No Person Left Behind

Are you being scrutinized by big brother?

Have you lost your most wonderful and precious freedom to looming governmental tyranny? Remember when George Washington fought mightily for freedom of speech, freedom to gather, freedom to write? Today I squirm as I try to tell.


How can terrible violence on our own ground lead to stifled freedom by our own government? Why are we scrutinized, not by the enemy, but by our own leadership, lowering the boom on it's own citizens. What nerve.


Today, I must show ID for my bank account. Not for the teller, but for the files. I'm promised privacy. No one shall see the file. How can I trust, when library computers are spied upon? When someone is held with no charges or proof? When unimportant me, with hardly a political opinion, must pass 14 classes for the mighty defense against National Threats. We no longer see the yellow, orange or red danger, danger, danger charts on t.v. Green was a joke to the paranoid. I use that word seriously. As in mental illness.


No child shall be left behind, I am assured, as I learn, robot-like, that the government demands obedience in my role, at the bottom of the great chain of command, in Kindergarten and 1st and 2nd grade, as an assistant. Now I must prepare for any threat to this country when I am teaching.


Listen, government, you are there For Me!! Get that straight!
You are there By Me!

I Lead! Not you; you ask, you suggest. You leave me be! I demand my freedoms, fought for by George Washington and his troops with rags for shoes on frozen feet. By Martin Luther King, Jr. with fire bombings and assassination destroying his faithful fight.


I am a simple cog in this giant bossy country. Don't micromanage me as if I am a clueless idiot! Have some respect, dammit. I promise I will take care of the children in a storm, in an emergency, in a dangerous situation. But you already knew that.

I always have known that. I don't need 14 classes telling instructing what acronyms identify which commander. I will elect a commander who will listen and do MY WILL.

Gee, they've really got me, a little homebody, who watches "The Office" and funny movies and who is slightly miffed at the writers strike, who loves the basset hound so much that it gets wrapped up at night in a blankie to doze on the end of the bed, someone who lies in the hammock in the spring and summer and Indian summer gazing at the unfathomable blue, searching for the big turkey vultures and ravens...

They've really got little me riled.