When Nothing is Easy

I want to help save the United States from falling into a fascist oligarchy or autocracy.

Helping, however, is not easy.

The easiest thing is to write a check or send an online donation, but I want to do something tangible. I need to see that I've done something, see something besides a dwindle in my bank balance.

And yet when I began looking online for ways to send out postcards or otherwise support a federal candidate in my own locality, which is contested in the House election this year, I found little to indicate that even the Democrats support their own candidate.

Websites that offer the option to write postcards pointed me towards North Carolina contested seats. While I understand the need for the Democratic party to keep a majority in the House and to gain a few seats in the Senate, I'm a Virginia girl who has written about local politics for 30 years. If the contest is here in my backyard, then that is what I'm most interested in.

After looking at the "how to write postcards" sites, my heart sank. So many rules. So much rigamarole. So much crap to wade through when all I wanted was addresses and a template on what to say. I sat that aside to return to later.

Then I went in search of the Democratic candidate for the Virginia's 6th District. I found her Facebook page. I found a place to order a sign - and my locality, which she would represent, wasn't even listed as an option for a sign. I had to list my address in the "other" line, which did not leave me feeling very hopeful, I must say.

I doubt I get a sign.

After checking her website. I found there was no option to volunteer to write anything. Options to canvas (go door-to-door) was about it, and I'm not physically able to do that.

I contacted a member of the county's local party simply to ask what was going on. She sent me to someone else, and I was told the money had to go where it mattered most. Meaning, they've already decided to give up the 6th District to the Republican incumbent, who as far as I'm concerned is one the former guy's cult of traitors. He doesn't represent me. He wants my sex to be popping out babies and losing jobs because of "motherhood."

My only option, I learned, was to write postcards for candidates either in northern Virginia localities where there were strong possibilities of wins or write for candidates in other states.

I don't know if Republicans do this, too. If they know a district is generally 70% Democrat, do they not support the Republican running there? I have no idea.

But the Democrats are coming across to me as totally stupid in running this campaign - or any campaign, to be perfectly honest. There is so much that could be blasted across TV screens to show that we are a failing nation - and so much of lays at the feet of a few men, including but not limited to the senator from Kentucky, who has held up many, many changes that would have been helpful to millions of people, and the former guy. 

We could be trying hard to remind the businessmen who have married the evangelicals to create a lockstep of bootlickers that maybe lower taxes isn't the only drumbeat that should sound in their heads. Maybe they need to be reminded that they could lose rights, too. Or that an autocrat, should he so desire, could just snap his fingers and declare that he - as the so-called nation-state - owns the businesses and their profits. It happens in other countries, so yes, it could happen here.

I mean, if they can make women lose their bodily autonomy by stacking SCROTUS, then of course any right can be removed. Even the right to own a business or property because you don't meet certain criteria. Or the right to have as many children as you want. One need only look at other nations to see that "rights" aren't rights at all, if enough people agree that taking "rights" from others is a good thing.

Maybe they need to be reminded that rioting in the streets isn't good for business, either, should the voting situation become dire, should other candidates use the former guy's tactics. And I'm sure someone will.

The Democrats are doing, well, as best I can tell, next to nothing, which makes them at best complicit in the decline of the United States, which is already nearly a third-world nation with nukes, if not actually working to make it happen.

I have thought for a long time that there is no party in this country that actually represents me, a middle-of-the-road person who is apparently caught in the 1970s in my thinking, still believing in the American Dream (as it was laid out for me in my teenage years) even though it's become a fascist nightmare.

I have never registered for a party. I have almost always voted for Democrats because their values align more closely with my own, but they are no longer reaching many people that they need to reach.

They give up too soon, and they don't fight back.

I guess they want to lose.

Maybe the people who don't vote have the right idea, after all.

Regrets - They Have a Few

Lots of people (mostly women) are now posting about the 2016 election and how "if only the Bernie Sanders lovers" and non-voting Democrats had voted, then SCROTUS would have been filled with Democrat appointees instead of the fascists we have there now.

First, I don't believe any member of the Supreme Court should be political. That should be the most nonpolitical appointment in the entire country. I realize the exact opposite is true, but just like everyone else, I'm entitled to my opinion, and that's my opinion on the Supreme Court.

That I now call it SCROTUS is a reflection of what I think of the current majority. I don't have much respect for the Supreme Court at the moment.

Second, why is no one looking back at 2016 and calling it a fraudulent election? The Mueller report did not exonerate the former guy. It merely said, as far as we know since much of it was not made public, that there was no smoking gun. Robert Mueller noted that "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him." Wouldn't we all like to see the full, unredacted report right about now? Can somebody drop that into the conversation?

Third, yesterday this came out of Russia: Russian state television host suggested that Russia is weighing whether to "reinstall" former President Donald Trump "again" as the United States' leader in a future election.

Where are the red flags, the bells and whistles, the yelling and screaming from the left that the 2016 election was fraudulent and rigged? Where were those shouts in 2016? And given that quote from Russia, why isn't this being revisited? They installed the former guy? WTF?

Fourth, if we're so upset about the eradication of Roe v. Wade and the other rulings SCROTUS handed down at the end of June, why are we not leaving our jobs, marching in the street, bringing the country to a total standstill, instead of going on about our day?

Are we really waiting to see what the states do? Do we really think the House and Senate will come together and sing Kum-ba-ya and pass federal legislation to undo what SCROTUS has done?

Slamming people who didn't vote or voted for Jill Stein in 2016 isn't going to help anything. That's only going to anger more people.

We need people to vote in every election, right down to the local dog catcher if that is an option in a locality (it's not in mine). 

Not paying attention is about to cost us (and not just Democrats, I mean everyone) this country. It's ok to feel remorse about the things that have happened, but it's also time to hurry up and get over it. Donate to your local Democratic committee. Donate to local candidates who maybe sort of think the way you do. If you don't have a local candidate, look at highly contested House seats and donate at ActBlue.com, or to the candidate directly.

