Elephants

 

Welcome to episode #5 of Life Under the Rainbow Oak, today’s episode is about Elephants, those things we know exist at some level or another, but often dismiss because we seem unable or unwilling to acknowledge.

 

We, as Americans, have certain things we like to believe about ourselves… about how we have continually improved ourselves and shed the negative aspects of our past, like racism & misogyny, when we all we have really done it to paper over the holes in the walls without repairing the holes the invading elephants made.

 

And the elephants remain in the middle of the room, too. We tiptoe around them because we don’t want to upset them and have them make new holes or tear off the pretty wallpaper…. Because then we might actually have to do the harder work of fixing the holes.

 

So, let’s recognize some of our collective elephants…. And I’m not talking about the GOP, well not exactly…

 

The other day, I was listening to a podcast and the announcer and his guest were discussing the differences about Biden & Hillary Clinton and why older voters like Joe better. Mind you, both commenters were men so they missed an elephant that any woman will see and many men will simply deny the existence of.

 

Mind you, Hillary Clinton wasn’t my #1 choice in 2016 for president, she had a great deal of baggage, especially thanks to the Right. They hated her as First Lady, they hated her as a Senator, they hated her as Secretary of State, no matter what she did, she couldn’t do anything right. She also had a lot of referred ick from being married to Bill Clinton. But no matter the baggage, she was certainly the most qualified of the candidates. She wasn’t considered “likeable” and people couldn’t “connect” with her, she was considered cold, aloof, & distant or aggressive & power-hungry. All of this may have been true, but given the generation that Hillary came up in, to advance, women had to develop a certain tough demeanor…  but they did so at their peril. Women still walk a tightrope between their feminine sides and tougher sides, and meeting the competing expectations is pretty much impossible. All women want is to be recognized as full human beings first. The biggest issue that nobody want to talk about with the Hillary problem is that she is a woman.

 

Controlling women is possibly the oldest elephant the human race has tried to paper over. And US likes to think that women getting the vote in 1920 fixed that… but the truth is that by 1970, women still couldn’t have a credit card or own property without a co-signer, or could get fired for being pregnant. These were finally fixed over the course of the 1970s, but that was OVER 50 years after the 19^th amendment. Married women weren’t allowed birth control until 1965 and it took until 1972 for all women to be allowed access to contraception. Congress didn’t even remove references to contraception from federal anti-obscenity laws until 1970. And the there is the eternal fight over Roe v Wade. I’m not going to litigate it here, because it’s just a piece of the women’s rights battle.

 

So how did I get here after talking about Hillary Clinton, credit cards, and then reproductive rights? Because it’s all the same thing. Women are not seen as full human beings. The fight for reproductive rights is about the control of women, hence the fight against birth control and abortion. Women are considered at a fundamental level to not be capable of making decisions about their lives or their own bodies, like children, we can’t be responsible and need to be controlled. Additionally, our value is measured by our reproductive ability: women get married and the first thing they are asked about is when they will have a baby, women who have had several children or who decide they don’t want children are often **not allowed** to have their tubes tied or other sterilization procedures. My own daughter had a doctor who “allowed” her to have her tubes tied based on his on calculation of her age + the number of children she had had…. It wasn’t because she wanted to stop having children, but because of some rubric he had made up. A friend of mine knew she didn’t want kids and was married, and her spouse was 100% with her… but the surgeon had to sit down with *both of them*.

 

Beyond all of this is the way that women are treated in the business and professional fields, often talked down, accused of being aggressive for wanting to advance (or accused of sleeping her way to the top). Per Leftronic.com (https://tinyurl.com/y3ho3a96), 29% of senior management is female, 33 Fortune 500 companies are led by female CEOs, 31% of senior roles are held by women in the U.S., 12.5% of American women are employed as Chief Financial Officers in Fortune 500 Companies, and female CEOs are more likely to be fired than male CEOs. These type of statistics are often blamed on having children, not being engaged enough, no giving enough, etc. rather than looking at the structures that either block or support women in the workplace. Women have different needs that are often not incorporated into corporate culture, what they are really saying is that they don’t want to change.

 

All of the things that I have mentioned here are all examples of how women are controlled, and the major mechanism is via her sexuality. If she dares to step outside the appointed box, she is called demeaning names or accused of demeaning acts, all to shame her and silence her. So we continue to talk about pay gaps, abortion, birth control, but never get to the discussing the elephant of misogyny.

