Baltimore- the City that Keeps Breaking My Heart

For the record, I was born in Richmond, Virginia, raised in adjacent Henrico County and now make my home in Virginia Beach. Save for four glorious months spent as an exchange student in London, Virginia is and always has been my home.

Yet, for reasons of ancestry and the many cousins who live there, I always regarded Baltimore as a “second” hometown and felt an affection towards the city as though it were my own. Although I never knew my paternal grandparents, we would frequently travel up I-95 to see my mother’s parents, who lived in a house my grandfather built near the intersection of York Road and East Cold Spring Lane. From my earliest memories, I remember being pushed in a stroller around the Guilford Reservoir which to my young eyes appeared to be a large swimming pool surrounded by a high wrought iron fence. Occasionally, I would walk with my grandmother from her house in Kernewood down to York Road and shop with her- that was back when streetcar tracks went down the middle of that north-south artery.

I was a rabid Baltimore Colts fan from the time I knew what a football was, and my father would take me each December to Memorial Stadium to see my heroes- Johnny Unitas, Mike Curtis and company- ply their trade on the muddied field that was their home. In the spring and summer, I would follow the Baltimore Orioles and their great teams of the 1960s and 1970s- the golden age of Orioles baseball and came to the youthful conclusion that Memorial Stadium was indeed heaven on earth.

The first time Baltimore broke my heart, was when the heavily favored Colts lost to the New York Jets in the biggest upset in NFL history- that was January 1969. I cried and cried, not unusual for a ten-year-old. Later that same year, the Orioles lost the World Series against the New York Mets, again breaking my heart. (1970 would bring a World Series championship to the Orioles and the Colts would be on their way to winning Super Bowl V the following January, making me the happiest kid in all of America.)

Later in the decade, following my grandfather’s passing, someone broke into their home and knocked my grandmother out cold, while stealing her valuables in a robbery that was never solved. At the time, it occurred to me that something dreadful was taking place in Baltimore that I never saw coming.

My father had spent much of his childhood in a rowhouse on Clifton Avenue, and worked to support his family at an Amoco filling station located at Gwynn Oak Junction. My mother- a native of Highlandtown, grew up in another rowhouse at the corner of Boarman Avenue and Pimlico Road- a stone throw’s away from the famed racecourse that was home to the Preakness Stakes. Both of them bemoaned what happened to their once-thriving neighborhoods, and that was back in the 1970s!

Once I attained adulthood, the City of Baltimore continued to break my heart. After my grandmother passed away in February of 1983, my beloved Colts left Baltimore in March of 1984- a travesty of greed and poor ownership that I have never fully gotten over. It was later that year, while attending an Orioles game at Memorial Stadium, I happened by the house that my grandfather had built only to find its first story windows festooned with wrought iron barricades and its windows covered on the inside with newspaper. The homes in which my parents had grown up were also in dilapidated condition, and no amount of urban renewal- Charles Center, Harborplace, and revitalized Fells Point ever stretched to northwest Baltimore.

The riots which followed the death of Freddie Grey actually took place on the streets where my father had once worked to support his family. I was glad he was no longer alive to see what had become of the city he once loved, and I began to feel that my “home away from home” was disappearing before my very own eyes.

The ensuing decades would witness the wrecking ball that leveled Memorial Stadium, the closure of shops once visited by me and my grandmother, and a fundamental change in the overall psyche of a town that once was regarded with deep pride and civic appreciation.

The locations I have referenced in this missive are all located in the seventh congressional district represented by Elijah Cummings (D-MD) for the last twenty-three years, and I can say without reservation that his representation has done nothing for those areas of a city that my family once knew as home…

…and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the biggest heartbreak of all.

-Drew Nickell, 31 July 2019

© 2019 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:

http://www.drewnickell.com

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Despite Trump’s Success, a Brewing Storm that Awaits

On the surface, given the unprecedented economic strength that is the hallmark of the Trump presidency, and that his reelection is all but certain, a vicious and potentially dangerous storm lurks on the far horizon of the next decades.

The signs of this storm are all around us. We see evidence of it each and every day, coming in small measures but nevertheless constantly taking us to a place where we will have lost the very traits that are uniquely American and set us apart from the rest of the world.

