Annamaria on Monday
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| Photo by Peter Rozovsky |
I tried. I really
tried. With all my might. I didn’t want to do this. I had a great blog in mind about the
invention of paper and other marvelous contributions to humanity by the Muslim
world. It seemed an apt subject for our
times.
But I can’t get my mind off the travesty that hovers, the
disaster that looms. Perhaps it‘s this
gloomy day:
Or the highly disorganized condition of my work in progress:
High anxiety compels me to talk about the election.
A little background on me:
There are those who hold the Old Testament, or the Bible, or the Qur’an
as sacred texts. For almost all my adult
life my most sacred text has been The United States Constitution. It is the centerpiece of the democracy in
which I have had the privilege to thrive.
And it is in danger, as far as I can see, as it has never
been before by the candidacy of the most dangerous, least qualified, most
disgustingly egomaniacal person ever to seek the office of President of United
States. The guy makes the worst
president we have ever had look like St. Francis of Assisi.
I have some pretty incisive insights into what brought my
country to this dangerous pass. I will
spare you having to read them and spare myself the increased blood pressure
points it would cost me to type them out.
I give you pictures instead.
Introducing the Republican Party: the elephant in the
room, with just a small sample of its wrongheadedness in recent
years:
The party of Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower, Jake
Javitts, and Nelson Rockefeller started its long walk to the cliff with Richard
Nixon and has found itself unable to change course since then.
Then it jumped on a runaway train streaking toward the
precipice by choosing its current candidate.
As I write this, the second Presidential Debate is a few
hours in the offing. By the time you
read this, the news may have changed dramatically. But as of now Agent Orange is still their
choice for the next president.
Can you laugh at this?
Posts
I think that last cartoon pretty well sums it up.
ReplyDeleteA worry I have is that Democratic leaning voters may decide that since Hilary now has it all sewn up anyway, they can (a) stay at home and not bother to vote, (b) vote for one of the small party candidates, or (c) write in Bernie Sanders or some other personal favorite. That may be enough to get Trump over the edge, despite the polls.
Or is that just rubbish?
Oh, Michael, you never talk rubbish. In the words of the favorite son of the venue of last night's debate--the late, great Yogi Berra, "It ain't over till it's over." I think (hope, pray) that there will be a huge effort to get out the vote in the swing states. On both sides. The polling over the next few days will give us a clue. If the popular vote was what counted, I'd feel safer. But the electotral college is what matters. Oh, my nerves!
DeleteLess than a month to go. I *MAY* survive. Whether the country does or not... whole 'nother question. I share your pain, AmA. The fact that EVERYONE gets a vote is our democracy's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. There must be a word for that. Zoë?
ReplyDeleteThe will of the people. I trust it. I really do. But so much stands between that will and who gets elected. The will of the majority of the people was that Al Gore should have been president. Look who we got instead. It is that crying need of the founding fathers to unify the colonies that still haunts us. But given the fact that it's what made us a country in the first place, i guess we have to accept that. Look what the lack of such unity is doing to Europe.
DeleteOn the other hand, if we get Present Trump, I will start lobbying for New Yexit!!
I'm sure there is a word for it, EvKa. Who was it who said that democracy was the worst form of government ... with the exception of all other forms of government.
DeleteWinston Churchill
DeleteDon't you think that the leaking of the lewd tapes and the Orange Man's bad performance at the debates and his misogyny and bigotry will be his undoing?
ReplyDeleteI think the release of those tapes cooked his goose.
We'll see. I'm not going to get sick over this, but I may get ready to move out of this hemisphere.
Kathy, My family made a plan for abandoning ship last summer. But things are actually looking up. One of the most influential Republicans in Florida said on the radio this morning that it may take the Republican party a decade to recuperate from the Trump debacle. And that he is voting for Hillary. So it looks as if you are right. We may be out of the woods.
DeleteAnd we now need to start thinking now about how to contain the fallout. Some of his supporters are deplorable--racists, white supremacists, sociopaths. But some are just desperate people left behind by the extreme greed our economy has spawned. We need a way to bring them back.
Hmmm. I have to mull over this. Yes, the deplorables, your list plus anti-Semites, whom I assume are in the white supremacists' category, along with neo-nazis, too. Also, right-wing evangelicals who are against any social progress for women, gay people, etc., and anti-science, etc.
ReplyDeleteActually, some of the Orange Man's flock aren't as low-income as portrayed. But they are Nativists; that's for sure.
I just don't understand why people can't just embrace others. One learns and grows so much from extending oneself to people from different cultures, religious, countries. I never understood the narrow-minded outlooks.
But there's fear and in the South, such a history of bigotry. But the Evil One knows how to whip it up and exacerbate it, telling his followers to beat up protesters in the arenas where he appeared, now threatening patrols at voting locations.
I know some people are still suffering from the Recession, and the subprime mortgage crisis (see movie, "The Big Short and the changes in the economy, loss of manufacturing and other jobs. But that's true across the board among nationalities.
Actually, if one looks at the BLS statistics, Black workers have the highest unemployment rate, and youth.
And the household income of Black families is far lower than of white families.
So, reality check to the Evil One's followers. I don't have sympathy for bigots, not the way they behaved in those arenas.
There needs to be unity, and people need to push for a New Deal-type of job program, put people to work and fix and build infrastructure.
Someone on ABC-TV reported today that the average yearly income of a Trump supporter is $70,000, far more than the median and a lot more than many people are earning.
ReplyDeleteWhat really gets to me about all of this is the SPIN the campaigns put on everything. They take black and say it's white. They make it so anyone watching with common sense says to themselves, "How can I believe anything I hear from anyone?" In my opinion that is doing more to undercut confidence in our institutions than virtually anything the candidates say. It's so bad it's actually giving lawyers a good name!
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, before you say anything, Sis, the Orange guy's folks are far worse offenders.
The media has given the Orange guy far too much coverage, even the more liberal stations. Non-stop playing of his speeches at the start of the shows.
ReplyDeleteThis is whipping up the worst elements in the country, encouraging them to crawl out from under their rocks -- and carry their weapons around. Now their leader is telling them to "patrol" polling places. This is dangerous to the population and infringes on the democratic right to vote.