The Spirit of 2020

There was a time, in the 70's, when I could always find a job that paid a living wage, with health benefits, vacation, retirement.  Then corrupt Nixon got canned which led to narcissistic but pure-of-heart Jimmy Carter, an ineffectual president, fucked over by OPEC, embarrassed by Iran, wearing a sweater and telling us to turn down the heat.  We remember the gas lines and the cost-of-living skyrocketing.  That scared us so much that we let corporations steal our unions out from under us, giving up guarantees and hard-won benefits in order to keep our jobs, which we ended up losing anyway -- sound familiar?

Turns out the republican brain trust had been waiting in the wings, or under their rocks, all along; they knew we would tire of honor over promises of the good life.  And they gave us plenty of empty promises, and an actor to make them convincing.  Ronald Reagan told us it was morning in America, but what he really meant was "mourning in America," and that is what we got.  Mortgage rates up to 16% with scams a-plenty to make our mortgages affordable.  A tax cut that he promised would trickle down -- a promise that never seems to get old, a con that works every time, and never, ever trickles down.

After the trickle down free-for-all of the Dubya years, when we nearly fell over the cliff, we at least recognized Sarah Palin as an idiot and rejected her hate (back then we still rejected overt bigotry).  What still puzzles us is that we had eight years of an economy improving despite every republican trick in the books (and some that weren't), and we still elected a bloviating con artist.

Today I struggle to get by spending most of my meager savings on insurance -- home, car, health -- and repairs on old stuff I can't afford to replace.  We keep hearing that most of us don't have $400 for an emergency, but billionaires convinced us that their families should not have to give up a penny in inheritance tax, making it sound like we were taking food out of the mouths of their children while they in fact were cutting food stamps and Medicaid to those who were truly in need.  The further irony being that the reason so many of us today are in need of basic services is that the wealthy fixed the system decades ago.

Our children live in financial insecurity like many of us have never known.  It was our fear that allowed us to compromise and give up the rights we grew up with.  It was anger over having lost those rights that allowed us to swallow and even bigger con.

Unless things change, my children will never know financial security.  They will work hard and never have time for their families, even though they won't be able to afford good quality child care.  They will never be able to take their eyes off the ball that is their next paycheck.  They will see their children receive education that offers less than I had back in the 50's and 60's, when fear of Russian exploration led to a surge in funding for better schools, better teacher training and salary, critical and creative thinking, sports, music and science.  In other words, quality of life.  They will worry about health care because the wealthy continue to work to snatch it away.  The cost of necessities will continue to skyrocket, the poor will be taxed so the rich can get richer.  And the rich will scorn the struggling middle class while learning bigger and better ways to con us with flattery and fear.  

Our Democratic politicians have tried everything to turn this tide.  Everything, that is, but the hard stuff.  But that is about to change... if we let it.  We have for the first time in decades people standing up who aren't afraid to fight to right those economic wrongs, and they now control the House of Representatives.  Proof that Americans aren't afraid to vote for dramatic change.  It was the young generation who saw how bad things continued to get under the whispered lies that compromise will keep them safe.

My generation was once fearless.  Some of us still are.  But we have been lulled into complacency by the battles that we won long ago.  We have been the frog in the pot of water that doesn't see that he is incrementally being cooked to death.  We keep hoping that if we don't rock the boat we won't get our lives stolen away.

What is utterly ironic is that it was the bright-eyed fearlessness of young women that won us the House in 2018, and now, facing 2020, we are hearing the mantra of the need for "safe" candidates.  That is indeed the sign of insanity, or maybe just of desperation, when we keep insisting on doing what hasn't worked before.

Women in the House, women of color, Muslims, LGBTQ, people we thought were unelectable.  And yet I am hearing the sighs and watching the wringing of hands over who is electable.  You know who isn't electable?  Donald fucking Trump.  And yet because he was fearless we let him lie his way into the White House.  I'm hearing qualms over being too extreme.  You know what is too extreme?  The republican party under Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump.

