Ramona's blog

Trouble at the Red Hen

Ramona — Mon, 25 Jun 2018 14:51:11 +0000

I've been thinking a lot about the Red Hen controversy--about whether Stephanie Wilkinson, the owner of the restaurant, should have told Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave her establishment. No guesswork for me. I'm on the side of Stephanie Wilkinson.

I've heard the back-and-forths, the calls for civility, the need to allow everyone the ability to at least eat a meal in peace. I get it. I'm not completely on the same page as those people who ran both Kirstjen Nielsen and Stephen Miller out of Mexican Restaurants last week. I understand their rage but I can't get behind them. Could be an age thing. Could be that I'm more inclined to hit them where they work and not where they eat. (Though eating at a Mexican restaurant right after lying about being mean to Central American refugee kids takes some whatever-the-Spanish-word-is-for-chutzpah.)

But when I read Stephanie Wilkinson's explanation, I found it both honest and poignant.

“I’m not a huge fan of confrontation,” Wilkinson said. “I have a business, and I want the business to thrive. This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”

Her main concern was for the feelings of her employees, and she spent many crucial minutes asking them what they wanted her to do before she finally asked Sarah Sanders to step outside. She did it privately, not wanting to create a scene, and she didn't insult, lecture, or demand. She simply asked Sanders to leave, explaining to her that she felt her restaurant had certain standards to uphold and Sanders didn't fit them.

I love that she gave her employees that much respect, no doubt knowing the impact this might have. She didn't broadcast it, an employee did, but there was no guarantee Sarah Sanders wouldn't have done it herself. Wilkinson had to know this would be big, but she did it, anyway.

I'm not a big fan of attempts at public humiliation. I think too often the reasons for doing it, as admirable as they may seem, get lost in the ensuing and often phony uproar over civility and manners. But we're at a point where civility and manners are only expected from one side--our side--while their side sees any attempt at decorum as an exploitable sign of weakness.

For the past two years we've been battered by nastiness and outright hatred. We're still being told to turn the other cheek, as if that's what it'll take to make us smile again. It isn't. Turning the other cheek doesn't feel good. This feels good.

Asking Sarah Sanders to leave a restaurant won't hurt her feelings. It won't affect her psyche. But our rage over lost children and terrorized parents has to have an outlet. Cheering the ousting of a hated member of a hated president's cabinet is a moment we might need. It doesn't make us "just like them". It makes us human.

(Cross-posted at Ramona's Voices and Crooks & Liars)

Topics:

Politics

The Children are Lost and Someone Must Pay

Ramona — Sat, 23 Jun 2018 12:39:50 +0000

The stories coming out of Texas this week are horrific and heartbreaking. They're far past maddening and into territory where heads explode.

No other way to put this: our government has been kidnapping refugee children and hiding them all across the country.

They move them in the dead of night and won't say where they've gone.

They refuse to open detention center doors to concerned government officials--the ones who haven't gone over to the dark side and show no signs of budging.

They won't allow outside cameras or recording devices, releasing instead their own sanitized versions of nice places to incarcerate terrified children.

They hang "Dear Leader" posters on the walls, showing a smirking Donald Trump alongside a bizarre, irrelevant quote from his book, "The Art of the Deal". ("Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war", in both English and Spanish.)

We know now that, long before Jeff Sessions told those families they're going to have their kids taken away if they didn't stop fleeing the dangers in their own countries to get to the Land Of The Free And the Home Of The Brave, they were already taking kids away from fleeing refugees.

Now they have over 2000 of them--some as young as eight months old--and it's as if locusts suddenly appeared in their fields, out of nowhere, thousands of them, all at one time. What is happening??

It's as if the plan to forcibly remove children from their refugee parents ended at "forcibly remove", followed by TO BE DETERMINED in the middle of a whole lot of white space.

It's as if they thought nothing bad would happen if they forcibly removed small, helpless human beings from the people who love them and care for them.

It's as if they thought...

You know where I'm going with this, right?

They didn't think.

They didn't keep accurate records. They know where some of the children are, but not all of them. They sent them off to dozens of locations across the country without a fool-proof paper trail or electronic trail or any other kind of trail, and now that the cockamamie plan to steal kids away from their parents has been whomped to bits by millions of furious, vocal Americans, along with hundreds of members of the press, the clergy, and by God, Congress--all clamoring to know where the kids are-- they've been forced to admit they just don't know.

In a tone so nonchalant you would think they were talking about missing Kleenex boxes, they admit some of the children--the small children they kidnapped in broad daylight, along with the older ones who came alone many months before--may never be found.

They're okay with that. In fact, now that the crisis is over, now that they've stopped ripping children away from their families, their job here is done.

Lights out.

So today we're on a tear to find those kids. Everyone from governors to mayors to social workers to battle-scarred reporters to those of us who do our best work on Facebook and Twitter--everyone is trying to reunite families who have been torn apart by an American government getting off on teaching terrified refugees a lesson. We're so angry we can barely stand it.

But what worries me now is the tone set by the punditry. The return of those children is the talk of the town. Every TV pundit is putting together panels to discuss everything from long term psychiatric disorders stemming from separation and incarceration (almost guaranteed) to whether or not Melania meant the kids when she wore the jacket screaming I really don't care. Do U? on a flight to visit the detention centers (who the hell knows?).

On every panel someone reminds us that there will be some kids who will never (not may never, will never) see their families again. Everyone nods in agreement. Yes. They'll never see their families again.

Sad face, everyone.

And then they move on. They MOVE ON.

I haven't heard a single person talk about punishment. Kidnapping is a crime. Terrorizing refugees is a crime. Sending children off to vanish without a trace is surely a crime.

Who's going to jail? Is anybody in trouble for this?

Not that I've seen. And I want to know why.

Topics:

Politics

Why It Means Something When De Niro Says It

Ramona — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 20:07:26 +0000

You could spend many wasteful hours going back through at least 30 years of my public utterances--blogs, essays, articles, comments--but you'll never find an F-bomb in any of them. That's not me. It's not my most hated word--that would be the C-word--but it's right up there.

I shake my head a lot, signalling uninvited disgust at the thousands of times I see it on Twitter, on Facebook, in blogs, in real life. I don't get how "F--- you!!!" adds to any argument, other than making the user feel mighty, mighty good. It's used so much it's lost whatever luster it might have had. As slings and arrows, they're even kind of laughable.

But last night at the Tony Awards Robert De Niro dropped the F bomb--twice--against Donald Trump, and I, an audience of one in my own living room, found myself cheering like a maniac.

So what's the difference? The difference, as I see it, is in context, power, and visibility.

Context: Trump had just come off of a lunkheaded one-man burlesque at the G7 Summit held in Canada. At the meeting where leaders from the top industrialized countries gather to work on equitable alliances,Trump's dual roles as chaos creator and spoiled brat became clearer with every word and deed. The Ugliest American embarrassed us once again, and put us in a far weaker position world-wide than any president had ever done before.

Trump is headed today for talks with the North Koreans. It's a clown show, with Dennis Rodman as the frontman. Trump will know in seconds whether or not it's going to work, because "It's what I doooo." The two dictators will have a private 45-minute sit-down, again unprecedented, the need for secrecy way too suspicious.

Then there's that whole flap about refugee kids in cages, literally torn from their parents' arms, all in the name of "new and tougher immigration policy". The program is so rotten the UN's Human Rights Commission felt compelled to condemn the United States of America for "arbitrary and unlawful separation of family life...a serious violation of the rights of a child".

It adds up.

Power: Robert De Niro is a world-famous actor known for his no-bullshit take on our politics. Every one of us would have been surprised if he had taken the stage and said nothing. He did what he came for, and he did in New York City, where businessman Trump is and always has been a pariah. De Niro did it in front of an audience of creative mavericks there to celebrate the freedom to dream, to endure, to interpret the human condition. Trump--no surprise--is the antithesis of all they hold sacred.

Visibility: De Niro got a standing ovation. How awful if he hadn't, coming off of that powerful performance by the still-grieving students from Parkland--those same students now working to bring the NRA to its senses before more children are killed, and getting ugly heat, even from members of Trump's administration. The optics were inescapable: De Niro could have been every furious parent, every furious student, every furious human being capable of horror at the violence perpetrated on us all.

The ceremonies are broadcast all around the world. Millions of people saw De Niro pump his fists and say those words, and, for everyone who sniffed "blasphemy", claiming, bizarrely, that it could only help Trump, there were countless others who did as I did--cheered the hell out of it. Pumped! We were pumped.

We need that kind of anger, that kind of power, that kind of visibility, and let's face it--it means more when it comes from a celebrity than when it comes from a policy wonk or a relative nobody. Celebrities have sway. They get quoted. Their names and faces mean something. Witness the fuss this morning over what De Niro said. We're talking about it. Not just the words but the reasons for them.

And that, my friends, is a Big Effing Deal.

(Cross-posted at Ramona's Voices and Medium)

Topics:

Arts & Entertainment

Media

Politics

Democrats, Get Fierce

Ramona — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 01:37:49 +0000

President Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act, on August 14, 1935. Attending were: (L-R) Representative Robert Doughton (D-NC), Senator Robert Wagner (D-NY), Representative John Dingell (D-MI), Representative Joshua Twing Brooks (D-Pennsylvania), Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, Senator Pat Harrison (D-MS), and Representative David Lewis (D-MD). (Library of Congress)

Five months from now, on Tuesday, November 6, we Democrats will have what may be our one and only chance to slow down the runaway Trump train. Maybe even--and this is just a "maybe"--stop him dead in his tracks. It could happen. It should happen. But will it?

Living in the real world as I do most of the time, I'm frantic, I'm worried, I'm hyped, I'm scared. Some days I'm beside myself with anxiety. Most of it comes from the awful realization that Trump is still president and the GOP is still pretending everything is hunky dory, but much of it comes from the Democrats and their wistful insistence that TrumpCo is so bad it can't possibly go on much longer.

I'm a life-long Democrat, but whenever I'm wistful it's because I'm longing for the good old days, when Dems were primarily the protectors of the poor and disenfranchised, the champions of the working class, the supporters of unions, the caretakers of our lands, and the nemeses of the power brokers.

The people who took on those tasks weren't wimps, they were fighters. Fierce fighters who knew their missions were the right ones and didn't veer from their convictions. Sometimes they won the battle, sometimes they lost, but we always knew where they stood. They stood with us.

The Democrats spent decades, starting with the Great Depression in the 1930s, working to better the lives of the lower and middle classes, while the other party, the Republicans, didn't. Every social advance came from the Democrats, against a predictable onslaught of opposition from the Republicans. And it goes on. So how is it that the Republicans now OWN us, and are--true to form--working against us? How is it that the Republicans are winning?

I'm no expert but I submit the Republicans are winning because the Democrats are losing. And the Democrats are losing because they've lost touch with the very people they traditionally fought for. If people think you're not fighting for them, they're going to look somewhere else for help. Even the people who brag about pulling themselves up by their non-existent bootstraps want to see strength and purpose in their leaders.

Strength and purpose, as we've seen, can work against them--it's what every bully has going for him-- but they'll take it over the pathetic bleatings of even the most goodhearted wimps.

We should know that by now, yet over on Twitter our Democratic leaders spend a lot of time warning us about what Trump and the Republicans are doing, making it seem as if it's OUR problem and not THEIR problem. Last I looked, we elected them to be the leaders. We chose them and we're paying them far more than most of us make. We expect them to work at taking care of this.

I want our Democratic leaders to get over their inferiority complexes, their need to mind their manners, and get fierce. FIERCE. Instead of hiding behind that hill over there, lobbing threats, they need to put on their battle gear and go headlong into the front lines.

They remind me of the commercial where robbers take over a bank and the guy telling the customers they're being robbed isn't there to help them, he's only there to tell them a bank robbery is in progress.

This current American regime is so corrupt our mouths hang open 24 hours a day. Our hearts race, our blood pressure rises, and those sputtering variations of WTF--our reactions to everything coming out of this White House--are beginning to sound canned.

And the Democrats wring their hands and shake their fists and wail along with us.

Trump, no secret, disdains the work that goes along with being president, but he's crazy about his role as Grand High Poobah. His performances are comedic nightmares, black with bile, but it's the crowds he's after. He puffs, they cheer, he drinks in the star power.

His ignorance is astounding, his every Twitterance is maddening, his love affair with Russia is dark and dangerous; his followers, including all but a handful of Republicans in congress, are deliberately oblivious...
and still the Democrats have to worry about winning elections.

The Democrats should never have to worry about winning elections. The Democrats are US. The Republicans are THEM.

So my message to my party is this: Democrats, get fierce! This battle is worth fighting. Don't be distracted by mosquitos buzzing around your ears. There be dragons out there. Swords at the ready. Attack!

I mean it!

Attack!

(Note: This isn't the first time I've had to say this. I challenged my Dem family in October, 2014, showing them the error of their ways. Long before Trump. Did they listen? Well, not to me. But you'll notice I don't give up. You shouldn't, either. Winning this time isn't an option. Our lives really do depend on it.)

(Cross-posted at Ramona's Voices)

Topics:

Politics

While Trump is Stealing the Show his Cronies are Stealing us Blind

Ramona — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 02:03:44 +0000

I'm sick of hearing Trump, seeing Trump, laughing at Trump, agonizing over Trump. I'm sick of Donald J. Trump, the squatter in the White House, making a mockery of our presidency.

He's a president like a third rate comic spoofing the highest job in the land would be president. His stake is only in drawing an audience; he has no feeling for what the real job would be like. It's beyond his capacity to get that deep into the role, and nothing says he has to. He revels in his "free to be me" rhetoric and the crowds keep on coming.

A president, no matter his politics or biases, has to, at some point, recognize he's the leader of a country and not just the spokesman for his base. Donald can't do that. He snuggles into his base, comfy and worry-free, and if there are people screaming for his head on the outside, they're really, really bad, aren't they? (Chorus: We love you, Donald! Donald: Thank you! Thank you very much! Me, too!)

Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call,Inc.

He came into politics as a reality star and he'll go out as a reality star. One quick read of his off-the-wall, stream-of-consciousness, look-at-me, CPAC speech the other day cements any claim that his main concern is, always has been, and always will be how people react to Donald Trump. (The transcript is here.)

He's not speaking to his country. He's not even speaking to all Republicans. He's rallying his fans.

This one small section, distilled in a couple of paragraphs, is the essence of Donald:

"So, thank you, everybody. You’ve been amazing. You’ve been amazing. What Matt [Schlapp] didn’t say, when I was here 2011, I made a speech. And I was received with such warmth and they give, you know, they used to give, I don’t know if Matt does that, he may not want to be controversial, but they used to give the best speech of CPAC. Do they still do that? You better pick me, or I’m not coming back.

But — and I got these — everybody, they loved that speech. That was, I think, Matt, I would say that might have been the first real political speech I made. It was a love fest, 2011, I believe the time was. And a lot of people remembered and they said, we want Trump, we want Trump. And after a few years, they go by, and I say, 'Here we are. Let's see what we can do.'"

Trump runs his 24-hour-a-day clown act as a distraction, and the GOP loves him for it. While he's on stage they're free to go about their business--which has nothing to do with our business. They're putting in place right wing judges who hold life-time positions, cozying up and giving unprecedented power to gun lobbyists like the NRA, dissolving long-standing protections for women, children, minorities, the sick, the poor, and the working class. We barely recognize ourselves anymore.

We have real problems that need grown-up intervention. Trump is not going to be that grown-up. They can slap any label they want on him, including POTUS, but he'll never be anything but a callous showman doing a bad imitation of a real president.

November is coming. We need to work on getting our people elected and throw those bums out.

We need to work at ending the obscene profits currently the deciding factor in every aspect of our lives, including health care.

We need to repair our crumbling structures, our roads and bridges.

We need to convince our allies we're capable of more than saber-rattling and meaningless flag waving.

We need to work at keeping our children safe from killers with assault weapons.

We need to have some pride.

We don't have time for the kind of mind-numbing side show Trump, the GOP, and yes--the Russians--have been forcing on us. The media's fascination with Trump's silly shtick has to stop. I don't care what he says, I care what he does. When he's not trying to destroy programs and departments we've held sacrosanct for half a century or more, he's busy filling every top cabinet job with agenda-laden, know-nothings famous for their cruel streaks. His administration holds the record for the most scandals ever to come out of the White House, and barely a year has gone by.

We have to stop treating Trump like the best copy ever and get back to reporting on the things that matter to Americans with the most to lose. He's a distraction we can't afford. He's a joke gone on too long.

(Cross-posted at Ramona's Voices and Crooks & Liars)

Topics:

Politics

Our Bleeding Hearts Might Have Saved Us

Ramona — Sun, 21 Jan 2018 16:57:00 +0000

Today marks the anniversary of the Dread Fiend Trump's official entry into politics, not as dog catcher, not even as city clerk, but as President of these United States.

