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.