Category: Sometimes I Flirt with Politics

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Thank You, President Trump!

I am not the same person I was on November 7, 2016.  I’ve changed, and I owe it all to you, POTUS.  Thanks for that.  It’s easy to get caught up in the frenzy of your Tweets and your lies and your hateful bigotry and the chaos that surrounds your administration, but the mantra I have chosen to live my life by is “choose hope,” so I write these words from a place of hope and optimism.

After the initial shock of you winning the election wore off (Pffft, who am I kidding?  I will never get over the shock of having a reality TV star sitting in the Oval Office.), something inside me woke up.  I understand the awesome task of what it means to be a citizen now.  Not simply a good citizen, but an active and engaged and appreciative citizen.

Because of you, I no longer take this country I live in for granted.  My Dad taught his children that America was the “greatest nation on earth.”  I think for him and for intermittent periods in our young nation’s history, that was true.  He was born the son of two Irish immigrants in the midst of the Great Depression and was just a young boy as America fought bravely and worked hard to liberate the world from the vice grip of one Adolph Hitler.  You know him, right?  Short man, odd moustache, killed millions of Jews — I’m keeping it simple for you.

I believed my Dad when he said those words.  Now I am a grown woman and I know more.  I have a context that I did not have as a child.  Your presidency has encouraged me to read more, learn more, seek out primary sources.  My naivete about America’s greatness has been replaced by a grittier, messier, conflicted and complicated appreciation for the noble experiment that our country is.  I see better where we fall short and have failed as a nation and where we soar and achieve and nurture greatness and possibility.

Sign from the Women's March, Chicago, 21 January, 2017.
Sign from the Women’s March, Chicago, 21 January, 2017.

You, Sir, are supremely flawed, but I have learned that you are but a mere reflection of America’s deeply ingrained flaws.  You are a living, breathing representation of our ugliness, our greed, our racism, our tendency to bully and manipulate other countries to our own powerful will.  I’ve come to embrace that you lack any sense of humanity.  You are hollow and full at the same time.

Despite your flaws, or because of them, so many things have been clarified for me and many other Americans.  More than a few say, “He is not my President.  He does not represent me.  I will never claim him.”  To them, I say, “You must.”  Every American, whether we voted for you or not, must own you as our president.  How can we vanquish you if we do not first own you, claim you as our own?

So, President Trump, oh president of mine, I am grateful for what I have gained under your administration.  Here are just a few of the things I’ve been gifted with in the past twelve months:

  • I learned how to march in community with others and hold signs that reflect my beliefs.  Protest is a verb that requires a lot of Sharpies, supportive shoes, and dressing in layers.
  • I discovered not just Twitter, but Black Twitter and I am a much better person for it.  The platform provides the opportunity to eavesdrop and learn and absorb lessons that a nice, white, middle aged lady should have learned well before having to color her hair or buy her first jar of Pond’s Cream.  I am late to the party, but I am here.
  • My white boys with their blue eyes will learn, compliments of their increasingly woke mama, that life will be easier for them than that of their classmates that have different colored skin or vaginas.  And for those classmates with different colored skin and a vagina — we salute you!  “With great power comes great responsibility” is a lesson for more than superheroes.
  • When someone I used to know in high school refers to my diverse, integrated Chicago neighborhood as a “fairy tale,” I speak up.  All the nope.  My life and my life’s choices are no less valid than his.  I respect myself, my neighbors, and my family more than ever now.  You can choose to live a segregated life and I can choose not to.  I like my neighborhoods like I like my Skittles, with all the colors of the rainbow.
  • My understanding of our government is probably as honed as it has been since watching Schoolhouse Rocks! shorts on Saturday mornings as a kid.  The process of legislation, committee work, judicial appointments, grassroots organizing — the nuts and bolts of governing is fascinating stuff, man.  You should look into it.
  • Science!  Scientists!.  Modern days heroes, all of them.  Because of you, I have added NASA to my list of regularly visited web sites.  You and the GOP have politicized climate change and the world will pay.  We are already paying.  Mudslides, raging fires, hurricanes, polar vortexes, starving polar bears — these things are now commonplace, but their cost, both social and economic, is adding up.  The military knows this.  Every nation on earth knows this.  It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.
  • My appetite for news and commentary has grown, but I no longer rely on the talking heads of cable TV to provide it.  Sadly, too many Americans do.  I crave more detail, more nuance, a more thoughtful approach.  Critical thinking is alive and well, but you have to search for it and it’s not always very evident in the places you would expect.
  • An awareness that you can’t lump all Republicans together.  For every Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, there is an Ana Navarro and Matthew Dowd.  I have gained an unexpected admiration for those few conservatives, big and small in stature, that speak up and challenge the extremists that have hijacked the GOP.  Those who support you and those who remain silent are equally complicit.

