Once Upon A Time In America
December 18, 2018 by Las Vegas Black Image Magazine
Filed under Community
Once Upon A Time In America
BY LOUIE OVERSTREET
Louie Overstreet
The easy thing to do in my December column would be to write a fluff piece wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. However, given the sad and alarming state of America today, I can’t do easy.
It’s very disheartening, just in my lifetime, to observe what has happened to America in the last two years — especially when compared with what we experienced and was able to overcome as a nation in the previous 75 plus years. When we look back on that time, many events come to my mind that demonstrate how our country has confronted challenges and emerged on the other side a better nation for the experience.
By winning WWII, America became the unquestioned — however sometimes challenged — leader in the world community of nations. This leadership is true in terms of military and economic dominance. Our desires, even when misguided, were with good intentions to lift up other nations of the world as best evidenced by the Peace Corps.
While remaining a largely segregated society well into the 1950s and 1960s, I remember our communities having thriving businesses and exhibiting a sense of community such that crime was fairly consistent with other communities. Crime became a problem for us when our government decided to treat drug addiction as a crime and not as a health crisis — unlike how opioids use is treated today.
People of all colors championed an era of civil and voting rights beginning in the mid-1950s thru the mid-1970s — including marches, race riots, and ending the Vietnam War. While such protests were primarily directed at our government, we now have a President with malice aforethought who is purposely dividing Americans along economic, cultural, and racial lines.
Our Idiot President should know that it was Honest Abe who noted in an 1858 speech that “a house divided against itself cannot stand”!
Hopefully, in spite of the Idiot’s best efforts, last month’s election results will one day be positively referred to as once upon a time in America.
