US citizens stopped normal work schedules, usurping their daily responsibilities to join the crowds on the streets in protest. By sundown Wednesday, the crowds shutdown the streets in most of the major cities. Wednesday, the day the SCOTUS announced the Personhood Bill of Rights, will go down in history as the night America shot itself and laid bleeding on the city sidewalks waiting to die. 

Marches with citizens in camouflage greens and army boots laced in leather boot strings, stepped in unison, fire fight rhythm, throughout the night. They were followed by citizens armed with torches and sledgehammers and ball bats. Cheers from the sidewalks crescendo from children waving mini-size American flags as the citizen soldiers marched by them and towards the Whitehouse. Standard size American flags on poles, followed the armed citizen soldiers carried by ten and twelve year olds, marching behind their fathers. 

Ammunition was worn like a necklace of authority. Thinking was shut down. Reasoning had never lasted long on the side of honesty, if one followed an armed insurgent with a megaphone and an AR15.

No one remembered what they once believed, or how things once were in America before Trump. Like children who tell their first big lie and their conscience will not let them sleep until they confess and pray for forgiveness, Americans must find a way to forgive themselves. Forgive yourself and each other. The realization of truth founded in reality, changes everything. Confession is hard, but the sense of forgiveness of yourself will overflow and cleanse your mind of misnomers. You might even feel elated. And peaceful. And grateful that you live in the USA where you can vote him out forever. You were once tricked. Yes, it really was all a big lie.

Funny thing. These citizen soldiers stored arsenals of war equipment hidden in bunkers, underground rooms, built below silos and under barns for years before Trump. They had promised themselves that someday they will be American heroes and have the right reason to overthrow the government, never knowing that they will be rebelling against their beloved President Trump, once their only choice for President. These are the citizen militia who have practiced fighting, shooting, blowing things up, caught in the adrenalin rush, the sexual-like orgasm of blind excitement waiting for the bombs to explode. 

They never were smart enough to foresee that those who wanted to overthrow this government made by Trump were once Trump groupies. Some claimed that they would lay down their lives in support of Trump. Now the World watches as proof that a Democratic Nation cannot sustain itself without honor, without a government faithful to the rule of law. A Democratic Republic cannot survive a government built on lies. 

If we continue to allow our GOP legislators to perpetuate the big lie through their lies–all the lies–our Nation will trip upon the words of our Constitution and die in humiliation.

Forgive yourself, if you were tricked. After all, we are the first generation in a new era where the internet and social media have taken control of our thinking. We have been used to broadcast television where news reporters verified their information. Christians are not taught how to be skeptical. As Christians, we are taught to have faith, to have a sincere heart built on kindness and forgiveness. We are just so vulnerable to false news these last few years that we can hardly hear through the static, or hear ourselves think, with clarity once again.

We are vulnerable to anyone who claims to understand our struggles and promises nothing but good will come to those who follow him–I’m talking Trump (not Jesus). We need firewalls for our thinking. We need the truth for our souls to sleep through the night. 

Citizens were confused, then frustrated, then angry. How dare any court require men to accept equality with women? Men can’t get pregnant. How dare women expect men to take financial responsibility for their pregnancy. Law now requires that the father sperm is responsible for the child’s essential financial needs while growing up. 

Women sat in taverns, on their porch steps, calling other women, celebrating at prayer meetings, the consequences of the law. Women watched TV while the screen displayed dozens of shooting incidents all across the Country. Screenshots of reporters’ postcard-like frames of riots from major cities were shown like puzzle pieces on the screen. News reporters with their mics held to the faces of individuals who had suffered, reported the latest catastrophe. A 24/7 continuum of news played over again. Much like school shootings, no one had a solution.

In every city and small town, in every tavern, in confessionals with the priest, gunshots were heard. Men with automatic weapons, driving down the streets were randomly shooting pregnant women. “How dare you make men your equal?” They called from their car. They cursed the Supreme Court and the President who had set up the Court to prejudice its rulings in favor of anti-abortion. The President had tricked us. Men don’t get pregnant. Like Trump, they believed “It’s not our fault.” They flipped their argument around to say that “it’s women’s responsibility–It’s her body.”

If men participate equally in the responsibility of raising our children, we have a real chance of ending child poverty in the United States. If men don’t want to pay to raise, feed, house, a person for eighteen years and nine months, all it takes is for them to wear a condom. It seems like a clear and deliberate choice, one way or the other.

Young people must be taught to understand this simple good habit: Wear a condom. We have shamed ourselves with unwanted pregnancies, ruining women’s life plans generation after generation. We have blamed the woman alone for her predicament for too long. 

Key point of this short chapter: Protect yourselves from getting your partner pregnant. Wear a condom.