There is a right side of history, Mr. Trump, and you are not on it.  You are a sad, raging, incurious embarrassment, full of hate and devoid of compassion.  You are not worthy to lead America or call yourself leader of the free world.  And yet, somehow, because of your flaws, I am learning, growing, stretching, flexing my American muscle in a way I never have before.

Sure, I’ve always voted, but, quite honestly, that was pretty much it.  No more.  Because of you, I now march, protest, read, research, donate, speak up, sign petitions, volunteer to help refugees, and make certain my sons are on the front lines for all of it.  On Monday, for the first time, I will meaningfully celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with my boys.  That makes me so proud and so happy.

I am a better American because of you, President Trump.  Me and all the other folks like me, learning to channel our outrage in productive and measurable ways, are not going anywhere.  We are here.  Patriots, all of us.  We are black and white and everything in between.  We are gay and straight and transgender and Muslim and Jewish and atheists and Mexican and Haitian and African.  We are immigrants, and not just from Norway.  We are poor and we are rich and we are everything in between.  We are mighty.

The greatest irony, I hope, is that in the end, you would have succeeded in making America great again, just not in the way you intended.  So, yes, thanks for that.

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Don’t Kid Yourself, Our Children Are Paying Attention to Current Political News

I talk and think about politics a lot.  Let me clarify that for you, when I say ‘a lot,’ I mean, a whole heaping boatful.

Politics is my jam and it has been since I was a young girl.  I remember watching the television footage of Nixon’s resignation as a four year old.  I got into a verbal sparring match with a second grade classmate who contended she was allowed to cast a vote in the 1976 presidential election when she went into the voting booth with her mom.  (Spoiler alert, she didn’t.)

In junior high, I wore a campaign button for Chicago’s first black mayor, Harold Washington, even though I lived in the suburbs.  And I am a proud former vice president of the College Democrats.  Hell, I married a New Englander who was attracted to Chicago for its politics and theater.  Politics and political discourse is in my DNA.

That said, I work to check myself when I speak about politics in front of my sons.  It is important to me that our sons grow up in an environment where political discussion is as common as putting together a grocery list or having to nag them to pick up their dirty socks.  But it is equally important that they not exist in a culture where those who disagree with you politically are seen as the enemy.  Which, full disclosure, has been pretty damn challenging this past year.

My goal as their mother is to introduce them to the concept that what happens in Washington, DC and Springfield (our state capital) and in Chicago’s City Council has an impact on them in the day-to-day.  How they choose to live their lives will be a political statement.  I want them to know that the personal is political and that the political is personal.  And, most importantly, that they feel they have the capacity to change their world through participation.

This weekend I got a wake-up call from my eight year old about how today’s politics, both national and global, is impacting him.  Trickle down economics is bunk, but trickle down politics is truth, my friends.  Our kids are paying attention to what is swirling around them, even when Mom and Dad (or, Mom and Mom or Dad and Dad or Mom or Dad or Grandma or Aunite or Uncle) works hard to help them feel safe and protected.

Excitedly, my son wanted to show me the pictures he drew on the computer.

story1

story2

These drawings tell a story that kind of took my breath away.  In “The Clash,” there is a horrible one-eyed green monster who is at the center of an epic battle between light and dark, good and bad, yin and yang.  And, mind you, these are my son’s descriptions, not mine.  The little green triangles are the people below, the masses, who await the outcome of the battle, but they are standing in formation behind their leader, the green monster.

Atop the monster is the internal battle of light and dark.  You can see that yin and yang are no longer part of a single unit, working in tandem, but instead, separated and at cross purposes.  They have no more relationship to balance, no need to stay connected.  And next to the broken yin and yang are the white and black flying dragons.  And, no, I have never allowed my boy to watch GoT.  In “The afterworld” — you can see my boy capitalizes about as well as he picks up his dirty socks, he explains that dark has won, evil triumphed over good.  The skies are overcast and stormy while the earth burns.

So, yeah, basically, my eight year old is depicting Armageddon.  That’s comforting . . .

Despite the alarming nature of my boy’s brightly colored vision of Armageddon, I took a deep breath and tried to listen rather that reveal how much I was freaking the freak out.  I got another opportunity to listen as he explained the stories later to my mother-in-law.  His tone was one of pride, not fear, so that helped, but his intention was clear — he was exploring what happens when evil wins.

My takeaway is that my boy is paying attention to what is happening in the world around him.  Despite our efforts to turn the news radio off when it gets too heavy, or be respectful and not stoke fear when we talk politics around the dinner table, he is listening and absorbing the free flowing fear and worry that is potent in the world these days.  Between Twitter tantrums and the growing threat of nuclear war and anti-immigrant fever across the globe, paired with growing nationalist movements and racial tensions and the calvacade of #MeToo stories, not to mention mass shootings that have become simultaneously epidemic and commonplace, being a compassionate, empathic human — the kind so man of us are trying hard to raise, is hard these days.

Our kids know this.  Talk to them, but more importantly, listen.  Get a sense of what they know and how they are feeling.  Do not underestimate their awareness or their capacity to understand politics and its impact on their world.  I promise you you will be surprised.

____________________

Note:  I spoke with my boy this morning, seeking his permission to write about his drawings and story.  His response was an immediate and enthusiastic YES.  Just know that as his mother, I see his creative product as his now, not mine, and writing about it requires his consent.  MTM

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I Visited Civil War and WWII Memorials Yesterday and Then I Heard About Charlottesville

The feeling was palpable and even in the moment I knew that I was seeing the Civil War monument with keener eyes.  Yesterday  I spent a few hours in Muskegon, Michigan with family on our way home from our summer vacation along Lake Michigan’s shores.  We parked the car to give the kiddos a chance to run around a bit and figure out how we should spend our time before catching the ferry back to our lives that don’t involve sandy beaches every morning and afternoon.

In the middle of Muskegon’s Hackley Park, a tall granite shaft pierces the sky.  It was a beautiful sky yesterday — bright blue with big, puffy clouds. As I looked more closely, I saw it was a war memorial.  As I looked more closely, still, I saw that it was a memorial to the soldiers and sailors of the Civil War.

"To the soldiers and sailors who fought and to all patriotic men and women who helped to preserve our nation in the War of the Rebellion."
“To the soldiers and sailors who fought and to all patriotic men and women who helped to preserve our nation in the War of the Rebellion.”

“Not conquest, but peace,” was written on one side.  I walked around to see “and a united people” on the other side.  On August 12, 2017, I more fully understood our bloody Civil War that almost destroyed the United States of America in its infancy.  I could comprehend it in a way that I have never before.

Looking up at the sculpted soldiers and sailors and reflecting on the words that commemorated a war that almost broke our country, it seemed clearer to me how that degree of hate and bloodshed is possible.  The tone of our current divided America makes that understanding so much more accessible.

Today in America, nothing feels very united.  We are a nation divided. Again or still, take your pick.  What divides us?  The same things that have divided us since before that Civil War so long ago.  It really is as simple as black (or shades thereof) and white.