An amazing woman I follow is Dr. Bandy X. Lee, MD, who is a professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine.  Her specialty is violence prevention, and she edited and contributed to the book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump (https://tinyurl.com/y4xud4e7).  She and her colleagues have predicted much of what we have seen Trump do and the pathologies he has exhibited as his presidency as gone on.  She was accused by right wing website of “not being licensed” (https://tinyurl.com/y4pdhwfu) and of violating the Goldwater Rule by the APA. She has accused the APA of having her blacklisted, as evidenced by her inability to get booked on most mainstream media outlets including Rachel Maddow. She has been outspoken in her discussion of Donald Trump’s pathological narcissism and how as the walls close in, he will become worse as he tries to save what shreds of his psyche remain (https://tinyurl.com/yxadptyq). She and her colleagues have warned, quite rightly, in my opinion, that Trumps mental health would keep spiraling out of control, possibly eventually taking the country, and perhaps the world, along with him. His uncontrolled & worsening mental state infects those around him, and the country as a whole. He will do anything for his psychic survival… all while having access to the largest military & nuclear arsenal in the world. He also makes clear how he does not care about others, and is incapable of doing so. She posits frequently on her Twitter account (https://twitter.com/BandyXLee1) that until we, as a nation, address Trump’s mental health, analyzing his actions and treating him appropriately from the mental health standpoint, we will get nowhere.

 

However, Dr. Lee is also Asian and has faced both racist and misogynistic attacks for her speaking out from her expertise.

 

Here we have to tiptoe around 2 additional elephants, racism and Trump’s mental health. Trump’s mental health has been nibbled at around the edges by the mainstream media, but has rarely confronted the issue head-on, perhaps under pressure from the APA and other groups, but she remains another female, and Asian, voice that is being actively silenced by the powers that be.

 

The last amazing women I am going to bring up, are Sarah Kendzior (https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior) and Andrea Chalupa (https://twitter.com/AndreaChalupa). I have mentioned them in previous podcasts, they have called nearly every step of the US descent into autocracy under Trump. Their podcast, Gaslit Nation (https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/), is a study of where we are as a country every week. They too have not been widely listened to, or taken seriously, until now… all while being faced with threats to their families and persons, up to and including death. And lately I have seen more experts on rising autocracies on the news as the mainstream media seems to finally be cottoning onto the concept that our country might actually be in danger. However, more often than not, those voices are male and not female. But these brave, bold women have been trying to tell us what has been coming for the last 5 years.

 

So we have some huge elephants sitting in our national living room… and they can’t be ignored anymore. Like so many problems, we have to recognize them for what they are and listen to the people affected by them to begin unravelling the toxic effects they have on us all.

 

The first and most urgent has to be Trump’s pathological narcissism. This is the most looming danger we face, partly because over 1/3 of the country is it on and taking the rest of us down with them, the problem is that they cannot see where this is heading and they really think this is what they want, please listen to my first podcast “Watch What You Wish For” (https://anchor.fm/jennifer-schmidt2/episodes/1-Watch-What-You-Wish-For-ejs10l) . We are on the USS Trumptanic and we are all locked in steerage. If we don’t deal with this, any semblance of the America we know and love will be gone. The road ahead isn’t easy going to be easy, no matter who wins the election in a month. However, understanding that we are dealing with a very ill individual from a mental health framework will make taking the next steps as a country easier, because we will have a grounded understanding of what is happening vis a vis the president.

 

The misogyny and racism elephants must also be dealt with squarely and forthrightly. The place to start is by listening to women and communities of color about what THEIR needs are. Don’t assume anything. Don’t treat any gender or community as monolithic. White men are treated as individuals, that is all women and people of color are asking. Nobody has to give up anything, this is not a zero-sum game.

 

America is an Abuse Victim Fighting For Survival

 

I watched as much of the first Trump/Biden debate as I could stomach, honestly I have a headache and feel queasy. I saw a man standing at a podium, but I FELT a man stalking the stage, raging like a drunk abuser in an a-shirt with his kids and wife cowering at his feet after he has beaten them.

As a woman, I experienced rage, fear, sadness, & humiliation that reminds me of those times I was bullied in high school… but mostly I am filled with rage. I wanted to reach through my computer screen and punch Donald in the face.

I feel white hot rage… for our entire country, but especially for people of color, for women, for LGBTQ+ folks, frontline & essential workers, and anyone else Trump deems “disgusting people”. Sadly this describes many of his supporters and they hear his call to “Stand Back & Stand By”; they will heed his call to civil war should he lose the election. White Supremacy & Racism aren’t even being hidden anymore. Those “proud boys” back him and will die for him, and he really couldn’t care less. We are all just the shit his money grows in.

