AMERICA, THE LAND OF THE FREE, YOU JUST LOST IT

The Electoral College system has just elected the first Dictator of its country, Donald Trump. 

                 The following is what the people in this country have in store for them:

Lot's of Chaos. Lots of revenge against any politicians or military, or notable persons who criticized Trump. LeBron James, Steph Curry, Steve Kerr, watch your backs. IRS is going to be weaponized. So will the justice department. 

 No realistic economic plan. The 20 dollar tariff on all products imported into this country is nuts and will cost middle class folks about $4,000 a year, maybe more. You think gas and groceries are expensive now, wait until Trump f__ks up our economy. 

A strict ban on abortion will become the Law of the Land. States like Californa and New York will have to fight it out in the courts, but it will be more chaos. In most states, women will be in peril of losing their lives if for some reason they have a problem pregnancy. If I were a woman during the Trump presidency, I'd stop having babies. Too risky. 

Forget about gender equality for at least four years. What the Trump men will try to do is send women back to the days when men ruled them. 

Forget about racial equality. People of color, those of you who voted for Donald Trump, you will look back on your vote as one of the worst decisions you ever made. Trump and this ilk are White Supremacists. What? You didn't know that???

Immigrants, get ready for mass deportations. Dreamers? You are out of luck. 

Get ready for Trump's total support of anything Israel wants to do in in Gaza. He and Netanyahu, two dictators like peas in a pod. 

Political and economic power will be in the hands of 1% of the population. This is called an oligarchy. Think Elon Musk, guys like him.  

Get ready for Russia and its Dictator Putin to influence our foreign policy.

Get ready for Trump to take us out of NATO, the result being America to lose all credibility with its past European partners.  

Get ready for law suits after lawsuits, grinding our country to a standstill. 

Get ready for more MAGA Republicans on the Supreme Court. 

Get ready for an attack against unions. You union members who voted for Trump, you screwed yourselves. 

I can probably think of a lot more troubles ahead for our citizens, but I'm too shocked by the result of this election to go on. Lets try to do our best to survive these next four years with dignity and grace.

 Democratic Governors, it's up to you now to save your states from the dictatorship of Trump.

                                                               Go California!

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HOW TO SURVIVE TODAY AND TOMORROW

 Last night, news commentator, Lawrence O'Donnell, said we have a chose hope or despair as we go into election day with our Beloved Democracy on the line. He cited as an example Nelson Mandela as a person who never gave up hope. For 27 years Mandela, the father of modern day South Africa, lived in one cell in an Apartheid prison, most of the time in solitary confinement. According to O'Donnell, Nelson Mandela went to bed every night with hope in his heart. 

Let us all follow Nelson Mandela's example.

SPIRITUAL, EMOTIONAL & PRACTICAL WAYS TO LOOK AT HOPE

Hope springs eternal:  As we pray

Hope springs internal:  As we feel

Hope springs external:  As we act

THE GENERATION Z COALITION

As a high school teacher for 26 years, I never missed a graduation. The auditorium was filled to bursting with proud parents, siblings, relatives, family friends, neighbors. The mood was always in equal measures, raucous, solemn, and festive. The graduating classes in their caps and gowns would enter in single file from the back of the auditorium to their seating directlyin in front of the stage. The stage where he podium stood held the school officials, School Board members, and student speakers. Huge bouquets of flowers graced both sides of the stage. At the center of the stage were stairs students would use to return to their seating after receiving their diplomas. And every year as I sat in the audience with my fellow teachers, proud of my graduating English students, thrilled for their parents and sibs, it was always astonished and delighted by the student speakers enthusiasm and optimism for the future. I was always their generation that was finally going  to change the world for the better. So many decades have passed since my first graduation, and for the first time in my life, I actually believe that the 18-year-olds plus, those members of the Z generation will be the ones who walk their talk. 

Last night, in Wisconsin at one of her closing rallies, Vice President Kamala Harris, Democratic candidate for President, spoke directly to The Zs, often called the Zoomers. She spoke of how much she loved their impatience to get things done, and promised she'd be the one to help them finally reach their goals: climate change; racial and gender equality, job growth, solving education debt, and the return right of women to make their own decisions about their bodies. In my eyes, Kamala Harris was the proud teacher talking to her students.  She told them in her presidency their hopes and dreams for America would be fulfilled. Watching the rally on TV, I felt I was back at graduation night, and for the first time believing what I was hearing. 

 It is believable because youth has finally caught up with the old white men and outstripped them of their voting edge. The youth vote is finally ready to assert itself. Gen Z is the last group of a winning coalition of voters who will elect Kamala Harris and send Donald Trump packing.  This coalition is composed of the three Gens that proceeded Gen Z: Gen Alphas, Gen Y often called the Millennials, and Gen Xers, who will not longer tolerate Donald Trump's misogyny or any government telling them what they can do or can't do with their own bodies. 

The time had finally arrived. Decades of graduation speeches full of hope have, at last, coalesced into one laser beam of change. This is no longer pic in the sky; it is the march to a different drummer; it is the mixed metaphor that will blast the reign of old white men out of power. It is the perfect union of women with the children they gave birth to, claiming their right to be equal citizens. It will be the greatest of ironies that with the help of the bodies they brought into the world that women will finally overcome the tyranny of men. 

                                    THREE MORE DAYS TO ELECTION, VOTE FOR KAMALA - 

                                                      IT IS A VOTE FOR CAMELOT. 

In 2012, I gave the graduation  address to the class of Saint Mary's College, my alma mater, and ended with this poem by Adrienne Rich. It deals with a lot of the subjects I've been writing about in my recent Blogs.   

Prospective Immigrants Please Note  by Adrienne Rich (1929 - 2012)

Either you will
go through this door
or you will not go through.
If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.

Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.

If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily
to maintain your attitudes
to hold your position
to die bravely

but much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who knows?
The door itself makes no promises.
It is only a door.  

es and

SCAREDY-CAT OLD WHITE MEN

It is often said that as we grow old we become wiser. This may be true for women, but it doesn't seem to be as true for men. Various political polls show that the majority of white men over 65 vote for Republicans in national elections. And the polls are showing that in this years' national election for president, those white men over 65 will vote Republican even though the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, will turn this country into an AUTOCRACY if he's elected. This means that the majority of old white men are willing to betray our DEMOCRACY and our CONSTITUTION. 

No, no, no, don't try to tell me Trump is just kidding - that he won't really do what he has pledged he will do on numerous occasions, that Trump is just a big kidder, it just Trump just being Trump, it's just politics. NO, don't tell me that because you all know better. You may be old but you're not stupid. You can tell when someone is telling you the truth and when someone is lying, you're old enough and have had enough life experience to know liars from truth-tellers. 

SO, as William Shakespeare said, "WHAT'S UP WITH THAT?"

One answer might be found in the play Hamlet that has to do with slings and arrows. Trump is aiming his ever increasing vicious slings and arrows in the direction of people who he believes are disloyal to him. Today he said, he'd like to see nine gun barrels pointed at Liz Chaney's face. If yuou've not heard of Liz Cheney, she is a staunch Republican who served in our House of Representatives and will cast her vote for Kamala Harris because she knows Trump is a danger to her beloved country. 

Let's view this in its most grotesque context: Trump does not want the barrels pointing at the target that is normally placed on a condemned person's chest when standing in front of a firing squad. He describes 9 barrels pointed at Liz Cheney's face. HER FACE. Is it possible that you old white men can't comprehend how deeply ugly Donald Trump's soul is? 

Or do you absolutely understand and believe that if you don't toe the line, (his line) that you will be the one he'll place in front of a firing squad, and are, therefore, paralyzed by fear? 

ARE YOU SCAREDY-CAT OLD WHITE MEN? 

There are probably additional reasons you will give up your DEMOCRACY for a TRUMP AUTOCRACY but this is the one that should embarrass you the most. 

LISTEN: I'm calling to you over the years from those days, you remember them, when the last thing you wanted any other boy in the school yard to call you: Scaredy-Cat, Scaredy-Cat, Mitchie is a Scaredy- Cat. Perhaps it was you chanting that terrible accusation at some other poor kid whose head was hanging in shame.  Perhaps you were that shamed kid and deep down you were, in fact, a scaredy-cat and you have remained one for so long that you are now a pathetically scared old white senator of the United States. 

And, you young white males, are these the kinds of old men you want to become? And you middle-aged white males,  do you want to be a frightened old white man cowering before the slings and arrows of another old fat white man? Do you want your sons to grow up to be scaredy-cats?

THINK IT BOUT THIS. THERE ARE ONLY FOUR DAYS UNTIL THE ELECTION.   

  

IMMIGRANT MALES

In today's blog, I want to talk to IMMIGRANT MALES. It is about Donald Trump's absolute disdain for people of color, in particular immigrant people of color. Recently in his Madison Square Garden rally, the vile names he called people of color were so repugnant that is alarming that the audience in MSG was cheering and applauding him. I know the saying about sticks and stones will break bones, but words will never hurt you. WRONG. Words can hurt deeply, they can wound the soul. Trump is a  wounder of souls. 

 Language can break spirits and sow anger and cause division. If anyone had any doubts what Donald Trump believes about people of color, all they need to do is to revive the TV footage of his vile comments in Madison Square Garden. Any person who listened to Donald Trump and his other speakers denigrate people of color, like the so-called MAGA comedian who called Puerto Ricans trash. It is abundantly clear - crystal clear - that anyone who votes for Trump is, like Trump, a racist. 

That said, I'm going to assume that no sane males of color will vote for Trump. In which case, I need to talk directly to white males, yes all you white guys in the Madison Square Garden cheering for the Trump.

I need to remind you of something very important. Extremely important to do with your HONOR.

Don't believe Donald Trump was denigrating just people with dark skin color. If that's whatt you think, you better think twice. Donald Trump was denigrating Italians, Jews, Polish, Russians and Irish.. You will reply, no doubt, that you are "whites" not people from those "bad" countries, like Mexico and Puerto Rico or Honduros. You'll point to your skine and say you're a white man. Yes, that would be true if this were only about skin color, but it's not. It's about prejudice and hate. I say to you, Trump's words would shock and anger many of your relatives that came from other countries to the United States to seek a better future: 

Those of you who are Irish, Russian, Polish, Italian, or Jewish are not so far removed, chronologically, from being called: Micks, Dagos, Wops, Kikes, Pinkos, and Polacks, from being called lazy, dirty, stupid, criminals, rapists and drunks, not so far removed from being accused of taking jobs away from good honest Americans, not so far removed from being lynched as dozens of Italian immigrants were in New Orleans in 1891. You are not so far removed from the facts depicted in Martin Scorsese's movie Gangs of New York City about native New Yorkers, earlier settlers, mostly English, abusing immigrant Irish, not so far removed from December 22, 1907, Louisiana where immigrant Jews were robbed and beaten for simply being Jewish, not far from  synagogue's burnings and recent shootings, not so far removed from hateful magazine article in the early 1900's that wrote Polish Immigrants, with their flat slavic faces were inherently ignorant and with a propensity for violence. 

It was not so long ago, in America 1954, during the Senator Joseph McCarthy period that I was called a commie and pinko and shunned by many of my elementary school classmates because I was a Russian Immigrant who had arrived in the Untied States after World War ll. I remember the sting. I remember how as a youngster I wanted to bloody the noses of my youthful detractors. It was not a good feeling.

You guys cheering in the Madison Square Garden for Trump, you need to ask your grandparents about their stories or their parent's stories. Donald Trump was not just talking about immigrants of color, he was talking about your kin folk. 

All of you, descended from Jewish, Irish, Italian, Russian, and Polish immigrants: if you vote for Trump, you will be pissing on your relatives' graves. Be HONORABLE;  Be COURAGEOUS. 

                                                VOTE FOR KAMALYA HARRIS 

I'll end with the first four lines of a poem/song written by Kathleen O'Neil in 1862 
Sur I was out he other night on such a wild goose chase,
I saw an advertisement about a decent place.
It is myself the place will suit, but I can not tell you why
The lady said did you not read NO IRISH NEED APPLY. . . 

Simply change the word Irish to Italian, Jewish, Russian, and Polish and it's a sign most of your relatives read who came to the United States to seek a better future for themselves and their families.