WS Chronicle

James B. Ewers Jr.

Guest Columnist

Would anyone disagree that we are living in some troubling times in the United States of America? Issues of social justice erupt almost on a weekly basis. Our children and grandchildren are going unchecked and uncensored. And if you live in states like North Carolina and Louisiana, regulations are making us question who we really are.

Since January, Americans have added a few new terms to its lexicon such as “alternative facts” and “alternative truths.” When I was growing up in Winston-Salem, my parents taught me to tell the truth. There weren’t optional truths. In other words, if I didn’t like the truth, I could always come up with “alternative truths.”

Can you imagine coming home from Atkins High School or any other high school in America and giving your parents “alternative truths”? The spanking you would have received would have been immediate. I can hear my mom saying to me now, “Boy, you must be crazy.”

We should have seen this coming last year. One of the presidential candidates said he was not going to release his most recent tax return and that was that, end of story!

How can a person be that much of a bully and we not offer any resistance? After all, we file our taxes each year whether we are running for public office or not. So now he’s in office and trouble is all around him.

Recently, Ana Swanson of The Washington Post wrote an article titled, “Trump’s shift on economy may leave supporters behind.” In it, she talks about what the president said during his inaugural address, which was to paint the economy as weak and bleak. Then a few weeks later, he uses a conservative website as a basis to say that job and employment numbers look great. It might be safe to say that over the course of the next four years, the word “misinformation” will be in full use.

Weeks before President Barack Obama left office, he said, “You are going to miss me when I’m gone.” Well, President Obama I, along with millions of people around the world miss you. We miss your honesty. We remember the word honesty, don’t we? We miss your hope for America and yes, we can. We miss your humanity and your civility. We just miss you.

For almost two years now, the sitting president has assailed The Affordable Healthcare Act. He promised to get rid of it. On his first day in office, he signed an executive order to do away with The Affordable Healthcare Act. This was done in the Oval Office with great pomp and circumstance. I guess he thought he was a magician. Not so fast!

Someone in his inner circle must have told him that we don’t have a replacement plan. Fast forward to Friday, March 24, when House Speaker Paul Ryan said there weren’t enough votes to pass a new health care law.

The president’s response was that Obamacare was going to implode and explode. Do you really want people not to have healthcare? If you listened to his short response on CNN, you came away with that impression. Prior to Congressman [Paul] Ryan’s announcement, the president remained steadfast in believing he had enough votes to pass it. Obviously, it was just his imagination running away with him.

It is my opinion that the president should become more acquainted with the term “constituent”. The constituents are you and me. We keep legislators in office. Without our votes, they, too, will become constituents.

James B. Ewers  Jr. Ed.D. is a former tennis champion at Atkins High School in Winston-Salem and played college tennis at Johnson C. Smith University, where he was all-conference for four years. He is a retired college administrator.