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.

Tide’s Coming In

So I hear that people are having mental and emotional problems under the pressure of isolation, plague illness, losing their jobs, losing their homes, losing their loved ones, seeing wildfires making the sky an impenetrable fug of smoke that we have been warned not to breathe - and now Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died.

Rest in peace, mighty warrior. Thank you for everything.

Now the inglorious leader has stated his unwillingness to give up the oval office if he loses the election. He has been saying this since 2017, but we are taking it seriously now.

This election and its outcome are a BIG DEAL, but this is not the time to despair and give up, dear hearts.

If you had any doubts before RBG passed, before you-know-who announced his intentions of being president for life, before Republicans broke a foaming sweat in their haste to get a conservative justice on the Supreme Court before the election, you know now that you need to step up to the plate. Our country, our whole world, our lives and the lives of our children and their children are at stake.

What can you do? For starters, VOTE in the coming presidential election. Vote and encourage others to vote, especially younger people. Vote. It might work.

Wear a mask. Do good deeds. Encourage the discouraged. Be kind.

Then there is the weather. Even those of us who embraced the science of climate change are surprised at how soon and how virulently changes have set in.

Many of us did not foresee all the hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and temperatures up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius) in places in California where I used to live, fifty years ago.

This summer when the entire West Coast caught on fire, a plume of smoke that looked like a genie released from a lamp in satellite pictures moved up and over and around us. Suddenly we were in lockdown again, because of smoke. I started to feel like I was in solitary confinement, albeit a comfortable and plugged-in solitary confinement.

It is happening fast - the ice shelves and glaciers of Antarctica and Greenland are melting, and one article I read speculated that when all that water is released it could raise sea level ten feet.

Ten feet. I have been trying to imagine how that would play out on the island.

Probably the end of campfires at KVI.

The ferry docks would have to be moved or raised.

Would the Burton Peninsula become an island?

The debate about whether Vashon and Maury Islands are one or two islands will be over – two islands, dude, and how shall we get from one to the other when Portage is under water? Ferries? A bridge?

If Maury becomes an independent island, will someone re-open a market and post office there? Am I the only one who thought that closing those was a dumb idea?

I look down the ravine behind my house to where it opens into the Sound, and wonder, gee, if the sea level rises ten feet, how far up the ravine is the water going to come? If there is a tsunami, will it come up the ravine and all the way to the top of the bluff? You know, where I live?

Beach house owners – condolences.

Residents next to the Fauntleroy dock will no longer complain about the ferry traffic congestion, because their houses will be under water.

But I digress.

Many things we have had to do out of expediency during the pandemic have turned out to be positive changes that will stick around.

For example: telemedicine. How much easier is it to talk to a provider from home rather than drive/catch a bus to Seattle for an appointment that lasts fifteen minutes? Not to mention parking fees and ferry fare.

Online school gets mixed reviews. This is a challenge most parents, teachers, and students never expected to face. Those of us who homeschooled before computers and the internet feel your pain. A little.

Many people are saying, “I want to go back to the way it was before.” Yeah, me, too. Life was so much easier in so many ways before the weather became homicidal, before the pandemic hit, before the land caught fire, before we had a president who is certifiable, who unleashed the hounds of violent racist hell, who would like to see a renewed Civil War, and who is backed up by what is no longer the Republican party.

We took normal life for granted, didn’t we?

We know that we are never going back. We must adapt to climate change and Covid-19 and terrible politicians, see it through, and ride it out.

So, pray to God and row for shore.

And VOTE.

Agape for All

 

Agape (ä-̀gä-pā) n [LL, fr. Gk., agapē, lit., love] (1607) 1: LOVE FEAST 2. LOVE

- Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary 

First thing I saw out the bedroom window this morning was a lot of yellow leaves on the big leaf maple tree. Autumn. Kind of ironic, considering what a crappy year 2020 has been, that I’m not in a hurry to see it go.

Name your poison: the rise of white supremacists and the further desecration and destruction of America, climate change, wildfires destroying homes and killing people, the smoke from the fires, Covid-19 (remember that?), joblessness, homelessness, poverty and hunger.