It's time to stop being afraid.  It's definitely time we stopped allowing the enemies of the people to define us and frighten us.  Proposals to clean our atmosphere and give health care to all are not extreme.  Plans to fund and improve education are not extreme.  A living wage is not extreme.  Building bridges that don't collapse and hospitals in rural towns, that is not extreme.  Protecting the rights of people of color, and making women's health care private is not extreme.

The opposite of all of the above is what is extreme.  What the next election is about is protecting us from the extremists.  It is about democracy.

Racism, Sexism or Cancer?

On March 10, the topic on the new Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore was women and power.  He has a segment called "Keeping it 100" wherein he asks weird questions designed to put guests on the spot, and then decides whether their answers have been totally honest.

One question was "racism, sexism, or cancer" (minute 18)  if you could eliminate two, and the other would proliferate, which two?  And Wilmore helpfully suggested that one of them should be cancer.

Guest Chloe Hilliard had to agree, and then decided that the other would have to be racism, because that would affect generations.  Or some such nonsense.

That, in a nutshell, is why women continue to be abused, neglected, used and mistreated.  We are half of all those other subgroups yet, after generations of enlightenment, we continue to believe that every other interest group is more important than ours.

I wondered how refusing to keep women safe from abusive partners did not affect children and their futures.  Or denial of a living wage, food stamps and health care did not reverberate into the community and the following years.  Equal pay for equal work?  How about privacy and freedom in deciding about whether to get pregnant, or remain pregnant?  Is the humiliation and suffering brought upon women by social policy really less important than that of other groups (which, again, overlap with the group labeled "women").

There have been short periods -- the fight for suffrage, the women's movement of the 70's -- in which we stood up and proclaimed that we are as important as any other issue.  And then we gained a few rights, thanked those with the power to grant them, and went back to being polite and grateful.

I wonder how bad things will have to get for women, how many women shot or beaten, how many women imprisoned for having abortions -- or killed by back alley ones, how many women sick, starving or homeless before we rise up again and say no to the arguments explaining why we should bow to higher priorities.

Time to stop compromising.  Time to stop trying to prove how reasonable we are based on our moderate and rational requests for the right to abortion and birth control.  Time to stop suffering.

This is how I would have answered the question of "racism, sexism, or cancer."  I would have chosen eliminating racism and sexism.  Because cancer cuts across the board; that means that everyone will be invested in doing something about it.  And none of the rest of us should have to sacrifice our individual rights so other groups can enjoy theirs.

Guns and Irony

We who are not fearful that the government is going to come banging on our doors to confiscate our guns are more fearful of those people whose paranoia demands total freedom to bear -- and bare -- their weapons.  We wondered at the bizarre result of the tragedy of 20 children shot and killed in Newtown in December of 2012:  more states passing more laws allowing more weapons with less training in more public places.

So it was just another ironic happenstance today that the front page of The State's website headlined "Officer Involved Shootings on the Rise in South Carolina, Richland County," with the third story on the page being, "Haley Will Sign Bill that Allows Concealed Weapons in Bars, Restaurants on Tuesday."

Where is the disconnect???  Is it a matter of the more things get out of control, the greater the paranoia and the more things get out of control?  Are we being controlled by the NRA and ALEC or is it the gun nuts who, like the most psychotic people in the neighborhood, are also the loudest and the hardest to speak over?

When logic is constantly being defeated by radical ideology, as it is in the South these days, I think the question has to be why those capable of reason -- those who I still believe are the majority -- continue to be uninformed, uninterested, uninvolved.  I can understand why those who are rageful and irrational are the ones who persistently and tirelessly show up at abortion clinics and the state capital, and stand in line at Chick-fil-A to wave their dollars in support of homophobia.

What I can't understand is the number of citizens that understand the issues and don't vote.  And the ones who know the issues but minimize the importance and continue to vote on a party line.  And for gods' sake, our own Democrats and Democratic Party that vote for guns and against the rights of women and gays, what on earth is that all about?

