This love is so personal and so intimate that I have rarely spoken of it. For long months after she passed away, I couldn’t even say the word “mother”. I remember being at CVS and realizing it was Mother’s Day and leaving immediately in tears.
I realized recently that I had given my daughter an impression that I loved her paternal grandmother the most, partly because I spoke of her often. This is something that I do not wish anyone to think. It is my mother who has my heart *more and always*.
Mama the JB Collection
The most important gift that my mother gave me was adult acceptance. No matter what our discussion included, she always accepted me.
Mama in 1944, she is a 16 year old bride
I tried not to model my life after hers. In the end I did to my daughters what she had done to me. She neglected me during my childhood and I suffered. I thought I was being different with my life. I went to school, got a couple of degrees and worked full time in white collar jobs. Mama worked as a bartender for the last thirty years of her life. Several years during the time of my childhood she worked two jobs or split shifts. She was always trying so hard to feed us. We were home alone. Inevitably, I did the same to my daughters, I left them home alone while I worked two jobs or attended school for my master’s degree.
Mama was the center of my universe. She was my go-to, my wisdom, my fail safe. She accepted me perfectly and loved me fiercely. Of course, she was my center. Twenty five years ago on MLK Day we went car shopping. We spent the whole day together without any little ones. We went to lunch and talked and talked. When I went back to work the next day, my soul was full. I felt loved and treasured.
Less than three weeks later, mama passed away. They called me in the middle of the night saying that she had a stroke. I got in the shower to get ready to go and while I stood there, I felt an energy rush that stopped with my body. I felt my mother and a full measure of her grief. I felt her saying to me with sorrow “I have to go”. I tried in my soul to grab her and hold her, it was desperate, but she was gone.
When Trump took office four years ago, many of us knew that it was the “White Mans’ Last Stand”. He was working hard to keep women in their place (as sexual objects) and to keep white male superiority at the top of the pyramid.
Because of his history as a businessman *we all know that was a charade* we thought he would change Washington. However, there was a secondary agenda. This secondary agenda was simply the hope of the people being placed onto a man (Trump) who disregarded them. Americans are tired of politics as usual; they are tired of losing ground on the economic front and people are tired of being pushed into poverty by every piece of legislation that comes down the pike. These Americans mistakenly believed that Trump would help. Trump supporters looked to this man to shake up the status quo (drain the swamp), because nothing was working to get lawmakers to pay attention to the average American.
That hope in Trump was misplaced.
He courted the ‘white man’ with power grabs and blatant hostility to everyone else. He was vicious, condescending and openly; a cheater. He justified all of that with the language of superiority. He did it because he could. It became evident that Trump was not interested in the average person; what he really needed was a way to make money.
A ‘White Man’s’ War against, well, Everyone else
Trump told America that he would “drain the swamp” referring to the backroom politics in Washington that allows lobbyists influence over legislation. He actually did drain the D.C. swamp and set it up in a way that has never been seen in American politics before. He openly and publicly courted the wealthy to donate to his causes and stay in Trump hotels if they wanted to gain favor with America. “The Times found over 200 companies, special-interest groups and foreign governments that patronized Mr. Trump’s properties while reaping benefits from him and his administration.”
While Trump is using his office to gain immense amounts of money and influence; Americans were suffering in a pandemic that was ruining the lives of millions of people. Trump proved over and over again that he was never interested in America or the people who live here. It wasn’t a surprise that he did not want to give up the office of President.
From the summer of 2019, Trump’s only ambition was re-election. From strong-arming Ukraine officials to American voter suppression, Trump kept his eyes on the prize. When he lost the election, he could not accept it. He tried anything to stay in power. He was aware that prison could be an outcome of his own civilian status.
Trump’s sedition~
When it came down to it, he wasn’t going to let the presidency go easily. From the beginning, white men have loved Trump. Q-Anon and Antifa and the Proud Boys were groups of people that he would use. Trump always courted the white men and they courted him back. Trump put out a call to action to his white men and they responded.
Not only did the domestic terrorists and rioters travel from all over America, they were already present in Washington D.C.’s police force and even the capitol’s police force. They were ready for insurrection, and so it happened.
Some among America’s military allies believe Trump deliberately attempted a coup and may have had help from federal law-enforcement officials.
Whatever he had planned, it did not work. Thank the human collective that it did not work. For those of us who felt attacked by Trump’s hostilities and disrespect, we can finally breath a sigh of relief. It really has been a struggle for the last four years and that struggle is over. Joe Biden is our next president, and so it is!
