Disgrace

I’m no stranger to descriptive language or emotion, but the past two days have plunged me into a depth I’ve visited just several times since that horrible excuse for a human became “president.”

Certainly November 9 was wretched, as was Inauguration Day, Charlottesville, the complete theft of a Supreme Court seat, and repeated healthcare debacles.

But something about Evil Yam’s impotent responses to hurricanes Harvey and Irma followed by his vastly stupid and offensive Twitter tantrums against those athletes who chose to take a knee compounded by his appalling invalidation of the suffering of Americans in Puerto Rico and the USVI in the wake of Maria plus his asinine verbal cock-fight with “little Rocket Man” in which actual nuclear weapons are at play all topped off by the horrific and largely preventable massacre in Las Vegas has hellfired me down to the abyss.

That our idiot “leader” finally got his ass to Puerto Rico where he threw rolls of paper towels to desperate citizens like they were eager parade groupies during Mardi Gras, told everyone how minimal their damage was because “only sixteen” have died (arguable and not substantiated), accused Puerto Rico of fucking with our budget, and then said the few hours he spent on the island were “really, really lovely” as if he’d just gotten a goddamn mani-pedi at a slightly nicer-than-usual place is all stunningly deplorable.

So is the fact that he offered Las Vegas his “warmest condolences.” What does that even mean? Did Las Vegas’s guppy just die? Or did more than 500 people just get gunned down by a crazy guy with twenty assault rifles hiding like a coward psycho on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay?  

Its the latter, people. 

Plus, can you even imagine how different the “lone wolf” narrative would be if Paddock were black or Muslim? I cannot even. There are more white domestic terrorists in this country than any others. And guns are their primary weapon. Accept it. 

“Thoughts and prayers” without action are now officially offensive.  

Today I noted on Facebook that more Americans have died from guns since 1968 than in all wars in which America has fought. Ever.  

A relative of mine replied, “I don't know if these numbers are accurate but I personally will mow down with my AK-47 anyone who ever tries to take my guns.”

There are no words for how disgusted, furious, embarrassed, and stunned I was and continue to be by such coarse, tone-deaf, selfish, shameful machismo. I am mortified and grossed out and that guy isn’t a singular example of too many people in this country. 

We, the US, are in the direst of straits.  I am utterly stunned by how quickly trump’s poison has courses through the country’s vascular system. The weaknesses were there, no doubt, but wow.

Eight months in and we are ravaged.  

Oh, and did you hear the one about the Republicans trying to pass a bill to make silencers available to everyone? They’re dying to protect hunters’ ears but I could swear hunters already have easy access to ear protection. You know who doesn’t have protection? People being fired at by an asshole hiding 32 floors above them. Know how they were warned? Because of the fucking sound of the constant gun shots (oh, because that great white American also had access to a neat toy that turned his semi-automatic guns into fully automatic ones. Isn’t that swell? And then he killed himself like a pansy-ass coward so I guess the state of his ears didn’t much matter in the end.)

Oh, and did you also see that today the House passed a bill to ban all abortions after 20 weeks? Only victims of rape get an exemption and even that is a maybe. These guys making all these decisions about women’s bodies totally get it. I mean, they as strangers absolutely know how I might feel if raped or with an unplanned child. And being pro-gun, their pro-life decrees ring SO sincere.

I have almost no hope for this country. It is letting down almost all of its citizens and the world. It is a disgrace.

A national suture

I have six sutures snaking across my upper back. The stitches look to have been sewn with navy blue fishing line, pulled taut and tied off into a grimace atop a fleshy ridge. Tomorrow they’ll be removed. By all accounts the wound has been beautifully closed by skilled hands. But really, what does that mean? Does it mean it will heal well? Look pretty on the surface? Smooth and soft, demure like a slight smile?

So much of life is never what it appears to be. Marriage is more constantly challenging, motherhood more regularly enervating, driving times but estimates failing to take into account traffic, other drivers’ skills or lack of, accidents, weather.

Our “president” is even worse than he seemed at first, a greedy buffoon with bad hair, bad ties, orange skin, and dubious business success. He is, in fact, a truly horrible, greedy, mean narcissist who still has bad hair, bad ties, orange skin, and dubious business everything. He is a bigot, a racist, a liar, and a fraud.

