Michigan and Connecticut

Ah!  Today I was going to write about what is going on in Michigan with Governor Rick Snyder jamming through union-busting legislature turning Michigan in a “right-to-work” state.  And if that isn’t a misnomer I’ve never seen one.  As some wit dubbed it, the “right-to-work for less” law.  On top of that, Snyder and the Michigan legislature are expanding their right to dissolve local governments the Governor deems to be in financial straits and for him to appoint a “manager” to oversee their finances, and to take the “appropriate” steps to rectify the situation.  Bull pucky!!  As a former local elected official, I find this about as totalitarian as one can get.  The people elect these officials.  If the people don’t like what the officials are doing they can vote them out of office.  The state has no business dissolving a local elected body!!

But I can write very little today.  My husband and I lost a child, and although it was many years ago, when something like the shooting in Connecticut occurs, the old tapes begin to replay.  So forgive the shortness of this posting, and contact your state officials to reinstate the ban on assault weapons, and guns that have multi-bullet clips.  That would be an excellent first step to stop this insanity. 

The Emergency Room on Election Day?

The emergency room on election day?  Why was I there?  As a patient!  Read on.

This election was really nerve racking for me.  The reasons for it were things that happened both before, during, and after the Republican Primary season, and all of the debates.  I’ll list them, not in any order because I didn’t take notes for one thing as to which came first, but these are what are in my memory.

One of the first events that really impressed me was when Rick Perry acknowledged that Texas had more executions than any other state, and the audience cheered.  Death is a good thing for ‘those people’.  Whoever they are, but then, they’re not us.

We had the audience who booed the gay soldier who had called in from either Iraq or Afghanistan to ask what the candidate’s opinion was on the military policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell”.  This was a young man who was putting his life in danger to protect that audience, and they booed the fact that he acknowledged he was gay. 

We had Mitt Romney stating he would eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood, regardless of the fact that the organization receives no federal funding for the 3% of its clients who have abortions, while the rest of the services are for women’s health, like cancer screening.  For the first time in my life I donated to Planned Parenthood I was so angry.

Who could forget Romney’s infamous talk to a group of his peers, discussing how different the 47% were from them.  And how much less as humans the 47% are.

Arizona passed their infamous 1070 law that allowed law enforcement to stop anyone who had committed any transgression, no matter how small, and ask them for their “papers”, making Hispanics or anyone who is darker into someone not like “us”.

We had Todd Akin and his “legitimate rape” comments, and Richard Murdock and his comments that pregnancy after rape was something God intended.  Then of course there were Rush Limbaugh’s horrible attacks on Sandra Fluke, and Romney’s spineless comments regarding those attacks. 

There was the transvaginal probe (I never in my youth thought I would ever write something like that) discussion, and the two women State Senators who mentioned the word vagina in whatever state legislature that was and were silenced and forbidden to speak in the chambers because of their “offensive” language.

This was not all in the past.  Currently the GOP controlled House of Representatives is refusing to pass the Violence Against Women Act because it contains provisions that also protect Native American women and women who may be in this country illegally.  What?  They don’t need protection as well as white women?

Sometime ago a good friend of mine told me that my mind “crochets” connections between events that others often don’t see.  In this case I was crocheting connections between all of the articles I had read on what describes an authoritarian, or totalitarian, government, and what these events meant to me.  What I was hearing was either an accidental or intentional marginalizing of “the other”.  That is, people who were different in color or culture from white people, or women who did not “behave” the way white men thought they should act.  This last I find very distressing since it is the way I was raised.  Nice girls didn’t speak, dress, act outside the generally accepted norms set down by the leaders of our culture, who were by definition, male.

I could see in this election a frightening drift toward an authoritarian, or totalitarian, form of government where workers (unions), women, people of color were of little or no value other than what they could provide to the elite of the country.  The population was being divided into “makers or takers” societal slots.  If one received any government assistance because of need, then one was a “taker”, and to be denigrated.  If one received subsidies from the government for one’s business that is deemed to be the way things should be.  Of course, no one mentioned that profits produced by these subsidies found their way into the pockets of the business people.  After all, they worked hard for those profits!  The workers were expected to work hard as well, but that was their lot in life.  Not to worry about them.

For my birthday this year, I received a little book from someone who teaches Holocaust studies at a community college.  The book is a compilation of thoughts from people who survived the camps, and the first and second generations to follow them.  There are historical comments as well.  The title is, “We Are What We Remember”, compiled by Konrad Gorg.  (In German, there is an umlaut over the ‘o’.)  On page 64 is a comment by Harald Welzer.  His citation is in German, so if you want to know what it is, look him up.  The title of his comment is ‘shifting baselines’.

