The right to choose abortion is not the in Constitution?

Really, Justice Alito?

WWhen the Founders wrote the Constitution, they didn’t write it for women. Nor did they write it for Blacks. Neither of these groups had any rights at all. Fetuses weren’t mentioned either. What do you propose to do with the three women who sit on the Court with you? And Justice Thomas? Should he have 3/5 of a seat? Interracial married couples had no rights. There was no same-sex marriage in the 18th Century. Will you propose to invalidate Brown v. Board of Education and Obergefell v. Hodges? The Founders understood that society and its norms evolve continuously and so provided the amendment process to modify the Constitution as customs and the country inevitably changed.

For centuries corporations had no voice, no influence in elections. They had no religious rights. But they have all of these now. Do you contemplate overturning Citizens United?

The filibuster is not enshrined in the Constitution.

Where is there a right to private gun ownership outside of a “well-regulated militia”?

Will you strike down Griswold v. Connecticut and the legality of contraception? If Roe v. Wade au goes down, will the morning after pill and the IUD be outlawed as well because they are effective when conception has already occurred?

Does the Constitution grant the right to ban or burn books that are deemed ideologically impure by a minority?

By striking down Roe v. Wade, you will open the door to revoking all matter of established precedents, profoundly changing life the United States as we know it.

Fran Lebowitz and me

Fran Lebowitz in 2011. Photo by Christopher Macsurak, License

I’ve never met Fran Lebowitz. I enjoy her wit, her humor, and her distinctive point of view. I admire her ability to name whatever elephant is in the room, to say what many think but don’t dare say. I spent a couple of hours in her company (on YouTube) today, so she’s on my mind. In many ways I consider her a kindred soul. She loves words and knows her grammar. So do I, notwithstanding the ungrammatical title of this post. I think that “Fran Lebowitz and I” would be a turnoff to the many people who don’t think proper grammar is necessarily a good thing. Yet I don’t feel right lowering my standards. Actually, these days I don’t feel right about many things.

Like the state of the nation, specifically the impending demise of American democracy. Income and wealth inequality, white supremacy, the shameful state of healthcare in the United States and the alarming diffusion of the Delta variant of the coronavirus are dangers and evils that keep me awake. I deplore the gullibility of the followers of radicalized politicians who lie shamelessly to stay in power. The legislatures and executives who deceive their constituents, encouraging them to indulge, defenseless, in activities that expose them to a deadly virus– these faithless leaders are criminals.

I digress. Back to Fran. She’s decreed that “racism is a fantasy” because under the skin there is no difference among human beings. She’s right. Waving the Confederate flag anywhere, let alone in the Capital (which was largely built by Black slaves) is worse than offensive. It is sickening. Fran believes, and I agree, that if the insurgents who stormed the Capitol on January 6 had been Black, they would have been shot. Justice in America is not blindfolded. Difference in gender, on the other hand, she says cannot be denied. Until men can get pregnant, women will have to resist their domineering. I don’t think there is a woman alive of any color who has not had a “me too” experience.

I love gadgets. Living without my computer is unthinkable and my phone is practically attached to my body. Fran, on the other hand, doesn’t believe that technology has been a boon for mankind. She flaunts her comfortable survival without a smartphone, a computer or a microwave oven. I agree with her that riding the subway and seeing practically every passenger intent on his phone is depressing. According to Fran, eighty percent of even the adults are not reading or talking; they are playing games. They don’t read books or newspapers or talk with other people. In fact, most of the time people use the apps on their phones for anything but talking. Texting has become the preferred mode of communication. Human contact– practically eliminated in deference to Covid-19– is losing the battle as office workers prefer working from home and masking and social distancing conspire to keep strangers from interacting.

In addition to a passion for social justice, I share with Fran the experience of writing block or more like a blockade, as she calls it: “I would not call it a writer’s block. A writer’s block to me is a temporary thing. A month, you know, six weeks. This was more a writer’s blockade. To me, this was very much like the Vietnam War. It was the same timetable, it was on the same schedule as the Vietnam War. I don’t know how I got into it and I couldn’t get out of it.” She has said that writing is “agonizing,” that writing is hardest work there is. “The only job that is worse is coal mining.” And very few people mine coal any more.

The fix was in

The Capitol was under siege and nobody came because the fix was in.

Consider this timeline:

• November 9th: Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper for refusing to allow active-duty military to be deployed domestically to put down peaceful protests.
• November 9th: four senior officials at the Pentagon replaced by Trump ideologues.
• December 4th: Esper’s replacement, Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, dismissed nine Defense Business Board members and replaced them with 11 Trump loyalists, including former Trump 2016 campaign officials Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie.
• January 6th: President Trump inflamed his restive followers and all but escorted them down Pennsylvania Avenue to attack and disrupt the counting of the ballots. Trump did not want Joe Biden’s victory finally ratified.
• Meeting little opposition, the marauding Trumpist terrorists stormed and occupied the Capitol.

Responding to a plea for help from the hunkered-down Congressional leadership, Republican Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland pressed the Pentagon to authorize sending the National Guard of Maryland across the state line. The Capitol Police were overwhelmed and needed assistance to quell the riot. Hogan was “ready, willing and able,” but his entreaties were “repeatedly denied,” he said. The Pentagon followed Trump’s orders to refuse assistance to terrified lawmakers or defend the iconic building.

An hour and a half later, VP Pence interceded and Gov. Hogan’s forces made their way to the Capitol.

Pondering this, the conclusion that the attack had been planned weeks in advance and law enforcement instructed not to disturb the pillagers is inescapable. It is mind-bogglingly nightmarish to know that the president of the United States fomented and encouraged the insurrection, denied succor to the victims, and stood by while the Capitol’s doors were rammed, glass was shattered and its sacrosanct chambers invaded.

Are we safe if Donald Trump remains in office, with the awesome power vested in him? Should he not be held accountable for the death and injury he caused and the havoc he wreaked? Call your members of Congress and your senators if you think we would be safer with Trump removed from office, stripped of his power, and deprived of any opportunity to hold office again.

Contact your senators. Go to https://contactsenators.com for phone numbers, email and postal addresses.

Contact your representatives. https://www.contactingcongress.org has every phone number, mailing address and social media account.

“This is not who we are.” Really?

We would like to believe that the attempt to overturn the presidential election and the denial of the legitimacy of duly elected President-elect Biden are aberrations, the actions of an insignificant group of outliers. Over and over, we hear and read, “This is not who we are.”