Still, the Black Lives Matter movement gives me hope. Perhaps sanity will take hold, after all. I believe that most people in this “Christian” nation would like to see Jesus’ command followed: love your neighbor as yourself.

A lot of people do love their neighbors as they love themselves and the problem is that they hate themselves. I always want to add a coda to that commandment: first, love and accept yourself. Be kind to yourself. Give yourself a little agape, or unconditional love.

Now, when our country’s founders put all their high-falutin’ ideals into writing, they meant freedom and equality for white men who owned property – which they all were.

I’m sorry, white guys. I know that you are not all heartless corporate billionaires. I married a white guy, gave birth to two white guys, and I like a lot of white guys, and I realize that our society imposes an extra burden on white guys for being white guys these days, unless you are a filthy rich white guy, and then everything is business as usual.

But I digress.

Unfortunately, the inspiring language of the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, for example, has given uppity ideas to a lot of people for whom it was never meant. You know, black people, women, indigenous people, Latinos, Asians, all people of color. Not to mention the Irish and Italians in their times.

We were taught those lofty ideals, those principles upon which our country was founded, and told we lived in the land of the free, and it was the best gosh darned country in the whole world.

We believed what we were taught.

Benjamin Franklin said that our country is a republic if we can keep it. I feel like we are losing, or have lost, our grip. So what can we do?

I strongly encourage you to vote. When you get your ballot for the November election, fill it out, sign the envelope, and either mail it (if we still have a post office) or take your signed ballot up to the drop box at the library and pop it in. Be counted. You matter. Your vote matters.

Then we shall see how it goes.

It is also past time to think about the unthinkable happening and make plans. We have been preparing for the Big One for years, now we need to prepare for wildfire. Do you have water, food, blankets, etc.? Medical supplies? A “go bag?” It is time to do whatever you can to protect yourself and your family.

You know that however the election turns out, we are in for a hard time. If Biden wins, there will be violent resistance from Trump and his supporters. If Trump wins – well, we know what that is like.

Our work is cut out for us. Us and the whole wide world. Our problems ebb and flow in their intensity and demands for our attention. Last week I was worried about a shooting war getting traction. This week I’m worried about the smoke-filled air and the people who have lost everything to fires, even their lives.

And, of course, I worry about Covid-19, the current continuo to all our lives’ music.

I hope that the foes of equality do not feel compelled to go to a full-blown civil war to preserve racism. Because ultimately this is the clash between people who want to have their human dignity respected, and people who would rather die than see that happen.

As far as I can see, there is no gospel, no doctrine, no philosophy of love and treating others as we wish to be treated ourselves, that has not been screwed up by human beings. There seems to be a primal need for war, and power, and wealth, which explains world history as well as the NFL to me.

My plan is, as best I can, to be kind to others and myself. I would like to see agape for all. Probably not going to happen, but I must work for it as if it will.

A little common sense would not come amiss, either.

Oh, the Stubbornness of Humans

 

Becky Bumgarner would like to say a big THANK YOU, from the bottom of her still-beating heart, to the EMTs who were on duty at the fire house in Vashon early on the morning of Monday, August 3rd. They totally rock, and they saved her life.

A little after six that morning I got a call from Becky. She said she had been kept awake by chest pains all night.

Now, Becky is the person who took me to the Fire Station when I had my TIA, and she said she felt much better when I got into the ambulance and headed to Swedish, so on August 3rd, when she asked me if I thought she should have her husband Roy take her up to the Fire Station to get her chest pains checked out, I said, yes, I would feel much better if she was in an ambulance and headed to Swedish.

So Roy took her up to the Fire Station, where the EMTs informed Becky she was having a heart attack. They wanted to airlift her but there was too much fog, so they whisked her off in an ambulance to Swedish Hospital at Cherry Hill, formerly Providence, where she was found to have a completely blocked left anterior descending artery, i.e., the big one that runs down the left side of the heart.

The docs put in two titanium stents.

When I talked to her later that morning, she was feeling much better.