These are tough times. I get the remorse. I get the angst. I feel it, too. I wanted HRC to win as badly as anyone. However, I'm not going to blame the non-voters or the Bernie lovers. I know the latter group was disappointed, rightfully so, I might add, and non-voters don't vote because they assume it doesn't make a difference anyway.

And if things go downhill in November in 2022 and 2024, the non-voters will be absolutely correct, because we won't be a democratic republic anymore.

We'll be an oligarchy or an autocracy.

And if you think things are bad now, wait until that happens.

Second Class Citizen, Reporting

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) reversed Roe v. Wade. They did not have to overturn this nearly 50-year-old ruling, which became the "law" of the land in 1973. It allowed women to have the final say over their uteruses and made abortion legal.

SCOTUS was ruling on Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization in Mississippi. The case involved restrictions on abortion access. The ruling on the actual case before them was 6-3.

But SCOTUS did not stop there, and with a conservative majority on the court, they went ahead and ruled 5-4 to overturn Roe v. Wade. The four justices who voted to uphold Roe were Roberts, Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayer. The former guy's three stooges - Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Gorsuch - were joined by Thomas and Alito.

The ruling does not make abortion illegal; it removed federal guidelines and laws concerning abortions and returned the issue to the states.

This means that a woman in Kansas could have more rights than a woman in Texas. Or not. It also means the laws could change as the winds blow, as conservatives take state legislatures, or liberals take state legislatures. Women will be twisting like windchimes in a thunderstorm trying to keep up with new laws as governing bodies change.

The end of Roe v. Wade means that women no longer have bodily autonomy over their own selves and cannot make decisions that impact their life forever. 

Yes, I am pro-choice, because I don't believe a parasitic clump of cells should destroy a woman's life. I would never have had an abortion myself, but that doesn't mean I have the right to impose my will upon others.

No one has the right to impose their will upon someone else, whether that's a forced pregnancy or taking a living soul with a gun.

SCOTUS changed 50 years of settled law with no regard for lives that are already here. At the same time SCOTUS made this ruling, they enhanced gun ownership by knocking down a century-old New York City law that restricted conceal carry permits to people with need, so that not any ol' joe could waltz around with a .243 shoved up his or her ass. Talk about hypocrisy.

The federal legislative body has had 50 years to make Roe v. Wade into federal law. They've had a couple of years to make the Equal Rights Amendment a part of the U.S. Constitution, because enough states have passed it now - except there was a timetable that was missed.

I blame every single member of the federal and state legislatures since 1973 for not moving forward to place the important things, like oh, I don't know, women are human beings and have the same bodily autonomy as men, into law.

Additionally, we don't have the infrastructure in place to deal with (a) the effects of botched abortions (did you know that prior to 1973 hospitals in large cities had entire floors dedicated to sepsis abortion patients. They sure did. Guess we'll be seeing those back again.) and (b) no laws to assist women who are now forced to carry and raise a child they didn't want.

Unwanted children grow up being hated by their parents, even if the parents don't expressly come out and say that. It's not a good feeling. And everything becomes the kid's fault. It's the kid's fault if the parents marry. The kid's fault if they fight. The kid's to blame for every fucking thing that comes down the pike, until it's beaten into the child's head that he or she (especially if the kid is a she) is a worthless nothing who should never have been born.

So, what do these lovely young babies that the nation is now forcing to be born have to look forward to?

We don't have enough mental health care to care for the people who are here now, much less the ones that we are going to force to be born.

The government - the Republicans - did all of this without any concern for the realities of life. They did not pass sweeping legislation to ensure that all children have access to healthcare, affordable house, or emotional and/or mental health support.

They have been fighting for this for 40 years without putting anything in place to ensure comprehensive schooling for all children, regardless of need (special needs in particular) and instead are working to kill off the public school system so that education in this country becomes a farce. 

There is no legislation to ensure that these children aren't murdered on a whim by some idiot with a gun. Is that bloody, gory, heartless death more acceptable than an abortion of a bunch of cells?

No legislation is in place to support single parents, grandparents raising their grandchildren, or forcing the male - the other half of the pregnancy equation - to live up to any part of the deed. Doesn't the sperm donor bear some responsibility here?

We have no legislation to support women who must now face prediabetes, eclampsia, or other life-threatening illnesses that a pregnancy can create. We have nothing in place for women who have ectopic pregnancies, and apparently a miscarriage could now, in some states, result in a jail sentence and/or a felony conviction.

There is no legislation to support these women who must now give birth against their will. What if they were molested or raped? What if the pregnancy endangers the woman's life? What if a woman just isn't ready to have a child? But we're going to make them have these children with no support systems in place, nothing to help them raise these babies, nothing to ensure the women and the children will be ok.

States won't step up - they haven't stepped up, ever, so why would they start now? This is no longer a federal issue, so why would the federal government step up?

SCOTUS just destroyed this country, because, as 88-year-old Gloria Steinman said in an Associated Press article, “Obviously, without the right of women and men to make decisions about our own bodies, there is no democracy.”

So here we are.

There is no democracy. Or if any still exists, then, as 76-year-old Heather Boothe said in the same article, we are standing on "a knife’s edge in a contest really between democracy and freedom, and tyranny, a dismantling of freedoms that have been long fought for."

I'm a woman, a second-class citizen, living in an oligarchy that I never wanted.

And I bet when it all blows out, the people who fought for this new government, who are dismantling the progress of the 20th century, will find out they never really wanted what they end up with, too.

He Did Not Act Alone

He did not act alone, this shooter who, at last count, had taken 19 lives and wounded countless others during a massacre in an elementary school in Uvalde, TX yesterday.

Nor did the shooter who took 10 lives at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York on May 14.