In essence, while we can look toward a Trump victory in 2020, the cultural war that has been waged over the last few decades is a war that is being lost before our very eyes. Just consider, for a moment, the following harbingers:

• Surveys amongst those under thirty years of age increasingly show that socialism is preferred to capitalism as the favored means of production and that the pursuit of “economic justice” is more important than economic prosperity…so much for the concepts of hard work and upward mobility that have made the United States the most prosperous nation in human history;

• For the first time ever in the history of the United States, those under thirty believe that certain forms of speech should not be tolerated under any circumstances- specifically, those which offend the sensibilities and norms of political correctness which have been established and fostered by the political left…so goes the idea of free speech and freedom of the press;

• Regular attendance at religious services, which has been waning for decades, is particularly lowest among those under thirty and, in the next decade, will constitute a substantial minority of the populace;

• Abortion, which was once preferred by Democrats to be “safe, legal and rare” has taken on a whole new and ghoulish aspect with regards to an increasing number of states which allow the procedure right up to and following the full-term birth of a child;

• In pursuit of LGBTQ rights, an increasing number of young people favor lowering the age of consent for sexual activity- some advocating that it be lowered to the age of twelve for young boys;

• An alarming and increasingly insidious trend among those under the age of thirty consider patriotism and the concept of American exceptionalism mere relics of past generations “who just don’t get it” anymore;

• Commodities such as food, housing, education, healthcare and even access to cellular services are deemed by those under thirty “human rights” which should be guaranteed for all persons living in the United States, regardless of whether or not such persons are citizens of this country. California has in fact become a sanctuary state and only yesterday has now guaranteed health care for all people in that state, including illegal aliens. The first-year projected cost of this initiative is slated to cost upwards of $100 million;

• As the result of the high cost of living, young people are increasingly opting to remain at home, living with their parents and are delaying marriage and childbirth until their thirties. While their parents clamored to have drivers’ licenses issued at sixteen, an increasing number of young people simply have no interest in getting these permits, ever;

• An increasing trend among those under thirty consider themselves to be “citizens of the world” as opposed to citizens of the United States, and the concept of national identity is starting to fade in the pursuit of global and international identity.

One can look at these trends and easily point their finger at a host of culprits- the news media, the entertainment industry, education (or, should we say, the lack of education), the reluctance of parents to teach their children about God, national pride and what constitutes good citizenship, just to name a few.

Worse, bad personal behavior by celebrities of all stripes- professional athletes, musicians, actors, etc., is being tolerated to a degree not seen before and it is the trend towards acceptance of such behavior that results in the lowering of standards of what is deemed to be acceptable or even admired. Where are the role models?

These observations are not merely the pinings of an old curmudgeon bemoaning a perceived downfall of civilization but rather a recognition of a downward slope that is rooted in the radicalization of college campuses which began in the 1960s. The professors of that era, who increasingly embraced atheism and even communism, became department heads and administrators in the decades which followed, and spread their influence among the students who, in turn, became the schoolteachers and university professors holding sway over millennials and gen-Xers. When prayer in public schools ended in the mid-1960s, that was just the first step in the cultural wars that have now taken umbrage with reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and the singing of the National Anthem.

Looking back on the developments of the last six decades, we can recall the very stark warnings that older and wiser people made at the time, while the “young enlightened” generation laughed at such warnings…now, six decades later, it is that “young enlightened” generation who is beginning to see the ramifications that have thus resulted.

Just think about what this country will be like in ten years, when those under thirty today become the movers and shakers and power brokers of tomorrow. While the generation of baby boomers, (those born between 1946 and 1964), move into retirement, who will be a position to stave off the trends toward socialism increasingly finding favor with their progeny? Who will speak out for the freedom of speech once speech codes imposed by political correctness actually lessen diversity of thought and usher in the dastardly dictatorship of groupthink?

These are questions that must be answered now, for our cultural fabric and our national identity- the very things which set America apart for two and a half centuries- teeter on the precipice of oblivion by a generation of those who have been indoctrinated to hold such concepts in utter contempt. While the rest of the world drools at the prospect of American demise, they too cannot see the forest of darkness for the sake of the trees which stand before them…

…and then, what?

-Drew Nickell, 22 July 2019

© 2019 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”

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Election 2020- Why the Democrats Have Already Lost…Bigly

With every passing day, with each and every week that advances the calendar, it becomes clearer and clearer…President Donald J. Trump will win reelection, and it won’t even be close.

The Democrats, the anti-Trump/NeverTrump blue noses who still claim to be Republicans, the Deep State in Washington, D.C., and most especially, the national media and the Hollywood elite are all setting themselves up for an even larger disappointment than they had election night, 2016.

Someone once said that “there is no lesson the second time one is kicked by a horse,” meaning that the first kick should have firmly taught the folly in standing behind a horse and, if that lesson didn’t take hold then it won’t the next time, either.

Evidently, all of the forces within and outside government, who are so rabidly opposed to the presidency of Donald Trump, learned absolutely nothing in the last three years in which they have actively tried to destroy the man, and with him, all of the millions of voters who put him in office.

Not that they won’t try, even harder than they have in the past, to take this president down. After all, none of these opposing factions…and they are legion…ever considered the remote possibility that Donald Trump might actually win the 2016 election…but then, history happened.

Now that Trump is president, and carries the attendant advantage of incumbency, look for all his many opponents to pull out all of the stops in their abiding hatred of the man who has the moxie to call them out for who and what they are, and you have a recipe for campaign coverage so biased and so filled with disdain as to stretch the imagination and boggle the mind.

