Today, the Orange Buffoon initiated a huge change to the ACA, for the first time since the ACA was put in place, you can again buy junk medical insurance plans. That will not cover pre-existing conditions. The next thing on our list today? The Buffoon has ordered 5,000 (he says today 15,000!!) active duty troops to our southern border to GASP! protect us from the "caravan" of refugees headed this way. The problem with this? Those people are over a 1,000 miles away, and are in no way a threat to us here in the Good ol USA! But, MURICA! He has also said they are authorized to fire on these people. These people fleeing violence in there home countries, who also have temporary asylum granted to them from the Mexican government. Women and children, the elderly, men. Mother's and fathers, sisters and brothers, grandparents! People who just want to be in a place that is safe. Funny thing is, most of those people will never enter the United States. The amount is one-tenth of one per cent of those in the caravan, ever reaching our border. But there are 5000 active duty troop being deployed with orders to shoot these "invaders" I don't recognize this country anymore.
It used to be, that neighbours actually cared for each other, helped each other. It used to be that churches helped those who needed it. What has happened to the country that is guarded by that Lady with Lamp, who has a poem at her feet which says;
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Emma Lazarus
What happened to the country that I grew up in? The one where if there were folks fishing in our creek, my dad would ask them up to the house for a drink, beer for the menfolk and of course kool-aid for the kids, coffee or tea for the ladies. (This was after all the last 1960's) Then perhaps there would be much laughter from the adults, grilling of food, and the sound of children playing. It didn't matter about what colour we all were. We had fun, it didn't matter that we weren't the same religion, we believed in the same god. We played endless games of red rover, and statue maker, hide n seek, and if it was still light, we would go down the path next to the creek and there was a crab apple tree. One of us got to be the Berry Monster. You climbed the tree and chucked the crab apples at each other until a new Berry Monster was chosen. (Rules changed daily, especially the one about how many times you had to bean someone with a crab apple in order to make the monster) This was the creek paths we knew better than any adult. We played on them almost every day, winter, spring, summer and fall. We skated on the ice my dad would clear for us. Didn't matter who wanted to skate. If you had skates, come on over let's go! And always, my dad, teaching us the lessons he learned as a child growing up during WWII. Nazis were the enemy, the KKK were awful people (and in my mind, they were probably Nazis as well as racist, turns out my seven-year-old brain got that right) and the only place a Cross should be, is in a church. I learned a lot of life lessons fishing on that creek and wandering those paths. What I didn't learn, was that someday my country might be taken over by the very people my daddy spent his life teaching me were evil men, who perpetrated evil crimes, on innocent, men, women and children. What I didn't learn was that today in this country, that beautiful Sonnet means nothing to a Trump supporter, to those on the alt-right, those still in the KKK. Because for them, those beautiful words are a threat. They threaten their very way of life. It terrifies them that our beautiful country is someday soon, going to be more Brown, Yellow, and Red than it is White. I love that, I love that diversity in all its glory is where we are headed, and that the old white men in Washington DC can do nothing to stop it. That is unless they send troops to kill all of us who oppose them. Turn this beautiful land into Gilead- if something like that happens, the first thing I'm going to do is head north, with my daughter, and her boyfriend, her Jewish boyfriend. And if I can convince her, I'll be bringing along my eldest and her brood, and her husband. They aren't what you would call Christian, there would be no place for them in Gilead, as there would be no place for me, or mind. Except for my girls, who are the right age to bear children. The only place women would have in a society of that sort, would be a breeder, or am Auntie, or if you were very lucky, married to one of the Elite, who use the handmaids to breed children for the wives who are as barren as the hearts of those who run Gilead. Margaret Atwood must be in a bit of disbelief, everything she wrote about came from history. And you and I both know, history tends to repeat itself. For us, now in 2018, it is the Evangelicals that are pushing us further to this dystopian nightmare, with each law enacted that somehow controls women, what they can and can not do with their bodies, we slip further and further into that future, We slip into programs like the Lebensborn, Hitler's pure Aryan children, created through eugenics. I sit here as I type and I wonder what my place would be in a society like that. I have many skills.. I think that is what tomorrows post is going to be about. What are our places in society, what would we become, if we do indeed become a place like Gilead..
What happened to the country that I grew up in? The one where if there were folks fishing in our creek, my dad would ask them up to the house for a drink, beer for the menfolk and of course kool-aid for the kids, coffee or tea for the ladies. (This was after all the last 1960's) Then perhaps there would be much laughter from the adults, grilling of food, and the sound of children playing. It didn't matter about what colour we all were. We had fun, it didn't matter that we weren't the same religion, we believed in the same god. We played endless games of red rover, and statue maker, hide n seek, and if it was still light, we would go down the path next to the creek and there was a crab apple tree. One of us got to be the Berry Monster. You climbed the tree and chucked the crab apples at each other until a new Berry Monster was chosen. (Rules changed daily, especially the one about how many times you had to bean someone with a crab apple in order to make the monster) This was the creek paths we knew better than any adult. We played on them almost every day, winter, spring, summer and fall. We skated on the ice my dad would clear for us. Didn't matter who wanted to skate. If you had skates, come on over let's go! And always, my dad, teaching us the lessons he learned as a child growing up during WWII. Nazis were the enemy, the KKK were awful people (and in my mind, they were probably Nazis as well as racist, turns out my seven-year-old brain got that right) and the only place a Cross should be, is in a church. I learned a lot of life lessons fishing on that creek and wandering those paths. What I didn't learn, was that someday my country might be taken over by the very people my daddy spent his life teaching me were evil men, who perpetrated evil crimes, on innocent, men, women and children. What I didn't learn was that today in this country, that beautiful Sonnet means nothing to a Trump supporter, to those on the alt-right, those still in the KKK. Because for them, those beautiful words are a threat. They threaten their very way of life. It terrifies them that our beautiful country is someday soon, going to be more Brown, Yellow, and Red than it is White. I love that, I love that diversity in all its glory is where we are headed, and that the old white men in Washington DC can do nothing to stop it. That is unless they send troops to kill all of us who oppose them. Turn this beautiful land into Gilead- if something like that happens, the first thing I'm going to do is head north, with my daughter, and her boyfriend, her Jewish boyfriend. And if I can convince her, I'll be bringing along my eldest and her brood, and her husband. They aren't what you would call Christian, there would be no place for them in Gilead, as there would be no place for me, or mind. Except for my girls, who are the right age to bear children. The only place women would have in a society of that sort, would be a breeder, or am Auntie, or if you were very lucky, married to one of the Elite, who use the handmaids to breed children for the wives who are as barren as the hearts of those who run Gilead. Margaret Atwood must be in a bit of disbelief, everything she wrote about came from history. And you and I both know, history tends to repeat itself. For us, now in 2018, it is the Evangelicals that are pushing us further to this dystopian nightmare, with each law enacted that somehow controls women, what they can and can not do with their bodies, we slip further and further into that future, We slip into programs like the Lebensborn, Hitler's pure Aryan children, created through eugenics. I sit here as I type and I wonder what my place would be in a society like that. I have many skills.. I think that is what tomorrows post is going to be about. What are our places in society, what would we become, if we do indeed become a place like Gilead..