And neither did the male (they are almost always male) who killed 13 people in Virginia Beach, VA on May 31, 2019, or man who killed 12 people on November 7, 2018, in Oakland, CA.

The man who killed 17 students in Parkland, FL, in 2018 did not act alone, nor did the man who killed 61 people in Las Vegas, NV on October 1, 2017. Neither did the fellow who killed 50 people in Orlando, FL in 2016, or the guy who killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Or the man who killed 32 at Virginia Tech in 2007.

We all have blood on our hands because we sit back and offer "thoughts and prayers" as if that is going to stop this grotesque mindset that Americans have, this horrific, terrible thought that "owning my gun" is more important than the life of, well, anybody.

Our senators do nothing. This falls mostly on the Republican side, but the Democrats are proving so useless and spineless that I have come to the conclusion they are complicit, not merely complacent, in all of this, or else they'd find a work-around the stupid rules in the Senate and the House. Those are rules, not laws, and rules are meant to be broken from time to time.

Sometimes even laws need to be broken, and sometimes a perceived right is not a right. I am being inundated by opinion pieces telling me women do not have the right to have an abortion under the US Constitution, but everyone (especially men, apparently), has the right to carry a gun, even though when the US Constitution was written "bearing arms" did not mean carrying a gun. It meant being in the damn military. One can't pick and choose "rights" from that dusty document.

We have to be the most gruesome, gory, heartless, warlike bunch of people to ever live on this planet.

The blood running down the street belongs to all of us, because we accept this as the way of life in the USA. This doesn't happen in other countries. Only here. Anybody want to take a guess as to why that is?

I am all for gun reform. I am for background checks, for making people who own guns carry appropriate insurance, for taking them away from people who shouldn't have them. I am a gun owner - I live on a farm and occasionally they're necessary, when a coyote is killing a calf, or a rabid groundhog goes after a dog. My husband hunts. He pays a fee to get a license every year. 

We both have had gun training. I treat guns with the utmost respect; they are locked up.

But I've blood on my hands, too. I haven't called my legislator every day demanding something be done. I've written a few letters from time to time, but it's not a constant drumbeat.

Why is it acceptable that young children have to have lock down drills in case of a massive shooting incident in this country? Why must we thrive on fear - not only of other countries, but of our own people? I do not believe any of this has to be because "it is what it is." Acceptance indicates lack of desire to change.

I do not accept this.

Isn't it time that we the people, the ones who are really supposed to run this government, stand up and say, no more?

Isn't it time we the people bring the country back to some semblance of sanity? Wasn't one million dead from Covid enough for two years?

My god, how much death do we need to prove our points? How many more elementary school children have to die to prove that certain segments of the population only care about youth when they're in a woman's uterus? Those elementary school children had heartbeats too.

Out, damn spot! Out I say! . . . What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?

Take back our power, people. Wash the blood from our hands, remove the idiots in office, find our footing, and regain our sense of society as a whole. We are all one. We are not islands unto ourselves. We're a society. We're supposed to look out for one another. We're supposed to be brothers and sisters.

It's way past time we act like it.

Traitors Who Profit

Perhaps I should be grateful to all of these folks from the former guy's administration who are putting out books, each one more putrid than the last, citing the many crimes and treasonous acts perpetrated in the name of the United States of America during those horrible four years.

Or maybe I should be grateful to Steve Schmidt, a former Republican and founder of the Lincoln Project, for just now pointing out links between the McCain campaign and Russia.

The threads weave in and out, a tapestry of lies, deceit, deception, and corruption. An afghan throw knitted so deep and so tightly that it would smother the flames of Hell, if I believed in Hell.

But I am not grateful. The people who need to read these words, the people who need to see these connections, will either (a) not read them, or (b) find them entirely appropriate.

And these writers are profiting off of words that should have been said long ago.

Here's a list of some of the books:

Bob Woodward’s Fear

Katy Tur’s Unbelievable

Sinking in the Swamp, by reporters Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng

Other books by aides like Cliff Sims, Sean Spicer, and John Bolton

Nightmare Scenario, by Washington Post reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta

The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender published Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, which includes information that the former guy wanted the military to “beat the f***” out of Americans protesting last summer for racial justice, and to “crack their skulls.”

I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year, from Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker. They also wrote A Very Stable Genius.

Michael Wolff authored Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency. He also wrote Fire and Fury, which the former guy tried to suppress. He'd also written Siege: Trump Under Fire in 2019.

Then there's Jonathan Karl’s Betrayal, a tell-all about the final weeks of the Trump presidency.

And more.

The thing is, while much of this information was reported in tiny little stories in newspapers that no one reads anymore, the public missed it. This information was there and available even as the nation was being flushed down the proverbial toilet.

No one paid attention.

And frankly, it is frustrating to the nth degree that these threads and weaves were not made more public.

And it is even more frustrating that the public is still not paying attention, is still running rampage under some fuming crowd sickness, a fugue state that has gripped at least a third of the nation and turned them into cult zombies who cannot think for themselves. They do not realize that not only are they jeopardizing their own futures, but they are also totally demolishing any hope their children might have had of living a decent and tolerable life.

I'm not talking about the Republican Party. The Republican Party that I knew - the one my father and my brother still think they belong to as businessmen - does not exist any longer. It has been taken over by a rabid wave of fascist evangelical lunatics who are, at the least, the equivalent of an American Taliban. A group of people who think things are fine so long as what one does is something they agree with. And if you're different, or don't agree with them, then you become other, as if it were you (the Democrat, the LBGQT, the teacher, the firefighter, the police officer, the black person, the Native American, whoever, really) who had turned into some frothing werewolf, when the reality is, they are the ones living now in an alternate world, a world that doesn't recognize reality and doesn't know it when it hits them upside the head with a voting machine.

While so many are busy trying to redo the 2020 election - STILL - I want someone to investigate the 2016 election.