It’s not enough that journalism…which is to say objective journalism…has gone the way of the telegraph. What passes today for the news media- network, cable, and the print media is nothing more than a collusive propaganda machine in undeniable cahoots with the Democrat Party- so much so, that the talking points of both arrive instantaneously and concordantly, and this is by design.

Tell the people a lie, over and over and over again, and what constitutes the “truth” becomes malleable and subjective. Worse, the people who must bear the suffrage of actual voting do so largely out of programmed ignorance due to the lack of real news, and from which they might otherwise make informed decisions.

Essentially, it is the preponderance of fake news across all media outlets which threaten the sanctity of an election, and thereby the underpinnings of representative democracy, more than any alleged tampering with our elections by a foreign power- be it Russia, China or anyone else.

Into this maelstrom, is the reelection campaign of a president who has defied his opponents at every level of government and delivered on the promises he made to the American people. To wit…

• The tax cuts and regulatory reforms he has put into place have lowered unemployment across the board, to the lowest levels seen in a half-century, and the lowest levels ever for Asian Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans and women across all ethnic identities;

• The energy policies of the Trump administration have made the United States the world’s largest exporter of energy, and completely self-sufficient from the dictates of OPEC. Remember that this is the same United States that was practically brought to its knees by OPEC in the 1970s;

• While there is still much to be achieved in the de-nuclearization of North Korea, the medium- and long-range missile testing has ceased, along with nuclear weapons testing, and the two sides are talking- something that hasn’t taken place since the 1953 Korean War cease-fire;

• For the first time since President Nixon normalized relations with China in the early 1970s, the United States is in a position of economic strength to finally leverage long-needed trade concessions, and we finally have a President willing to take on the Chinese in a way that none of his seven predecessors were willing to do;

• Ridding the country of the individual mandate attendant to ObamaCare fixed the biggest and most invasive aspect of the (un-)Affordable Care Act, and thereby unlocked the potential for actual improvement to how healthcare is delivered to the people. Couple that with Trump’s initiative to lower the cost of prescription drugs across-the-board, and we might finally begin to get a handle on the rising costs of healthcare;

• Pulling the United States out of the insanely masochistic and ludicrous JCPOA (the Iran “Deal”) and the equally self-flagellating Paris Climate Accords, brought forth a foreign policy that puts America first, and to a degree we haven’t seen since Ronald Reagan left office in January of 1989. A succession of globalist/internationalist presidents- both Bushes, Clinton and Obama- all-too-often subrogated American interests to a new world order dead-set against American prosperity and pre-eminence.

Juxtapose this reality to Democrat aspirants to replace President Trump who

• Advocate for universal single-payer health insurance, eliminating private health insurance currently enjoyed by seventy percent of Americans who get this coverage from their employers and unions;

• Seek to decriminalize illegal border crossings so as to effectively create open borders, some even offering to provide guaranteed healthcare coverage to these same illegal immigrants;

• Seek to eliminate the tax cuts enacted in December of 2017, driving up the tax burden for working families and middle-class taxpayers, and taxing the wealthy at a rate of 70%;

• Seek to effectively shut down domestic energy production with the imposition of environmental regulation guaranteed to make the United States once-again dependent on foreign oil, coal and natural gas;

• Seek to re-commit to the disastrous JCPOA, the Paris Climate Accords, NAFTA and other such deals that, by design, will hurt the American economy and will cost Americans the very jobs gained back in the wake of the Trump presidency;

• and… who seek to punish Donald Trump for having the gall to win the 2016 election, by supporting impeachment and even post-presidential prison for the man they seek to unseat.

So, we are supposed to believe that a vast majority of people in this country would prefer (name the Democrat- Biden, Bernie, Warren, Kamala or even Mayor Pete) to occupy the Oval Office in 2021?

Well that’s just more of the same horse-hockey of wishful thinking that the media tried to foist on us in the last election…it didn’t work then…it won’t work now that the election is in full swing…and it won’t work in the fall of 2020, either…

…but don’t even try to tell that to Trump’s opponents, or members of the Hollywood elite, or the media, or the deep state apparatchiks in Washington, lest you be labeled a racist, a misogynist, psychotic or worse…

There are liars, there are damned liars and then there are those adversely affected by Trump Derangement Syndrome…just turn on the TV…you’ll see them all there…

-Drew Nickell, 17 July 2019

© 2019 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”

Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2

Drew Nickell was back on the Radio Thursday, 11 July 2019

After a fifteen-week long hiatus, I was back on the radio, sitting in  on the Nora Firestone Show, on WKQA-AM Freedom 1110, where I discussed the over-the-top double standards in media coverage, the poisonous platform of Democrat presidential candidates, why President Trump will win re-election and an ongoing threat to our cultural and national survival.

This show also appeared as a “Facebook live” broadcast, so here is a replay of that broadcast:

https://www.facebook.com/drew.nickell.7/videos/10211786519698470/

-Drew Nickell, 10 July 2019

© 2019 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”

Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2