But the ugly and irrefutable truth is that this is who we have become. It is not who we imagined ourselves to be, who much of the world believes we were, who we would like to be. No, America the no longer beautiful has been exposed as a racist, violent society. The President is both racist and violent. True, he has lost the popular vote twice, but in 2020 74 million voters chose him over Joe Biden. Almost 47 percent of the electorate chose Trump despite or because of his bigotry, corruption and desecration of American ideals and institutions.

If you don’t like what you’re reading, do something about it. Help change American society. Let’s start by removing Donald Trump from the office he has defiled. Let’s restore America and relight its beacon for freedom. Call your Congressional representative and your senators. Make it happen!

Contact your senators. Go to https://contactsenators.com for phone numbers, email and postal addresses.

Contact your representatives. https://www.contactingcongress.org has every phone number, mailing address, social media account, how to schedule a meeting. Get active.

Congratulations, America!

The nail-biting is over. Democracy, threatened as never before, has survived. Decency has triumphed over spite. Empathy over self-dealing.

Progress. Transformation.

Now the really hard work begins. Winning the election was easy compared to the monumental task we now face. Joe, Kamala, and all Democrats must reach out to the people who voted for Trump, and they in turn have to agree to look forward, to begin the healing process. Unless we breach the bitter divide, rebuild the Union that made America great, the United States will be history.

We have to trust in a leader who will take on the Coronavirus, follow the directives of the medical experts, if we are to beat back the scourge that is killing us. The virus is an apt metaphor for the partisan disease that has crippled the U.S. Until grandparents fearlessly hug their grandchildren and friends embrace each other, when children learn in classrooms, restaurants sparkle with good cheer, big stores and small shops alike welcome shoppers, and Democrats and Republicans work together … will we get our lives back.

No democracy, no union. Where do we go from here?

Small American flag recovered amid World Trade Center debris at the Fresh Kills Landfill. 9-11 exhibit at the East Tennessee History Museum. 2003 Smithsonian photo by Hugh Talman.

The United States is no longer. It is not united and it no longer has a government that is of the people, by the people, or for the people.

The Republicans in the Senate majority represent 18 percent of the country’s population; 60 percent of the Senate now represents just 24 percent of the country. Let that sink in.

The United States is not a democracy. The principle of one man, one vote has become a travesty.

Now Mitt Romney (R-UT), the lone Republican senator who voted to impeach Donald Trump, has announced that he supports the move to allow Trump to nominate the next justice of the Supreme Court. Romney’s decision almost certainly guarantees that the replacement of liberal icon Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be a hard-right-leaning conservative.

We can anticipate the resulting 6-3 majority to muzzle the liberals. In addition to the Senate, Republicans control the judiciary and possibly the executive branches of the government.

We can expect the minority “majority” to overturn every Democratic initiative to safeguard the country and protect its people. Republicans will achieve their fondest goals. They will

• revoke Roe v. Wade, erasing the woman’s right to choose that RBG was instrumental in establishing almost 50 years ago.
• dismantle the social safety net devised by Democratic administrations
  • Social Security, envisioned by Franklin Roosevelt in the depths of the Great Depression
  • Medicare and Medicaid, initiated under Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society
  • Obamacare, Barack Obama’s first step toward universal health care
• abolish regulations that combat climate change, protect the environment from commercial exploitation, reform the banking system
• stifle any attempt to regulate guns

What can the gagged majority do? It’s clear that a country so divided cannot stand.

Civil war is one response. The blue states could secede. Geography is an impediment, because Democrats inhabit not only the East and West Coasts that are separated by a vast expanse, but also great cities in the Republican Midwest like Chicago. Republicans tote guns, Democrats by and large don’t. I suspect the food supply from the Farm Belt is largely in Republican hands.

At this moment I’m not coming up with alternatives to this nightmare scenario. I ask readers to argue with me and suggest ways to cope with the untenable situation that we face.

No celebrations

Fourth of July Solitary bonfire

On Independence Day we should be celebrating the American spirit that strove to cast off burdensome chains and gave birth to a new country unlike any that came before. But not this year.

This year there are no spectacular fireworks, no beach parties, no barbecues— nothing to mark what many fear may be the last gasp of American democracy. Will the American electorate succeed in loosening Trump’s chokehold on us and the traditions we hold most dear? Will the deadly Coronavirus wring the life out of hundreds of thousands more?

We can’t breathe!

The plague can’t last forever, but the devastation Trump has wrought will be difficult, if not impossible, to repair. His Administration has snuffed out the beacon of hope that the world used to covet, sullied our ideals and accelerated the despoliation of the planet. We have become the home of the incarcerated, the tortured, the hungry and the sick.

We are teetering on the cusp of an inflection point— we can continue our decline into ignominy or aspire to revive and finally realize the ideals of Jeffersonian democracy. 

America has a death wish

How else to explain that at least 40 percent of Americans are comfortable not wearing masks, blithely attempting to return to life as it was before the pandemic invaded the nation? Is it possible they don’t understand that the Coronavirus spreads when people are close together, especially in enclosed spaces? That wearing face masks inhibits some of that contagion? That close to 120,000 Americans (that we know of) have already died from Covid-19, that the virus is still raging and infections are spiking in states that ignore the warnings of scientists?

Most Americans can’t afford to get sick. They cannot pay for the hospitals, doctors and medicines that serious illnesses require. Do they know that the U.S. is the only one of 33 developed countries that lacks universal healthcare?

Almost a third of Americans own guns, an average of three each. Over 50 percent of suicides in 2018 were executed with firearms. Though “mass shooting” is variously defined, in 2019, there were 417 mass shootings in the US, more than the number of days in a year. According to the Small Arms Survey of 2017, U.S. Civilians have more firearms per capita than any other country, double the rate of its closest competitor. Assault weapons, designed for the military to kill enemy combatants efficiently, are wielded by civilians and enable domestic terrorism.

Some American cities, like Detroit, poison their inhabitants with contaminated water. Some burn coal, polluting the air with asthma-producing fumes. They allowed government to dismantle the regulations that protected drinking water and the air we breathe.

It is time— past time— to resuscitate the life force that gave rise to American ingenuity and determination. To revive the love of knowledge and respect for science that empowered earlier generations to reach the moon and ours to sequence the human genome. We must rebuild the institutions that made the American experiment the envy of the world.

Image credit: oNline Web Fonts

It Matters, 7 o’clock cheering

Andy Newman, New York Times

I left the city a few weeks ago to eke out the shelter-in-place mandate where I can take long walks without wearing a mask or having to worry much about social distancing. Far from the city, it’s easy to maintain a safe distance from the few people I encounter outdoors.