Because I think that one was the one that was rigged. That one was the one that gave us Putin's puppet, and let the hounds of hell loose, leaving the rest of us to sit and try to furiously crochet our way out of the fires of hell on earth.

And as for these assholes who are profiting off of knowledge that should have been shouted from rooftops and made public years ago, even a decade ago, if not longer, shame on you. You are no American.

You're a fucking traitor.

I'm Alive Because of Roe v Wade

I'm 100 percent certain that if Roe v Wade were not the law of the land in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when I was trying desperately to have a child, I'd be dead.

My endometriosis was severe. Endometriosis is a disorder in which the tissue similar to the inner lining of the uterus (endometrium) grows outside the uterus. This results in pelvic pain and irregular menstrual cycle. The tissue can migrate all over the pelvic area and has even been found in the lungs of some women.

In my case, the first signs were pain. Pain during menstruation. Pain during intercourse. Pain all the time, some months.

Birth control pills helped control the pain so I could function. Otherwise, I would miss an average of two or three days of work a month. Over the counter pain pills didn't help. 

It is hard to hold a job or go to school and deal with that kind of pain. It is hard to have a marriage and have that kind of pain. It's hard to do much of anything with that kind of pain, quite frankly.

Since the use of birth control pills is something that many people believe may be threatened by overturning Roe v Wade, I would not have been able to utilize that outlet to control my health problem.

I married at age 20. I wasn't ready to have a child at the age of 20. We had little money when we married - taxes that first year wiped out our savings, and it took us a while to recover from that blow. (It was called the marriage penalty tax back then. I think they may have done away with that, but I'm not certain.)

The birth control pill was essential not only for birth control but for my pain and problems. We built our house in 1987 and in December of that year, I stopped taking the birth control pill so we could attempt to have a baby.

I was 24 years old.

Almost one month to the day I'd stopped taking birth control pills, I developed a fever and horrible pain in my abdomen. I went to my doctor who sent me off to a gynecologist immediately. He did a sonogram and saw that I had a huge cyst on my right ovary. 

It was the size of a grapefruit, and it had twisted. I had sepsis. And there was a second spot they couldn't identify on the sonogram.

It was possible this second spot was an ectopic pregnancy, (a baby outside of the womb) and without Roe v Wade, the doctor wouldn't have been able to operate. He could only have watched me die.

But because Roe v Wade was the law (and currently still is), the doctor sent me to the hospital, where they performed emergency surgery and saved my life. And while it turned out to be not one but two cysts, technology in 1987 was not what it is today. They couldn't have been sure.

And to be honest, I don't know if any of the treatment I received afterwards to try to help me have a child would be allowed without Roe v Wade. After the removal of the cysts, the doctor put me on a high-powered dose of a drug that stopped my menstrual cycle for months. The idea was to trick my body into a false pregnancy with these pills so as to give my body time to stop creating the endometrial tissue.

But it did not work. As soon as the doctor took me off of those drugs so we could try to have a child again, the cysts returned.

And I had another life-saving surgery because I again had sepsis. The cysts kept twisting and locking in infection. They grew huge. They were the size of grapefruits.

And each time the doctors opened me up and went in, they removed scar tissue and pieces of my ovaries, until finally, in 1992, after having already opened up my abdomen seven times as my husband and I tried to have a child, the doctors performed a hysterectomy. (They left the scar tissue because there was so much of it, but the problems that created is another story.)

I was 29 years old. I would never have a child.

If Roe v Wade had not existed, I would have died before I was 20. The doctors were sure that the birth control pills kept the cysts from coming on sooner, so without them, I'd have had the cysts much earlier, probably before I married. Would they have seen that second spot and decided it could have been an ectopic pregnancy, and let me die?

And if I'd died at 20, what difference would it have made to the world? Is that how people who want these safeguards to women's health removed see the world? What difference does it make if this woman dies, even if the pregnancy is already null and void (ectopic pregnancies generally do not go to term)? Really, is that how they think?

I know Roe v Wade saved my life when I was trying to have a child.

And now I see a future when women who want to have a child but have issues will die. When the treatment they need may be withheld . . . just because.

It is that simple.

And it is that sad.

What kind of bitter, horrible, twisted people wish such a fate on another human being?

Space . . . the Final Frontier

Challenger explosion. Photo from Nasa.gov

Today is the anniversary of the destruction of Space Shuttle Challenger. On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle was taking off with a teacher, taking a civilian into space.

The shuttle blew up 74 seconds into flight, sending plumes of smoke all over the sky, and killing the seven people on board.

Thousands of students watched the shuttle blow up, as this was supposed to be a lesson in the great technological feats of the US. I remember all the media coverage of the first teacher in space.

This was supposed to be a great victory.

I was traveling in my vehicle on Interstate 581 when I heard on the radio that the shuttle had blown up. I burst into tears and had to pull over. I was late getting to work. They'd heard the news, but it was no big deal.

It was a big deal to me. As a lifelong space and NASA fan, I felt it was a national tragedy - and it was. I think that was the day I learned how indifferent people can be to the things that bring about change and growth.

 

I felt the horror once more when on February 1, 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia began its return to earth, only to break up over Texas about 22 minutes before its scheduled landing. Again, seven people died.

And now we have Bozos and William Shatner flying up into lower earth space, playing with balls and flapping around like toddlers in a McDonald's bouncy room. It's hard to take space flight seriously when it's become a playground for the wealthy.

It's not as if you or I will ever go into space. We don't have the money. Our grandchildren, however, may be ferried to the moon as our beautiful orbiting satellite is conquered by the billionaires who will then claim its resources, whatever they are, and send the poor and uneducated, of which there are unfortunately many in the USA, on shuttle ships to bring those resources back.

It is only a matter of time.