So here we have it, consolidated into one front page website, the insanity that more people are being killed by guns while our politicians are voting to allow the freedom to carry weapons into public places, bars, restaurants, schools.  And coming soon:  legislation to allow people to "open carry," so the paranoid can actually see that those people they believed were coming to get them are armed.

I don't know where it ends, but the crazies are indeed tireless and, unlike so many of the rest of us, they vote.

Pope Frank

When a priest in Italy tried to convince my imprisoned father to fight for Mussolini, he quit the Catholic Church.  My own break with the Church was far less dramatic and had to do with my father's insistence that I attend Mass even though he refused, and my unwillingness to get up early on Sunday morning.  I was also becoming more conscious of the hypocrisy that works its way through just about every aspect of the Church, most obviously the conspicuous wealth and power that seems to bang right up against the teachings of Jesus Christ at every turn.

The aspect of the Catholic Church that I am most proud of in fact is the ability of so many practitioners to reject what makes no sense.  Birth control?  Homosexuality?  Racial equality and integration?  The Church has been wrong before, and will be wrong again.  I think I'll deal with this on my own, thanks anyway.

So much to my surprise and wonder, this most conservative group of men select a pope that is very nearly an anti-pope.  The world -- my cynical self included -- is enthralled with this pope who does not just preach peace and love but walks the walk.  Fellow atheist Bill Maher fondly calls him "Pope Frank."

In a world in which reaching out is seen as weakness, inclusion as the work of the devil, and the poor and meek merely deserving of their bad fortunes, Pope Francis humbly disagrees.  He reminds us that he is not God, but attempts to represent God; perhaps the Church is infallible, but the man who represents the Church should not be one to judge.

So this new world leader rolls out some amazing comments.  Not only the predictable ones about the poor and war, but about gays and abortion.

That said, let me not appear unrealistically optimistic.  Pope Francis will not be likely to ever support a woman's right to choose to terminate a pregnancy.  But he will not presume to support laws punishing women for having an abortion.  He will not be likely to condemn gay men and women for marrying but won't in the near future offer to perform the ceremony.

In fact, hot off the presses, the Pope has just excommunicated a priest for advocating gay marriage and female clergy.  Apparently the wheels of the Catholic Church move slowly and this has been in the works for years.  Even so, he's the Pope, he could have figured out how to put the brakes on this.  But he's said he was fallible, so maybe this is the proof.  I don't know, this is a little too much like Obama not being willing to run up against the bad boys in Congress.

So here we are, lapsed and intact Catholics all excited about having a Pope who seems to really care about people and not just perpetuating the power and the holdings of the Vatican.  I'm going to keep my eye on him though.  The most difficult job he is likely to have will be retraining those who work under him.  Centuries of greed and narcissism don't evolve easily into, well, Christianity.

Our Freedom Is Your Freedom

I believe that one of the reasons the war against women's reproductive health care and privacy has been allowed to creep forward over the decades is that women are, after all, members of every other civil rights group.  We fight for the rights of workers, of African Americans, of the LGBT community.

But it is time that we ask our fellow freedom fighters to join in our struggle.  Because our struggle is also one of the right to equal rights, to freedom from government surveillance and control, the right to privacy, the right to health care, education and a good job.

When a woman is unable to afford or obtain contraception and a pregnancy is the result, a teenager drops out of school, a young adult is unable to go to college, a working woman becomes unemployed.  A family is disrupted, emotionally and economically.

The right to abortion became the law of the land, just as contraception is legal, because we do not have a militaristic, religious extremist government.

When laws are passed that force a doctor to provide a woman with false information, when teachers are made to provide false health information, when women are required to have unwanted medical procedures, when laws are created to force health care clinics to close their doors due to impossible and unreasonable restrictions, we need to join together against those forces.

When a woman is prevented from access to affordable contraception and abortion services, that woman's economic future is in jeopardy.  The well-being of her family is at risk.

