photo taken by the author on July 4, 2023
Every day when I wake up, I say a prayer thanking God for returning my soul back to me. In Judaism, the prayer is called “Modeh Ani” which allows me to practice gratitude for everything in my physical and spiritual world.
About four decades ago as a child in Romania, I would wake up every morning — including Saturdays, my Sabbath — to go to school. Work was compelled, and since freedom to practice your religion was only a right on paper, we had no other choice. Adults would go to work, and children went to study. The dictatorship lasted for almost half a century.
I was proud of my mother’s work ironing our clothes but I hated that communist uniform with all my might. I hated the red tie and the transparent ring that was keeping it together. I hated what it represented.
I hated — a heavy word to be used by a child — that I was constantly hungry while we had rationed food and our teacher was eating our already poor lunches. I hated that we had to stay in line for days at a grocery store not knowing if and when something will be brought in. Shelves were empty — a sight that no longer shocked us.
My mother and I instantly cried in a Food Lion selling everything in stock in the United States prior to its closing, weeks before the pandemic hit in 2020; did they know about what was to come?
A simple rumor about food being delivered during communism in my native Romania would spread like wildfire, and people — usually retirees — would flock to wait in line for days on stools or camping chairs, shifting members of the family around the clock.
My mother was working long hours to provide us with food, and she was impatiently waiting for the summer when we, the children, could go to the countryside where we could drink milk straight from the cow’s udder, and eat apples straight from the trees.
Back in those days of the 1980s, we were allowed only half a loaf of bread per person a day, one liter (33.81 fl oz) of sunflower oil, and one kilogram of sugar (2.2 lbs) per month. If there was any margarine on the market, each person was allowed only one package. Butter only existed if you had connections in the countryside where each made their own dairy or vegetable produce.
We washed glassware — bottles, jars of all sizes — and wait in line to sell them back to the government for pennies on a dime. Naturally, going with them to a specific location without breaking them was a serious job for a kid. Nobody accused our parents that we, children, had to pull our weight, and we knew that we had to survive. However, we were too weak to fight back against the regime.
The part that we all, even children, easily understood was the "grandomania" of the dictator Ceausescu and his clenching government. We were not allowed to speak badly about the communist party or we risked being in an orphanage while our parents would be beaten up or worse, killed by the law enforcement officers paid to "protect the people".
As an American citizen, I look back at those days and wonder when that shift of power took place. Who allowed it? Why didn't people do anything to stop it? When did law enforcement serve the regime instead of the taxpayers?
That looks like what has happened in the last three years in the United States. It is strikingly similar to what the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (aka ATF) does to the citizens of our country by enabling rules to be bent to make innocent people become criminals with the stroke of a pen. It happened in other countries in which the weapons were stripped away to disarm any resistance against the demons behind the power, allegedly “for their well-being”.
We are fast approaching the first simulation of the Convention of States ever in the history of humanity between August 2-4, 2023 — our last chance to level the field between “we, the people,” and the representatives in Washington, DC. Our last chance to send a strong signal to the world and humanity that hope exists, and that the power is in our hands.
I wake up every day looking at the American flag and pinch myself for being a proud veteran of my adoptive country. To me, every day is Independence Day. I don’t want America to become a communist country, and by God’s grace, I’ll fight with every bone in my body to not let it happen during my lifetime.
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