Seventeen days ago, our country elected a petulant man-child (PMC) to lead our country. Amazingly, there are enough people in this country who don't understand the ramifications of this. Most people I know went into a period of depression and anger....finding it hard to focus on work, or on anything because of feeling stunned that this PMC could actually be elected as the leader of the free world (free is a relative term in 2016, by the way). But what has followed for me and most liberals since has been more fear than anything. Well, fear, and wanting to fight back.
I've had all of those emotions swing back and forth and back again and forth again. But I usually land on fear, or more specifically, terror.
In past years, I've been hesitant to post my political opinions on Facebook or Twitter or anywhere else. But since November 8, I have decided to be silent no more. And I'm supplementing that now with this blog. I don't care if nobody reads it but me. I don't care if people take offense to it--especially right wingers, because much of what I'm feeling will be aimed your way.
So why am I afraid? Well, some of my Republican friends have suggested giving the PMC a chance, that maybe he will surprise us--you know, because he's so successful running his businesses. Well I'm sorry, but I will not give him a chance. He lost the popular vote by over 2 million. Two fucking million. I will not give him the benefit of the doubt. Because I know what kind of person he is and how he's run his campaign and how he's put his transition team and cabinet together.
The PMC put Michael Flynn in charge of National Security. This dude is brutally anti-Muslim, which is perfect for putting the PMC's initiative of not letting Muslims into the country--but extremely dangerous to foreign relations. We start banning Muslims and deporting Mexicans, and you don't think those policies will lead to more terror attacks? Nikki Haley, the sitting Governor of South Carolina, will be the ambassador to the U.N. She has as much foreign policy experience as I do. Dr. Ben Carson as the head of Housing and Urban Development, because, you know, he's black. And most ignorant right wingers associate blacks and urban as being one and the same. So instead of putting Dr. Carson in charge of Health and Human Services, the PMC puts him in a position where he knows nothing, save for growing up in the inner city (really?) and having patients from the inner city. Oh, okay!
Steve Bannon, the Breitbart guy and so-called founder of the "alt-right" movement, is the PMC's chief strategist. Bannon has been described as racist and anti-semitic. Putting a guy like this in that position is the kind of thing that empowers white supremacist groups like the one that convened in DC last weekend, and made no bones about the fact that they felt empowered under the PMC and saluted him the way Hitler's followers did 80 years ago. This is a bit too close to home. I have a Jewish wife and child being raised Jewish and I'm legitimately afraid of being targets.
Kris Kobach is an adviser on immigration. This guy brought us Interstate Crosscheck, the discriminatory group that claimed to fight "voter fraud" and instead wiped off huge swaths of voters in swing states that had last names that sounded African American, Asian or Hispanic, claiming they were voting twice across state lines. Really? Kobach is anti-immigrant, anti-gay, and an all-around jackass. But don't take my word for it. Read this.
Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. Betsy DeVos has ties to the Koch Brothers, who give gazillions of dollars to right wing causes that will slash their taxes, allow them to park money overseas and allow them to spew pollution into the air and have no regulations in place to stop them. DeVos herself is a charter school advocate. Well maybe that's not the right word. She wants to abolish public education in our country. I'm sorry, but education is right, not a privilege, in this country. And DeVos and her minions are going to try and bastardize it.
I could go on. But all of the people the PMC is surrounding himself with are dangerous. But the PMC himself is a problem too. He will not put his assets in a blind trust, and thinks the law protects him from running his businesses and combining them with public service. Let me repeat that--the PMC, who accused Hillary Clinton of being crooked over and over again, is quite literally being corrupt with all of these conflicts of interest, and doesn't really care. His campaign communicated with Russia, who helped him by using their propaganda efforts to sway the election his way. So when Russia invades another Crimea or Georgia, is the PMC going to be tough or is he going to let his buddy Putin do whatever the hell he wants, because he helped get him elected. If alarm bells are not going off in your head right now, you cannot possibly have a pulse or a conscience.
I'm afraid of people who got health care for the first time under Obama will have it taken away by whatever genius replacement plan the righties have in mind.
I'm afraid for women who will not be able to receive care that they need (and yes, sometimes, abortions) from places like Planned Parenthood because religious nut bags are feeling empowered to overturn Roe vs. Wade. You want small government? Stay out of womens' vaginas.
I'm afraid for LGBT people who fought for the right to marry and won, and now may have to face the fact that an all-GOP Congress will try to reverse that law.
I'm afraid of the PMC condemning and trying to control the narrative about him and the right, in the press. If anything the right is guilty of paying for their own narrative, making it so that they are afraid to print truth. This method of propaganda is very much a trait in dictatorships.
I'm afraid of climate change, and the fact that the PMC is a climate change denier and his team will pull us out of the Paris agreement. The rest of the world has to be looking at us with a big giant WTF, but also that we are refusing to do our part to transition to clean energy before climate related weather events and rises in sea level start to affect us in ways we never thought possible in our lifetimes. I'm afraid of this for my kid and for your kids and grand kids. Catastrophe is right around the corner if we ignore climate change in order to rely on fossil fuels for another 50 years.
I'm afraid of Medicare and Social Security being privatized-- another word for putting a profit motive on it, which won't ever have greed attached to it, right? This would never cause another market crash, right?
As I mentioned earlier, I am afraid of increased terror attacks because the rest of the world will become even more hateful and resentful of us. We will answer by more bombing and invading and spending money we don't have on those attacks. It's the Republican way.
I am getting the feeling that this blog post is already too long. I need to reserve my thoughts for more posts instead of ranting, which I can do all day.
But the bottom line is this. We are supposed to be a self-governed democracy, but big money in politics has turned us into an oligarchy, where the rich few rule our country with their money and their pet candidates and their bought judiciaries. We are losing our voice, despite running a candidate who won by over 2 million in the popular vote. We are being condemned for lashing out and protesting the PMC's election--told we are babies who need a diaper and a pacifier. Remember how the Tea Party began? It was in response to Obama being elected. Those same people are attacking our own freedom of speech and the freedom to assemble. They are also calling out people like George Soros for supporting protests. I'm sorry, but you can't call someone "evil" who is a Hungarian born Jew that survived Nazi Germany and who is a huge supporter of human rights groups. And for every Soros that supports left wing causes, there are 100 that support the right--i.e. mostly taking rights away from people and trying to silence them.
Can you tell I'm pissed off? This was a rambling post, and after this my posts will be more specific. But we cannot afford to be silent. We need to stop the PMC administration from even happening, if possible. It's dangerous, corrupt and if you couldn't tell from the reactions of most people the past seventeen days, extremely unsettling.
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