Tag: protests

The Matters & The Change

Stormy Daniels was on Sixty Minutes. I watched. Didn’t learn anything new. Her situation with Donald Trump isn’t changing anything.

Nor will Karen McDougal’s situation with Donald Trump change anything.

Nor will what the other sixteen women who claimed, with graphic details, how he sexually assaulted and molested them, change anything.

Trump supporters will not, or do not, care for the most part. A few outliers will quit supporting him for this behavior. Most of Trump’s supporters will not. They’ll say, as Rush Limbaugh has said, “Bill Clinton,” cherry-picking exactly what happened, and twisting memory into making history different. And, or, Trump supporters will say that his personal behavior doesn’t matter, that it’s his political agenda, and what he’d doing, draining the swamp, that matters.

All that infuriates Democrats, many Independents, and those on the left. They’re disgusted when this behavior is uncovered, no matter who the person is, from Bill Clinton to Al Franken, to Hollywood actors and producers. Anger and support withdrawal usually quickly follows.

It’s been pointed out multiple times that Trump hasn’t drained the swamp with the quality of people he’s selected for his cabinet and leadership positions. Trump claims the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were huge mistakes, but he hired one of the architects, John Bolton, to be his NSC advisor, and John Bolton is hiring more of the thinkers behind PNAC and the horrific continuing wars of the Middle East. That’s one more point that seems to prove that what Trump says doesn’t matter, just as he said he’d never be on vacation as POTUS, and never go golfing, because he’d be too busy.

The children’s protests, walk-outs, and March for Our Lives won’t matter either, to Trump supporters and the NRA. They’re doing their damn best to ensure that the narratives are twisted to fit into a surreal political reality.

In the larger context of our politics, it all matters to the world’s citizens. What Trump and his supporters say, how they say it, and what they do, reveal enormous logic gulfs, and shreds their claims to ethics and morals. They can’t see it, won’t acknowledge it, or, when they acknowledge it, rationalize that it doesn’t matter.

No, the best that can be said about these matters is that America’s youth are bending more sharply to the left and equality every day.

Left is such an easy label, but we’re forced to use it, because gun control and equality are defined as left issues. So, every mass murder in a school followed by nothing more than thoughts and prayers pushes America’s youth further left. Every action against equality for transgender people and the LGBT citizens of America that Trump announces, like his ban on who can serve in the military, pushes them further left.

Because here is the funny thing. Not many of the youngest American generations watch television. They don’t read the mainstream media. They find their own news. Those children who organized, who hear Trump’s words and see how his statements don’t align with his behavior, how he flat-out flips on issues and lies about what’s going on, are being pushed further to the left. Every time they go through these lock outs and lock downs in their schools, and hide in fear, they think, “I am tired of this. It’s not fair.”  That’s what they said this weekend. And they move further to the left.

Which isn’t good news for Democrats and the Democratic Party. That party holds itself in the center. It’s opportunistic, short on principles and leadership, and doesn’t offer a great vision for America itself. No, this isn’t about whether Hillary should have won, would have won, or did win. Hillary, despite what so many on the right say, has nothing to do with it.

This is about, for example, stripping away the laws put in place after the last economic meltdown, which is what Democrats and Republicans in Congress just did. This is about, as Trump supporters have pointed out, business as usual in Washington D.C., and the merry-go-round of elected officials and lobbyists, and the influence of money in politics.

Trump wasn’t the answer to that.

Neither was Hillary.

No, this is about a new political will that’s growing and shaping itself. It’s growing among the young people. I’m not sure what shape it’ll take. I’m old, male, and white. They, the young, no matter what their color, race, gender and sexual identity, don’t think as I do. They create their own spin, decide their own truths, and pursue their own actions. Egged on by the high costs of living in America, dwindling opportunity, and failed government leadership, they’re moving away from the institutions and norms that were set up as the functioning center for the last one hundred years. Fewer of them are driving, so cars matter less. Manufacturing had already drifted away and they, the young, no longer see it as the savior it was after World War II. Money matters less because they have to do without it. Bankers have already betrayed them, and revealed their infinite greed, so the young have grown up not trusting them.

Water matters more because they see and experience what happens without it. The environment happens more because they see the impact of the plastic dumped into our waters. Equality matters more, because they know people who are transgender, and LGBT, and recognize them as equals and friends, regardless of the law.

And that is the change that matters, because they are bold and powerful, and growing in numbers. When they finally take control, it’ll be something to behold.

5

Thursday’s Theme Music

The opening words to this song streamed through my thoughts last Saturday, when I participated in a women’s march in Medford.

Everywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy
‘Cause summer’s here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy

Hey! think the time is right for a palace revolution, but where I live the game to play is compromise solution

Hey, said my name is called Disturbance; I’ll shout and scream, I’ll kill the King, I’ll rail at all his servants

h/t to Wikipedia.org for lyric and historic context

Of course, when I thought of this song, it was winter, and I was in a women’s march, organized by women to remind the POTUS and America that they’re here and displeased, and want to continue the agenda of change in America that’s been going on, an agenda that includes equality regardless of gender, age, sexual orientation or preference, religion, ethnicity, skin color, and many other things that America claims to be free and equal about.