The Trump threat is real, this man has been telling us since before 2015 who he is and what he wants to do. He wasn’t taken seriously until now because he was viewed as a buffoon. But Sarah Kendzior, author of The View from Flyover Country and Hiding in Plain Sight, as well as scholar of authoritarian states, saw what he was and warned us. In her 2016 essay (https://thecorrespondent.com/5696/were-heading-into-dark-times-this-is-how-to-be-your-own-light-in-the-age-of-trump/1611114266432-e23ea1a6), she quotes Trump as saying, “You know what solves it? When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster. Then you’ll have a [chuckles], you know, you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great.” In her eyes, “This is what “Make America Great Again” means to Donald Trump.” She also posits that Trump and kleptocrat class want to “strip our country down for parts, often using ethnic violence to do so.” And given what we have seen in the last 4 years under Trump, she was right. She and her counterpart, Andrea Chalupa, host the Gaslit Nation Podcast (https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/) and have been warning of everything we have collectively been experiencing.

Tonight more of the country saw who Trump really is. He is mean, cruel, sadistic, uncaring, and fucking unhinged. It was all about him, what he wants and what he needs. The debate, if you can call it that, became yet another episode of the Donald Trump show that has become a fixture we have been unable tune out for the last 4 years. I really appreciated Joe Biden just telling him to shut up. Trump is a bully and he hates it when someone tells him the truth and when he can’t control the narrative. He acts like an out of control toddler and lashes out trying to regain control. He’s the poster child of “arrested development” and his antics communicate loud and clear to his fellow arrestees. The large swath of men and women in this country who never learned to deal with the emotions in a healthy way, I would say far too many… believe only weaklings show emotions, thanks to the stew of toxic masculinity we have all been steeped in. Our country is emotionally stunted and it’s really no wonder we are so fucked up… Kids get ridiculed for attempting to find emotional wellbeing. And yes, I resemble that remark.

Another important point to consider is the input of Dr. Bandy X. Lee, the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. She and the other contributors to the book likewise warned us that Trump’s pathology would become a national pathology, as well as pose a danger to the country as a whole. She makes a strong case that as a country, we need to deal with Trump’s mental health issues, because those coupled with the immense power of the presidency, will more than like yield deadly consequences for our fellow citizens, country, and world. Surely they already have, as evidenced by his blasé attitude about the 205,000+ dead from coronavirus and. And conditions like his worsen over time at an acerating pace.  Do we really want him near the nuclear codes? (https://medium.com/@bandyxlee/the-accelerated-unraveling-of-donald-trump-702dec03330e)

Biden maintained and exuded a presidential demeanor as best he could tonight, but unfortunately, debating Trump in anything near “normal” is nigh impossible. Biden’s connections came through when he ignored Trump and just talked into the camera to the American people about his own life, about our families’ lives. Biden isn’t perfect, but damnit, we have to get this jalopy of a country back on the road if we are ever going to get to the dream country dealership.

I’m not surprised at how the debate went tonight, not really even shocked. Many of us knew who he was, deep in our bones, our Black sisters and brothers were trying to tell us, as were those who knew what they were looking at….

So really, the question before us is… **What can we do?!?!** This is not the time to sit on the sidelines and assume everything will take care of itself. Donate money up and down the ballot if you can. Donate time if you can: volunteer as a poll worker, write letters, drive people to the polls, hand out snacks and water for those waiting to vote, gather ballots in your state and take them to drop boxes (but check your local laws first!), phone bank, text bank, talk to friend and neighbors, do what you can where you are and with what means you have.

Personally, I hate calling people, but I plan to start textbanking later in the week… and I’m going to be a monitor on social media. I have also written 20 lettesr to voters in Ohio and 200 postcards to voters in Florida. I live in a vote by mail state and plan to grab all the ballots from my household and walk them to the dropbox at the library. A great guide is here at the Gaslit Nation website, https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/2020-survival-guide.

The one thing that is certain is that if we stand up as a country and tell Donald “NO!” & “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” in numbers too big too ignore, he will disappear like cowards & bullies do.

Stand up! Vote!

Cheeto Mussolini & the Magic Sharpie vs. the Notorious RBG

I woke up before the alarm this morning, wracked with anxiety. RBG’s passing last Friday, may her memory always be a blessing, has thrown so much more doubt into an already doubtful time. I don’t think many people, myself included, understood viscerally what she stood for, all she had done, and what a bulwark she was … and how much we were depending on her.

