Trumpster Fire

 

 

Remember when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and Donald Trump won the electoral vote? Remember how his supporters told us, “You lost. Get over it.” Has anyone said, “You lost, get over it,” to Trump believers since Joe Biden was elected president? They probably would not see the irony. Or the hypocrisy.

I come from a family of Trump-lovers. Here is a quote, part of a long piece, posted on a Trump-loving relative’s Facebook page last week:

“The Democrats are right, there are two Americas. The America that works and the America that doesn’t. The America that contributes and the America that doesn’t. It’s not the haves and the have nots, it’s the dos and the don’ts. Some people do their duty as Americans, obey the law, support themselves, contribute to society and others don’t. That’s the divide in America. It’s not about income inequality, it’s about civic irresponsibility. It’s about a political party that preaches hatred, greed and victimization in order to win elective office. It’s about a political party that loves power more than it loves its country. - Lou Holtz, football player and coach.

Coach Holtz aims to vilify Democrats, poor people, and people of color, but he has described Republicans when he talks about the party that preaches hatred, greed and victimization, the party that loves power more than they love their country.

Perfect clueless projection, Coach. It is easy to tell people, “If you work hard enough and contribute, America will reward you.” I’ll bet you attribute all your success to your own efforts

It is unforgiveable not to acknowledge and respect the hard work of people who do not have enough but contribute to society all the same; who, in fact, do the hard work that keeps the society going.

 Usually when people passionately condemn behavior, the behavior they vilify is exactly what they are doing.

Hence: Trumpsters are sitting on their pity pots whining that the election was rigged. Claiming that they are patriots, and the rest of us are Socialist scum. Some are Evangelical Christians who feel superior because they know they are going to heaven and they know who is going to hell: everyone who did not vote for Trump, plus anyone who does not believe and think exactly as they do.

They call themselves Republicans, but the Republican Party is no more. It has been destroyed from within for the sake of protecting the wealth and privilege of the ruling white class. There are former Republicans who have been working to save the country from the madness of King Donald.  Perhaps they should start a party called “Real Republicans.”

The murder of George Floyd was only one of the millions of murders of black people in this country, but that particular murder lit a spark that caused a conflagration of protest and demands for equal rights, respect, and the simple ability to stay alive when minding one’s own black business. Trumpsters reacted by painting protestors as violent socialists, looters, and thieves, and then said with their bare faces hanging out that “conservative protesters are peaceful.”

Right. One word: Charlottesville.

A few more words: yeah, those Proud Boys and Nazis and Qanons and other white supremacists are a peaceful lot.

Dare I suggest that they are civically irresponsible?

Some white people believe they are losing the superior position they have always had.

They are correct.

They are not taking this shift of power graciously. Like their inglorious leader, they do not care how many people die or suffer as they pursue their goal of white supremacy and control in America. People of color are coming on strong in this country, and soon and very soon, white people will be the minority population.

Tick tock.

Pause. Deep breath.

It is easy to have some snarky laughs at the expense of people, who, with all due respect, are delusional. Snarky laughs are a good way to vent some of the anger I feel at the criminal, heartless, indeed, murderous behavior of Trump and his followers (273,709 Americans dead from Covid 19 as of November 30, 2020).

I do not know what it will take to bring us all to our senses if Covid 19 has not. Is there some threat that will wake people up and make them think, gee, we need to pull together? Evidence would suggest not.

Let us not slump back into the business-as-usual government of the pre-Trump era. We must call those who govern to account.

Stay awake, dear hearts. We shall be dealing with the delusional citizens of this country and their behavior for a long time. We are joined to them ineradicably. They are our family. They are us.

Let us try to make the family better.

Well, not me, maybe. I might be too snarky.

Veterans in the Family

 

It will be the day after Veterans’ Day when this essay hits print, so I am going to ramble on about the veterans in my family.

My grandfather, Percy Litchfield, served in World War I. Where, and doing what, I do not know. I never got to know Percy, possibly because of his last wife, Sally. Sally was not the warm grandma type. She was a businesswoman. She ran a brothel. That’s where Percy met her.

My mother always called her, “That old madam,” but I did not understand until years later that she really was a member of the oldest profession. Sally married Percy, and after he died, she inherited a lifetime income from the ranch. The ranch would not pass on to Percy’s four children (Thelma, John, Lois, and Vivian or “Chick” as everyone called her) until Sally died.

Sally outlived Percy by thirty years, and by that time my father, John, was dead, and my cousins Nancy and Charlotte’s mother, Chick, was dead, meaning that when Sally died, my grandfather’s legacy went to the spouses of the deceased and their children, and Thelma and Lois, our aunts.

“Is Sally dead yet?” became a running joke among us. That question sums up waiting for someone to die so your life will improve. Not attractive, but we made each other laugh.

My father, John Litchfield, was 29 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. A few months later he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and stayed in for the duration. He became a captain, was assigned to an ordinance group, and was deployed to Australia and then the Philippines, where, my mother told me, he did a lot of “hurry up and wait.”

Apparently, that is the nature of a lot of military life.

Then there is my brother, Allen. He was drafted in 1965 and ended up at Ft. Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, Indiana. He served bravely, teaching shorthand to Army clerks. Shorthand is not used anymore. It went out with the typewriter and the phone booth. Allen met his wife, Barbara, there, though, and that turned out well.

My husband Rick’s father, Mark, was an Army lifer. That is why Rick lived in Japan, Austria, and Germany, as well as the United States, while growing up. Rick loved being an Army brat. He considered himself a citizen of the world.

Mark was in intelligence where he saw and learned a lot more than people should see or learn. He lived to be 91 and took most of his knowledge to the grave. He did tell us about playing poker while sitting on a nuclear bomb in an airplane flying a zig zag route over Europe to avoid the airspace of countries that did not allow nuclear weapons in their sky.

My husband, Rick Tuel, was in the Naval Reserve for eight years, one of those years spent on active duty aboard a ship in the Tonkin Gulf doing search and rescue (North SARs) for the pilots who made it out to the gulf in their wounded jets.

The closest Rick came to dying in Vietnam was when his chief sent him out to dump garbage cans during a storm. Rick tied a rope around his waist and tied the other end to the guard rail in case he got washed overboard.

Which he did. But the rope saved his life.

Or did it? When he told me that story, he said he could swear that someone grabbed him from behind and pulled him back up onto the ship.

Then there was the time they shot off a missile that went rogue and flew between the ship’s masts before ditching in the ocean. That could have been bad.

Rick couldn’t get an Agent Orange-related pension when he needed it because in 1991 the government stopped paying pensions to Navy vets who served offshore (blue water sailors), on the specious theory that being at sea they were not exposed to Agent Orange. They were exposed, though, because Agent Orange ran down rivers to the gulf, where ships sucked up contaminated saltwater and desalinated it, turning it into potable water that had a concentrated level of Agent Orange.

America, to this day, has its eyes closed and its ears covered regarding blue water sailors. Occasionally a bill to provide pensions for blue water sailors reaches Congress, where it is either rejected, or dies when Congress adjourns that session.

So there ya go, a handful of regular guys who served during WW1, WW2, the Korean War, and Vietnam, and a little bit in peacetime. The military was a rite of passage for most young American men for a long time, but no more. My sons never knew the terror of the draft lottery. I did not mind that.