It was ironic, and a little disappointing when thinking of protest songs, that “Street Fighting Man” came to mind. Where’s the street fighting women? I was surrounded by them.

Mick Jagger said that events in the United States and France inspired the song when he wrote it. It seems like an indictment of the pervasive male oriented society that only men were mentioned from that era of protests in the 1960s. Despite its inherent sexism, the song, with its driven rocking beat and discordant sitar and guitars, is a powerful protest anthem, powerful enough that Chicago radio stations didn’t play it in the summer of 1968, fearful that it would incite more rebellion and violence in a city that was already struggling with the violence emerging in the shadow of Democratic National Convention as anti-war protesters and police clashed.

Stream forward through time a few years, and the publication of the Pentagon Papers display the American Government’s hypocrisy and cynicism, a reminder that emerges through the recent film, “The Post.” Watching that film, the calls for change and to shake up business as usual sharpen with understanding, along with the bitter taste arising from the belief that our government, no matter which party dominants, is failing us. Those parties apply lip-service to our demands, but their actions often sustain the status quo and business as usual. Most Americans want change, but often split about the shape of change desired. It’s the struggle of democracy. The path seems clear, but it’s messy an slippery.

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

~ Frederick Douglass

That’s why I joined those women and marched to demand change. I want change. I served in the American military to forward the ideals of freedom, democracy, and equality, with the simple truth that all people are created equal. I slowly learned how those words and sentiments are often more of a propaganda slogan and less of a governing ideal, and that many people, including our leaders, lack the principles and moral courage to fully embrace the ideals behind these words.

In the song, Mick asks, “What else can a poor boy do,” and adds, “There’s no place for a street fighting man,” a suggestion about the frustrations of limited options.

What a wheel of history we ride.

0

Right, Right

I’m starting out crabby this morning. I haven’t had my coffee.

I just read an article about California’s right-to-die law. Before that, I read about fake news, sometimes called alt-news, and its spread after the Vegas murders of fifty-nine people at a concert. Before it, I read about the surge in gun sales and the rise in gun-manufacturers’ stock prices. Sales and stock prices go up because people fear that gun controls will be implemented.

The echoes of past debates about all this gains volume as new arguments. America enjoys the satisfaction of having the right to own guns. Americans have enough private weapons to provide eighty-eight of one hundred people with a weapon. But we know it’s not all of us who want to be able to shoot and kill other creatures.

That’s what’s interesting about the juxtaposition of these three stories. People, even with terminal conditions and in terrible pain, are often not afforded the right to kill themselves. It’s not their right. Our government owns that right. In a few places, it’s delegated to bureaucratic processes, but it’s mostly considered a no-no. Your life is too valuable for you to have that control. We’re going to make you hang on until your last breath.

But then, we have the weapons that can fire ten rounds a second, as the killer did in Vegas, or twenty-four rounds in ten seconds, as the Orlando killer did. And that’s your right to own. You don’t have the right to kill, unless you feel threatened, and your state has a defend-your-ground law. The interpretation of that has law has gotten broad. Police officers also have broad latitude, killing others if they feel threatened for themselves or the public. Wounding is less often an option. So here, the right to kill is widely distributed, for a variety of reasons. These reasons seem to trump the sanctity of life.

The last story was about freedom of the press, and the difficulty of coping with the spread of lies, known as false news, fake news, or alternate news, instead of being called bullshit, and lies, as it should be, because, well, rights. People fear that if we start calling bullshit on these things, then bullshit will occur. And as we dither about what to do, what to do, bullshit happens. With that bullshit, we struggle against tides of fears, change, doubt. Then the echoes of debate fade, until the next time.

Enough of this. I’m going to get my coffee and go read about the people complaining about athletes exercising their to protest during the propaganda portion of our sports events called playing the national anthem.

That’s not why wars were fought and soldiers gave their lives, you know. How dare people be so disrespect of their lives?

1

Protest Dream

I dreamed I was with my wife and sister-in-law. We’d arrived at a huge meeting center and were there to protest against government actions and for social justice, freedom and equality. The opposition to these ideals, who believed that others shouldn’t get them because others getting these rights were ruining our country, were also showing up. Armed, they were intent on intimidating “our side.”

But we weren’t intimidated. We assembled to protest. When government leaders appeared, we raised our right hand and formed the letter “C.” We held it up over our heads in silence.

It was amazing for me, in the dream, back in the crowd, to look forward, down, across and back, and see tens of thousands of people standing silently in sunlight with their right hand raised in a “C.”

Why that letter and action? The dream didn’t explain that. We all just knew, that’s what we were to do.

0

Today’s Theme Music

This song was written in nineteen sixty-six, and released in nineteen sixty-seven. The lyrics, though, speak to our times now as much as they did to the era which produced them.