Honestly, she reminded me of my mom, seemingly able to absorb every blow and come back fighting… until her frail body just couldn’t take it anymore.

Now with McConnell and Trump working as hard as we knew they would to fill her seat with an anti-RBG, to all intents and purposes, their motivations and lies are laid bare.

For all those who think they want an a world without all that Libtard shit, 40 hour work weeks, weekends off, osha protections, the ACA, a functional CDC, environmental regulations, clean water, freedom to live that “gay lifestyle” (including marrying the one you love, working without fear of being fired, and other “minor” considerations), women’s rights to have a credit card or mortgage without a co-signer, to take birth control without consent of her partner, not lose her job just because she gets pregnant, to have an abortion, equal rights for black people and people of color, trans-rights, and so many other things we have come to enjoy and count on.

The list is voluminous, but the point is that she worked for us all.

The amount of damage our institutions, norms, and laws have sustained under Cheeto Mussolini and his Magic Sharpie in not even 4 years is amazing … unthinkable is how much more he will be able to do with his packed courts and a win in November. Nothing that we have known is safe, especially if you aren’t white or male or straight or Christian.

These movements are like an ever-tightening circular firing squad, with continuous purity testing. It happened in the French Revolution, it happened in Nazi Germany, it’s happening with Trump. As the Dear Leader gets bored or tired or disaffected with a given person, they get tossed aside and the circle gets smaller and the purity tests get harder to pass.

And the faith that so many had in our institutions is now recognized as a false hope. Certainly, those loyal to the rule of law and the constitution remain, but the agencies have been co-opted and corrupted by Trump. The CDC, DOJ, USPS, have all been Trumpified to some level or another… and many other agencies as well.

The rule of law and the constitution are only as strong as our collective belief in the ideals they represent. This includes our elections. Trump has been sowing doubt about the elections, which have been a sterling hallmark of our country since its inception, especially as the franchise has expanded… and now that founding principle is thrown into doubt. He has successfully brainwashed his minions into believing that voting by mail is fraudulent, even though, according to former Republican strategist Rick Wilson, absentee voting has long been the “secret sauce” the GOP used to help secure wins in states like Florida.

And now, tonight, Trump made his plan clear… pack to the Supreme Court with a 9^th justice favorable and (most likely beholden) to him and refuse to accept any election results. Then he will use that favorable supreme court to throw out all mail-in ballots and declare the election null and void so he can just continue on. That’s it. That is the plan.

And the Democrats, after years of bringing tea sets to gun fights, are finally waking up to fact that the old norms and rules were scrapped long ago. Unfortunately, while they were clutching their pearls, and sending scolding letters to Republicans, the playbook fundamentally changed and they have been stripped of many powers. Additionally, they refuse to use the powers that they do, such has the subpoena & contempt powers of the House. It’s just not decorous, it’s not bipartisan, it’s not seemly…. “here have a cup of tea… and be careful not to get it on your lace gloves.” It’s also way past time trying to shame the shameless.

The Democrats have got to get it through their heads that the tea set needs to stay at Grandma’s house, and while dropping it off, they should grab Grandpa’s shotgun. As former Congressman Joe Walsh said on his Monday (9/21) “F*ck Silence” podcast, the question Democrats need to answer is “What are you prepared to do?!”, referencing Sean Connery’s character in The Untouchables. It’s a valid question that deserves an answer.

The death of Notorious RBG has made an already complex situation worse for this country. As has been said in several places on social media, it’s a hell of an indictment in this country that the laundry list of things I mentioned earlier were being held up by one 87-year-old woman in frail health. She can’t save us, Pelosi & Schumer can’t (or won’t) save us, Mueller didn’t save us, the Electoral College didn’t save us, Hillary didn’t save us.

Again from Pogo, “We have met the enemy & he is us”.

All we really have left is the vote. This is our last chance to save our Democracy. And we must do in numbers too large to be ignored.  And if they try to nullify the election, we must be ready to lay ourselves on the line… just like the Civil Rights fighters in the 1960s and the Black Lives Matter protesters today.

VOTE!

 

 

200,000 

& Inconvenient Truths

200,000. Dead. Small by percentages as far as total US population goes, but huge to those who have lost loved ones… in some cases, almost entire families wiped out… only kids left behind… and the ongoing health effects for the “long-haulers” and those with ongoing heart and memory problems. And the incredibly high impact on communities of color makes COVID-19 even more horrifying. Per the CDC, when compared to whites, the case rate for Black communities is 2.6x higher, 2.8x higher for Native American populations and Hispanic/Latino populations. Death rates are, 2.1x higher for Blacks, 1.4x higher for for Native Americans, and 1.1x higher for Lantinx people.