This is not about being pro-life.  Those who are fighting to deny women their reproductive freedom are those who are also fighting to prevent funding for health and nutrition programs.  They are the same people who oppose any gun control.  They have no moral opposition to going to war.

A father, a husband, a son, a friend, all should be united against a government that would shame and control its women because they have the capacity to become pregnant.  If you don't agree with abortion or contraception, you should fight more than ever for the money wasted on restrictions on women to go to programs that provide a better life.  You should nonetheless understand that whatever your position on abortion and contraception, this is a choice that just doesn't belong in the halls of Congress or state legislatures.

When our government is allowed to legislate control of women's bodies, the rights to freedom and privacy of all of us is attacked.

A Nation of Whiners

Harry Reid has finally decided to do something about Mitch McConnell's blocking of executive branch nominees.  If you were watching C-Span yesterday, you got to see McConnell have a tantrum over -- are you ready? -- the fact that Reid called the meeting for Monday, at 6 p.m.

The Minority Leader of the Senate was upset because his members would have to show up early for their work week.  This despite the fact that Reid could have called the meeting for Monday at 9 a.m., which is when the normal work-week starts for lots of us who are not members of Congress.

He then followed up that impressive argument by calling Harry Reid a "liar" and Obama's recess nominees "illegal."  To which Reid defended himself by saying, "Am not."  Not his finest moment, granted, but this is Harry Reid, and you have to be proud of him for just taking a stand, right?

The behavior of our republican officials prove the point that bullies are cowards and whiners.  Their government jobs, big salaries and short hours, great health care and paid vacation and sick leave, and quite enviable retirement benefits, including the ability to use their contacts and influence for life, only make the whining more incessant.

The 2012 election season, with its highlight the Republican National Convention, was a showcase for bullies.  These are the people who steal your lunch money and then when a friend gives you half their sandwich, knock it out of your hand and call you a crybaby.

Which is what they are also demonstrating in the battle over the Farm Bill.  In essence, they are stealing our tax dollars for their buddies (and themselves) in Big Agra, while knocking the food stamp dollars out of the hands of the poor.  And whining the whole time.

We should be better than this.  And I'm talking about those who vote these characters into office.  Those who bullied their way into the health care town halls of a few years ago, even shouting down a woman in a wheelchair.  The ones who would have us spend our tax dollars to build a fence and pay for yet more border patrol but gripe about public school dollars.

Who are these people?  We know them.  They are misinformed and afraid they are going to lose whatever they have.    They put their trust in the bullies, because the bullies yell the loudest, and point the finger away from them.  The bullies provide a scapegoat.

The poor, women and children, gays, minorities, immigrants.  What they have in common is not that they are destroying our country.  What they have in common is that they are those not in power, they are the weaker among us.  They are the groups that bullies feed on.

But the LGBT among us stood up and stopped being afraid of the bullies.  The immigrants who live among us, whether legal or not, are standing up so that we can see that they are essential, and can no longer be picked on.  Minorities will stop letting the bullies pit them against each other, and when they unite, they will be minorities no more.

Women are beginning to fight back.  We are finding our heroes, like Wendy Davis.  We are beginning to see that the fight against abortion is a red herring that allows the powerful to continue to gain wealth and power while we fight among ourselves.

And the poor?  Thanks to the success of bullies like Mitch McConnell, more of us than ever have joined their ranks.  Which means that when we fight back, we will be formidable.

A Sad Day

We all remember the tragedy and horror of 9/11.

And just in case you may not have noticed the date, you will see that your inbox has touching and patriotic emails from the likes of Tim Scott, and even Jim DeMint has condescended to reach out to us.

It is appalling to me that they take advantage of the tragedy to sound the drumbeat for patriotism, talk about the bravery of the first responders and the loss of lives on that day.

Because when it comes to putting their votes where their mouths are, these people consistently vote against people like first responders, against healthcare and benefits for the military who have volunteered to protect us since that day.  They preach about the value of life and vote against bills that would make our lives safer and more secure, like gun control.  And they brag about how they fight for freedom, and then vote for the right to control a woman's body, prevent her from taking care of herself and her family the best way she can.

