America's Fault Lines: How Trump Thrives

I haven't written here for a long time, but it's not my fault.

Somebody's to blame and I'm going to find out who it is.
 
I'll check on it and get back to you.  I promise.

So, we're good?  Okay, moving on:

Donald Trump is president of the United States (I know!) and the reason he's president is because  nobody in the entire country cared about the little people left behind when the gazillionaires took over until the billionaire with bigly ideas came along.

We might have had Hillary as president! Think of that! Thank goodness for those emails! Nobody liked her, anyway.

More than a year and a half in, Trump is still president but it's okay because the Democrats are wusses and it's a tough world out there. Nobody likes them, anyway.

Trump is a congenital liar and a verifiable weirdo but a whole bunch of Americans seem to like that in a president. It can't be them. It must be us.

Vladimir Putin might be pulling Trump's strings but Obamacare is dead in the water and poor people won't be allowed to game the system, so that's something. Right?

They're separating refugee families, kidnapping their kids, losing them and adopting them out, but it has to be done to send a message that asylum in America is not available to brown people.

We have to put up with Trump and his regime because if we don't we might be stuck with judges who just don't get it that atheists, non-Christians, gays, blacks, browns, blues, women, poor people, sick people, and all-around non-Republicans don't have a place here, either.

The stock market is up! We're doing great! Okay, maybe not you or me, but that guy over there is ecstatic. Well, no, of course he's not one of us, but look how happy he is!

The UN, NATO...those outsiders are sucking us dry! And how about that China, folks? North Korea? Venezuela? Iran? England? France? And now CANADA! It's a good thing Trump came along when he did. You have to admit, nobody handles those foreigners like our guy.

Big guns, massacres, and the NRA. It's America. We have a right to shoot ourselves up, no matter what the second Amendment says about well-regulated militias or some such.

Flint, Puerto Rico, New Jersey? Terrible what happened to them but can they quit whining? After all we've done for them?

Lots of people are writing bad things about Trump and his administration. Just awful.  Books, articles, essays, blogs...all against the president the most like Lincoln on this earth. This man who has the best words and hires the best people and who alone can fix us. The American press--enemies of the people--can't stand his success.They're so jealous.

And then there's God. God has taken to shining His countenance upon Donald Trump. I'm having a hard time with this one, too, but the people saying it swear on their dog-eared bibles that that's what God has told them. So let me ask you--has God ever spoken to you like that? No? Me, neither. I rest their case.

But the kicker is abortion. Yes, lets just say it. It's the be-all, end-all perfect scapegoat and the thing that cements Donald Trump in his cushy digs inside our White House.  If we could just eradicate abortions we wouldn't be where we are right now.

But everybody loves the president. He's the most successful president ever.

EVER.

And if he's impeached it's the voters' fault for not voting to keep him safe from Democrats.

Democrats who, we all know, are wusses, snowflakes, losers, and getting meaner by the day.  Really, really crooked, those people.

The whole thing is silly. There's nothing wrong here. It'll be fine. It'll be better than fine. It'll be so great!

As Dear Leader says--and I quote: "Stick with us. Don't believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening."

So in closing I'd just like to say I'm not responsible for anything you've just read here. The truth is, I hardly know this person. Met her once or twice. Maybe had my picture taken with her. But that's it.

(Cross-posted at Crooks & Liars and Medium)

Let's be Honest. Anti-Abortion Doesn't Make You Pro-Life.

I'll get right to it: I'm on the side of every woman who chooses abortion as a solution to what she considers a problem in her life. I don't need to know her story. I don't need to insert myself in her decision-making. I don't need to be judge and jury as she goes through the act of aborting a fetus.

I do need to support her decision against those who chant "Abortion is murder" and "Baby killer!" I need to let her know her worth is not any more, any less because her choices about motherhood are different from someone else's.

 I can  do this without hesitation, without equivocation, and I do it as a woman who worked hard at conceiving my three children, never once considering abortion as a solution for an unwanted pregnancy. I can do this because it's not about me. My own life, my own feelings, my own sense of right and wrong, has nothing to do with any woman's decision to abort.

So let me speak directly to those who throw out that phrase "pro-life", as if aborting a fetus is the be-all,end-all of life as we know it here on earth. If you insist on inserting yourself into any woman's life, deciding for her that she must carry a fetus to term, you can't, in all that's holy, stop there.

If you force a woman to bear a child she doesn't want, it should be on you to insure health, wealth, and happiness to both. The real sin is in turning your back on her once your interference brings about the outcome you were hoping for.

Children don't raise themselves. Women don't suddenly become Mother Mary at the birth. Real life doesn't suddenly become wondrous or heavenly on the appearance of a baby.

You can't possibly understand the factors in a woman's life that would bring her to a decision to abort. It's clear you don't care. That's how you lose your case. You don't care.

 We could spend the rest of our days defining life: When does it start? What makes it precious? Who gets to decide? None of it helps the woman who finds herself pregnant with an unwanted child.

You need to stop. I'm a mother who loved that life--reveled in it--and I'm begging you to stop.

Too many of you have used abortion as the single issue bringing you to the voting booth, and, for the most part, your choices have been piss-poor. You've put people in power who are intent on controlling our lives from birth to death, who are working to deconstruct every comfort, every gain, every protection, and you've done it without any deep thought beyond putting an end to abortion.