But after the initial push in March for lockdowns and masks, we pass the 200,000 dead mark with a blasé sigh and seemingly collective national “Whatever”… unless you are out protesting masks and lockdowns as against your rights. Nevermind, the concept of personal responsibility and consideration for others, ie duty to society.

I am a former Public Health RN, I worked in a small county health department in Missouri for 7 years, but continued funding cuts and crappy pay finally forced me out of a job that I loved… and we saw people from the community from birth to death almost. From the WIC program to immunizations to injections for community members and so many other services, what we were able to do diminished over time.

I was primarily the Communicable Disease nurse and did the contact tracing for disease reports and outbreaks. When I see how the Coronavirus Pandemic has been screwed up, I feel it deep in my soul. I know the hard work of the invisible battlefront that nobody appreciates… and used to ask where we were when things got bad. But Trump’s absent leadership now calls into question the very function of public health from those who have no clue of its vital role in healthy communities.

If you don’t know where the disease is coming from, who has come into contact with the infected, or where they have been, controlling the spread is nearly impossible. When messaging is muddled or incorrect, it further diminishes the credibility of any advice, even from the most respected institutions like the CDC. And we have lost any sense of civic duty, rather like the Dear Leader.

So, thanks to the lack of national leadership on the Coronavirus Pandemic, 200,000 is not so much a milestone as a speedbump at this point.

One of those inconvenient truths that Cheeto Mussolini likes to obscure with other scandals, like he does.

The Inconvenient Truth is that we have long surpassed the total number who died in every conflict from Vietnam to present (63,418) AND World War 1 (116,541)… total 179,934… and taking out the 5 years of WW2 at 405,399, it took us 98 years to wipe out that many people in war. We lost an estimated 675,000 to the 1918 Flu Pandemic. (https://tinyurl.com/yb9sz5e2) (https://tinyurl.com/y33v84me)

Or another way to look at it: it’s like the population of Salt Lake City has disappeared over the last 6 months. But many of us are lucky, because we are untouched by the heartbreak of this disease… often because we are white. And these lives have been slipping away slowly, outside our sphere of experience

And it’s not because whites live inherently better lives than people of color, it’s because healthcare isn’t a right in this country and accessibility and affordability is unequally distributed. 

Racism is such a part of our entire governmental system, and we have been divided to such a point as to make it impossible for poor people of color to join with poor whites to fight together to make the system more equitable for all of us.

The Dear Orange Leader has an evil cunning for manipulation. As I wrote in 2016, “Trump is a master showman & fraudster ... He builds big shiny skyscrapers, casinos and hawks steaks, wine, his “university”, clothing line, et cetera… All flashy, status-ey things with his name slapped on them… but, truthfully, the core is hollow and the glitter is just spray paint. …Then the spray paint & reality got conflated, and here we are, unsure of objective reality vs. spray paint fumes. …Stuck in the dystopian theme park we can’t leave.” (https://tinyurl.com/y5kbkbar)

His favorite “secret sauce”, if you will, is racism. He knows he can play on the base fears of the rubes, but he doesn’t care about them, unless he can squeeze more money out of them. Per Olivia Troye, who served on the White House Coronavirus Task force, the president said: “Maybe this Covid thing is a good thing. I don’t like shaking hands with people. I don’t have to shake hands with these disgusting people.” (https://tinyurl.com/y39gpbau)

Additionally, he lives in a demented fantasy world, one in which he believes he can obscure the rising death toll by just talking his way out of it, or ignoring it, or obfuscating by creating other scandals… he has managed to do for most of his life. He said repeatedly that the virus would just go away and after said cases would drop from 15 to zero, he started equating “a good job” to 50,000-60,000 deaths, then 100,000, etc. Now he just says that he has done a great job and prevented “millions of deaths.” He has also said that he takes no responsibility.

This is the same man who ridicules those who wear masks and practice social distancing…. While packing crowds together at venues all over the country… but at a recent appearance in Nevada, he actually told a reporter that he doesn’t worry about catching coronavirus because “I’m on a stage and it’s very far away”. He also told the same reporter, “I’m more concerned about how close you are, to be honest.” (https://tinyurl.com/y5et7wsl) He expressed no concern for his followers packed illegally into the privately own airplane hangar.