Though I realize how lucky I am to be able to do this, I miss the city, especially at 7 p.m. I used to set the alarm for 6:55 every evening so we wouldn’t accidentally miss the time when New York opens its windows to cheer, clap and crash pots and pans. We thank and show our appreciation to health care workers and all the others who risk their lives to perform the essential services that make it possible for the rest of us to quarantine ourselves safely at home.

CIMEDICALCENTER.org

Even though we could barely hear or see our neighbors from the 35th floor, we joined the chorus in the hope that the intended audience would feel our support and recognition of their selfless service.

My alarm still rings daily to remind me that it is 7:00 and New York is cheering. But now, even farther away from neighbors who could hear and be heard, I give thanks in silence.

Tonight I read a post on the Upper West Side Nextdoor blog that affected me deeply. I still have tears in my eyes. I hope Julie Brickman won’t mind that I repost it here:

Tonight, as I was standing at my open balcony window at 7 o’clock, clapping and cheering as the health care workers returned home from their long 12-hour shifts, risking their lives to save ours, a young man in shorts stopped to talk to me. My balcony is only one story up and the window is 8-feet high and leads onto a little Juliet balcony, so everyone can see me there; sometimes people shout something from their cars or give me thumbs up in return.

But tonight, this young man left me in tears.

“I think I’m one of the people this is for,” he said. “And I want to tell you how much it means to me.”

I was stunned. So little to give for all that he’s doing, and yet I can’t stop crying. I wish I could tell him how deep is the gratitude in my heart to see such dedication and bravery at a time when there is so much else that I won’t name, because I’m not going to stain the wonder of this moment, of seeing the kind of humanity I have admired and respected all my life, standing in front of me and speaking with heartfelt gratitude about the decency he feels coming from all of us, locked down in this “joyless” city, yet showing up from our diverse solitudes to cheer those who are using their skills, energy, heart and moral courage on our behalf.

I thought it was worth sharing with all of you who are cheering too.

Yes, there is decency out there. Yes, I had the chance to see it tonight. Yes, it made a difference.

It made me believe in the long arc again; of justice or “what love looks like in public,” and especially of goodness. It made me believe we will survive this and create, if not a better world, at least a decent one again.

All I want to say is: Bless this health care worker who spoke out. Bless everyone who is helping get us through. Bless Upper West Siders and New Yorkers and everyone suffering through this lonely pandemic. May you stay well, safe, happy and find your own ways to give to our community following in the spirit of this amazing young man.

Like Julie, I want to believe that after Covid-19 the world will be better: more just, harmonious and cleaner. Looking beyond the catastrophe in Washington, it’s easy to find generosity and selflessness. Look no further than the Pennsylvania workers who volunteered to labor round the clock in 12-hour shifts for a month at their factory. Without ever going home, they slept on makeshift beds and produced millions of pounds of PPE materials, uncontaminated by the virus.

Self-sacrifice and the American can-do spirit are alive and well.

A Blue Wave after all

The immediate aftermath of the midterm elections left me uneasy, unable to fully celebrate the Democratic control of the U.S. House, despite my conviction before the election that without a Democratic victory in the House, democracy in America would surely be doomed.

The superstars, Stacy Abrams, Andrew Gillum and Beto O’Rourke were counted out as most returns were tallied on Wednesday. But high hopes dashed on Wednesday were revived by the weekend.

Andrew Gillum gave his concession speech on Thursday when it seemed he would not be Florida’s governor. But on Saturday, he took it back. Gillum and Stacy Abrams in Georgia are striving mightily against Republican opposition to have all votes counted and recounted in their races for the governor’s mansion. Both are close enough to trigger recounts. The same holds for the senate race in Florida.

As the vote counting continued, a Blue Tide began to wash over Republican-held seats, growing in size and strength. The House majority kept growing, and close races drew even closer. Democrats needed 23 seats to gain a majority in the House. As late vote counts rolled in, they garnered 32 seats, with 10 still not called.

The Blue Wave asserted itself: Democrats won 367 congressional seats— more than the Tea Party had in 2010. They flipped seven governorships, including in solid red Kansas (where they also captured a House seat). And when Florida and Georgia are finally finished counting and recounting, Democrats may gain one or two more governors.

Democrats scored trifectas — winning both houses of the state legislature and the governor — in six states: Colorado, Maine, Illinois, New York, New Mexico and Nevada. They will have full control in 13 states; the Republicans in 21.

Victories in state elections are important. State governments strongly influence health care, taxes, immigration and climate change in their states. They control redistricting, which is pivotal today, because gerrymandering currently causes Democrats to lose elections and seats, despite winning the popular vote.

Republican Martha McSally at first appeared to have won Jeff Flake’s senate seat in Arizona, but when all votes were counted a week after Election Day, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema became the first woman Arizona would send to the Senate and the first Democratic senator elected by the state in three decades.

The country moved left. Even in races the Republicans won, Democrats gained ground. As in 2016, Democrats won the popular vote. In Texas, Beto O’Rourke roused enthusiasm and came close to winning with a tremendous number of Democratic votes in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat since Ann Richards became governor in 1991.

More reasons to celebrate the 2018 midterms:

• Americans were more engaged than ever in the elections. They voted in record numbers, more than in any midterm since 1914.
• They elected more than 100 women.
• The new class of representatives is more diverse than any of its predecessors, including two Native American and two Muslim women.
• They are young, and have lowered the average age of representatives by a decade.

Pipe bombs and the crackup of the Union

Americans awoke this morning to the news that pipe bombs had been mailed to prominent political people. Not just any politicians— no Republicans, only Democrats and Trump’s favorite targets.

In his tweets and at his rallies, Trump has threatened and vilified Hillary Clinton, leading chants to “Lock her up!” He denied Barack Obama’s legitimacy, for years insisting that he was not born in the U.S., and has been dismantling every achievement of his predecessor since his first day in office. George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and major Democratic donor, has been accused by Trump and the Right-Wing extremists of master-minding conspiracies against the U.S. and the world order. Trump has consistently disparaged the media, in particular, the publications that have criticized him, news organs like CNN and the New York Times. George Brennan, former Director of the C.I.A., has been outspokenly critical of Trump, and the President retaliated by stripping him of his security clearance.

Except for the NY Times, all of the above were recipients of bombs sent to their homes. Brennan’s was sent to CNN offices in New York.

We have a head of state who not only condones violence, but incites it. Since the days of his campaign, when he defended and encouraged his supporters that punched protesters, promising to pay their legal bills, the rabble-rouser-in-chief continues to stoke the fury of his followers, encouraging them to ravage the foundational principles of American democracy.