The Nazi era provides an insight

From which one can learn something about the process

in which people choose inhumanity willingly,

indifferently or reluctantly.

The emergence of such a process is not a specifically German phenomenon.

There have been other genocides after the Holocaust

and their starting point is always a ‘categorical distinction between human groups.’

Such distinctions, however, do not remain abstract,

but were regularly translated into a social practice,

in which one considers it to be self-evident

that for different groups exist different laws and standards of conduct

and where in the end it is even morally valid to humiliate others,

deprive them of their rights, rob, deport and finally murder them.

Thereby it is certainly a difference,

if I change to the other side of the street

when I meet a Jewish friend in order to avoid an embarrassing situation,

or move into the beautiful apartment of a Jewish family

who had earlier been forcefully expelled,

or if I order the death of a man by signing a medical form,

or whether I design the ovens of the crematorium,

or whether I as a member of one of the Reserve-Bataillons,

murder Jewish women and children.

All these are qualitatively different stages,

which vary in difficulty to cross over into the next stage.

But I fear that these are ultimately a continuum

at which the starting point is something seemingly innocuous,

and which the end point is marked by destruction.

For most people it is important only that they have managed the first steps

to enable them to step over into the last.

The perfidy, however, is that to the vast majority,

when crossing from the first stage, the last still appears quite intolerable;

while there seems to be good reason to take just the first not-so-grievous step,

this is perhaps just a little offence

against an already fragile inner conviction,

against a morally uncomfortable feeling,

but this is the moment in which the decision for inhumanity

has already been made. 

(the term ‘shifting baselines’ in social psychology describes the following phenomenon: in many people insidious changes in the social reality dislocates their perception step by step and at the same time their associated moral evaluation) 

Fortunately for me, my trip to the ER was only for anxiety.  All the symptoms disappeared when it was announced that the American people had rejected dividing us among ourselves. 

 

 

 

Wow! What a Thanksgiving We Had!!

Wow!  What a Thanksgiving we had!! 

Although I pride myself on not being superstitious, the fact that we were going to have 13 for dinner sort of sat in the back of my head.  I even counted our delightful 3 year old great granddaughter as an adult (after all she would be seated at the table with us), but still 13.  My niece and her husband were coming up from Los Angeles and called to let us know when they left Glendale, CA.  Everyone else was here when they arrived, but behind them came a Volkswagen.  We all drive Suburu’s or Honda’s, and who was this Volkswagen?  Much to our delightful surprise our daughter and son-in-law from Tucson, AZ, had driven to our niece’s house Wednesday, and on up Thursday morning.  Not only were we thrilled to see them, but it made 15 for dinner!  It was the first time in years that all four of our daughters were here at the same time. 

I had prepared and stuffed the turkey, and all else was sort of pot-luck, except the mashed potatoes and gravy.  Our two great granddaughters, one 10 and one 3, were to make the mashed potatoes, so of course the 3 year old had to stand on a three-step stool to get her high enough to reach the sink so she could help peel the potatoes.  Their mom cut up the potatoes, added the water and salt and put the potatoes on the stove.  A son-in-law helped drain the water out later, but from then on the 10 year old mashed them by hand, added the right amount of milk and butter, and they couldn’t have been better.   

The only small catastrophe came early on when our friend pulled on the end of our ancient oak table to pull it out for the leaf, and the lip under the edge came off in his hands.  The poor fellow had the most horrified look on his face, but we assured him it was glued on in the first place, so could be re-glued with not much of a problem.  We all got around the table with enough room.  The other guests did not come in for dinner.  That was the 8 dogs, one cat, and two parrots that came with the group.  The cat and 3 dogs are ours – the rest were visiting.   

We repeated the whole thing on Saturday with a birthday party for one of our daughters.  Two from Thanksgiving weren’t here, but my nephew and his wife came and brought some terrific apples from their place further up the canyon.  We are still noshing on them.  We had the 8 dogs, 1 cat and 2 parrots.  Everyone left for home after the party, though we got some pictures.  There was much laughing at both parties, good conversations although we avoided the topic of politics and the election when one much loved son-in-law who is quite conservative was around.  It’s amazing how fast one can switch topics! 

All in all, a great party time, and we had much to be grateful for.  Most of the family is basically healthy (colds and stuff don’t count), gainfully employed or in school, or both. 

 

 

Very Short Blog!

This is wishing that you all had a very Happy Thanksgiving.  This is a very short blog this time because we have a house full of family, and tomorrow almost all of our family will be here.  Even the ones from out of state, who really gave us a great surprise.  Although I treasure all of those in whatever country read this, and for whatever reason, I’m sure you know that family comes first.  We treasure all of ours.  Until next week, then.

A Sex Scandal? How Nice!

What a relief to have a sex scandal to concentrate on.  After this past election a good sex scandal almost seems quaint.  After all, the only person Petraeus lied to was his wife.  During the campaign, the GOP seemed intent on lying to the entire country.  It reminded me of an old not so nice comment of mine:  “When a Democrat screws someone, it is usually only one person at a time.  When a Republican does it, it is the whole damn country.”  Does this mean Petraeus is a Democrat? 

So, you can imagine my horror this morning to notice a couple of articles asking whether it will be Clinton (Hilary) and Palin for President in 1916.  Let the voting machines at least cool off from this election before jumping ahead 3 years. That is when the primary elections will be so even if the general election is in four years we will be bombarded starting much earlier. 

Actually, in our house we missed all of that TV advertising.  We live so far out in the country we have a satellite dish, and the programs we watched were pretty ad free.  Of course the pundits would run a particularly offensive ad so we would know what they were commenting on, but usually it was never more than one every hour, unless the ad was so egregious that more than one pundit discussed it. 

The big other whoop-de-do of the day is Bhengazi, with John McCain doing most of the whooping.  He has forgotten, either deliberately or otherwise, that it was Congress that turned down the budget request from the State Department for more funding for security at foreign consulates and embassies.  Whether the host nation provides security or not, the US needs to make sure that the sites are secure.  Anyway, this whooping is so obviously politically motivated to make trouble for President Obama that I wonder that McCain’s colleagues and family don’t take him aside and tell him to cool it.  He is slowly losing the respect that many of us have had for him for years.   

Other than trying not to fall off a non-existent “fiscal cliff” (non-existent because it is something the Republicans manipulated into existence), a sex scandal involving the highest intelligence officer in the nation, starting the 1916 Presidential race already, another Republican made scandal involving the incidents in Benghazi, there is not too much to write about. 

For my readers in the United States, I wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That Supercilious Syrupy-Sweet Smirk No More!

That condescending smirk on Romney’s face whenever he was literally forced to listen to someone he considered, well, not quite what the person ought to be was most unbearable.  The other person could be a female, black man even if he was the President of the United States, a female reporter for sure, or a female debate moderator, and on and on.  That smirk epitomized everything that was offensive in the Republican platform this election season.  It let the rest of us know that unless we belonged to that group of white people who were affluent we were, well, just not quite, well, you know.  And when Romney was to be elected, those of us who were not quite, you know, would be put back in our places and let the real Americans, the white male affluent Americans, take back their country.  After all, they are the makers as opposed to the rest of us who are the takers. 

The night after the election results were announced, I couldn’t really sleep very well.  As I lay there, I let my thoughts roam over some of the events of my life that occurred during the time the Republicans wanted to take us back to.  In the 1930’s I remember my parents arguing over whether my mother ought to be giving sandwiches to the “homeless bums” who came by.  My father thought not.  My husband remembers his parents arguing over the fact that his mother had purchased a bunch of ribbons for $.10 from a woman who had come by the house and claimed she was hungry.  His father thought not. Ten cents in those days was a lot of money.  Or my own non-understanding of why my brother and I had to eat meat and vegetables every night when my parents got to eat chili beans.   

Or later when I was about 10 years old we moved to what was then the country.  The school we attended had a rather large Hispanic population, and the Hispanic kids accepted me with no problems.  I didn’t quite measure up to the white kids expectations.  One Mexican girl in particular and I became sort of friends.  After WWII was over, I learned that her brother’s wife had died shortly after childbirth from peritonitis from a burst appendix.  The brother had taken her to the hospital, but she had been sent home with the admonition that of course she had abdominal pain.  She had just had a baby.  After her death, the brother had given up his fight against undulant fever (which one can get from raw milk) that he had gotten in the service of his country, and he gave up his fight to create a small business with a tractor he had purchased so that he could plow the orchards of the smaller orange growers.  The white farmers thought he was getting above himself, and wanted to be a “white man”.  He died in about 6 months from the fever and grief. 

After I graduated from college in San Jose, California, I immediately went to work for the welfare department.  A job for which I was singularly unprepared.  I had been there a couple of months when a young Mexican couple – a brother and sister – came in to see me.  She had several knife scars on her abdomen where her husband had stabbed her.  They had gone to the police, but the police would do nothing about it because, after all, they were Mexican.  The visit to me was the last resort.  The brother told me that if I could do nothing he would have to kill the husband.  In what I thought was a perfectly reasonable thought, I explained that since they had come to me, if he did kill the husband I would have to say it was pre-meditated murder, and he would either get the death penalty or prison for life, and his wife and children would be deprived of his presence.  So that night the un-married brother killed the husband.  On the advice of a lawyer I quit my job, and moved back to my home town.  I had already met my soon-to-be husband, so that was not a problem.  I followed the case, and the brother received a sentence of 10 years, which, under the circumstances I felt was just.  I didn’t talk about this for some 30 years, needless to say.   