A year has passed and as much as we've spit and hollered, as often as we've watched the evidence of corruption pile up, Donald Trump is still president. He is every bit as bad at the job as we imagined. You might even say he's far worse. But on the bright side, North Korea hasn't nuked us yet, the Grand Canyon hasn't been filled in and paved over, and neither ermine robes nor jeweled crowns have replaced Polo shirts and MAGA caps.

Court jesters are filling the Capital and kowtowing is back in vogue but so far no guillotines have appeared in any town squares. Nevertheless, good people are being banished from the realm by the thousands--families torn apart, falsely accused of unworthiness--and countries that were once our friends now look on us with pity and/or disgust. Many of them can't stop laughing.

We're in a fine mess, with no rescue in sight. If there be heroes, they're mighty scarce and awfully damned quiet.

The Democrats, except for a gallant few, are performing their usual cowardly moves. They sit behind the barricades yelling and shaking their fists, but when it comes to doing battle--twisting arms and bloodying noses--they're outta there.

So here's a radical thought: Let the liberals do it. Give us a chance to show how it could be done.

Liberals, you say, are the classic political nerds, not worth bothering with unless it's to give us our daily wedgies or noogies. Quaint, naive little do-gooders lost in a world of ruthless cruelty without weapons adequate enough to bruise a flea. (That's what they said about Hobbits, too, you know.)

In the 1980s, around about the time the actor Ronald Reagan,friendly Midwestern liberal turned hard-hearted California conservative, was solidly in there as POTUS, the word went out that liberals--those ridiculous "for the people" gadflies--were ruining the country by helping too many undeserving, impoverished leeches, by insisting that workers be represented by hard-nosed unions, by tightening, enforcing, or inventing regulations that were or would be anathema to the gold-plated entities they targeted.

It wasn't hard to convince the many millions that health, wealth, and happiness could only come from a government without teeth, from the benevolence of ridiculously powerful corporations, and, if all else failed, from that venerable standby, Old Testament God.

All that stood in the way were those damned Liberals.

Liberals became such pariahs an entire bloc jumped ship and took on a new name: Progressives. (I would describe them for you here, but I admit I don't know the difference. I hear they're mainly friendly.)

But what we liberals have that others don't are hearts that gush blood whenever injustice rears it's massive, ugly head. We see a bleeding heart as a badge of honor. The same with tears. We cry when things move us, and we don't hide from our emotions. Our anger stems from compassion, our outrage roars at cruelty. We wear our hearts on our sleeves and we don't care.

Liberals have a long history of getting things done. We pulled the entire country out of a great depression by hiring our citizens to do meaningful busy-work, by using our charitable might, by giving dignity and hope back to a country mired in poverty and hopelessness.

We built the unions and gave workers a voice. We put an end to child labor. We fought to give every adult citizen the right to vote, no matter gender or color. We helped the poor and the elderly by creating Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. We passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Clean Air act, and the Clean Water Act. We ended a recession that nearly destroyed the middle class.

We did all that and more against the wishes--and the might--of fat cats and right wingers who sorely wanted what we're heading for today: a country ruled by non-contributing despots whose only interests are power, greed, and self-preservation.

We are not that country and we never will be. The Trump phenomenon is an anomaly, destined for the history books, a long chapter on how close we came to letting our democracy die.

We're still a majority of the good and, thankfully, most of us aren't ashamed to show it. It's our time now and there's much to do. They're out there waiting for us and they have heavy weapons. The obstacles are scary and formidable.

And here we go.
____________

A personal note: Today also marks this blog's ninth anniversary. I wrote my first blog post on January 20, 2009, on the afternoon of Barack Obama's first Inauguration, celebrating hope and sanity with a smidgen of skepticism. No miracles expected, none received.

(Cross-posted at Ramona's Voices and Crooks & Liars)

Topics:

Politics

Al Franken Shouldn't Resign

Ramona — Sat, 18 Nov 2017 16:45:15 +0000

Yes, I'll say it, and I hope it's not too late: Al Franken should not resign. He shouldn't be forced to resign, either by the Democrats who (rightly) can't abide double standards or the Republicans who would love to see a Democratic knock-down. I can agree that what he did to Leann Tweeden was stupid, gross, and as close to sexual predation as it gets, and still want him to stay where he is.

Leann's story came out yesterday and it's shocking Sickening. I've read Franken's new book, Giant of the Senate, so I know he was no angel during his years as a funny man. He recounts in the book how even he had doubts about his past and how it would play when he ran for a job that followed in the footsteps of his hero, Paul Wellstone. Franken knew his state, knew his politics, had a great education, and was smart as hell--but his chief claim to fame was as a sometimes raunchy comedian. (He should have been a shady billionaire blowhard instead. Pure Teflon.)

The former Fox reporter says he kissed her during a 2006 USO skit but went too far, tongue inserted where it wasn't wanted. (Note to men--and women, too--unless you're in the throes of hot passion, grinding face to face--both of you--don't try to stick your tongue down someone's throat. Coming as it does, unexpected and/or unwelcome, the recipient will gag on what feels like a cold, slimy slab of liver. You must know that by their reactions. Just don't do it.)

And worse, while Tweeden slept, Franken thought it would be cute to pretend he was groping her breasts, and even funnier, have his picture taken while doing it. (She was wearing a flak vest and it's not clear whether or not he actually touched her, but the picture is there and it's insulting, demeaning, and damning. Leann Tweeden has every right to be appalled by its existence.)

So, all that said, how could I, flaming liberal feminist, active #MeToo member, wish for Al Franken to go on working in the Senate? I confess I've been torn over this, asking myself why I should accept Franken's admission and apology and still go after Roy Moore or Donald Trump for their ugly sexual transgressions.

Well, yes, they're lowlife scum and don't deserve my defense--I agree--but I want the punishment to fit the crime. Franken has plenty to apologize for--gross, sexist stupidity is finding its day in court and, after so many decades of unfettered applications, it can't come too soon--and he has apologized. Twice so far, without the usual equivocations. He is as disgusted with himself as we are. Leann Tweeden accepted his apology. She said she doesn't want him to resign, adding that he does good things for the people of Minnesota while still acknowledging it was wrong and these things shouldn't be ignored.

She's right. They shouldn't be ignored. Spreading sunshine all over the place encourages women--and sometimes men--to come out of the shadows and tell their stories. We are at a crossroads now and we have to get it right. Sexual predators, no matter who they are, need to be exposed. We should, of course, look to punishment, but who gets to decide what form and how much?

Did Al Franken do something worthy of expulsion? There's the dilemma. I want women like Leann Tweeden to be able to come forward without consequence to tell their stories. I want the men who abused them to feel their pain, to get it, to show us they've learned from these revelations and will work to put a stop to a culture that has for too long equated power with the freedom to use sex as a right.

I believe Franken gets it. I want him to stay in the Senate because his work is important. Too important to set aside. He does good work there. He asks relevant, sometimes burning questions, does his homework, and works for the disenfranchised, the underdogs, the people hungering for attention to their condition. The loss would be painful.

I want him to work for us, against the Trump administration and the GOP majority, against any hateful agents who try to diminish or harm those of us without power. I want him where he can do the most good. I want him in the Senate.

Topics:

Politics

Me too: Every woman has her story.

Ramona — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 00:54:35 +0000

With the not-so-shocking sexual revelations about Harvey Weinstein, Bill O'Reilly, Bill Cosby, Anthony Weiner, James Toback, and, yes, our current president, Donald Trump, comes even more revelations from women who have suffered in silence for years and have now come forward, loud and clear.

Women's March, Washington DC, January, 2017

In recent weeks the hashtag #MeToo has become our social networking battle cry--our admission that it happened to us--but the story of its inception needs to be told. When Tarana Burke, founder of JustBeInc, was a young camp counselor she often counseled young girls who had been abused or neglected or both. One encounter in particular ended badly and Tarana begins her story this way: "The me too Movement™ started in the deepest, darkest place in my soul."

It's a troubling but familiar story many of us know all too well: some stories are so painful, so close-to-home, we find ourselves turning away when we're needed most. Tarana built a movement on her shame.

As a young girl, as a young woman, I had my share of sexual harassment--leering men, provocative gestures, unwanted, uninvited touches or grabs, ugly invitations to perform sexual acts. None of us, I venture, were immune. I fended off rape twice, but don't consider myself lucky or blessed. If the boys in question hadn't stopped I would have been just one more among those vast numbers of rape victims. (One I never saw again; the other I ran into from time to time, both of us pretending it never happened.)

There are many ways to violate but none are as demeaning, humiliating, and harsh as rape. And because rape is so horrific, we tend to underplay or diminish those sexual acts that insult, that defile, but don't quite penetrate. As ugly and disgusting as the encounters are, we breathe deep. We were spared. We go on.

Many of the #MeToos have been harassed, solicited, violated, and raped by men who hold power over them. It's far different from a casual, unwelcome advance by a stranger or co-equal. Our normal response to the latter is a sneer, a laugh, a flick of the finger. There is no real threat.

And there's the difference.

We live in a culture where we women are supposed to be able to take care of ourselves, but if we can't it's our own fault. It's what comes from the "freedom" reluctantly given to us by men who reserve the right to make more restrictive rules if we try to go beyond their chains. We see it in government, in corporations, in the church. We see it in all situations where men hold power and use it as privilege. They may grant us our wishes, but we'll have to pay a price.

Our silence condemns us: "Why did she wait so long? How do we know she's telling the truth?"

Speaking out condemns us: "What did she do to provoke him? How do we know she's telling the truth?"

Seeking a legal remedy condemns us: "She just wants money. How do we know she's telling the truth?"

Our sisterhood, our solidarity will save us, but so will the millions of decent men who understand and work at keeping us from sexual harm. It takes courage to speak out. We'll commend the brave and stand by the challengers. We will not stop until every last man with the power to diminish or break us understands we will not be silenced, we will not be broken.

And that includes everyone--from a Hollywood mogul, to a boss, to a family member, to a church leader, to the President of the United States. They are no longer safe from us.

Topics:

Personal

Politics

Women's issues

How the G-Man Worked to Bring Down POTUS

Ramona — Sat, 10 Jun 2017 20:37:27 +0000

After former FBI director James Comey's testimony on Thursday, there were questions about why he waited so long to go public with all he knew. He'd had two one-on-one meetings with Trump, along with several Trump-initiated phone calls, all deemed inappropriate, at the very least, by anyone who knows anything about how our system is supposed to work.

Comey first met with Trump at Trump Tower on January 6, when the then-FBI director had to tell President-elect Trump about some Russian-generated salacious material against him. There were others in the room, but Comey said he was unnerved by the tenor of Trump's comments and began recording the details on his laptop the minute he got back into his car. He shared those notes almost immediately with other FBI members, so there would be no question about fuzzy recollections or later alterations.

The first private meeting took place on January 27, at a dinner set up by the White House. Comey testified he had no idea he would be the only guest until he walked in the door and say a small oval table set for two. The conversation took an awkward turn toward his loyalty to the president. Comey says Trump said, "I need loyalty. I expect loyalty." Awkward pause, wherein Comey blew it by not saying, "My loyalty is to the country, to the constitution, blah, blah, blah". Instead, he said something about honesty, and then muttered--to his own chagrin--something about "honest loyalty". Which Trump, of course, took to mean he'd just finagled a loyalty oath from the director of the FBI.

Game on!

On February 14, after an Oval Office meeting, Trump asked everyone but Comey to leave the room so they could talk about Mike Flynn, who had resigned as National Security Officer the day before. According to Comey, Trump said Flynn was a "good guy" and he hoped Comey would see fit to "let this go". Comey says he only agreed that Flynn was a good guy and made no promises. Comey again took notes and discussed it with other FBI officials. He didn't go to the DOJ, he said, but asked DOJ head, Jeff Sessions, to keep him away from any more one-on-ones with Trump.

Then there were the phone calls, all generated by the president. The whole thing must have seemed satisfying and so buddy-buddy to Trump. Comey, as uncomfortable as he might have felt, took the meetings and took the calls and never told Trump this was wrong.

I submit it wasn't simply because Comey didn't want to hurt Trump's feelings. Comey is the consummate FBI man and his sniffer is in fine working order. He was on the case and Trump was his mark. With each encounter came more revelations, more ammunition to use to build a case. He took copious notes, clearly written to share when it came time for a showdown. (He knew contemporaneous notes had been accepted and used effectively in courts in other FBI matters. )

How long this might have gone on if Comey hadn't been fired is anybody's guess, but the firing opened the floodgates for Comey. If he had insisted at the very start that private conversations with the president were off-limits, his case against Trump would be non-existent. It may come down to "he said, he said", but given Trump's penchant for lying to save his skin, it'll be more like "he said, he lied".