I don’t want to hear about this year anymore. I don’t want to hear about how bad the virus has been on all of us. We know how bad it has been. We suffered it and we continue suffering it. It’s not news.
The election was hectic. It was so stressful drawing party lines with friends and family. Who knew that our relationships were so vulnerable? Who knew that there was a secret between us? Bigotry is so much more common than we thought.
Reaching for the truth was so difficult. When I discussed Clinton and Biden and Trump, I was told that I was lying. “Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying eyes?” Which way led to the truth? Who was the pedophile? How do you know?
The truth is knowable and important.
The virus revealed what an inadequate financial system we have. We came to realize that the stock market is irrelevant to most of the people in the country. We came to see that the billionaires had stacked the deck in their own favor. Every politician in a power position had been bought and paid for, so the minimum wage stayed at it’s debilitating 1990 level. As businesses closed, it was the most vulnerable that paid the price of the pandemic. We suffered it and we continue suffering it.
For all the posturing of the politicians, the Paycheck Protection Program ended up being wildly and inadequately distributed. The wealthy companies borrowed, some embarrassingly returning the loan money. While some companies put the money to good use, others squandered the loan and did not save jobs.
We saw how inadequate our health care system is, designed to make a profit, human beings are forgotten. America rations health care based on ability to pay. If you don’t pay, you don’t get life saving care. How many diabetics lost their lives in the summer of 2020?
What a disappointment.
The food lines got longer and they never went away. As soon as a week ago, thousands of families were waiting in line for food. What does this tell us about our great country?
So where do we go from here? Relentlessly forward into the future is where we go. We must grow our generosity towards each other. We will vote to make sure that we express our commitment to a democratic future. We can and we will find answers to our problems. We can and we will make our country a good place to live.
The Republicans are once again crying “budget” as they are called upon to help the American people with Covid relief. They have blamed all of their inaction on the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi. Tax dollars and the budget are apparently meaningless words for this Congress.
I have to say that I am actually livid – not mad – livid. The Republicans know that the Feds are dumping money into the stock market. They are fully aware that our military budget is beyond any military budget in the world. The congress is aware of where all of our tax dollars are going. The congress is simply not going to help the American people by allowing them to have their own money to get them through the tough times of this pandemic.
Did you know – and lots of people don’t know this: Jerome Powell, Federal Reserve chairman has been pumping money into the stock market in order to “stabilize” it? Take a guess at how much he has dumped into the stock market? Initially the budget was 1.5 trillion dollars. Reuters reported a 3 trillion dollar investment as of July 13, 2020. Lest you not see what trillions mean, it’s 1,000 billions.
This is a direct transfer of taxpayer money to the wealthy owners of the stock market.
This is not “fine and dandy” because the Feds borrowed the money to make these investments: According to Ben Winck quoting Carmen Reinhart writing for Markets Insider 10-16-20:
Major economies may be well on their way to recovery, but outsized government borrowing runs the risk of fueling a financial crisis, the World Bank’s chief economist, Carmen Reinhart, said Thursday on Bloomberg TV.
Ben Winck goes on to say:
The path of governments’ fundraising and bond-buying is not sustainable and could spark debt crises should they continue, the economist said.
“This did not start as a financial crisis, but it is morphing into a major economic crisis with very serious financial consequences,” she said.
The results are staggering and Americans are suffering.
While Wall Street bailouts are an endless expense, help for human beings is not available. Nowhere is the Republican-way more clear than here: According to the New York Times, 8 million more people have slipped into poverty since May. Add that to those already in poverty, add that to the number of unemployed and we are seeing a disaster of epic proportions. It’s an unseen and unknowable disaster. Those in poverty, rarely speak out and rarely protest. However, there are consequences for all of us.
Is it really necessary to maintain a military budget that *by itself* is more than all other militarized countries combined?
The military industrial complex continues to fuel its own life while dousing the light of others. Why can’t our budget include humanistic endeavors like eradicating poverty and homelessness? How about healthcare for all?
JB Collection
America, what is your future? Will America return to feudalism? Will America always be known as having the biggest and most guns? Is that the America you would choose?
The Trump Boat Parades are the greatest examples of ignorant white privilege.
I have to say ignorant because if you are woke, you could not, would not participate in a Trump boat parade. With wisdom you could see that a boat parade is screaming “look at me and my money”.
Boats come from two types of homes: where dad does what he wants, mom says “don’t question him” and the boat payments are his way of saying “my money, I’ll spend it as I want”. The other home that a boat comes from is, the home where a boat is easily afforded and no one is deprived just because someone bought a boat.