Stents do that for people. Amazing what getting the proper amount of blood and oxygen distributed to your body can do.

Some of her heart muscle has been injured so she is not home free, but she is home, and she is recovering, and learning a whole new regimen of pills. We were talking about blood thinners the other day.

I am grateful she got in there and was saved, and so is her family, and so are her many friends.

Thanks, Vashon EMTs! Thanks, Swedish Cardiology!

When I spoke to her daughter Maggie, we expressed frustration that Becky did not get help as soon as she felt chest pains the previous Friday night.

She did call a medical advice line before she called me that Monday morning, and they told her to call 911.

“But I didn’t want to do that.”

Oh, the stubbornness of humans.

When Rick first became seriously ill, he wouldn’t go to the doctor.

"I'll work it off," he said, which is what he'd done all his life with every ache, pain, sprain, etc. Turns out you can't work off cancer or kidney failure.

I was angry about his refusal to take care of himself until he was nearly dead, and talking with other women, who said their husbands were just the same, I decided it was all men. Men! So stubborn!

And then ... I had my TIA. Transient Ischemic Attack, or a little stroke that resolved itself so was not a stroke. Woke up with a loud noise in my head, a weak left arm, and crap balance.

This happened at four or five in the morning, of course, so I called a nurse hotline and the nurse told me to call 911.

But I didn’t want to do that.

Part of the reason was that my grandson was living with me then, and he was asleep upstairs. I had to make some provision for him. Finally called Becky and asked her to take me to the ER. She came over, looked at me, and told me she would take me to the fire station.

I argued with her, but finally gave in. She took me to the fire station, where the EMTs put me in an ambulance and whisked me away to Swedish, Cherry Hill. Becky, god bless her, took care of my grandson, until she could hand him off to my son, Uncle Drew.

By the time I got to the hospital my symptoms were gone, but they kept me for a night for observation. That’s why I take a blood thinner.

So now I don't think stubbornness is a male trait. It's a human trait. I think most of us, maybe all of us, are pig headed, or simply don’t want to admit something serious is happening.

"I'll work it out."

"I'll just sit here with these stroke symptoms, and call Becky instead of calling 911."

"I'll put up with these chest pains all weekend and call Mary on Monday morning."

I'm off my high horse of being angry at Rick, or anyone, for being stubborn. It is humbling to realize that refusing to get help is exactly what I did when the time came.

The best things I learn in life involve being humbled.

Takeaway: When someone tells you to call 911, call 911. Even if you don’t want to do that.

The Seriousness of the Situation

Recently a cousin of mine wrote a post on Facebook expressing his concern that public health directives to wear face masks and observe social distancing would make him a sheep, blindly following the government’s orders.

He is worried about the tyranny of wearing face masks, but he is not worried that he is are already the willing sheep of a fascist government.

Trump claims he wants to “stop the insanity.” The insanity he wishes to stop is most of the American people demanding equality for black people, for indigenous people, for Latinx people, but mostly demanding that our police, who used to be called “peace officers,” stop killing people of color for no reason.

How dare we.

Protesters exercised their legal right to assemble peacefully. The police used their “crowd control” weapons, instigating violence where there was none.

Unfortunately, like the coronavirus, assholery is an equal opportunity employer, so we have had people going on violent rampages in Seattle, and elsewhere: Businesses attacked and vandalized, windows smashed, fires started, graffiti everywhere. This is the violence of which Trump accuses all protesters, labeling them, “domestic terrorists.” This is the “insanity” he wants to stop. The actions of a few are an invitation for him to send in his storm troopers. Not that he needed an invitation.

And oh yeah, some of those violent, destructive people? White supremacists, neo-Nazis, and QAnon geniuses, agitating for their “boogaloo,” using the protests as an opportunity to escalate violence among Americans.

The Homeland Security troops are thugs and goons. We have seen them in action in Portland, Oregon. Trump sends them only to cities whose mayors are Democrats. He is transparent about deploying his storm troopers as a political tactic to please his base, raise his polling numbers, and, he hopes, win the election in November.

His base loves seeing protesters getting beat up, shot, gassed, and otherwise injured.

