Heather Cox Richardson,
who described how she was feeling today as
"incandescently enraged" -
and all I can say is,
"Preach, sister! Me too".
As the felonious, sexual predator (who is cosplaying our President)
takes over yet another urban city,
armed with fake statistics and parts of the Armed Services
that SHOULD be protecting us from foreign dangers,
all many of us can do is shake our heads in disbelief.
What the fuck is happening to our country??
We KNOW;
we've seen the warning signs for the past decade.
We've marched,
we've petitioned,
we've rallied,
we've made 5 Calls a Day - or more-
to the Supreme Court,
our elected officials on both national and state levels,
States Attorneys,
the DOJ...
We've written letters,
postcards by the hundreds ...
anything we could think of
to say this downward creep
to authoritarianism
and dictatorship is NOT OK;
is NOT American,
is anti democratic.
We've had countless people
in our personal lives
as well as in the public sphere,
"tsk tsk" us, saying we're overreacting,
we're being too emotional.
Worse than that, we've seen fellow citizens
welcome the militarization
against ourselves,
saying "since they haven't done anything wrong,
they have nothing to fear";
as if by taking away due process, civil rights,
equal protection under the law
and allowing our government to disappear whole swathes of people,
(to concentration camps, for Gods sake)
most of whom have brown or black skin,
they couldn't decide on a whim du jour
to come for you too!
We see our fellow citizens delight in inflicting terror,
and the pain of separation upon families and children.
Citizens who are OK with masked men kidnapping people off the streets,
with no provocation, and disappearing them to other countries -
behavior that is antithetical to my understanding of what it means to be an America .
We've watched in horror as those in power
try to rig the system for generations to come
so they can stay in power,
effectively disenfranchising everyone who actually believed the Pledge of Allegiance
when we said in school -
"with liberty and justice FOR ALL!"
Those in power are rewriting history,
erasing any contributions, in any field,
made by females, minorities or gays.
The laws, or proposed legislation, in many states,
including my own,
will reduce women to chattel, controlled by men,
and base our worth as citizens upon the functioning
of our reproductive systems.
Its the worst version of every dystopian novel I've ever read -
well, maybe not as bad as Octavia Butlers, but we'll be there soon. enough.
(If you haven't read her 2 book series about 'the future'
(Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents,
both written 30 years ago, do it now -
both terrifying and eerily prescient about our current time.)
And the thing is, there are MILLIONS of us who don't want this;
MILLIONS of us doing everything we know how to do to fight against this -
yet our system is such a monolith,
being operated BY and FOR the benefit OF billionaires -
that it feels impossible to have an impact.
For too long,
people have been pinning their hopes on the midterm elections;
I, for one, do not believe we'll have elections anymore.
Our system of government is being changed and, for one side, at least,
the 'old rules' don't apply anymore.
As it is, the other side is late to the game;
its time for the gloves to come off and to play by their rules.
"When they go low, we go high"
sounds like a quaint idea from the distant past.
And it's not going to get us anything close to a functioning democracy back
and millions of us
WON"T go back to a white supremacist patriarchy
without a fight.
There ARE some things worth fighting for ...
I have to keep breathing and get some rest,
so I'll concentrate on the beautiful abundance
of a recent farmers market.
(Hello, Green Bay)
and live, in hope,
to fight on another day.
