Category: Angry Rant

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We Teach Our Kids Not to Act Like Donald Trump, and Yet He May Be Our Next President

I generally work to keep this blog politics free.  Occasionally I write about silly things politicians say, but those posts can be counted on two or three fingers in five years of content. And, sure, I write about gun violence regularly, but to me that is a public health issue and we should work to keep the politics out of it.  Today, though, Imma get a bit political up in here.

I don’t understand the whole Trump thing.  I’ve asked my conservative friends to help me understand, but they are equally stumped.  No one seems to claim the man, and yet his rallies are full of fist pumping patriots. I sit here wondering when hate and vitriol and misogyny became so patriotic.

For months, liberal friends have poked fun at this man, full of hubris about how silly the GOP has become.  None of them are laughing much anymore. A seriousness has entered their posts, a sense that a President Trump is, indeed, a possibility, and not just a joke.

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As a mother of young boys, I find the idea of four or eight years of my sons’ childhoods under a President Trump unconscionable.  Terrifying, actually, especially after seeing the three little girls happily dancing to propaganda set to music about crushing people who don’t believe in “freedom.”

My guess that all of us who are parents, no matter what side of the political aisle we align yourselves with, work hard, day in and day out, to instill values and behavioral expectations for the little ones we are raising to be adults someday.  The lessons we teach them are universal and transcend politics:

  • Do not bully.
  • Do not make fun of people with disabilities.
  • Do not treat people who are different differently.
  • Do not prey on people who have weaknesses.
  • Do not call people “losers.”

This is basic parenting, 101 kind of stuff, you know?

And yet, Candidate Trump is in his salad days on the campaign trail with exactly these behaviors.  Thousands, as he so often reminds us, flock to his rallies to cheer on what he calls patriotism. Any clip I see seems to categorize today’s America as a cesspool of awful, but a vote for Trump will “make America great again.”

I don’t know, folks, but the idea of our next American President entering office with an agenda of building walls to protect us then require another country to pay for those walls, well, it just doesn’t make sense.  Many folks around the world already think of America as a bully.  Can you imagine the implications of an actual bully, as Trump proves himself to be time and time again, gaining a position of power and authority?

I know my thinking is simplistic, but some things truly are black and white.  Exhibit A are Donald Trump’s own words.  They speak for themselves:

  • “You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media writes as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”
  • On exporting goods to China, “Listen you motherfuckers, we’re going to tax you 25%!”
  • “The only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yamakas every day.”
  • “Arianna Huffington is unattractive both inside and out.  I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man.”
  • “If you can’t get rich dealing with politicians, there’s something wrong with you.”
  • “Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people, but we have stupid people.”
  • On John McCain, “He’s not a war hero.  He’s a war hero because he was captured.  I like people that weren’t captured.”
  • “All the women on The Apprentice flirted with me – consciously or unconsciously.  That’s to be expected.”

These quotes are but a sprinkle of the ugly vitriol that Donald Trump puts forth on a never ending basis.  He categorizes people into “winners” and “losers” with impunity, growing ever more popular with each insult.

It’s too much.  If what’s involved in “making America great” again is a litany of crass insults, appealing to our basest instincts, and puffing up my chest with hate and name calling, I want none of it.

For me, I want to vote for a president that doesn’t rely on instigating the worst in us for votes.  I want my children to be proud of their country, to look to their president as a human, man or woman, that works to better their country, not divide it.  And when my sons watch news clips in the next four or eight years, I don’t want to have to shield them from the antics and despicable behavior of our Commander in Chief.

We have an opportunity here, folks, just like we get every four years.  If you are unhappy with what is happening in Washington, I implore you to VOTE, exercising that greatest of American rights.  But I also caution you to be sensible.  If you would not encourage name calling, buffoonery, misogyny, or bullying in the children you are raising, do not condone it in your president.

 

 

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Sandy Hook: Three Years Ago

Three years ago this afternoon I was driving with my then three year old in the back seat.  We were stuck in traffic coming home from Milwaukee.  My husband called me wondering if I had heard the news.  What news?, I asked.  I was grateful the boy was sleeping, as I listened to the reports about a school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut most of the way home.

Something changed for me that day.