Trump is not particularly book-smart, but has a twisted cunning, as mentioned earlier. In addition to his manipulative cunning, he has a strong sense for self-preservation & short-term gain, but no concept of long-term consequences or strategy. For months, controversy raged about whether Trump understood the severity of COVID-19 and was thusly carelessly bumbling along, but the Bob Woodward tape made it obvious that he DID know and made a conscious choice to play the pandemic down, doing essentially nothing, knowing that people would die…. all to preserve his image. Acting again purely in the moment, again looking only at short-term gain. (https://tinyurl.com/yyhm86fb)

His conscious decision to let people die coupled with his absolute disregard for those lives only leads to the conclusion that there is something seriously wrong with him.

Trump does not care about anyone but himself. People are the shit his money grows in (Ukrainian saying, Andrea Chalupa, Gaslit Nation)… or an easy piggybank he can tap with his never-ending cons.

The other part of his culpability in how badly the Federal COVID response has been is how he knowingly disregarded the roadmap left by the Obama/Biden administration, which was built on a sound foundation created post-9/11 by the Bush II administration. But his absolute narcissism, jealousy, and incurable malice against those who don’t kiss his ring run through everything he does as well. So he put Jared Kushner in charge of the response, and didn’t bat an eye blue states were left to fend for themselves, because they refused to bow down to him.

Additionally, he delusionally thinks he knows everything, including epidemiology. So with his “leadership”, real scientists and scientific knowledge has been sidelined, ignored, blocked, or covered up.  And now he has Scott Atlas,  a radiologist, advising him about a vastly different type of medicine. He’d probably be able to read an MRI and tell us about Trump having deterioration in his brain, but he would only have the most general knowledge of epidemiologic principles. Hint: neither herd immunity nor herd mentality are sound plans right now.

Trump has created, in-effect, a slow-moving genocide of the inconvenient, no gas chambers required. Ironically, many of those likely to die are his own supporters.

As of 16 September 2020, per Rachel Maddow, there were about 6.6 million cases and almost 198,000 dead. And Trump’s “herd immunity” (read as: genocide) strategy will see approximately 215 million – 231 million Americans infected (65-70% of total population). Our current fatality rate is 2.97% of those infected and if that follows, we can expect 6,385,500 – 6,860,700 deaths. (https://youtu.be/UVfxjS1DnBc).

Trump and his sycophants have decided that over 6 million of us are expendable.

The Inconvenient truth is that it didn’t have to be this way.

 

Watch What You Wish For

First they came for the Communists 

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

I first learned this piece in junior high, and it has haunted me ever since. I’m a lifelong history/news/politics junkie, thanks to my parents, who considered themselves “dumb old country kids.”

I am glad they aren’t alive right now to see Trump, a wannabe dictator, tearing our country limb from limb all for his own advantage. He incites “patriots” to civil war, incites their territorial imperative, paranoia, and deeply ingrained racism… all to protect himself from his many legal entanglements… but it is never about country, it’s always about Trump

The Confederates in 1861 thought they’d start a Civil War & be home in a month, after they licked the Yankees... 4-5 years later, and nearly 620,000 dead, some of them returned to a ruination of what was. Trump’s cultists exhibit similar sentiments.  Trump wants to be a dictator, and he will use any means to that end, even civil war.

Per my fave YouTuber, Beau of the Fifth Column, the US Army insurgency manual states that a civil war is a minimum 6 year commitment. Not days, weeks, or months… but years. How many *more* will die? Trump has already thrown 200K Americans into the ground to protect his fragile ego.

So we really come down to it now.

Watch what you wish for…

You think you want a civil war?

You think you want to go to war for him?

If Trump wins, he will continue to kill us all and sell the whole country for parts, as Sarah Kendzior says.

He doesn’t give a shit about you, you are just the shit he & his oligarch buddies grow their money in.

And watching the un-uniting of the former United States is Putin’s wet dream… and just like Syria, you know they will be happy to sell arms to any and all factions.

You think I’m hallucinating? You think I’m mad?

You still think he cares about you?

He called those who serve in the military losers & suckers.

He asked why our military members serve, since they didn’t get any obvious personal gain from it.

When interviewed after his recent Nevada rally, he worried more about getting COVID-19 from the interviewer and expressed no concern regarding spread amongst the crowd from which he was socially distanced.

So you think a civil war is an easy answer… and you will go out and own the libs in a month and return home….

As stated before… Plan to be committed for 6 years. 6 YEARS.

Not 6 hours, 6 days, 6 weeks, 6 months, but SIX YEARS.

And what happens in that SIX YEARS?

