Good Advice from Queen Latifah and a Fictional President

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So I have been catching bits and pieces of the Republication National Convention. In truth, I am already really over election season even though things are just getting interesting. And now that the Trump camp has admitted they need better speech writers (I mean could you have been any more obvious?!) and since I am not interested in hearing yet another one of Trump's children take the stage to try and convince us that he really does like women and minorities, I am so ready to change the conversation.

I mean, there just HAS to be something else going on in the world that's worth talking about? But I don't seem to be able to escape it. And maybe I shouldn't. This election season will be like no other. There is so much division in our country - worse than I think I have ever seen. And as this election cycle unfolds, you see just how divided we are right down racial lines. And I have to admit, it is rather interesting to see how convention organizers subtly and sometimes blatantly, try to use those divides to score political points.

Take opening day - after completely offending members of the disabled/special needs community by mocking a reporter with a disability (and the running of SEVERAL ads pointing it out) the convention opens with a young girl who is completely blind and has mild cerebral palsy, singing the National Anthem. She did an awesome job. But I just can't help but wonder how that all came about. As the mother of a child with special needs, I was offended by Trump's mockery of that reporter and while the young lady sang wonderfully, it didn't change how I felt about his earlier actions.

Or we get an African American police officer to shout how Blue Lives Matter to the roar of the crowd, as if the Black Lives Matter movement somehow implied they don't. Yes, those with the right intentions do believe that all lives matter, black, white, blue... But when African-American males are being killed at almost three times the rate of any other race by law enforcement, it is disturbing. The purpose of the movement is just to point out that there needs to be a real conversation about race in this country. I think Queen Latifah summed it up best - there are issues that must be dealt with on both sides. The senseless killing of police officers HAS to stop, no question about that - but be real, not every killing of the African-American males by police over the past several months has been justified. It isn't realistic to pretend that there aren't people with prejudice carrying guns and badges.

So I wish that we could just stop the posturing, the name calling, and get down to business. What do we need to do as a nation of people to make life better for us all? How will we help the poor, regardless of their skin color? How can we make sure we all really understand the laws of money so we don't have to work until we drop dead? What can we do to really confront racism and eradicate it? How can we make sure our young people are prepared to compete in this digital, global world? Do you really think kids in Japan or China are advancing because they are taking the EOC? Not hardly! To quote a line from a fictional President (Andrew Shepherd in American President) "We have serious problems to solve and we need serious people to solve them," (see attribution is key - just give credit to the people you got the line from and you're good).

After all of the speeches and examination of the speeches, I hope we can get it all behind us and deal with the problems at hand - but trust me, I won't hold my breath.