America was founded on white supremacy.  That is simple fact.  White Europeans landed on the shores of a new to them continent. They did not discover this land, as it had been inhabited by humans that happened to be native born, but they did colonize it.  When those colonies formed a United States, slaves were a foundation of the American economy.

At its core, the Civil War was about eleven southern states not wanting to cede to a country that was moving towards the abolition of slavery, which was central to the southern economy and way of life.  So what did they do? They formally seceded to continue the reprehensible practice of owning humans with a skin color darker than their own who were forcibly imported here from Africa.

After 622,000 men were killed, a full 2% of the population, the Confederacy surrendered.  They were beaten into submission, their rebellion squashed, their states almost unrecognizable.  But where does that hate go?  Does it just disappear?  Did the Confederacy merely lick their wounds and move forward, welcomed back to the United States with open arms, forgiven their sins?

Nope.

The idea of the North as good and the South as bad is simplistic and inaccurate.  With the passage of the 13th (the abolition of slavery), 14th (all citizens having equal protection under the laws), and 15th (granting black men the right to vote) amendments, plenty of northerners were worried. Even my beloved and evolved Walt Whitman did not agree with giving freed black men the right to vote.

America lurched forward, inequality remaining firmly entrenched in our culture.  Slaves don’t just magically go from being owned to being fully autonomous.  By the time America entered into WWII (only after being attacked at Pearl Harbor), the armed forces of the US were still segregated. Integration didn’t occur until 1948.  And that forced integration was the result of an Executive Order by then President Truman, not a Congress that drafted bi-partisan legislation to make it the law of the land.  Think about that.

After Hackley Park and those Civil War monuments, my family made its way to the USS 393, docked in Muskegon and now a private military museum.  We toured this WWII era LST ship used to transport tanks and POWs and injured soldiers.  The ship now contains thousands of pieces of military ephemera, from flags to uniforms to weaponry.

ww2

Along one wall two flags were displayed — a tattered American Stars and Stripes, and the bright red Nazi flag.  I snapped photos of both, humbled to learn the ship had been at the invasion of Omaha Beach on D-Day.  I tried to explain the significance of that day to my eight year old.  I failed.  As I snapped a photo of the Nazi swastika, my mother-in-law cautioned me against posting it on Facebook, “All those neo-Nazis will find you. You don’t want that.”  It still feels shocking to see a Nazi flag.  It has a potency that cannot be ignored.

Full disclosure, that week in Michigan was blissful.  It was so good to step away from following the news so obsessively.  It was good to be with family and in nature.  It was good to not think about what is happening in America. But, yes, it was vacation, and what is a sure thing about vacations?  They end.

Last night, after we had crossed Lake Michigan by ferry, I fired up Facebook and the news of the day came screeching back. Charlottesville. Nazis.  White supremacy.  Violence.  Hate.  Bigotry.  Insufficient condemnation from our president.

The murder of Heather Heyer while she was counterprotesting at the Unite the Right protest is where America is at in 2017.  There is a direct correlation between the Civil War and WWII and what happened in the streets of Charlottesville this weekend.  Connect the dots.  It is easy to do.

This is no longer reading about events in a history book.  This is not being inconvenienced by marches or other Americans who disagree about politics.  This is not visiting a memorial or a museum.  This is not about white guilt.  This is not a drill.

There are actual Nazis and actual white supremacists gathering and organizing and perpetrating violence today, right here and right now on America’s streets.  They are celebrating after Trump did not single out their actions in his remarks about the protests.  They are growing and emboldened and promising more to come.  They feel victorious and ready to rumble.

Thinking about those memorials I saw yesterday makes everything more real.  I wonder how soldiers dying on a field in Pennsylvania, or others sitting in a tank disembarking onto a beach in France to fight Nazis would think about the swastika flying in the breeze in Charlottesville, Virginia on a warm summer day in 2017.

How do you feel about it?  What are you willing to do to stop it?