1.       People starve b/c they can’t get groceries
2.       There’s no electricity b/c the power grid is gone
3.       Cell phones will become distant memories
4.       Refugees will flee the fighting in droves

Really I could go on… but why? You think you will go home to your Keurig, Mountain Dew, Cheetos, Netflix and Amazon deliveries?

No.

Look at Syria. Maybe talk to a scary Syrian refugee… they will tell you what it is like to watch their children starve, or have loved ones die in bombed out shelters & hospitals. Only the very rich are protected in their enclaves and even know what electricity, cell phones, food supplies, or any of the things you currently take for granted, are.

I’d urge you to talk to real people who have lived through civil wars… oh, but they aren’t human, they are Muslim Scum, like the Libtards, you love to hate. You want to kill them all, just to make yourself feel better.

Also, you don’t want to have your dreams of manly glory messed up by the truth of how Uncivil war is, any war. It sure isn’t something to be glorified, unless you are insane… or just don’t care.

And make no mistake, your Dear Orange Leader doesn’t care. You are just a tool to him… and if you piss him off, he or his minions will come for you too.

Hell, they have already come for immigrants, locked children in cages, rolled back environmental protections, workers’ protections, they are attacking free speech on the streets of Portland, Chicago, Washington, Minneapolis with unmarked federal troopers. Who will be next? If you aren’t useful, or if you are complaining too loud, it may well be you. If the least of us isn’t safe, none of us are safe.

We have also reached the 14th point of fascism, elections interference, as our democracy fights for its life in possibly our last election.

When we have lost what is left of our democracy, it will be too late.

Watch what you wish for.

You just might get it.

BLACK LIVES MATTER

I am a White woman of privilege, not hugely wealthy, but I don’t have to worry about much, financially speaking. I don’t think I have personally had a bad experience with the police, per se. And I DO NOT know what it is to be a Black person in the United States. I cannot, from my position in this highly unequal and systemically racist society, say that I do.

That said, I know what my eyes see. I know that my heart reaches out to both my Black friends and all Black people. I cannot imagine the fear they feel of the police. I cannot imagine the years of racism and the constant messaging they receive from our society that they are lesser than. The years of anger, frustration, and stress are unimaginable to me.

Equally I cannot fathom White people who cannot get it through their heads that the America they experience is not the same one that Black people live in. Honestly, I am getting sick and tired white people as a whole… both by volition or just plain being obtuse. This includes my own brothers, ¾ of whom just don’t get it. One of them said that he doesn’t worry about law enforcement, nor should others, if they follow the law. Another brother of mine called Ferguson a “flapdoodle” when I tried to discuss it with him. Just too many white people are under the impression that if black people followed the commands of the police, they won’t get shot.

Classic white privilege talking. That concept often doesn’t work for Black people, if they are even given a chance to comply… and if they do comply, there is no guarantee that they won’t end up in a jail cell, or dead. Black parents have to have “the talk” with their kids on how to try NOT get killed by police, and that includes specific instructions on how to comply. 400+ years of that submission to merely survive isn’t healthy or sane…. but that is what we white people have created: a system that has driven our Black citizens to survival mode. And yet we expect them to keep putting up with things that we would never put up with. We ask our Black citizens to bear all of our shit and all their own, that has largely been created BY WHITES.

There have been so many lives lost through police violence. I know so many names, I wish I DIDN’T know them… because that would mean they were still alive, being loved and moving through life with their families and friends, and adding to the richness of the fabric of the United States. The list is too long. The point is that these were living, people who have been removed from their lives and the lives of those who knew and loved them.

-        Philando Castile: Worked in a cafeteria in Minneapolis, had a gun permit & told the police about it during a traffic stop. He was shot to death in front of his partner and child, after telling the officer he was reaching for the weapon.

-        Tamir Rice: 12 yo with a toy gun in park: the police car pulled up and shot him to death without warning. His sister was hysterical and was held, handcuffed, in the back of the police car.

-        John Crawford: young man was shopping in a Walmart, he had picked up a BB gun that he intended to purchase, police shot him without questions or warning

-        Michael Brown: 18 year old with his hands up and unarmed, shot in head, his body lay in the street for hours

-        George Floyd: Minneapolis: possibly used counterfeit $20 bill, suffocated by an officer who knew him

-        Breonna Taylor: Louisville: aspiring RN, dedicated EMT, shot in own bed while sleeping, no-knock warrant for person already in custody who lived 10 miles away.