We've made a mockery of science and of something that should have been a source of national pride and great joy for all of the world. Stepping out of the earth's atmosphere is a feat performed only in the last 60 or so years. It is beyond extraordinary. It is science at its finest. It is mankind's greatest achievement.

And today we treat it like a toy.

What a shame. What a crying, damn, shame.

I still watch space flights. We have them a lot, SpaceX flights taking food to the men and women manning the International Space Station. I watch those. I don't watch Bozos or Musk. I don't watch the rich men's toys.

Space, to me, belongs to everyone. All of us can look up at the vastness of the night sky and look at the moon. We can reach out and try to touch a star. This delight, this divine and not-yet-understood realm of reality, should not be owned by anyone.

We all own it, each of us, who can look up in the sky and dream.

But What About . . .

A long time ago, about 2005, I think, for we were at war in Iraq at the time, my husband and I went to Myrtle Beach for our vacation.

Being a news reporter and somewhat gregarious when I'm in public, even though I'm more reclusive and introverted than most folks, I tend to strike up conversations with people as we stand in line or sit and wait for tables or whatever. It's the Gemini in me.

That year, I struck a conversation with a nice couple. They were a little older than we were, and we were talking congenially about the weather and the beach, the things that had changed over the years, and this and that.

Suddenly, abruptly and bristly, and frankly out of nowhere, the man spoke up and said that his wife's cancer, which we'd not even mentioned, would not be cured because of abortion.

"Excuse me?" I said.

"We've let so many people die, probably the one who would have invented the cure for cancer has been aborted. The people who could make the best inventions are the ones women are killing off for their own personal perversions." The man's face reddened. He was nearly apoplectic, and my initial thought was something along the lines of, Holy shit, he's a nut and we're trapped in a line here.

But I also am not one to back to down. And abortion, my dear reader, is a touchy issue. I'd never have had one myself, but I don't think it's my place to tell anyone what they must do, even if it is only for 9 months and they can give the child away after they pop it out, as a Supreme Court Justice recently noted. 

After all, pregnancy carries great risks, emotional, physical, and financial, to the pregnant woman, and who I am to force gestational diabetes on someone, or to make a 12-year-old give birth to her half-sister conceived through incest with her father? Or force a woman to lose her job, or possibly her life, carrying a child she doesn't want?

That was not the tact I took, however. As I am a pacifist, the current war was a better target.

"Could be that we've just murdered the child who could cure cancer in the war in Iraq," I responded. "Or the mother who would have had that child. We're killing so many."

His wife gave the slightest of nods of her agreement with me but said nothing.

"The child who could cure cancer would have come from the United States," he retorted. I raised my eyebrows at that.

"You mean a white child, I suppose."

He nodded.

Fortunately, my husband, ever nonconfrontational, grabbed me by the arm and said, "They've got us a table," and dragged me away before I could become embroiled in an argument with a bigoted white supremacist.

I report this memory because it came to mind as I have read about the recent Supreme Court hearing on a southern state law that basically stops abortion. Many more laws will follow regardless of what the Supreme Court rules, but I write about this because it is a great illustration of what the abortion argument is really about.

It is not about women of color having abortions, or about killing women of color overseas in stupid wars that are for rich men and have nothing to do with protecting this country. 

It is about white women having abortions. It is about racism, it is about misogynistic ideas, it is about control. 

It is not about saving children so they can grow up to cure cancer. Because in order for a child, any child and every child, to grow up to cure cancer, that child must first have opportunity - the opportunity to be fed nutritious food, to live in a loving and supporting home, to have a quality education, to move about unburdened by depression or any other mental illness and be physically fit and appropriately raised.

We don't ensure any of that. In fact, the people who want abortion go to great lengths to ensure that children are not raised with such security.

Until we ensure that every single child born in this country has every opportunity to be the child who can grow up to cure cancer, and we ensure that the women we're forcing to have babies receive prompt, appropriate care, both mentally and physically, paid for and supported with tax dollars, then I support the right of women to choose whether or not to have a child.

Virginia Bleeds

My friend called me around lunchtime and wanted to know on a scale of 1 to 10 how "ticked off are you" that Virginia is now a red state.

"I'm not ticked off. I'm sad," I replied.

"Oh." Not the response she expected, apparently. "Why are you sad?"

"Because this means a backward toss to women's rights, for one."

"Because of abortion?"

"Because of a women's right to her own body, mind, and soul. Not only abortion. Eventually women will lose the right to hold property, to carry a credit card, to hold a job. That's the logical conclusion if you follow the path of the conservative effort to create a theological autocracy."

"Well, that's scary," she said.

Damn right it's scary. What is really scary is that I see Conservatives calling the left Fascists and the left calling Conservatives Fascist. And they're both Fascist, but the Conservatives are the ones careening toward a path of oligarchical theological authoritarianism. The Democrats are simply floundering around trying to figure out how to keep some semblance of democracy from running head on into a brick wall, and doing a poor job of salvaging whatever little bit of the Republic may still be intact.

A very long time ago, the movement toward democracy began in Virginia with something called the Fincastle Resolutions. We don't hear about them much, but in 1774, a group of 15 men (white, landholding men, of course), from Fincastle County, Virginia (which doesn't exist anymore), passed resolutions opposing the King of England and sent them on to the Virginia's Delegation to the First Continental Congress that same year. The First Continental Congress met after the Tea Party incident in Boston.

The Fincastle Resolutions basically said the men of this part of Virginia were willing to die if their rights were not obtained from the Crown of Great Britain. Had King George III acquiesced and set things right, they would have been happy to accept that, but under no circumstances were they going to do his unlawful bidding, especially when it came to free exercise of religion, their liberties, and their properties.

We all know the rest of the story. The shot heard 'round the world, the glorious George Washington (also a Virginian), the American Revolution, and then the beginning of a new political experiment, government of men by men, with rights granted by men, and a republic that pretended to be a democracy came into being.