It has been hard to be back here. Hard to return to swastikas and white supremacists and the pardoning of a man who unabashedly targeted minorities and made them suffer. It has been almost impossible to watch our “leader” make equivalent the neo-Nazi racists and those who peacefully (and even less peacefully) opposed them. There is no equivalent. None.

It has been hard to watch brave men and women who've fought in our military be suddenly banned from service because they are transgender. It has been sickening to hear bullshit claims that their medical costs are too much of a burden to this country, not worth their courage and service, when in fact our military spends five times that amount on Viagra and our deplorable “leader” has already spent more on personal travel.

The stitches itch something fierce and the skin around them is raw and red, irritated by the bandage adhesive keeping them slicked with ointment and padded and covered.

The country aches something fierce and so many are raw and red, furious and exhausted by the fight since our birth, since the Civil War, since emancipation, since suffrage, since battles for Civil Rights and Women’s Rights and reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights. Like the worst sort of full circle we have a "leader" - with bad hair and bad ties and orange skin and the meanest streak - who wants to take us back to before, to the time of our birth. To the time when only he and men who looked like him, potentially minus the orange skin, could succeed or even hope to.

Friends and family and millions of strangers spent the past few days battening down for and enduring Hurricane Harvey. It has been a Katrina redux to watch Houston flood. And our “president”? He pardoned a racist crook, banned willing and brave service members, and tweeted a book review on the day the rain started to fall. As if that imbecile reads anything booklength or not about him. He flew south during the campaign although he was asked not to. He’s barely said boo to Texas, a state that handed him its electoral votes, since Friday and might go visit on Tuesday.

While in the Netherlands I got to spend time with a friend there. She was lamenting her daughter’s nearly-six-week summer break; summers are tough for working parents. Who watches their children? Where? For how much? I said, I understand, we have twelve weeks.

Summer is now officially long in the tooth. I’m sick of it. The next eight days will be a slog, an uncomfortable fishing line grin snaking across the remains of August. The rose-colored summer break is at once marvelous and not at all what it appears to be.

And yet this is life. There is a PE uniform to buy (late) and braces to be set and schedules to be made. There is the weeding of the garden, the removal of all whose season has passed, the extra love given to all who persevere in the blurry pages between summer and fall. Perhaps we’ll get some more tomatoes, squash, and melons. But the arugula is long gone, the peppers and okra now wisps of hope. The birds have stolen all of the berries, and I have stopped fighting them. For this year at least.

I will try to find my way back to activism but also to the simpler things that enable me to better care for myself and my family. This fight is going to be a long one, and we all must both protest and pace. It will, potentially, take generations to undo and heal some of what Trump has wrought. But he is not the only one to blame.

This country has never adequately reckoned with its racist birth and past and the ways in which those old tentacles reach insidiously into the present. That failure allowed such a heinous individual to (sort of) win a presidential election, and if we, white America, do not deal with our wrongs now, we are as complicit as ever in laying the groundwork for another Trump in the future.

Stitches may capably close a wound but talented hands don’t ensure the underlying ill is excised. A lovely scar can mask ugliness. Just ask America.

Anne Frank House and Charlottesville

Last Thursday, Mom, Tom, the boys, and I spent the morning at Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Although we knew the story, although I studied the Holocaust extensively in college, although I thought I knew what to expect, we all of us were rendered silent and emotional. We each listened intently to the audio tour, bearing witness to the horrors and courage and human spirit the Frank family (and millions of others) endured and demonstrated. 

Today, just two days later, I am back in America and watching with a heavy, outraged, disgusted heart the white supremacists marching and beating peaceful counter-protestors in Charlottesville, VA. Governor McAuliffe has declared a state of emergency, three are dead, dozens are injured. And that's just the physical damage. Imagine the psyches of Americans of color right now, as white men and woman wave confederate flags and scream about "taking our country back." Imagine how Jews watching Americans raise their arms in Sieg Heil salutes, swastikas waving at their sides (see below) must feel. 

72 years separates the end of World War II and now. 72 years. 72 years since Anne Frank was murdered after hiding for two years in a dark annex. 72 years since the hate-filled Hitler took his own life in cowardly fashion. Less than that between the turbulent Civil Rights movement in America and now. What are we doing? 

I am nearly speechless. I am sick to my stomach and desperately sad to be back in this country after enjoying two weeks in beautifully progressive, largely tolerant places. I'll leave you with this, courtesy of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect.