins. It was for nothing, men. It was all for nothing. My cursed foresight sees an America which will soon see an alarming increase in murder, suicide, unwanted pregnancies, and crime and drug abuse as never envisioned. Red Dawn will no longer be just a movie. The great numbers who will now swarm and fight to suckle at the breast of America will result in an economic depression far deeper than that in the 1930s. I predict a huge separation of the races, of those who have and those who have not, of those who wish to thrive and those only to survive. I see walls around great communities with guards to protect the free. The animals beyond are devouring each other. My one great sorrow is that I have lived to see this day. At least, I have sweet memories of a strawberry field, Stella Dallas and a J-3. Today, I am a man without a country. Bob DeMotte (SECRETS and LIES)has been actively involved in helping the underdog fight for his or her rights since 1984. One of the few individuals who actually reads a legislative bill, he reports the details here and lets you decide. Bob intends to run for the U.S. Congress in 2010 in the Washington State Fifth District. America’s future is being sold down the drain by politicians who are giving up her sovereignty every day and by those who refuse to stop them. As a strong Independent Conservative, Bob DeMotte will fight to give our children and grandchildren the safety and independence they deserve. Bob can be reached at: bobdemotte@hotmail.com

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