However, the way that white people refuse to understand or listen to the ongoing trauma of the Black community, just shows how white privilege works. White people are shot by police & probably in greater raw numbers than Black people, but that is a function of us being a greater percentage of the population. When comparing percentages by race, Black people are much more likely to be shot by police. Additionally, white people are more often taken into custody peacefully, even if armed; one glaring example is the murderer of 9 Black parishioners at the Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston… the police took him through drive through fast food before taking him to jail.

Then we come to discussing the police themselves: perhaps there are only a few “bad apples,” as we often hear, but the system protects them through qualified immunity and union contracts. And that “thin blue line” sure gets thick when their own are threatened with investigation of wrongdoing, or anything else. Good officers tend to keep their mouths shut, for fear of their jobs… or retaliation… or being forced out. The “bad apples” are spoiling the barrel. There will always be need for some police, but they don’t need leftover military equipment like MRAPs or AR-15s. Screening of potential police recruits needs to include psychological profiling and training needs to include de-escalation training. Misconduct needs to be met with real repercussions. Also pairing the police with community-based social services created with community input.

The racial divide in this country is as old as the country itself, but the breach can only be healed with deep, systemic change and a lot of soul searching & honest listening by the White population.

BLACK LIVES MATTER.

The Omega Glory meets Willy Wonka: aka A Lost Plot with Half a Map

Watching my twin grandsons, aged 3, play and frolic is a delight. Suffused with so much energy and joy, they remain blissfully sheltered a world where a nigh-invisible organism is stalking and culling the human race. We work hard to shelter them as much as we can in Trump’s United States of Fascism. I envision my grandchildren as fully actualized human beings – not just cogs in some dystopian corporate machine.

The Black Plague birthed the Renaissance – what will be born out of our current Plague? In the United States and worldwide, the inflection point is now and our ultimate disposition depends on whether the oligarchs wield enough power to keep the rest of us under their yoke, or not.

How do you wake up the tired/overworked/overmedicated/somnambulating masses in this country? How do you spur them to collectivize and fight? How to teach them that together they are strong? I DO NOT blame the people for their situation… the Powers That Be work tirelessly to undermine collective action, and have since the 1960s by “any means necessary.” Good old-fashioned fear knits together racism, sexism, tribalism into a tool that divides us and keeps us punching down, rather than punching up, and finding out what is really going on. Xenophobia, fear of job loss, fear that we can’t afford the plastic pretties that measure our worth, fear of missing out, fear of pain, fear of change, all feed into a desperate populace, trying to just maintain mental health. Adding in lack of healthcare, addiction issues (a side effect of living in a toxic stew), drugging the masses (with actual drugs, with things, with unreasonable expectations, etc.) just makes this country more toxic.

The Republicans manipulate these fears masterfully, to be honest. The COVID-19 pandemic naturally ratchets fear up to 11, and the GOP is grabbing power behind the curtain (ie. Suspending environmental regulations, attempting to suspend constitutional rights, ad nauseum…). The question remains… how long can they continue with the body count climbing exponentially every day. When/if the populace wakes up (ie. when the drugs stop working), will we 1) end up like Syria… a wartorn wasteland with factions fighting over rubble, 2) end up like The Handmaid’s Tale, 3) begin to rebuild the United States into a truly more perfect union, or 4) end up as several smaller countries based on regional affinities, which may already be underway.

I wish the answers were clearer, but the road ahead is dark.  The 1918 Influenza pandemic guides us for part of what we are experiencing, but very little precedent exists for the concurrent constitutional crisis. Never have we seen one political party almost completely abdicate constitutional duty in pursuit of power.

The Constitution only has as much value as we collectively give it, through real faith in the tenets of which it is comprised. I am reminded of the original Star Trek Omega Glory episode in which the constitution has become “sacred words” but whose real meaning has been lost. When the Constitution becomes words on paper that nobody understands and to which only lipservice is paid, the precarious historical precipice on which we stand is clear. When an amendable, living document of governance is treated as sacred, inviolable, and unchangeable, the plot is lost.

So, for now, we muddle through as best we can with a vile, despotic, dementia-riddled madman as the titular figurehead of this country. The States have effectively become sovereign unto themselves – haggling on the open market for supplies and equipment to aid our frontline medical personnel in saving as many lives as they can. Unless the madman decides we are all equal and deserving, we are headed for battlefield triage conditions without help and control measures.

And yet a third of the country supports him and the more his daily lies are televised, more people seem to think he is worthy of praise… but will his political aspirations for a second term survive the coming body count?

And these came up in my mix in Spotify today, randomly... 

https://youtu.be/4mam3iJLvCs

https://youtu.be/YSZf0yIx1ec