The country that prided itself on being a nation of laws is devolving into the misrule of chaos and hate. Trump campaigned on a pledge to destroy the existing order, and for perhaps for the only time, he is keeping his word. Rather than Making America Great Again, Trump is presiding over the disintegration of lawful society.

The political parties no longer work to reach compromises that further the greater good. Rather, they reflect the stark division of Trumpists determined to rend the fragile fabric of democracy and their opponents who want to conserve and build on the achievements of the bold experiment started over 200 years ago.

Update: Later in the day, more bombs were discovered. They were sent to Eric Holder, Obama’s attorney general and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA).

 

And now, Justice Kavanaugh

 

Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) put the icing on the cake. The confirmation was baked in long ago: the path to a fifth conservative seat on the Supreme Court was in the works for at least 30 years. (Remember Karl Rove’s dream of a permanent Republican majority?)

Before Dr. Christine Basley Ford described the sexual assault she had suffered in high school at a specially convened hearing of the Senate Judicial Committee, the Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) vowed that the Senate would “plow” through to a certain confirmation. But when Ford described her ordeal, she moved and impressed not only the senators, but the president, with her authenticity. Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation no longer looked like a sure thing.

Then Kavanaugh testified. Red-faced, he wept and he raged. Furious, he accused the Democrats of plotting a “calculated and orchestrated political hit,” fueled by “pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election.” But “what goes around comes around,” he said, apparently foreseeing vengeful retribution against the Democrats.

Following the hearing, people were appalled at Kavanaugh’s injudicious lack of control, his partisanship, fury and unseemly demeanor. The American Bar Association and the Yale Law School withdrew their endorsements pending a further investigation by the FBI. Close to 1,000 professors of law wrote to the Senate that Kavanaugh lacks the judicial temperament required for a seat on the Supreme Court.

The Republicans, all men, identified with Kavanaugh. They said they believed Ford had been sexually assaulted, yet contrived a way to exonerate Kavanaugh and justify voting for him. They began to poke holes in Ford’s testimony, pointing to her inability to remember details such as the address of the house, who took her home and the like. The people Ford named as being at the party couldn’t recall the party, much less the attack. All the evidence the senators chose to examine was gleaned from the severely limited FBI investigation. It was not enough to identify Kavanaugh as Ford’s aggressor. There was only Ford’s word. It didn’t occur to the men that a woman who had been sexually assaulted would have a powerful and excruciatingly present memory of the event, if not the superfluous details, while others present would have no reason to remember what was for them one unremarkable party among many. Once again, the woman was silenced, her searing testimony almost beside the point.

Within days, the debate shifted. Kavanaugh’s lack of judicial temperament, his lying under oath and his fierce partisanship replaced the sexual assault as the principal reasons to deny him a lifelong seat on the Supreme Court.

In the end, however, Kavanaugh’s unsuitability was tamped down by the overwhelming desire to hold on to power. Republicans have an extremely thin majority in the Senate. In the event of a Democratic victory in the imminent midterm elections, they would lose not only one or both houses of Congress, but the ability to establish a conservative majority in the Court that could endure for decades to come.

So Ford exposed her private torment to the world, and for what? For nothing, as she herself had feared?

Well, no, not entirely. Women heard her and their own buried traumas rose to torment them. All across the country women clamored to bear witness. They marched and spoke and wrote and pounded on the doors of their representatives. 

Many men listened to them. Amazed by their number, they confessed they had no idea that sexual assault was such a widespread problem. The #metoo phenomenon, just a year old, came roaring back.

Now that women’s and Democrats’ efforts have failed to prevent the elevation to a lifetime appointment of a judge whose convictions threaten the progress already made, what comes next?

Keep striving. We have to believe that though we have undoubtedly suffered a setback, we have the strength to reclaim lost ground and continue to advance into a more equitable future for all Americans.

Immigrants make music

Maria Martin, Artistic Director and Flutist

Marya Martin, Artistic Director of the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, announced this year’s theme at the first concert last night. Her lingering accent belied her birth on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Proudly she announced that all 10 musicians of last night’s performance— and what a performance it was! — were born outside the United States. Except for one, all now live in the U.S. The only native-born American was Alan Alda, who narrated the story of Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn.

Donald Trump, please take notice. Immigrants are what make America great.

From left: Emily Kruspe, Jakob Koranyi, Angelo Xiang You, Jonathan Lo, Then-Hsin Cindy Wu, Hezekiah Leung, Alan Alda, Jon Kimora Parker, Marya Martin

 

 

Kristin Lee

Angelo Xiang Yu

Jonathan Lo

Tien=Hsien Cindy Wu

 

“This is not who we are” Really?

Wailing toddlers ripped from their mothers’ arms, pre-adolescents caged in detention camps, children warehoused like so many sacks of flour— horrors never seen before in the U.S. are happening now at our southern border.

Really? Never before? There was a time when we whipped slaves, broke up their families and tortured them into submission so their hard labor could fill American coffers. Slavery really happened. Native Americans were killed or driven from their lands to make way for the white man’s expansion across the continent. The natives who survived were penned up in “reservations.”

We are a land of immigrants, but we never welcomed them. Lady Liberty lifts her lamp before the Golden Door, but the passage into her arms was never easy. To succeed and live the American dream immigrants had to claw their way up.

Not who we are? Sixty-two million Americans voted for a racist, xenophobic, pussy-grabbing tyrant. Millions of Americans approve of Trump as he snubs and slurs our allies while he clearly admires dictators whose hands are bloodied by the murders of their own people.

Trump’s numbers, even in the face of his latest outrage, are going up. Nearly 90 percent of Republicans approve of what he is doing. Recently, his approval rating among all Americans has climbed above 40 percent. There may be more Democrats than Republicans, yet when over 40 percent of Americans approve of Trump, despite his racism,  cruelty and corruption, we cannot say “This is not who we are.”

I don’t think it was always like this. When the U.S. sent its sons to die for a cause, to liberate the Europeans under Hitler’s boot— not to gather booty or expand its territory, we could say “This is not who we are.” And yet, while American boys were fighting for people who lived across the ocean, here at home other Americans were being taken from their homes and made to live in detention camps.

No one can impugn our ideals. Our founding document proclaims that all men are created equal. Though women and people of color are not mentioned or included, we have been working for over two centuries on the inclusivity of that ideal. Americans live in liberty and are free to pursue their happiness. Just not all Americans. Not all the time.

Joe Kennedy III (D-MA) implores his colleagues to end the inhuman brutality that the migrant children and their parents are suffering. These children need to be with their parents, just like all children. “Anything else,” he says, “is cruelty in its purest form.”

