Different Perspectives of Benton
Perspective Four of Six: The South will rise again! And Donald Trump will be President!
Character Point of View: Shawn Bridges.

This whole world is going to hell. A man can work from Dawn till Dusk and at the end of the working day he'll still starve to death. Abroad the world seems falling apart with Mr. Vladimir Putin bombing the hell out of the Ukrainians and the Jews killing the Arabs again. All the while we have people spilling across our border by the thousands. Covid rising again, and the dollar is almost worthless. And I can square the blame on one person, his name is Joe Biden and I believe he is the Antichrist and I believe all the events that are unfolding right now were foretold two thousand years ago in the Book of Revelations.

I also believe we, the once proud, and free citizens of the United States have been reduced to a state of servitude by the money-mongering bastards of Wall Street and the high-tech corporations of Silicon Valley. I tell you what, it's enough to make a man's blood boil. Now, I'm a good old boy. I was born and raised in Sharbrough's Landing, I was raised in a working class family. My granddaddy was a sharecropper who toiled from sun up to sun down to put food on the table. And a roof over his family's head. And clothes on their back and shoes on their feet. My daddy studied hard and pulled himself up by his boot laces and joined the armed forces as soon as he turned eighteen.

He fought in the Gulf War and earned the Silver Star. Once he got out he joined the Sharbrough's Landing Police Department and started to work his way through the ranks till he was made Chief. My daddy worked long and hard to put a roof over my head and food on the table for mom and I.

As for myself, I joined up as soon as I could. I'd married my High School sweetheart and well I got her pregnant on our honeymoon. So I really had no choice but to sign up. The 'War' was still going on so after basic training they pushed a rifle in my hand and sent me into the sandbox. Eighteen months I was over there in that burned out wasteland, seeing shit I can't put into words. Doing horrible things to horrible people. Heck I had to shoot some kids down in the road cause they were rushing toward our position. War is hell, war is cruel and as much as I hate to say it, I started to enjoy it a little.

War to me was like hunting, only they shoot back at you. Anyway at the end of my first deployment I came home to find my wife had given birth with my son while I was away. She had named him 'Ronald Allen Rogers' after her dad, my father-in-law. That did not bother me. What bothered me, is that in my eighteen months being away from my family, my sister-in-law 'Tabitha Shires' had become my brother-in-law 'Tony Shires'.

I was informed that she had grown tired of being a woman and wanted to become a man. I told her she was full of shit and if she wanted to fuck her body up she could. But she had to stay away from my son and my wife. My wife threw one hell of a shit fit. She told me I was nothing more than a cruel bastard because I was keeping her away from her 'Brother'. I told her point-blank and to her face that she did not have a 'Brother' no she had a 'Sister' and right now her 'Sister' was pretending to be a guy.

Well after that things settled down some. I went off for another eighteen month tour of the sandbox. Saw some bad shit, fought my way through some really tough ambushes. Saw some good friends get killed in front of me, and saw some terrible shit. Halfway through my employment, I got a call from my wife. First I thought something was wrong.

Cause you know, it's rare to get calls from home out here in the sandbox. Turns out she had phoned me to tell me that something bad had happened to her brother and she needed me to come home. You know for moral support and all. I took that chance to remind her that she did not have a 'Brother' but a 'Sister' and if something bad had happened to her she had brought it on herself by dressing like a man and acting like a man. I later found out that she had gotten the tar beaten out of her by a few guys in a smoke filled poolroom. For what I don't know, but they knocked her up pretty good and she spent a few days in ICU in Mississippi Medical Center. I'm grateful she lived, I just hate the beating did not knock some sense into that brick head of hers.

Anyway, she ended the call and told me it was over. That if I could not accept her 'Brother' for who he was, then there was no need for us to stay together. Plus she said the stress of me being away eighteen months at a time was too much for her. I said a few things I should not have said, and broke the phone in the process. Anyway nine months later I was back stateside.

And my whole world seemed had been turned upside down. The army taught me only one skill and that was how to kill people. And I was quite good at it and I enjoyed it. But once I transitioned from military life back to civilian life I found out that killing was frowned upon. To make matters worse the world was starting to change. I got out as soon as Barack Obama was leaving office and Donald Trump was getting into office. And yes, I voted for Donald Trump, I voted for him twice. Proud of it.

Anyway, Covid-19 hit as soon as he took office I think, people started talking about defunding police, and a lot of nasty stuff went down. I would work my nine to five down at the Wal-Mart, come home and turn on the news and see looters running the streets of American Cities. I would see protests, people protesting this and that. A bunch of stuff about BLM (Black Lives Matter) and how the commander and chief was giving the 'Awoke' crowd hell. And I was rooting for him. I felt after eight horrible years under Barack Obama this country was back on track.

Anyway, I left Wal-Mart because, okay, I was fired for some reason. I moved in with my cousin here in Benton. At first I thought it was a nice little town, peaceful, the kind of town where you could leave your windows open at night and your doors unlocked. Then I started to notice something. A bunch of Rainbow colored flags started to appear around downtown. That kind of bothered me.

Then a friend of mine informed me that he was taking his son out of the local academy because the school board was allowing them transgender kids to go there. I asked how many were going there, cause I figured it was kind of silly to pull your kid out for just one confused little boy. I was shocked when he said three.. then I talked to a fellow called Mr. Smith down at the local beer joint. And he said the same thing that the left was taking over this town. It just like the good people at Fox News said, the left was tearing at the very fabric of the American Dream.

And well I thought Mississippi would never turn, but I was wrong. In the last four years this has gone to hell. First Tate Reeves, our governor if you can call him that, has seen it fit to remove the stars and bars from our state flag. Mississippi has always been proud of her Confederate heritage and removing the stars and from the state's flag was just spitting in the face of their proud memory! And that is not the worst of it, Tate Reeves has also legalized the growing and selling of “Medical Marijuana” in the so called “Mississippi Medical Cannabis Act” and finally they have started selling lottery tickets.

Now all this is supposed to be good for the state and sure he's getting tough on them Transgender folks, but damn, it like Mr. Smith said, all the things I listed above are weeds in our garden. There the first leaks in the dam. What will the next ten or twenty years bring? What kind of future will my son have?
And worst yet, this town has just elected its first woman mayor? And to rub salt into the wound. She is a firm supporter of the LGBTQ+ crowd. Hell I think she even is one and I know her little sister is one of them transgender folks too! I'm going to say this, and you can mark my words. Soon, the South will rise again and the former Confederate states will once more band together and throw off the chains of this hated union! Mark my words, and are ready. And when it happens, I hope Donald J. Trump will become president!