But the capper came yesterday, when Trump was asked at a press conference if he would be willing to testify under oath that Comey lied about his version of their conversations. Trump said, and I quote, "A hundred percent".

I call that a clear victory for the G-man.

(Cross-posted at Ramona's Voices and Crooks and Liars)

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Our First Un-American President

Ramona — Tue, 30 May 2017 11:31:40 +0000

When Donald Trump rode down that golden escalator in June, 2015 and announced he would run for President of the United States, the guffaws could be heard round the world. What a colossal doofus! A shady real estate mogul, a beauty pageant owner, a dubious celebrity famous for firing people, saw himself as the perfect person to fill the highest job in the land. Clearly the run would be short-lived and hilariously inept. In his long history as a famous figure, there was not a moment spent in public service. No sign that he knew a thing about governing or world affairs. No sign that he even cared. What on earth would qualify him?

The closest he had ever come to government involvement was when he pretended he had proof positive our then-sitting president, Barack Obama, was born in Africa, making him illegitimate and unfit to serve. It turned out, of course, to be a lie, but the fact that the lie would not die energized Trump and gave him the idea that he of all people might just be able to pull that president thing off.

He blustered his way through a long campaign that put him in front as the fiery populist against a rigid, anachronistic loser of an establishment. Along the way he discovered the benefits of the religious right, a gun culture based on fuzzy Second Amendment logic, fears fueled by right wing talk radio and Fox News of a rogue government, and a work force desperate enough to want to believe a slimy billionaire known for stiffing underlings could be their messiah.

The seduction of screaming crowds hooked him but good. From that first rally forward he would do whatever he had to do to win. He knew he had to give lip service to the needs of the country, but it would always be Trump first, cronies second, and the country a distant third.

He saw early on that his crowds loved him most when he dropped his billionaire mantel and pretended to be one of them. He took to wearing flaming red "Make America Great Again" baseball caps. He developed a rumpled look, used superlatives like "beautiful, fantastic, the greatest", and made promises he could never keep about what he and he alone would do if elected.

He waged war against the press, a known fascist tactic, and the press, to our surprise, didn't fight back.

But his ace-in-the-hole turned out to be Hillary Clinton, a far more qualified candidate who, after years of attacks from both the left and the right, was waging an uphill battle. Just as Trump had pressed for Obama's birthplace illegitimacy with no basis in fact, he took to calling his opponent--without a shred of evidence--a crook. He built a flimsy case based on a handful of errant emails and rejoiced when his crowds took to chanting "lock her up!"

He found he could say anything and his followers would buy it. He was eerily on to something when he said "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and I wouldn't lose any voters." He knew his people far better than we did.

And then the thing happened that was so far-fetched no one but a few observant pundits would have believed it: Donald Trump became president of a country that had long warned against creeping fascism and the threat of oligarchy. His mission was to take apart a government based on constitutional regulations and social constructs, and now he was on his way. His motto and guiding principal is as he said soon after taking office: "I'm president. I can do what I want."

Did the Russians have a hand in attempting to alter our election? Of course they did. Could Trump surround himself with any more Russian operatives? Yes, he could and probably will. A country that once saw Russia as our enemy now embraces a president who cannot and will not condemn them. In time, we'll find out why. We will follow the money and find out why. But in the meantime, who are these people with access to our most sensitive secrets? Top security clearances go to anyone Trump wants in the room. The vetting process--a process once seen as serious and inviolate, with a threat of jail for lying on security clearance applications--is another in a long list of obligatory regulations meant only for other people.

Already, less than a half-year in, the Trump administration is embroiled in scandals of a magnitude far beyond anything we could imagine that night we gasped at the realization that this vicious, egotistical, supremely unqualified man-child would be leading our country. The scope of scandal is breathtaking, even at this early stage, and it promises to get worse.

And now Donald Trump has taken his Ugly American act outside our borders, showing the rest of the world what a terrible choice we've made. In every country he has visited--Saudi Arabia, Israel, Italy, Belgium--he is an embarrassment, an object of ridicule, a preening, ignorant, crude representation of the worst of us.

He is our first un-American president. Americans now have to decide what that means and how we'll deal with it. Our true character is being tested and the fate of our nation depends on the course we take. Trump may see our presidency as a joke, and Washington as his playground, but we've struggled too long and too hard as a country to become Donald Trump's willing foils. No matter what he says, he just isn't worth it.

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