No matter which home the boat comes from, a boat screams “I have excess dollars, look at me”. Boats are excessively expensive and the care of them is even more expensive.
Bernie’s Campaign
It’s not a good message in our economy. Not right now. There are millions of people without jobs, millions of families who don’t know where the next meal is coming from. Showing these families your money is like rubbing pepper on a kitchen cut; or rubbing salt onto a burn.
The Trump boat parades are indicative of an attitude that says “we don’t care about you and your suffering, we don’t care that you are starving, we have enough money and we can burn it”. What Trumpers don’t realize is that the people who don’t have enough money are the majority of people in this country. Pre-pandemic over 75% of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck. The country is hurting economically, more than anything else. More than anything else, we are facing economic deprivation.
It’s clear to a feeling person that showing off with money has been out of style since the nineties. No one appreciates ostentation.
The Trump boat parades are a way of identifying with Trump. It’s a way of saying “hey, greed and even racism is okay”. The wealthy are obsessed with the idea of not allowing anyone to take their own money – which is fair.
However, they (the wealthy) also want one other thing and that is to worship on the altar of capitalism. Capitalism is the thing that makes all stealing, raping and looting justified. After all, it is done for the almighty dollar.
Racism serves the purpose of having a handy victim so that no white has to feel “less than”. By having an entire race of humans that can be subjugated and told that they are less than, whites are able to keep their heads up high.
By identifying with Trump, whites are able to justify their greed. They are also able to be “better than” and to subjugate an entire other race. This is also why it is so hard for Trump supporters to give up on supporting Trump. White men can thoroughly identify with Trump. Old men whose values are under attack by the up and coming generations that cannot agree with their values.
Lots of people don’t want to give up the nineties, it was okay to be greedy and even condescending. It was especially gratifying to keep their boots on the necks of others. Feeling superior was a national pastime. Every working supervisor in America was busy grinding their feet onto the backs of working Americans.
None of this has changed. We are still a group of people that want to feel superior and one up on everyone else. Who doesn’t walk into a room trying to figure out how to present as smart, or moneyed or cool?
All Americans are complicit in the racism dance. We never did enough to resolve racism. We gave the concept a lot of lip service, but never enough real effort to eradicate racism. We could have outlawed racism decades ago. We didn’t. Just like the minimum wage, we sat complicitly allowing awful things to happen to others.
People see behind the lies they were taught in Government class.
Federal Capitol Building: Public Domain
My immature understanding of government from my Civics class and from my reading of John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize winning book Profiles in Courage was essentially flawed.
I learned that as a citizen, it was my duty to read about legislative candidates. I was told to understand the issues and vote on the candidate that I believed in. Based on the voting base, the successful congress member would then vote to benefit their own home base population. Always, congress was directed to work for the benefit of the people.
Because of something called “politics” politicians are doing things that are not good for the people. While we may call it politics, it is truly all about money. The politicians are in pursuit of money, vote on all matters big and small, only as a result of being paid to do it.
Public Domain
Currently, in this country, there appears to be no reason to stop a public mandate for “Medicare for All”. Yet, no political platform will get on board and fight for this important public right to healthcare. In fact, we are in a country, where one person, yes, that’s right, ONE person makes life and death decisions for everyone in America. (This is definitely not what the founding fathers planned.)
One man causes so many deaths, Mitch McConnell who has stopped all legislation as it sits on his desk. Untold numbers of new legislation proposed by the Democrats sit on this man’s desk (collecting dust). Caused deaths how, you ask…
“Your morning reminder that Mitch McConnell refused to take up any legislation to help states respond to COVID the whole month of June because he wanted to ram through as many conservative judges as possible.” @ChrisMurphyCT
Many attempts to legislate equal rights, if passed would prevent much of the rioting in this country. Relief efforts for the Corona virus disaster all sit on his desk. An increased minimum wage sits on Mitch McConnell’s desk.
What possible justification would there be for paying tipped workers $2.13 per hour (minimum wage)? The only justification that I know is that the legislators are lining their pockets with the blood of these same workers and taking millions in bribes to keep the status quo – status quo.
What possible justification is there for a minimum wage that no one can survive on ($7.25)?
In a different example, at the state level: One man has prevented so much wellness, Rick Scott who blocked the Medicaid expansion in Florida. How many deaths did Rick Scott cause by blocking the Medicaid expansion in Florida?
“A report by the Center on Budget and Policy Prioritiesreleased last week said states that expanded Medicaid showed significant reductions in death rates for older adults who fell into the income brackets that allowed them to gain the coverage.”