There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

It’s s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

h/t to MetroLyrics

What’s interesting about that song is that Stephen Stills wrote it about a curfew on Sunset Strip. While they speak to the mood in America in the nineteen sixties and the twenty-first century, they speak to the life and times in the U.S.S.R, Nazi Germany, and other places ruled by fear, paranoia and oppression. People seek rights and freedoms; others squash them to preserve their status and wealth. It’s a cycle as old as humanity, except, instead of a man with a gun, there was a man with a rock, spear, bow and arrow, or other weapon.

Let’s listen to Buffalo Springfield and “For What It’s Worth.”

 

3

Longings

I hate myself on days like this.

I confess, I have longings.

Some are very simple and basic. Many will claim them as impractical and idealistic, even absurd.

Like, I have longings to be young again, and to have a nice cup of coffee with a pastry or donuts without worries about its healthiness or origins, longings to walk around, preferably on a warm, pleasant beach, smiling and nodding in friendliness to other people, who simply nod and smile back in friendliness.

I have longings for success, comfort, happiness, fun, and security in all its forms.

I have longings for freedom, equality, liberty and justice.

I’ll bet those longings are shared with many others.

I bet many people on the right and left share these longings.

I bet many politicians and CEOs share these longings, along with teachers, minorities, refugees, shoppers, consumers, teenagers, the elderly, the rich and the poor.

The nut is in the details of how we get satisfy these longings.

When the United States was founded, it was another step as part of a long walk to satisfy these longings, and the founders walked on the backs of many others. We’re shocked, angry and dismayed by their declaration that all men are created equal even while they were stealing land others already lived upon, deciding women are less deserving, and so are people who were slaves, because slaves were slaves; they were property. That was a compromise. A good one? Hell, no, I hear some shout. We’re still arguing it. It was a different era, with different values, views and principles.

I have sisters and friends who wish the protests going on in the U.S. to be over because, well, the elections are over, and isn’t that what this is all about? They have longings for a happier, more relaxed life.

But the protests and elections are part of a process. Both are symptoms of desires and larger arguments about what is right and wrong, and whether freedom, liberty and equality is even possible for everyone. Aren’t we humans simply animals at the heart of the matter, and shouldn’t it be that the strongest shall rule and take what is theirs by right of strength and power, whether it’s physical or intellectual prowess, military force, or the power of our gods?

These are arguments about longings and principles, perceptions, hopes, dreams, emotions and frustrations, resentments, hostilities and dreams that go back to separations derived from where we live, what we speak, our differences and similarities, all the way back to the most basic and fundamental questions of why we’re here, how we came to be here, and what we want to become.

I hate myself on days like this because I have longings. I want to go write. I want to enjoy my comfortable routine of writing fiction, dreaming of breaking out, working toward the horizon that I’ve created for myself to keep myself going while staving off bitterness, weariness and depression.

Some will read this and remark to their screens to me through their screen, you are a self-indulgent idiot.

I can’t argue that I’m not. I know too well the limits of my talents, intelligence and abilities. I tell myself that if I try harder and persist, promising myself, “I can do better,” and that, if I do, I can overcome my shortcomings.

Which is what these longings are all about, really. You understand.

And I hate myself on days like this, because others have longings, and I think of myself as one person but part of a larger body trying to make a difference. So I set aside my personal longings to take up the longings of others, those longings that were there long before I was born as an American, and march for what we believe is right against an agenda that we believe is wrong.

History will not judge us. History is written by the winners. It’ll be the winners who judge us. If we lose, we’ll probably be forgotten. Hell, if we win, we’ll probably be forgotten as well.

That’s the nature of being part of a larger longing.

2

Resistance Bread

A fascinating part of the net for me is the opportunity it provides to meet people who I would otherwise never encounter. Many of these are fellow writers, intelligent and personable people who enjoy reading and writing. One of these is Barbara Froman.

Barb is the author of Shadows and Ghosts. She has come up with a recipe that she calls ‘Resistance Bread’. She posted it on Facebook. I liked it (because it sounds delicious for  cold day) and decided I’d share it here, so here is Barb’s FB post and recipe.

#Resistance Bread

I created this tea bread so that it would be food for strength and comfort—loaded with antioxidants, yet sufficiently sweet. Indeed, my husband says he can’t think of this as bread, as it seems more like dessert to him. I, on the other other hand, eat it for breakfast. The recipe is open to improvisation. If you try it, and experiment with your own additions/changes, please share!

Preheat oven to 350º

Liberally grease an 8″ x 4″ bread pan with cultured butter.

Mix:

1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons grapeseed oil or melted cultured butter
2 beaten eggs
1 grated apple
1/3-1/2 cup orange juice (pulp or no pulp, it doesn’t make a difference, just start with the smaller amount and add more if necessary)
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup dried cranberries or cherries (I mix the two when I have both on hand)
1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts.

To this mixture add:

1 cup minus two tablespoons any 1-to-1 gluten free flour mix
2 tablespoons coconut flour
(optional) 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
2 teaspoons baking powder

Blend well into liquid mixture. The batter should have substance, but not be stiff.

Pour into prepared pan and bake for @50 minutes. Test with toothpick to see if it’s done. Cool in pan on rack, then slice when still slightly warm and slather with chevre or your favorite nut butter.

Ready to #Resist?

1

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