There was a convergence of my own grief from having lost a child, living in a city where gun violence is rampant, and the idea of someone holding an arsenal targeting a school of defenseless children.  Like many mothers, that day wrecked me.  My boy was only in pre-school at the time and I was able to shelter him from news about schools not being a safe place, but I wept at the idea of young children being murdered, shot, dying through random gun violence.

Newtown Victims

Now, with my boy being in first grade himself, I can’t help but think of an armed intruder targeting his school, walking his halls, methodically shooting and killing twenty first grade classmates and six teachers and administrators.  Now I know the names and faces.

America changed that day.  I changed that day.  Maybe you did, too. Certainly every parent who lost a child that day now lives a life that is unrecognizable to the lives they enjoyed on December 13, 2012.

My boy attends a Chicago public school.  He stands in a long, snaking line every morning waiting his turn to walk through a metal detector.  His teachers run “intruder drills” every fall.  These practices are common place to him and don’t appear to cause him great distress.  He knows no different. The principal of his school made a passing reference earlier this fall how lucky the students in Kindergarten and first grade are, as they have a storage room inside their classrooms — something the older grades don’t have access to.  Her point was that they would have an extra layer of safety in the case of a deranged, gun wielding monster who intended to shoot rooms full of school children.

This is the world we live in now, folks.

The truth is that life moves on and routine takes over.  Politics and personal feelings about rights have become more important than the shock and fear and outrage that was almost universally felt in those hours and days after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary.  Conspiracy theories abound suggesting that these children and teachers never lived, their existence something of a hoax, the broken lives of their families invalidated to prove a point.

I make no bones about where I stand on gun violence.  Some of you agree with me, some of you do not.  I am past the point of thinking that my words about this subject make a difference.  One mom at a keyboard in her living room is no match for the endless resources of the NRA.  I get it.

But wherever you stand on the matter of guns, please take a moment to remember these children today.  Think about the holes in their bodies, the blood on their clothing, the procession of tiny, little caskets being lowered into the ground.  Think about their surviving parents, older and younger brothers and sisters, grandparents who wonder how they can still be alive when their grandchild is dead.  Say their names, even if only a whisper.

Remember the fear and anger and horror you felt that day three years ago before life became routine again.

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How Facebook Came to be the Most Depressing Place on Earth

I’m not quite sure exactly what happened, when the tipping point was, but Facebook is really starting to harsh my mellow these days.  It is depressing as hell over there. Between dentists decapitating lions, black motorists dying after traffic stops, and political hijinks, I’ve about had it.

The thing is, none of these things are new.  Wealthy men with small penises have always opened their wallets wide to get help putting a new animal head on the wall of their man cave.  Racism in our criminal justice system is not something “on the rise,” as its been the norm for as long as our criminal justice system has existed.  And politicians just suck, everyone knows that.

Maybe part of the problem is that Facebook allows me to know things about people I love dearly or just met once or twice.  In a different era, I might not be privy to where my acquaintances stand on controversial issues like choice, marriage equality, or the displaying of the Confederate flag.  Now I know.  Because they tell me.  Often.

I am just as guilty.  Facebook has become the ultimate bully pulpit.  I use it myself to raise funds for pediatric cancer research, rail about the state of public education, and try and educate folks about America’s unhealthy and dangerous obsession with guns.

Here is a sampling of my own posts from the past few weeks:

Heading to my son’s school for an evening meeting. Thanks to Obama, Duncan, Rahm, and the CPS powers that be, it feels like I’m heading into a crime scene. And, yes, I do hold Obama partially responsible. His education policy truly sucks.

Bobby Jindahl tells us that what we can do for the victims of tonight’s theater shooting is send our prayers and hugs. I respectfully disagree. We can start to demand shock and outrage at these continued shootings.

And my kid now has a 7:30 AM start time for his CPS school. That means a 5:45 AM bus pick up for some classmates. This is not good. Not good at all. All to save $ that was squandered by politicians. But I guess we all need to make sacrifices, right?

We have lost any sense of collectivism or social responsibility. We embrace this mentality of taking care of our own, and no others.

My guess is that many of my “friends” find me insufferable, politely scrolling past my Facebook activism, believing that our connection from grade school or cancer circles or blogging merits me remaining on their friend list, just as I do with them.

And the thing that strikes me as the most oppressive is the indignity we all seem to have, again, including myself in this.  The shaming, the outrage, the hell fire and brimstone response to everything that happens.  Everything, big and small. Facebook’s currency is making mountains out of mole hills.

Here’s an example.  Cecil, the feline national treasure of Zimbabwe, is stalked and killed by a dentist from Minnesota. People are outraged.  An actress posts the dentist’s address on Twitter.  He is almost universally reviled (at least on my feed).  Cue the contrarians. Now a whole other set of folks are outraged that the dentist outrage is so out of control.  Where is the outrage about street violence in America?  Where is the outrage about violence committed by cops?  Where is the outrage about hunting closer to home?

It goes on and on and on, the outrage.

Caitlyn Jenner is crowned with an award certifying her courage in the midst of her transition from man to woman.  Cue the contrarians. Where is the courage award for veterans who have lost limbs?  Where is the courage award for young women basketball players struck down by pediatric cancer?  Where is the courage award for [insert cause of choice here]?

Witnessing this outrage and indignity is unhealthy and oppressive.  Seriously.  It is depressing and heavy and ugly and fills our hearts with goop, and not the expensive Gwyneth Paltrow kind.

Human nature, it seems, can be kind of awful.

I need a break.  It used to be that people complained about the nightly news.  “If it bleeds, it leads,” was the saying.  But, the thing is, that evening news was contained.  It was an active decision to turn on the news at 5:30 or 6 or 10 or 11 to learn about the world around you, near and far.

These day, just the mere act of trying to stay connected with friends and family places you in this arena of ick that is Facebook.  We have all somehow decided to slog through the muck of black lives matter/all lives matter, cops suck/cops are heroes, the sky is falling for Confederates/Chicago public school kids/the Supreme Court/Christians/etc.

Staying in touch with one another never required so much fortitude.  And I’m pretty certain this is not what our forefathers hashed out in the Constitution.  Oh wait.  That’s another discussion entirely.

See, that’s the thing.  Everything has gotten all jumbly-wumbly.  A person’s concern about animal cruelty really can be separate and apart from their also present concern about local gun violence. Cops can, it turns out, be both good or bad, and they are also allowed to be individuals, meaning one bad cop does not condemn an entire profession.

This constant exposure to anger, outrage, shame, indignity, and Kardashians cannot be healthy for any of us.  Why, then, do we stick around?

  • I stick around because it’s where I learn that a fellow set of Cancer Parents who also lost a little daughter to cancer are traveling home from China with their newly adopted daughter.
  • I stick around to see how that micro-preemie is doing since she was discharged from the hospital.
  • I stick around to celebrate my friend’s kids graduating kindergarten and junior high and high school and college.
  • I stick around to learn about a mother in Chicago’s south side who has created a grassroots band of other mother’s who sit in lawn chairs on dangerous street corners every afternoon in an attempt to curb gun violence, believing that no one will shoot a gun under a mother’s watchful eye, even if it is not their mother.
  • I stick around to share my blog posts that I work hard to ensure are not all doom and gloom and, hopefully, contain words that inspire and help people feel connected to one another.
  • I stick around to nurture virtual friendships made with people I would have never, ever encountered in my typical day-to-day life.
  • I stick around to keep in touch with cousins that live in Las Vegas and Virginia and Ireland — folks I might never see again in person, but whom I care about and value and treasure.
  • I stick around because a friend in Amsterdam I have only met a handful of times posts some of the most life affirming photos of flowers I have ever seen.
  • I stick around because when I am writing a blog post about children’s literature, I can tap one of several Facebook friends who just happen to be children’s lit authors.  How cool is that?

Okay.  It’s sunshine and lollipops for you, folks, just for slogging through this blog post. No rainbows, though, because Facebook reminds me that rainbows are now considered controversial symbols of the evils of marriage equality, and I am not jumping on that outrage bandwagon.

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Facebook isn’t always easy, but it is, most likely, how you came to find my words, how you came to learn about my dear daughter Donna, how we manage this connection we have, close or distant, near or far, friend or acquaintance.

Damn you, Zuckerberg, I fear I will never be able to quit you.