This isn’t the country that I learned about in my high school. The country I learned about included in the design a balance of power. How did we get to a point where one person can cause the death of others through legislative action or inaction?
How many of these legislators are taking money for some very specific purposes? For example, the world financial crisis caused by the banks:
JP Morgan is worth $2.4T, and only paid a $13B fine for their role in the ‘08 financial crisis. Our predatory capitalist system rewards greed, and punishes those who try to play by the rules. #BreakUpTheBanks#BreakTheDuoploly Quote Tweet Ryan Knight @ProudSocialist
JPMorgan quarterly earnings?
BREAKING: @JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. bank, just reported its highest quarterly revenue EVER during a pandemic that’s seen 40 million Americans lose their jobs and small-businesses decimated. I cannot stress this enough: #FuckCapitalism. It is killing everyone besides the top 1%. @4apeoplesparty
How many legislators did it take to keep JPMorgan Chase from suffering any dire consequences as a result of the 2008 financial crisis? How many legislators does it take to keep them from paying taxes and one step further from using those taxes to provide relief to millions of Americans who are suffering from the Coronavirus crisis?
Please help me understand why “Medicare for all” is not real, right now, today?
Health insurance statistics are not what we are being told. Medicare and Medicaid are the largest payers of healthcare in America and have been for decades. The balance of national health care dollars are spent by for profit insurance companies on healthy cherry picked people who insurers chase after for their healthcare dollars. Why? Because insuring them is cheap – they don’t file claims.
At this time, we are being bombarded with false information about who has lost healthcare as a result of the Covid crisis. Each research facility gives a different number or attempts to extrapolate a number of uninsured. Since the 90s, the uninsured number always stayed at around 38 million. Obama was able to reduce that number by half. Not only are we back up to 38 million, but we have surpassed it now. Trump kept peeling away at the Affordable Care Act and replaced it with nothing. Most people in America depend on their jobs to provide health care insurance, therefore coverage. So where are we now? The loss of jobs, the loss of health insurance.
I’ve never been an advocate for charities, because I see so few of them doing the right thing. Add that to the fact that charities are nothing more than a third party between you and the person who needs your donation.
That’s a fact, but beside the point. The point of this essay is that so many are coming forward with large and even mega donations for the Black Lives Matter movement. I think giving away money is just a way to assuage the guilt of not being a good human. Not being a good human, is this idea that “I have mine and you get yours, and if you don’t get yours, too bad”.
We Americans have been living like rugged individuals for hundreds of years. As Americans, we have not done the hard work that is involved in gaining equality for all. We have fallen far short of our forefathers goal: equality.
We have taken advantage of our myth of rugged individualism and have allowed all “others” to fall to the wayside. And let’s admit, we are at the wayside. The middle class is so small now as to be irrelevant.
What is the hard work of gaining equity for everyone and not just some? Well, let’s begin with economics. How have the large corporations and the legislature of this country been able to keep the minimum wage so low? It’s clear to everyone that the minimum wage is not a living wage.
All of the large corporations take advantage of the minimum wage laws. They may not pay the minimum, minimum, but they are paying so little that those who do these jobs cannot subsist. Take a look at McDonald’s, look at Walmart and look at Amazon. These are among the biggest employers in the United States. Not only are they taking advantage of the small wages, but the employee benefits are minimal as well.
The big employers play a game called “seasonal worker” or “temporary worker”. You can be a “seasonal worker” or a “temporary worker” for YEARS. Because you are a seasonal worker you can work forty hours and NOT be a full time employee. This allows the large employers to cheat you out of any benefits that you would be entitled to as a full time worker.
Papa John’s Pizza (the owner is a renowned racist) owns and lives in a 40,000 square feet house. He pays his staff $8.00 an hour with no benefits. This is an awful statement about our country. We have designed a country wherein it is okay to live on the backs of others, without compensating them.
Public Domain- John Schnatter’s Home
Why haven’t we forced our legislature to increase the minimum wage to a livable wage? Why haven’t we done the work to make companies pay a living wage?
Why are Managed Care CEOs making millions and millions in bonuses when 80 million people cannot get health care? Regular people are fighting to keep health insurance companies in the mix. Why? Insurance companies have no goal except passing profits to shareholders. It’s an incongruent goal and doesn’t match with healthcare.
If eighty percent of the country is living paycheck to paycheck that is 264,000,000 people. How can this country be so ineffective? Where did we go wrong? We created a capitalist society whereby all the money goes to a very few, while millions suffer without support: no living wage, no health care and no access to education.