Fitting, isn't it, that here it will also die. I harbor no illusions that this republic will remain standing or whole. In fact, I harbor no illusions that it still exists.

It doesn't.

We are in fact fairly well set upon a fascist road, regardless of party. When power is removed from the people, then fascism is what steps in, and the people are now powerless on both sides.

They just don't know it yet. Many an authoritarian country in this world holds elections and has votes, but it's still an authoritarian, fascist bastion of hate and spittle, and we are nearly there.

Hitler is the best example of a fascist regime, the one we all know something about. In 1933, he created a decree that gave him the power to take over state governments in order to keep Germany safe. This decree said:

"Thus, restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, on the right of assembly and the right of association, and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications, and warrants for house-searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed."

We're already there, are we not? And so busy worrying about weird crap like critical race theory that we can't see the scope of what has happened.

Here is how Mussolini explained fascism:

"The maxim that society exists only for the well-being and freedom of the individuals composing it does not seem to be in conformity with nature's plans, which care only for the species and seem ready to sacrifice the individual." 

Basically, safety is what matters. We must be safe. 

That is why the former guy was so scary. He touted this safety crap everywhere, and only he would make us safe. Mostly he would make us safe from scary immigrants and people of color. He was blindsided by a virus - a mote in his eye that he never saw coming. He did not make us safe from that.

Fascism happens differently in every instance and in every country. However, it all ends the same:  authoritarianism and brutality. The former guy was brutal.

He also didn't simply show up out of nowhere. No, the American brand of fascism has been coming since the 1970s, a slow and slogging march, unrecognizable because of the creeping way it has writhed its way into the brains of the masses.

It actually started with the Moral Majority - also a Virginia invention, I'm afraid - and those loud and energetic nuts who wanted to bring their brand of morality into every facet of life.

They helped create division, and in turn that division has helped create an inability to accept or handle change. The Reagan years brought about the downsizing of important government functions, leading to the privatization and control of aspects of life that should never have left public hands.

Bush I brought us lies about Willie Horton and that creation of other. He legitimized that.

After that came the Clinton years, NAFTA, and the loss of local jobs. Suddenly we had a totally marginalized society, people who felt victimized who weren't used to feeling that way. And they were still scared of that other, whatever that other was.

Newt Gingrich stoked the fires then with hatred via political division and thus the great divisions of Republican Democrat began - and us versus then that lay not in anything tangible, but in a continual brainwashing via Fox News and other media. Lies, everywhere, finger-pointing to the point of gasping laughter, except none of it was funny. So much of our democracy, we didn't know, had been based upon the statesman's unwritten agreement that gentlemen would indeed be gentlemen, not crass boors who would turn, like bulls in glass shops, into something that would break everything it ran up against. And all of it legal, or at least appearing to be so.

Because we lost our statesmen and replaced them with boors, agents of hate and deceit, we have lost the republic.

And the solutions offered now? Republicans smash more government power over everyone's head until those who are paying attention feel as if they've been beaten by the belts of their fathers. Government power such as killing rights for women, stealing the votes by changing the voting laws, creating so many "others" that no one knows who is on what side, creating chaos in the maelstrom of laws and tweets and vindictiveness. The progressives find these abhorrent.

The other side, meanwhile, cracks down with laws for everyone's safety, too,  - take the vaccine, abide by this law on climate change, listen to Uncle Joe. The conservatives find this abhorrent.

So no one agrees on anything. We are a people awash in ideas and no action, or actions without thought of consequences, and no one following through to the logical conclusions of the farces of the day.

Fascism is not simply here because today Virginia is red.

It has been here for years. Virginia bleeds red today because the United States of America is inherently fascist.

Smile! You Know Who You Are.

 

Not Everything is Political

The discourse continues to be vulgar and dismaying.

This morning, the first entry on my Facebook feed came from author Nora Roberts decrying the awful comments on a post from yesterday, when she announced that Netflix was making a movie out of one of her books. The movie would star Alyssa Milano.

I don't know who Alyssa Milano is. I've heard the name but until I go look her up here in just a second, I am clueless.

She's 48 years old. I have not watched a single thing she's ever starred in. She comes up as a political activist and apparently has something to do with the "me too" movement in 2017. She campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and endorsed Joe Biden. Apparently she is therefore a bad person because she's a Democrat.

So, apparently, is Nora Roberts.

This is important, because we have all lost our way. Social media plays a big role in how we relate to one another today - not as human beings, but as blobs behind keyboards. We aren't looking one another in the eye to speak. We're casting about with our personal agonies being thrown against others, who actually have nothing whatsoever to do with whatever one might be feeling. We need to own our feelings and deal with it, internally and alone, not send that out in the world. The world didn't do whatever it is one thinks it did. The world simply is.

I read the comments on the announcement. It is the same stuff I see elsewhere on TV station news, the local papers, etc. "Libtards are bad and I will never watch this movie." Name calling from adults is so 2016. Isn't it time to grow up, at least a little?

Neither Nora Roberts nor Alyssa Milano knows the majority of the world, and have done nothing to engender such acrimony. If you disagree with either or both of them, keep it to yourself. That is what we used to do. You know, back when people actually spoke to one another.

I will let Ms. Roberts speak for herself here:

I’ve read many of the comments on Laura’s announcement of the Brazen Virtue adaption for Netflix, starring Allysa Milano. And I’m simply and sincerely appalled.

The vitriol, the hatred, the anger, the bitterness and the demands are astounding to me. 

. . . I keep politics off my pages. That’s my choice. Now many readers have dragged their own onto this page, so I’m going to state, for the record. I’m a liberal Democrat. always have been, always will be. And as one, I’ve always believed everyone has a right to their political beliefs, and has a right to express their opinions. But I don’t have to tolerate insults and ugliness on my page. 