Or after Bill and I were married, and our landlady, who was also a friend, came to our apartment in tears.  Her niece had foolishly walked home from high school alone one evening.  She was snatched by some young men and brutally raped.  Nothing was done because by being by herself at dusk, “she was asking for it”.  Needless to say, her life would never be the same.  At that time, there were no rape counseling centers, or anything else, because it was almost always the girl or woman’s fault.  She was asking for it by the way she walked, or talked or dressed. 

I could go on and tell more stories, but I think you get the idea why I am so thrilled that I never have to see, hear or write about the person, the politics or the policies or the philosophies behind that supercilious syrupy-sweet smirk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Almost Over!!!

 

 

By this time next week, the election, thanks be to God, will be over!!  It is obvious to any reader where I stand on this election.  I know from my time in office that it took me some two years before I felt the least bit comfortable in what I was doing.  Further, as I’ve stated before, I followed someone who was basically incompetent, and as a result it took my legislative assistant and me all of that first two years to respond to all of the constituent concerns that he apparently didn’t know how to do.  And our county had only about a 270,000 population.  It is beyond my comprehension what President Obama had to deal with when he became the President.  Although I have hit on some of these same themes in my previous blogs, I am going to state, once again, why the thought of a President Mitt Romney actually terrifies me. 

The first, of course, is his position on what progressive Catholics refer to as the “pelvic issues”.  Abortion, contraception, and homosexuality to name the most prominent.  It has taken this country some time to understand that women are as perfectly capable of making decisions as men, and in some cases more so when it comes to their own health care.  Men tend to idealize pregnancy, making comments that pregnancy is not a disease.  It does not fit the classic definition of a disease, but it can be just as lethal to a woman and the fetus as a disease, regardless of what Joe Walsh thinks.  If Romney is elected we will go back to the way women were treated when I was a young person, and I don’t want my beloved grand and great-granddaughters to have to live that way. 

The second reason is that it is pretty obvious that these radical right wing Republicans want to reestablish a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) aristocracy.  Since I don’t fit in to the P, or Protestant, part of this, I really question why some conservative Catholic Bishops are encouraging their “flock” to vote for Romney.  The Bishops of course have lost track of the fact that their “flock” is no longer recognizing them as legitimate “shepherds”.  The radical right has forgotten that the 99% of us vote.  Or perhaps that is why the voting machines in Ohio have ties to businesses that Romney has ties with. 

The third reason is that the safety net for American citizens will be shredded.  One never knows when one will need this safety net, including health care.  We can assume that possibly when one is older, but I know plenty of younger people who need help now and then, and we need to have that hand-up there for them.  This is not creating a dependent society.  It is creating a society where we care for each other.  In my youth in Southern California I was imbued with the notion that one took care of oneself and one’s family, but if a neighbor, through no fault of his or her own needed help, we would be there.  And if for some reason the tables were turned, our neighbors would be there for us.  This attitude that we are only in this for ourselves is so far from the way Californians in the country side lived (city folks may have had a different attitude), that I find it really hard to comprehend. 

The fourth reason is that Romney will roll back as many of our newly attained civil rights as he possible can.  Affirmative action will go out the window.  There will be massive voter suppression among ethnic and/or poor neighborhoods.  Racism will no longer be a shame; it will be the norm, as it was in my youth.  Fortunately for me, my own parents were so prejudiced against blacks, browns, Jews and anyone who was not like “us”, they never talked about it.  I think they thought it came with the genes!  Consequently I grew up not learning to look down on anyone. 

But the final reason is the trend toward totalitarianism I perceive in the GOP.  I’m not going to say they are going fascist, or becoming Nazis.  But they are beginning to exhibit tendencies toward excessive authoritarianism.  Saber rattling in the form of building up our military; removing any feminine influence from the public sphere by removing any legal protections for women (refusing to expand the Violence Against Women Act, and the sure overturning of that Act if our government goes all GOP); the reestablishment of a WASP aristocracy; the emphasis on business, or corporations as the ultimate good, and that government is all bad.  Go ahead.  I’m sure you can name a few yourselves. 

As some wit said, “The GOP believes in bi-partisanship when the Democrats do what the GOP orders them to.”  Hardly the ideal democracy.