How is it even possible to be in a democratic society, when so few are being represented by our legislature? Our legislature seems to represent those who have money to donate to campaigns and no one else. This is a limited group of people.
This is what I mean by the work of this country. We live here, we owe it to ourselves and to our children to make this country a place of prosperity. We cannot afford to allow this country to be run by those few who have the money to pay for legislator’s campaigns. Because those with the money are not looking out for anyone else. That is why after three decades, the minimum wage has not changed very much.
We want to go back to running the country for the people. We’ll need to overhaul everything because it’s been too long. Virtually anything that benefits human beings has been done away with: living wage, education, health care and even banking.
America is not a country that has done well for its people. Charity and donations won’t help, we’ve gone too far in the wrong direction.
We continue to get so many opinion pieces on the internet. Everyone wants to weigh in on what the World Wide Web is doing to us. I read today about TikTok, I read about Youtube, I read about Instagram and Twitter.
So much of what I read was about how the internet is changing us — but not for the better. Lately I have read a lot about politicizing the Internet. There are loud and compelling complaints about Facebook, and Twitter, and Instagram and now TikTok.
Gaming — JB Collection
I’ll never forget years ago; I was standing in the hallway of a convention center complaining loudly about the lack of service and the lack of coffee. I was the hostess of the event and I was dealing with a broken agreement. One of my trainers asked me “so do you really think this hotel should do things your way?” That put me in check for a second and he continued with “do you believe that the world should act according to your rules?” It was food for thought and it made me think hard.
I never did get coffee that day, but I did learn the lesson of my frustration. If I want to live more peacefully, I’ll have to accept that people don’t always do what they say and things never go just right when you’re planning a huge event, or any event, for that matter.
It is this conversation that I think about when I read articles about the Internet. From the beginning, when my colleagues were complaining about texting, I would always respond differently. Colleague “my kid is always on his phone, he won’t stop texting”, Me “he’s learning how to read quickly and how to spell, all good”.
What I find interesting is that so many believe that the Internet should be controlled. Even the Facebook Staff.
First, I don’t believe the Internet is controllable. That is what is so amazing about it. The Internet has given those without a voice, a real voice: including a place to meet and a place to talk and all online! Secondly, how will 7 billion people ever come to any agreement about the way that the internet “should” be? Yes, no and maybe.
Clay Banks on Unsplash
We the people have responsibility for what we understand, we cannot pass that responsibility to another.
Right now, Trump is trying to change the narrative about who he is and what he stands for.
Trump is going after those who disagree with him.
Imagine a world where there was only one story: Trump’s.
I would even go back to my earlier conversation. That is, that the world won’t go the way that you want it to go. If you want peacefulness, accept the mess. Fifteen years ago, not any of this was possible and now it’s here. Just Imagine where we are going…
Everything I read, no matter what the source, discusses Mr. Trump’s madness. He continually rejects common goodness and concern for Americans. And yet, many follow his directions and many even defend him. I’m not sure I understand this. Over and over again, this man claims American headlines and keeps his name in front of Americans. I cannot identify any reason why Trump is in the headlines.
In the meantime, he has behaved so badly, that no other person known, could survive the press associated with his bad behavior. How has he survived? Any other public figure would be condemned, rejected and forgotten about. Given all of his bad behavior and the condemnation of millions all over the world: Who follows his direction? Who does his bidding?
Let’s address Trump’s latest controversy. Trump decides (with the help of outraged aides) that he wants to visit the Episcopal church across the street of the White House. In order to do this, peaceful protestors have to be removed from the area that Trump wants to walk to and pose for a picture.
Who decides that it is okay to disperse the peaceful protestors with the use of violence, flash grenades and tear gas (Bill Barr)? Then, who, who would actually do this? Who would throw tear gas and a flash grenade into a crowd of peaceful protestors? The curfew was passed, and that curfew is possibly what gave the brutes an excuse for violence.
Doug Mills / New York Times
If you are an American soldier it is against the law to raise a weapon on an American. If you are an American policeperson, it is against the law to use a weapon except in defense of yours or another’s life.
People follow this madman’s orders, preferences, dictates, etc. suggestions. Why, who, how?
Madness: no one believes that Trump is a spiritual man. No one believes that he knows what is inside a Bible. There he stands in front of the Episcopal church with a Bible in the hand. No one has been able to give us a hint of what the point was of that entire exercise.
The police dispersed peaceful protestors with violence, then Trump was staged with a Bible in front of a church. What was the point? Who followed his orders? Who made the orders? Why? Madman.