Fortunately, some Republicans are recognizing that this is not a political problem. It is a national emergency. Today, the protests and anguished cries finally made the President capitulate. He has ordered that families not be separated, but interned together. Only some of the more than 2,300 children in camps will be reunited with their parents. Homeland Security and the other agencies were not prepared to keep track of where the children were sent and with whom they belonged.

Women vault from the military to the ballot box

A SALUTE TO WOMEN VETERANS TRAILBLAZING A PATH FROM THE MILITARY TO PUBLIC OFFICE

By Diane Vacca

Reblogged from Women’s Voices for Change

Knowing she had to come down smoothly with a single engine and 149 people aboard, Captain Tammie Jo Shults deftly guided her crippled aircraft while reassuring her passengers that the plane was descending, not going down. She warned that they would come down hard, but instead, “she didn’t slam it down. She brought the bird down very carefully.” Passenger Alfred Tumlinson admired the pilot’s cool (“She has nerves of steel”) and the emergency landing that saved the lives of almost all aboard the Southwest Airlines plane whose engine exploded in April. The single fatality was the woman who had been blown halfway out a window broken by shrapnel from the explosion. Once safely on the ground, Shults modestly thanked the air traffic controllers for their help and walked through the plane, talking to each passenger and shaking every hand, according to Tumlinson.

Shults knew what she wanted at an early age. “Some people grow up around aviation. I grew up under it,” she said. Living near Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, she was fascinated by the planes overhead and knew she “just had to fly.”

But it wasn’t easy.

Read More …

The times they are a-changin’

University and high school students march along Amsterdam Avenue at Lincoln Center.

Is Dylan right?

Has the NRA met its match?

Is a Democratic wave coming to wash a majority of gun-loving Republicans out of office?

The answer to these questions may be yes.

On March 14, 2018, two things happened to raise the spirits and the hopes of the majority of Americans. Republicans, who have refused to challenge the Trump administration’s corruption, dishonesty and xenophobia, are beginning to lose ground. They are losing to Democrats in special elections in deep red Trump country. The early morning hours saw a Democrat eking out a victory over his Republican opponent in rural Pennsylvania, in districts that Trump won by 20 points.

Police block traffic, allowing students to return to school

In another upset of the status quo, students across the country marked the one-month anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting by walking out of their classrooms. Crying #Enough! and #NeverAgain! they are determined to hold politicians to account. The students are resolved to elect candidates who will enact sensible gun laws that will curb the massacre of innocents by wild men with assault rifles. They are committed to use their spending power to support businesses that have ended their financial relationships with the NRA and penalize the ones that haven’t.

Women, emboldened by the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, are joining their peers in ripping off the gag that has silenced them throughout history. They are demanding a reckoning from the men who took advantage of their power to demand sexual favors with impunity. Institutions in every field are responding by exacting retribution for sexual abuse.

Suddenly, 2018 is shaping up to be as disruptive as 1968. The 21st century is waking from the torpor that allowed American democratic ideals to be perverted by autocrats who value lucre and disdain the needs of the vast majority of Americans.

The times, finally they are a-changing.

 

 

 

Pink Pussyhats

Streaming out of the subway in waves of pink exuberance, New York City women had lost none of the energy from last year’s Women’s March. Signs abounded, screaming opposition to Donald Trump and the harm his decisions have done to American life and the welfare of the planet. America is a nation of immigrants, so DACA and immigration were major themes. Women’s rights— #MeToo, abortion and pay parity— were the other main focus.

There were people in costume, like the man covered with dollar bills and other currencies, all splattered with blood. They were bands. One had a tuba, clarinets, saxophones, a trombone, a melodica, tambourines and, of course, drums. Another was all drums, played by women in blue, dancing and drumming. Fogo Azul (blue fire) wore blue pussy hats. They had everyone in earshot moving and dancing.

Many creative, artistic signs.

“A woman’s place is in the House, the Senate, the White House.”

“It doesn’t say ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled Norwegians yearning to breathe free.'”

We all enjoyed ourselves, but we appreciated

“Resign. Don’t make me march again.”

The march was scheduled to begin at 71st St. and Columbus Avenue at 11 a.m. My group met at 66th and Columbus at 11:30. By that time,, Central Park West, the main route, was inaccessible from the side streets, so the March was directed up Columbus to join the mainstream on Central Park West. It took us three hours to reach Central Park West at 77th St. A policeman told me that people had to march to 91st St. to reach the end of the line.

The procession began to move a little faster as the shadows lengthened and people peeled off.

At 4 o’clock I was the only one of my party left. I reached Columbus Circle (59th St.) and the spirit was willing, but the flesh was weakening. I told myself it was okay not to continue. I had, after all, marched 22 blocks in three hours only to return to my starting point. I wish I’d had a seat in the helicopter overhead to see the barely moving double flow of enthusiastic people waving signs and making music in a huge demonstration of solidarity.

.

 

An sea of pink, pussy-hatted women of all ages–
babies

 

 

to grandmas–

Not every pussyhat was worn by a woman.
Although the vast majority of marchers were women, supporting men took part too.

 

 

 

Of the several themes, the most consistent, the one that tied the others together, was anti-Trump anger.

His boastful claim that when he sees an attractive woman he “grabs her by the pussy” was of course the inspiration for the pussy hat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were little pussycats

Big cats roared in defiance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Covered with bloodied currency, this figure embodied scandal and corruption:

Rounding up the usual suspects for Special Counsel Robert Mueller:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Votes, instead of pussies, were proposed for grabbing instead.

Getting out the vote to defeat Republicans and Trump in particular was a popular theme. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Woman power.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were references to #MeToo.

Plunder of the Earth was a pressing concern.

And the music played and the marchers danced.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And of course, the Trump Shutdown.

 

Trump’s unforgettable language.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally,

 

A Catholic Nun Schooled Paul Ryan in Humility Last Night — Resist and Replace

From Esquire.com It was a Biblical beatdown. Getty BY CHARLES P. PIERCE AUG 22, 2017 While the president* was fastening on his Serious World Leader face Monday night, Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from the state of Wisconsin, was facing a carefully tailored audience at a CNN “town hall” in Racine. Because Ryan is […]

via A Catholic Nun Schooled Paul Ryan in Humility Last Night — Resist and Replace

Elegy for Main Beach

Makeshift floats in the festive parade, the red wagons and strollers laden with blankets, coolers, picnic baskets and the occasional toddler wound their way from far-flung parking spots to the beckoning beach. In 2003, temporary crutches made it rough going for me, but nothing could keep me from East Hampton’s Main Beach on the Fourth of July. Ever since I can remember, I had gloried in the fireworks, lying back on the sand, gazing at the night sky exploding with color.

