Did you watch Tuesday's State of the Union Address? Good. Good for you. Whatever your answer is.
I'm sure some of you won't believe this, but I'm not normally a watcher of that particular speech. I caught Obama's maybe once. And didn't enjoy it.
The folks who wouldn't believe that last sentence probably don't read this column. It came to my attention on Facebook that I am a liberal and there's no reasoning with a liberal.
That's good to know. I depend on Facebook to keep me informed of who I am and what I think.
I'm writing this column far away from my wonderful Pike County home. And, I'm writing it at about the same time as Cadet Bone Spurs is spewing the most incredible words anyone has ever heard.
They're so stupendous that I think I'm feeling them from afar. Or maybe that's the vertigo. Very hard to tell sometimes when it comes to hearing the words of comrade Trump.
But I digress.
This week, I have travelled to the west coast, to LA LA Land, aka Los Angeles, California. It doesn't look like too many folk out here are fans of the SOTU address, either.
As I said, I love my home. I chose to live there and I choose to stay there. The good side of living in Pike county far outweighs the bad.
But visiting this place, far removed from eastern Kentucky, reminds me why I love my country. You know, the United States of America.
This land, from long before our independence, has been a melting pot of cultures. The Spanish, the first Europeans who settled this continent, brought folk from several European nations and Africa. As did the French and the British.
In some cases, these colonists blended and lived with the native Americans already here. In other cases, they didn't.
But there has never, even before the Europeans arrived, been a time when this continent was homogenous. The cultures of the first Americans were as varied as those who came later.
Some of you might not notice, but we aren't that multi-cultural in east Kentucky. Yes, there are different beliefs and backgrounds. But let's face it, we're white as a bunch of sheets for the most part.
There isn't anything wrong with that. It's the way our area was settled.
But it does give us a distorted view of our country. It makes some believe that this country is supposed to be white and protestant and that's it. It makes us look askance at folks who obviously aren't one of those two things, because they aren't "of our tribe".
And that only hurts us.
So I'm out here in California for a week. I've already heard more languages in two days than I would in a lifetime in Elkhorn City. The same with human skin tones and types of worship.
The thing is, they're all in America. They want to be here. They work and they fight for this country just like the Americans who live in eastern Kentucky. That's what has always made us great.
Somehow, I doubt that sentiment came through in the state of the union.