Abortion won't end. Closing clinics, forcing women to wait, to get permission, to endure indoctrination--none of it will stop abortions. Praying won't stop abortions.

You know what affects abortions? Free, readily available contraceptives for both men and women, economic stability, sex education, free or inexpensive child care, work schedules allowing for parenthood, a promise to value every single life, regardless of color, creed, or nationality. All of that. In many cases abortion is more than a right--it's a necessity. Whatever the reason, the woman and her doctor get to choose. You don't.

You must know by now that Planned Parenthood provides essential services to millions of women and families who wouldn't otherwise have access to obstetric or gynecological health care. You know that abortion or abortion education is an infinitesimal part of their work. You choose to believe the lies. You cheer when clinics close. You need to stop.

If you voted for Donald Trump or any other slug purely because you thought they would bring an end to Roe v Wade, you need to recalculate. How is the sanctity of life better under them? If your personal life is okay, what you do about the suffering of others under this regime is now your obligation. It's on you to prove all life is precious.

If you can watch poverty programs disappear and health care become increasingly for-profit, knowing it's the children who will be harmed most, you need to tell me how you can do that and still insist you care about the child.

If you can watch mothers and children being torn apart, separated, because the mother dared to want a better life in America for her kids--if you can watch that and do nothing, you've lost any chance at staking a claim for decency.

Life begins in the womb but can thrive only in a culture where kindness and humanity are the norm. If we were ever there, we're swiftly moving away. You must see that. If you care more about fetuses than you do about the lives of people trying to exist, to survive, in a world turning against them, you need to stop. This can't be who you really are.

_____________

Cross posted at Crooks &Liars.

These Children Are Lost and They've Entered Our Village

Thousands of Latin American children have been arriving in the U.S. over the weeks and months, in scenarios more like that of a fictitious screenplay than of real life.  Out-of-control gangs, drug cartels, and corrupt government officials are the antagonists in horror stories of a kind we can only imagine. Poverty, exploitation, rape, torture, murder--so common now in Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, there is little chance those countries will ever float free.

The parents, seeing no future for their children, have taken the most extreme, heartbreaking measures: they're sending their young ones away.  They're forced to pay dubious characters large sums of money to transport their kids over the Mexico-U.S border into what they've been told would almost assuredly be a safe sanctuary.

The children, some of them barely walking age, don't know why they were sent away or why they're here.  They don't even know where "here" is.  They're in a strange place, far from anything familiar,  their only safety in a group of other terrified children.

The older ones, hardly old enough to take care of themselves, have been charged with caring for the young.  By the time they've reached the border leading into the U.S, they've traveled over a thousand miles from home.  They're dirty and hungry and the fear of what's ahead (or behind) stays with them every waking moment.

Once across the border they're in desperate need of some proof that they are safe.  The promise was that the hellish thousand-mile journey would be worth it in order to get them to a place where they could breathe free, where they could ease their own fears and those of the smaller children they carried, and where, maybe, possibly, they might finally face a life where there is hope.

Instead, soon after they cross the border they're being met either by officials who move them into jail-like pens where they'll wait until, most likely, they'll be sent back to their home countries, or--and this is where it gets crazy--by angry protesters carrying ugly signs telling these small, defenseless beings to go home.  They're being told by snarling grown-ups that we don't want them here.

These children are refugees from war-torn countries.  We are the kind of country that demands of other countries the safe passage of refugees.  The U.N has already declared these fleeing Latin American children refugees and is asking the United States to treat them accordingly.  If we turn these children away, forcing them to return to their homes, we do it knowing we're sending them back to a life of abject, unrelenting misery. 

There is no good answer, no ready solution when thousands of children arrive at our borders without our permission, but at this moment we're in the throes of a humanitarian emergency.  We have children in need in our midst and if we're who we think we are, we will dry their tears and calm their fears.  We will fill their bellies and tuck them into warm beds.  We will keep them safe.  They came out of the darkness and into our light.  While we didn't ask for this, they are children and they are here and now it's our job to take care of them.   

  So who are these screaming, sign-carrying monsters who see these kids as some kind of marauding enemy?  Where do they come from?  Who taught them to hate so broadly they think nothing of scaring already terrified kids?

This was the scene near an intake center in Murrieta, California last week.  The buses being held back by American-flag-waving protesters are full of scared kids who spent many uncomfortable if not terrifying days trying to get to our border and the safety beyond.  They were instead caught by border patrol agents and put on these buses heading for a detention center, where they're to be housed until our people can figure out what to do with them.

In quiet moments I see in my mind's eye busloads of frightened children.  I see a menacing mob pushing toward those buses, blocking the drivers from moving forward.  I see signs that say, "Go away!  We don't want you here!"  And I have to remind myself that this is not a scene from their own ravaged countries but is, instead, a scene unfolding in the United States of America. 

I worry about those children and what will happen to them, but I worry, too, about the people waving those signs and turning away busloads of frightened, defenseless children.  They are a problem; their numbers are growing, and someday soon, when we've figured out how to keep those kids safe, we're going to have to figure out how we're going to live among people who would knowingly, purposely do this.

(Cross-posted at Dagblog and Alan Colmes' Liberaland. Featured on Crooks and Liars MBRU)