Thousands of people were converging toward the sand, passing me and my group of friends and family as I labored forward. Then one couple spotted me. They stopped, saying, “You need this more than we do,” insisting I ride in their kids’ red wagon. I clambered aboard, slightly embarrassed but grateful for the lift. The other adults shouldered the picnic gear that I had displaced and took turns pulling me along. And so we continued, wending our way, laughing and joking with friendly strangers— teens, toddlers, parents and grandparents, all in high spirits and filled with anticipation.

I usually eschew crowds, but the convivial throng at that annual celebration was suffused with bonhomie, a shared feeling of community that bound us together. At the beach, we gingerly threaded a path through the clusters of beach chairs and blankets until we could claim a patch of sand. All around us families were spreading their blankets. Picnic baskets opened, disgorging bowls of potato and chicken salads, bags of sandwiches, grilled chicken, guacamole and no end of other goodies. Sodas popped and drinks poured. Boisterous children barely contained their excitement. Crowning their heads and circling their necks, glow sticks began to fluoresce as the day faded into twilight.

Night fell gradually, and the crowd ate the last of the brownies and cookies and the cakes with red, white and blue icing. Flashlights began to sparkle sporadically.

At last it was nine o’clock, and all eyes turned eastward, caught by the first soaring rockets. They burst in midair, showering fire and ice. We settled back, dazzled by the red glare and starbursts that morphed into hearts and atoms of gold and blue and green. Humongous umbrellas and giant jellyfish commandeered the night sky, eclipsing the stars until they decayed, trailing sparks that fizzled and sank into the ocean.

When the show came to its inevitable end, we gathered our detritus, packed the leftovers and reluctantly left the beach. Though traffic choked the local roads and made for a seemingly endless crawl, it couldn’t spoil the good feeling. It didn’t stop us from returning year after year.

But that was long ago … What the traffic couldn’t do, the piping plovers did. I don’t begrudge the little birds their right to nest on the beach. I am a conservationist and I believe we should protect endangered species and not drive them to extinction. But it’s been 12 years, and I resent the little critters who have appropriated so much of the public domain and deprived us of a tradition that had lasted 90 years.

Even more, I bristle at the appropriation of the flag by the Alt Right. The “patriots” who want to take their country back— Back to where? To when? To the time when native Americans were fighting to save their homeland from European invaders? Or later, when the descendants of those Europeans enslaved the people they captured on another continent? The patriotic pride of “E pluribus unum”— out of many peoples, one nation— that we took for granted is now problematic, because the “pluribus” are being imprisoned and deported, their mosques and synagogues bombed and defaced.

I do hope the piping plovers proliferate and I dream of the day when the sharp divisions that now divide us dissolve. Then Main Beach will open to everyone and the fireworks will again dazzle at the twilight’s last gleaming.

Though I dream in vain, in my heart it will remain … the memory of time gone by.

Too political?

My daughter told me that I’ve become too political. That set me thinking. It is true that I pay much more attention now.

I hardly paid any attention in the 70s and 80s. I was too preoccupied with small children in the first of those decades. Graduate studies, two teenagers and an inter-city commute took over in the second decade. In the 90s, Clinton and his impeachment, his relentless pursuit by members of the political establishment who abandoned even the pretense of commonality, riveted my attention.

When an unprecedented, horrific attack on a complacent nation spurred the newly installed triumvirate of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to curtail our civil liberties with the Patriot Act, I was galvanized. I warned anyone who would listen to me that proud and prosperous German Jews were decimated because they believed “it can’t happen here.” It can happen here. History has taught us that no government, no society, is immutable. I was afraid we were falling down a slippery slope, and indeed, that was when Americans lost not only their privacy but their faith in the impregnable fortress America. The same powerbrokers plunged us into a war we couldn’t win. Surveillance, fear, and torture insinuated themselves into the American experience.

In the Obama years, blind hatred and the corrosive antagonism between Democrats and Republicans further undermined American democracy and paved the way for the clownish but unfunny despot who is doing his best to undermine and sabotage the institutions that made America powerful and just.

How can one not be “political”? How can one ignore Trump’s peevishness, his enthrallment with himself and his desires, his reckless onslaughts on long-established norms, his ignorance, mendacity and deliberate sabotage of arduously wrought pacts to rescue the planet and provide care for the poor and the sick?

American democracy is under siege. Only activists, roused by anger and fear, can sway the politicians who have the power to save the Republic.

The New South and the Confederacy

Buried in the turmoil and never-ending work associated with a move from one home to another I’ve kept up with the headlines, but little of real substance. Over a week ago I took a break and came across the transcript of New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s speech on the removal of confederate monuments. The mayor represents the new South, the Southerners who acknowledge that they live in the 21st century and understand and accept that slavery and the Confederacy died more than 150 years ago. They belong to a progressive America that has been trying to overcome that old legacy since the 1960s, an America that continues to make progress in the civil rights of people of all colors, genders and ethnicities.

Landrieu was responding to his critics who hold that by removing the statues of Confederate leaders he is erasing history:

There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it. For America and New Orleans, it has been a long, winding road, marked by great tragedy and great triumph. But we cannot be afraid of our truth.

The truth is that New Orleans is a great city, a “city of many nations … a bubbling cauldron of many cultures.” It is also true that

New Orleans was America’s largest slave market: a port where hundreds of thousands of souls were brought, sold and shipped up the Mississippi River to lives of forced labor of misery of rape, of torture.

…

America was the place where nearly 4,000 of our fellow citizens were lynched, 540 alone in Louisiana; where the courts enshrined ‘separate but equal’; where Freedom riders coming to New Orleans were beaten to a bloody pulp.

So when people say to me that the monuments in question are history, well what I just described is real history as well, and it is the searing truth.

And it immediately begs the questions: why there are no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynchings or the slave blocks; nothing to remember this long chapter of our lives; the pain, the sacrifice, the shame … all of it happening on the soil of New Orleans.

Was the Attorney General listening?

