I majored in political science and minored in history in college. My Master’s degree is in public administration. I can’t just turn all that off, even though I graduated 50 years ago.

I used to not be a political person. I just wanted government on all levels to work at their highest and best purposes. I wanted honesty and transparency in government. I wanted the politicians to have as little influence as possible over the actual daily operations of the government.

I wanted government employees to be left alone by the politicians to guarantee the water was safe to drink.

I wanted government employees left alone by the politicians to make sure building permits were issued and followed up by trained and certified building inspectors to make sure houses and commercial buildings were built to meet construction standards and codes.

I wanted government employees left alone by the politicians to register the deeds for all real estate transactions within the county.

I wanted professional librarians left alone by the politicians to use their years of training to purchase age-appropriate materials to benefit all citizens.

I wanted the archivists at the State and National Archives to be left alone by the politicians and trusted to gather and preserve the articles of history for future generations.

I wanted governing licensing boards to be left alone by the politicians so that I could trust that a person with M.D. or R.N after their name had the knowledge and skill to treat me when I am sick or hurt.

I wanted government employees to be left alone by the politicians so they can regulate the insurance industry and speak up for a citizen when they believe they have been mistreated by an insurance company.

I wanted medical researches to be left alone by the politicians so they can work tirelessly to find causes and cures for diseases.

I wanted university professors to be left alone by the politicians so they can teach from their knowledge of their chosen field without fear that they might say something that offends someone.

I wanted college and university students to be left alone by the politicians so they can take any course they want to take, read any book they want to read, and non-violently protest anything they want to protest without fear of being kicked out of school, arrested, or deported.

I wanted public school teachers to be left alone by the politicians so they can teach what their grade-level students need to learn so they can progress through the education system and be free thinkers.

I wanted park rangers to be left alone by the politicians who have absolutely no understanding of or appreciation for the natural world.

I wanted government employees to be left alone by the politicians so they can monitor air quality and prevent us from returning to the smog of the 1950s and 1960s.

I wanted our system of elections to be left alone by the politicians who are determined to make it more and more difficult for a person to vote… all in the name of preventing voter fraud, when fraud by politicians is a much bigger problem than voter fraud. (Case in point, my current US Representative, Mark Harris, who used to be a Baptist preacher, hired someone to go around marking absentee ballots for people in his 2018 run for the US House. His own son even testified against him. His operative was charged with several counts of obstructing justice and possession of absentee ballots, but he died before the case went to trial. Mr. Harris escaped being criminally charged, brushed the dirt off himself, and successfully ran from NC’s 8^th District in 2024. In another case, Mark Meadows, who served as Chief of Staff for Trump in his first administration, claimed a home address in a remote area of the mountains and cast his vote in North Carolina in 2020. The address he gave as his residence was a dilapidated, vacant mobile home which he had probably never laid eyes on.) But somehow, it is the everyday citizens who cannot be trusted to vote.

I wanted the United States to continue the USAID program of distributing food and medical aid to the poorest people in the world.

I wanted the United States to not only maintain but to strengthen its decades old (and in some cases, centuries old) international alliances.

I wanted to be allowed to be a Presbyterian and not have some right-wing conservative evangelical dogma forced on the public at-large that paints all American Christians with a broadbrush of misinformation.

I wanted the separation of church and state to remain a valued principle. I did not want a Presidential Administration to parade under the guise of being Christian while openly, as well as under the cover of darkness and behind closed doors, attacking everything from science to education to medical research to food safety to immigrants to museums to clean air to the arts to clean water to libraries to national parks to habeas corpus to national forests to the United States Constitution to our very sense of security.

I wanted a United States Government that did not operate through intimidation and threats to individuals, groups of people, and institutions.

I wanted our system of government, though flawed, to continue to generally work for the good of the whole.

I wanted every citizen to have an equal opportunity to follow their dreams and be allowed to live in peace.

I wanted a President who did not embarrass me every time he opened his mouth.

That’s pretty much all I wanted.

I miss that America.

Janet