Maybe our right-wing Tea Party "patriots" need to do a little more reflecting on 9/11, and a lot less politicizing of it.

When Tim Scott's Freedom Is Not Our Freedom

The U. S. House Representative for SC District 1, who is not and never has been my representative, although I live in that district, has a peculiar view of freedom.

For example, he believes that women should not have the freedom to access contraceptive care, but that employees should have the freedom to not provide this coverage when the law requires it.

He calls it "conscience."

I call it bullshit.

When a religious institution feels comfortable taking my tax dollars, which I do not have the freedom to withhold from said groups, regardless of my conscience, the very least obligation they should have is to follow the law.  If their conscience causes angst, they can refuse the federal dollars.  They can also stop pretending they should be tax-exempt.

Tim Scott passionately professes his belief in "life."  That, too, is bullshit.  Jesus, neither Scott's nor anyone else's, would never condone automatic weapons (or war, for that matter).  When innocents are getting gunned down in a classroom or a movie theater, Scott should have more important things on his "conscience" than whether or not a woman should be allowed free contraceptives.

This hypocrisy would puzzle me more if it didn't so much follow the money.  The National Rifle Association has incredible power in this country, and incredibly deep pockets.  So it is no surprise that when Scott "prays" on issues, gun control provokes as resounding a "no" from God as does contraception.

No disrespect to God, however.  Because when Tim Scott prays, he may think he is hearing God's voice, but in fact he is hearing answers that are easy on his ears.  The voice he actually hears, I believe, is that of Jim DeMint.

I have yet to hear of a vote cast by Tim Scott that he has not only agonized over, but then voted against what his hero in the Tea Party has dictated.

And so freedom, for Tim Scott, is the freedom to hear whatever voices he chooses to hear, and to vote "for life" when it is convenient, and anti-life when the NRA and Jim DeMint tell him to.

Shame on you, Tim Scott.

Not Angry Yet

Why should women be angry?

We should be angry because, after decades of fighting for equal rights, women are more than ever treated as decorative hood ornaments.  Our governor here in South Carolina is an example.

Nikki Haley is cute, flirty and manipulative, just the traits men like in a woman.  It makes them feel more manly when a woman pretends to be in charge while she is doing exactly what you want her to do.

She is the decorative hood ornament that keeps us in our place.  She is there to prevent women from having equal pay for equal work.  She makes sure women that are raped and abused don't make a fuss.  She won't help you pay for your daughter to have an HPV vaccine, because she can't order you to do it, which is what she would have preferred.  She is not going to make sure that you or your daughters get education and training unless you can pay for it your own damn self.

But we aren't most of us angry.  We are worn out, beaten down.  We haven't been taught to think for ourselves, so we continue to believe what we are told.

It's time to get angry.

Welcome Bobbie Rose!

Wrapped up in my own little world, I have been walking around thinking, "I wonder who's running against Tim Scott..."  Today I found out.


Bobbie Rose describes herself as a "liberal, progressive Democrat", and in my mind, in South Carolina, that means you need to stand tall and be fearless.  You need to not be afraid of the names that the right-wingers will call you, and the false accusations that will be made.  As a woman, you need to be unafraid to say exactly what "women's rights" means to you, you need to be unafraid to fight for the right of a woman to own her body.


You need to be able to stand up for freedom of religion, not the freedom of the religious right to dictate our lives.


You need to be able to defend good government, and responsible, much needed, taxation.  We need schools and teachers that are paid a living wage, we need well-funded libraries.  We need roads and bridges, and we need to bring our public transportation into the 21st century.


Corporations need to be responsible employers and taxpayers, and not billionaires shopping for cheap labor and a free ride in South Carolina.


Our Representative needs to keep our harbor from being exploited by the oil industry, and respect and support science and innovation.


I am thrilled to throw my support behind Bobbie Rose.