Snoops

Privacy is such a quaint notion. Since 9-11, we have become inured to having our personal belongings searched at theaters, airports and the lobbies of big buildings. Records and recordings of our calls reside in humongous government data warehouses, ready for scrutiny and analysis. We know that if we use the super-convenient transit credit cards like New York City’s Metrocard or drive past tollbooths with EZ Pass, we are leaving an easily followed trail of our comings and goings. Wayward husbands can no longer “hike the Appalachian Trail” in Buenos Aires with impunity. Credit cards, customer loyalty programs, just about anything that makes everything we do easier and faster comes at an unspoken price. We willingly and often unwittingly divulge intimate details that would have been unthought of only a few decades ago. Our faces are recorded by cameras in the street, at building entrances, public spaces and elevators.

One of the many devices we can rely on is a thermostat that can be remotely controlled. The Nest knows when you are home and figures out when to raise or lower the heat. It tracks your energy use and like Santa, sees you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake, and it continuously relays all this information and more via the Internet to the company that made it. Amazon, Netflix and Roku know of your predilection for porn and what kinky action turns you on. Or not.

Your smart phone, as you know, is constantly sending out your MAC address, a unique identifier that can be tracked very precisely to determine exactly where you are, how you got there, how often you go there and where you go afterwards. Retailers can track you in their stores. The signals from your phone disclose which displays interest you, based on how long you ponder them and whether you subsequently buy the product. Storekeepers may also use this info to fine-tune the arrangement, positioning and content of their displays. We’re all familiar with the way Google and Facebook analyze what we write and the links we click to profit from that data.

Drilling down, merchants now know who is driving by their billboards and how many of those drivers are buying the advertised merchandise. According to The Boston Globe (May 19, 2016), “the nation’s largest billboard company, Clear Channel Outdoor Inc., is bringing customized, pop-up ads to the interstate.” Using data gathered from 130 million AT&T subscribers, augmented by phone apps that corral millions more, “Clear Channel knows what kinds of people are driving past one of their billboards at 6:30 p.m. on a Friday— how many are Dunkin’ Donuts regulars, for example, or have been to three Red Sox games so far this year.”

All this information is for sale, and it is probably impossible to control.

Even Trump must have been surveilled. Clearly, not directly by his predecessor. At the very least, the same devices that hover over all Americans will have collected data that can easily be exploited by any of the agencies that spy for the government. Did Trump gut the State Department and cripple Justice to hobble investigations of his Russian connections? He may have anticipated the exposure of some of the tentacles of his Russian deals, corruption and collusion.

Surveillance cameras photo by Quevaal at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.o0

Women on the march

International Women’s Day in New York City— beautiful, brisk, and perfect for marching, cheering, chatting, comiserating and consoling. Women of all ages and all colors were united in their will to resist the Trump agenda. If women were striking, I did not see them. But the women I did see were marching for their less fortunate sisters who did not have the luxury of taking time off from work. They demonstrated their solidarity with the many women in the US and around the world who work very hard for long hours and minimal pay. Some are not paid at all. They marched for equal pay, reproductive freedom and the health care they now have with the Affordable Care Act. They marched to restore clean air and clean water, and public education for their children.

Young

Eight-year old Ravan Peterson (below, left) was delighting everyone who heard her with her enthusiastic support of women everywhere. “Women are stronger than men.” She said she was “marching to support all women, but especially women who are suffering all over the world.”

Older

 

Black

 

White

The sign reads, “Tinkle, tinkle little czar. Putin put you where you are.” Golden showers fall on the umbrella.

Stand up on International Women’s Day

Women’s rights are human rights. Wear red in solidarity with women across the US and in more than 30 countries. March 8 will be A Day Without a Woman, in which women who can will take the day off from paid and unpaid labor and avoid shopping.

Show up at town halls and petition your members of congress to repair Obamacare. Speak up for the gutted EPA, clean water and clean air. Insist on the importance of public education, of the arts and of a social safety net to provide the necessities, like nutritious food and health care to those who can’t provide for themselves. Defend regulations that were put in place to protect people from predatory lenders, to safeguard public health, to keep the stock market honest. The fabric of American democracy is being rent by a blitz of lethal blows. You know of others that also affect you personally. Stand up! Make yourself heard! There is power in numbers.

Read Emily Crockett’s “The ‘Day Without a Woman’ strike, explained.” She’s done a masterly job of examining the “gendered revolt” kicked off by the Women’s March on Washington the day after Trump’s inauguration.

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

Democracy still lives

In the Age of Trump, many of the people who couldn’t imagine him president now fear for the survival of American democracy. Far from making America great, Trump is undermining and attacking the institutions that made America great. He has railed against the independent judiciary, firing the acting attorney general and impugning judges who thwarted his attempt to impose a discriminatory travel ban. The ban took the form of an executive order that violated the Constitution in various ways, including the contravention of freedom of religion. Trump has declared war on the press, whose freedom is guaranteed by the First Amendment, for the reason that it is playing its essential role in a democracy. Trump and his family are profiting from his position. The press is investigating illegal and suspicious acts and attempts to cover them up by the members of Trumpworld. Fake news! cries Trump with each new leak.

Every day brings new revelations of conversations and relationships between Trump and members of his administration with Russians connected to the Russian government or Putin himself. U.S. intelligence services have irrefutable proof that Russia attempted to influence the election in favor of Trump. It is becoming apparent that Trump and an increasing number of his associates have relationships with Russia that they have tried to conceal, even under oath, as Jeff Sessions did during his confirmation hearing for the post of attorney general.

If all the contacts with Russia that are surfacing are innocuous, why lie about them? Why is Trump so dismissive of the Russian tentacles winding around him and reaching deep into his administration? After it was clear that Michael Flynn had not only undercut then-President Obama by improperly divulging information to the Russians but denied having done so, why did it take more than two weeks for Trump to decide Flynn couldn’t continue as national security adviser? In view of Russia’s meddling in the election, why are most Republicans still supportive of Trump and his tarnished cohort and reluctant to appoint a special counsel? Many questions to be asked and answered.

I have sketched only the barest account of the subversion of democracy that we are witnessing today. Long before any indication of Russian influence and possible collusion, the attempted censoring of the press and the Muslim ban, I worried very much about Trump’s despotic ability to mesmerize a crowd, his erratic nature, his ignorance about the fundamentals of government, his cluelessness about economics and foreign affairs and especially his totalitarian admiration for authority. Long ago I recognized the peril in Trump’s unlikely but steady ascendancy. Democracy is fragile, I thought. I kept thinking of the complacency of the German Jews who believed “it can’t happen here.” But it is happening here. This time has no precedent and this presidency is like no other, I read time and time again. I am not at all happy to see my prescience being confirmed.