For those who want to claim Freedom of Speech—look it up. This FB page isn’t the government. Some have comments on here using ‘liberal’ as a slur, an insult, equating it with communism. Others have used outright slurs against an actress, while claiming she should keep her opinions to herself. (No doubt those same people would be quick to assert their own First Amendment rights.)

Some will never read me again because Milano will headline this adaption. One reader stated she intended to BURN all my books in her collection for this choice of actress.

. . .

Over this past long, hard year, we’ve lost over 400,000 friends, loved ones, neighbors to COVID. We’ve been isolated from each other, and I for one yearn for the company of my pals again. I wonder, truly, why this grief, this hardship hasn’t taught so many of us we need each other. Instead, as illustrated by that comment section, it’s hardened far too many into an us and them mentality.

The viciousness I read in too many comments below hurts my heart. And realizing because I’m a liberal Democrat, many of those comments are directed at me for that reason alone is a real eye-opener.

Watch the movie when it comes out, or don’t. But lobbing nastiness at an actress or threatening me doesn’t do anything but illustrate your own limitations.

You go, Ms. Roberts.

 

Beau of the Fifth Column

I have been watching this fellow on youtube who looks like he comes from the farm here in my county.

However, he is well-spoken, apparently educated, and well-followed, given the hundreds of thousands of views his videos receive.

He recently did one that cited #45 accomplishments. Twelve accomplishments and two negatives, because, as he said, it was his video.

So for my #45 supporting readers, if there are any left, here you go. It's six minutes or so. Watch to the end.

 

Here's the link he lists on his video.

A New Year Now

I feel like a child who has watched the abusing parent being hauled away in a helicopter. After four years of bullying tirades and threats, today's inauguration of a new president was a welcome relief.

It was also a day of many firsts as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayer swore in Kamala Harris as Vice President of the United States.

Harris greets well-wishes after her swearing in ceremony.

After watching men reign supreme for my entire life, finally, a woman represents half of the country in a national office.

Finally.

Only 400 years after the country was founded.

Only 100 years after we obtained the right to vote.

Only four years after a woman ran for the office of president on a major ticket, and lost.

I'm fairly sure the men in my life have no idea what this means to me. My husband has an idea, but I suspect others are clueless. They have always seen themselves reflected back at them; I have not.

No woman ever has. Not in a national elected office.

Oh yes, we have made strides. But now we've made a huge leap.

***

This morning was fraught with fear for me. I would have preferred a more secure area for the ceremony. Inside somewhere. I feared for the life of everyone who was sitting on that balcony. I expected to see a bomb detonate on live TV. I held my breath as I watched, wishing them to hurry it along even as I applauded the bravado, the steadfastness, and the willingness to show to this country and the nation that we will not succumb to those who would deny the U.S. Constitution and its promises.

When Kamala Harris took her oath of office, I teared up. I couldn't help it. I didn't join in with other women who are wearing pearls and Chuck sneakers today, but I didn't need the trappings to admire and be mindful of this historic moment.

When U.S. Supreme Court John Roberts swore in Joseph R. Biden as president of these United States, he actually grinned. A real, honest and from the heart smile. Even my husband commented on it.

I don't think either of us had ever seen him smile before. At least, not enough to note it.

There was little spectacle in this inauguration. Lady Gaga came out in an expected outfit, large physical-distancing skirt trailing around her, a golden dove of peace flying above her bosom. She sang a lovely rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.

Garth Brooks later sang Amazing Grace, asking at the end for everyone to sing with him. He left the podium and enthusiastically hugged everyone within reach. (I was glad to hear commentators note that everyone out there had been tested at least twice for coronavirus in the last 72 hours.)

The National Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman, read an amazing poem. She did a great job. Her cadence reminded me of my college professor, Jeanne Larsen, and how she reads her poetry, stressing certain syllables and lines. 

Gorman's poem was called The Hill We Climb.

Here are a few lines:

We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it,

Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.

And this effort very nearly succeeded.

But while democracy can be periodically delayed,

It can never be permanently defeated.

It was nice to have poetry back in D.C.

I am not naïve enough to think that this is the end of things. It is simply a different beginning. I do not want to go back to the normal of four years ago - that normal wasn't working. I want to move forward, into a brighter and better future.

Find our better angels, as our new president said.

They are out there, somewhere. All we have to do is look around.

Now, I can breathe.

Apophenia

Apophenia is a word I recently learned. It means “the tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things (such as objects or ideas)."

In contrast to an epiphany (a moment of sudden revelation or insight), instances of apophenia do not provide insight into the nature of reality. They also do not create a factual interconnectedness, but instead creates an abnormal meaning that is then considered to be factual or real, even though it is not. 

Instead, what comes from an apophenia is self-referential, solipsistic (the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist, i.e., "this is my opinion and therefore it must be correct"), and paranoid, which would or could include thinking all the news media is out to create harm, that all government officials are evil (unless they're on your side or speaking your language), that people are following you, etc.

In today's world, it would be things like 5G is more than another advancement in technology, it's something sinister (so wear the tinfoil hat), we couldn't possibly have a pandemic without it being some covert operation (even though history is littered with instances of pandemics, the 1918 flu and the Black Plague being but two examples), there can't be a vaccine created so quickly (even though they've been working on vaccines for SARS and related coronaviruses for over a decade now), etc.

The falsehoods spread on social media are great examples of apophenia. It's how people are creating these alternate realities, where up is actually down, where fascism is "democracy," where wearing a mask is taking away rights, where someone can believe that people who went spent four to eight years in college and then went into the media are out to get them by telling untruths, where they really believe that Democrats suck the blood from babies and eat the hearts of their enemies, or whatever that idiotic stuff is that I see float across my Facebook pages from time to time because I haven't managed to unfollow the latest person to swallow the bait.