But, after all the hand-wringing, a comforting thought came to me. Democracy is still functioning as it should. The judiciary stood up to Trump. Citizens rebelled. First they flooded the airports to protest the holding of people for hours without being charged or tried. At every airport lawyers volunteered to represent immigrants and their families who were bewildered at best and tortured at worst,. U.S. attorneys filed suits against Trump’s order and with a temporary victory, they obtained a lull in the proceedings that allowed the courts to establish some order.

Beginning with the Women’s March the day after Trump’s inauguration, people are exercising their right to assemble peacefully and petition the government. The continuing protests, unprecedented in number and size, are in every town of every state. Citizens demand town halls with their congressmen/women where they demonstrate their anger and call for action. They know who represents them in Washington and they call to register their opinions. More people than ever before are deciding to run for office.

The free press now comprises all the media. Newspaper journalism is augmented by television, cable, radio and social media. Reporters are vying with each other to investigate and publish the truth behind the prevarications of the Trump administration.

But this is a race against time. Trump will be filling judicial vacancies with his own appointees, and it will become increasingly difficult to resist his policies and expose the lies and misdirection.

Recognition of African-American Women in 1960s long overdue

Now, as Black History Month begins, is an ideal time to celebrate the heroism of the largely unsung African-American women who put their lives on the line, fighting next to their men.

Few of the women activists in Martin Luther King’s day—women whose zeal and courage matched his—earned lasting fame. In the 1960s, women’s voices didn’t carry very far, despite the fact that their activism was critical to the movement. The resounding chorus of men, few of whom realized or acknowledged the intelligence and dedication of the black and white women who worked and protested alongside them, all but drowned them out. Of those women, only Daisy Bates, who spearheaded the desegregation of the Little Rock Schools, spoke at the rally that concluded the famous 1963 March on Washington.

A half-century later, black and white women organized massively: On January 21, 2017, hundreds of thousands of women marched not only in Washington, but in cities and towns across the U.S. Their voices reverberated throughout the world.

Here are some of the African-American women of the 60s whose stories must be told again:

Is anybody home? The Department of State– what’s left of it

This is a diagram of the seniormost staff of the Department of State. Blue X’s are unfilled positions; red X’s are positions which were purged. Note that the “filled” positions are not actually confirmed yet. (From Trial balloon for a coup?) The reproduction is pretty bad, but you can see how many positions remain vacant.

Will Kim Jong Un decide to send an explosive ambassador? What about the minor players who have severely injured us in the past?

Trump has stripped the major agencies of the people at the top who make decisions. He fired the Acting Attorney General for overruling his immigration order. The rule of law is under siege. We are truly in uncharted territory.

It’s not looking good.

Democracy lives!

 

Anti-Trump protesters flood O’Hare Terminal 5 on Saturday. | Matthew Hendrickson/Sun-Times

Gloomily pessimistic, I shuddered with each blast in the fusillade of Trump’s executive orders. It is happening so fast, I thought, as Trump defunded, gagged and paralyzed one essential agency or program after another.

But people reacted. They resisted, protested, called their members of congress and demanded to be heard. The Women’s March was larger than any demonstration in history, drawing millions of people into the streets, united in their opposition to the increasingly unpopular demagogue.

On Friday Trump shocked and infuriated all Americans who are proud to be a nation of immigrants. We refused to target and reject our neighbors. It was Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Trump decreed that the US would not admit Syrian refugees. Families who had survived the carnage were already en route to asylum and new lives. Instead, they were detained upon arrival, sequestered for hours in windowless rooms.

Protesters streamed to the airports, chanting and carrying defiant signs. The ACLU and lawyers from big law firms and small descended on the federal court. By Saturday afternoon they succeeded in trumping the despot by obtaining a temporary stay that allowed the release of the detainees.

In Boston, Mayor Marty Walsh defied the president. Not only did he refuse to aid the feds in rounding up undocumented residents, he offered to shelter them in City Hall as long as they were afraid and subject to deportation. Mayors in other sanctuary cities united in opposition to Trump and defense of their people.

Now I see the resilience of American democracy. It has taken the darkness of a fascist cloud to rouse its citizens from decades of apathy. Today I am much more hopeful and confident that we will counter and deter the megalomaniac who has managed to diminish America’s greatness in less than a week.

Make America great again? Trump has no idea what makes America great, but he’s about to find out.

Time to stand up!

I know, it is very hard to accept that the Orange Menace will hold the U.S. and a good part of the world in his tiny hands in just three days. But accept we must, so it is incumbent on anyone with something to lose to fight back instead.

There have been some excellent articles recently that explain how to do just that. Demonstrating, marching, writing blog posts are fine, but they are not enough. Everyone has to do something — volunteer, raise money for causes you believe in, speak out at community meetings — get involved and involve your friends.

“Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda” was written by congressional staffers who know the ropes. “Indivisible” shows the most effective ways to make your voice heard by your representatives in Congress. If you are frustrated and angry but don’t know what to do, then check out the booklet, read online or download and get going!

Criticize John Lewis? Seriously? On eve of MLK Day?

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga), icon and hero of the Civil Rights Movement, dared to avow that he won’t attend Trump’s inauguration because Trump wasn’t elected legitimately. Lewis told MSNBC yesterday,

I believe in forgiveness. I believe in trying to work with people. It will be hard. It’s going to be very difficult. I don’t see this president-elect as a legitimate president.

Referring to the now generally accepted fact that Russia, under Putin’s direction, interfered with the American election by floating fake news and releasing information that would harm Hillary Clinton and boost Trump, Lewis said he thinks “the Russians participated in helping this man get elected. And they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.”

Trump was silent for several hours, seemingly demonstrating that he was beginning to learn to contain himself in the face of critical or unflattering remarks, keeping his little hands off Twitter and remaining silent. In our dreams! Early this morning he tweeted,

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump  8h8 hours ago

Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to……

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump  8h8 hours ago

mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk – no action or results. Sad!

Even Republicans are aghast. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb) tweeted “John Lewis and his ‘talk’ have changed the world.”

The president-elect, who prides himself on having a great brain, demonstrated again(!) how stupid or ignorant he actually is. What possible good could he do himself or his dismal favorability ratings by attacking a civil rights hero, and on the eve of Martin Luther King Day to boot? Does he not know any recent American history? Or does he believe that he can say anything, that every transgression will roll off him?

Apparently so. He deludes himself. He has said that the American people don’t care that he won’t release his tax returns, that only the media cares. Yet polls show that 72 percent of Americans and 65 percent of Republicans want to see Trump’s returns. His answer to every concern about his words and actions is that he won the election anyway.

And so he did. How much longer can that defense shelter him as accusations and revelations keep mounting?

 Official White House Photo by Pete Souza