This word explains a lot about what is going on today. We have a large group of people - less than half of the nation, I suppose, but close enough, who believe certain things. These things are based on opinion, unrationalized suppositions, and information pieces that people are trying to put into a space that fits into their world view.

However, the information doesn't fit into their world view, so they create a way to try to make it fit. For example, Donald Trump was unfit for office right from the start, and those of us who voted against him knew that. He made it blatantly obvious that he was a racist, a white supremacist, that he wanted to be king of the world.

It was also obvious that he knew nothing about government, why we have it, or how it actually functions. 

I do not know how the people who voted for him could overlook all of that. They wanted a change, from what I've read and been told. To be sure, most people don't understand government, but I have been writing about it for 30 years. It has a function, but apparently people who voted for this man could not follow their thoughts through to the logical conclusion of his taking office (which was the insurrection seen on January 6). They wanted someone who could "speak to the common man," which means someone who knew the racist dog whistles. Did they honestly think Donald Trump would sink so low as to have a beer with them on a hot summer day after they've done hard work and smell like a working man? Maybe they did, I don't know.

There's a very good article that explains these delusions in video game terms here. It is where I learned the word.

I have experienced this apophenia myself, mostly visually in patterns. I have always seen things in random designs on bathroom floors, in tile, or in curtains. As a child, I had a dinosaur I saw on the bus ride everyday. It was a patchwork of brush that looked to me like a dinosaur. (This is actually called pareidolia, but it falls under apophenia.)

It's the same way we see things in clouds as they float by. Who hasn't looked up at the sky and thought, oh, that cloud looks like an elephant, or whatever.

This is all well and good and harmless. When these kinds of interpretations move into the real world because one cannot accept reality, truth, or facts, then we begin to have a problem.

Addressing why people cannot accept reality, truth, or facts then becomes the question.

I do not have the answer.

Thursday Thirteen - Insurrection Edition

Biden calls Capitol riot ‘insurrection,' Trump tells mob to 'go home' - live updates (msn.com)

Trump’s election attacks on Twitter spark new online calls for violence as rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol (msn.com)

Statehouses evacuate amid protests in support of Trump | News 4 Buffalo (wivb.com)

Pro-Trump protesters storm Pelosi's office, take over Senate chamber at US Capitol | Fox News

Protesters gather outside state Capitols nationwide as chaos sweeps Congress (nbcnews.com)

Woman shot capitol lockdown as Trump storm building Washington DC | wusa9.com

(8) Officials say the Capitol is secure after pro-Trump mob breached the building and forced lockdown / Twitter

Biden calls Capitol riot ‘insurrection,' Trump tells mob to 'go home' - live updates (msn.com)

TV Networks Shift From Coverage of Electoral Tally to Storming of Capitol - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Watch Live: Trump supporters breach Capitol as violence forces lockdown (cbsnews.com)

How Television News Outmatched Donald Trump on a Dark Day - Variety

Trump supporters, police clash at Capitol steps | king5.com

Georgia Senate results who won news & more | Live Blog | 11alive.com

Washington DC, Parts of Virginia Go Into Curfew After Wednesday's Attack (vadogwood.com)

§2383. Rebellion or insurrection

Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

§2384. Seditious conspiracy

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

lincolnproject.us:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 6, 2021 - “Today’s violence and insurrection in Washington and in state capitols is the direct responsibility of Donald Trump. This shameful culmination of four years of lies, propaganda, dog whistles, gaslighting, and conspiracy theories at the hands of a dangerous, unstable president has now put our Constitutional system of government at risk. While our democracy has been under attack since Donald Trump was elected in 2016, today’s domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol highlights just how much Trump and his enablers have entirely abandoned the principles of the Constitution and the Republic.

This is no longer simply about Donald Trump’s charade. It is an armed, violent, and planned insurrection against the United States of America. It is a moment where the tenets of Trumpism replaced the tenets of American democracy with the inevitable, violent results.

“Make no mistake, this is sedition and insurrection,” said Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson, “People have long asked why the Lincoln Project has targeted Trump’s Republican allies, and today they have their answer. Those Republicans who have endorsed and encouraged Trump’s lawless coup attempt in the House and Senate deserve to be prosecuted, not seated in the halls of government.”

“The House should immediately impeach Donald Trump for directing and provoking this attack. The United States Senate should immediately vote to convict and remove him from office. Any Member of Congress who refuses to do so should be considered a co-conspirator.”

The Lincoln Project is a group of former Republicans who worked to defeat Donald J. Trump’s reelection and will continue to battle Trumpism in America.

****

I could not let the events of yesterday, Wednesday, January 6, 2021, go unmarked in my blog. On this date a mob of terrorists attacked the U.S. Capitol as the House and Senate convened to count the Electoral College ballots for the 2020 election.

At the urging of President Donald Trump, this preplanned coup involved a lack of police protection for the lawmakers, an inordinately long wait for approval for the National Guard to move in, and tweets from the president urging the violence to continue, with minimal "oh, gee, be nice to the guys in blue" tweets in between his continual falsehoods of "I won by a lot. Bigly." (That's all paraphrased because I'm so pissed and upset. His bullshit is on twitter and if anyone wants the exact wording, they can go look it up. (Twitter has blocked his account for 12 hours. I guess it is still up there.)

One person died (update 5:50 a.m. - NPR is reporting 4 deaths); I don't know how or who. More blood on this president's hands, along with the deaths of 350,000+ who have died from his mishandling of the Covid virus, and God only knows what else. 

I am shaking I am so angry. I have known from the moment this man was elected that he was nothing but an autocrat who would be king if he could. He doesn't give a flying fuck about anyone but himself and his cult of simpletons cannot see how he has deluded them and led them astray and right into the gaping maw of fascism. He surely doesn't give a damn about the United States Constitution.

Hopefully by the time this post hits my blog, he will be in a strait jacket or handcuffs.

_____________

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 689th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.