Couple of weeks ago federal troops arrived in Seattle. The following day Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan held a press conference at which she said that she talked with Chad Wolf, the head of Homeland Security, the day before. He told her that he saw no need for sending federal troops to Seattle, and if they were sent, he would let Mayor Durkan know ahead of time.

The troops were in the air on their way to Seattle at the time of that phone call.

I hear that those troops have left now, after Mayor Durkan, Governor Inslee, and King County Executive Dow Constantine, the most visible of public leaders who objected to the troops’ presence, managed to convince whoever is in charge of their deployment that the troops were not wanted or needed here, and might escalate violence here as they have done in Oregon.

News reports are that Oregon Governor Kate Brown negotiated the departure of the federal troops from Portland. Portland has become a more peaceful place without them.

Supposing Trump loses the election in November. He has been open about saying that if he loses the election, he might refuse to leave the White House. Of course that is an extreme possibility. At least I hope it is. Trump is acting more and more like a cornered wounded animal.

Even if he loses the election, so much of the United States government is in ashes, so much of the Constitution has been trashed, so many fascist minions will be entrenched in government agencies and departments, and our population will still be divided almost in half. The Trump base will be mad as hell if he loses, and they have been emboldened these past four years to express their racism and act with violence.

They don’t mind fascism. They think it’s peachy, because the gestapo has not come for them or theirs yet.

If Trump wins, by hook or by crook (the latter, I’m thinking), our country will continue its downward plummet.

Even if he doesn’t win, so much of what used to be America is gone, and the rebuilding will take years, decades. That’s if enough people can keep their eyes on the prize and turn things around consistently for those years and those decades.

The United States was once the country that could call other countries to order. Now we have the fascist government so many of us have seen coming for years, and Americans are now judged the stupidest, and with the coronavirus out of control, literally the sickest people in the world.

I am sorry for our children, and our grandchildren, who will be inheritors of this sad, violent legacy.

My generation – yes, the infamous Boomers – had big ideas for the world, of making love not war, and giving peace a chance. We failed to do those things. We really did not grasp the seriousness of the situation.

Karens, Among Other Things

Recently those of us who use social media have been treated to an onslaught of videos of mostly middle-aged white women being ridiculously racist, and the name “Karen” has been applied to these women.

Now we have people who refuse to wear masks or do social distancing, people who insist that the Constitution states, “You ain’t the boss of me.” They are showing up in videos and the women are being called Karens as well.

A friend of mine whose name is Karen is feeling a little put out by all the Karen-shaming, and I do not blame her.

It’s too late, I know. This labeling racist or otherwise obnoxious white women in videos “Karen” has blown up and spread through our culture. Yesterday I found out there is an Instagram site called “crazykarens.” As soon as you say it’s a Karen story people know what you mean. This stinks for people named Karen.

It is better to use the offenders’ real names.

Early in July a white woman ran into an Asian family - mom, dad, and two daughters, plus their dog Fluffy, an 11-pound Maltipoo on a leash – hiking in the woods in Marin County, California.

The white woman blocked the trail and told the family that they were breaking the law by having their dog in the park (not true. Dogs on leash were legal). Then she told the family that they “couldn’t be in this country,” and they needed to “go back where they came from.”

The mother of the family told the white woman that she should check her own heritage and go back to wherever she came from.

If this Asian family went back where they came from that day, it was probably Mill Valley or San Rafael, at a guess.

The father of the family filmed the incident.

When white lady demanded to know the family’s name, he told her that was none of her business, then turned the tables and asked her what her name was.

By this time, her bandana had fallen, exposing her face, and she realized she was being filmed. She must have lost her presence of mind then because she walked away from the scene, muttering that her name was, “Beth.”

The father posted the video on YouTube, titling it, “Park Ranger Karen Tells Asian Family They're Breaking Laws & Don't Belong in America! (California)”

The video went viral. She was neither a Park Ranger nor a Karen. Beth was quickly identified – her name and where she worked. Within a couple of days her employers announced that after they reviewed the video, Beth turned in her resignation, and that they did not tolerate racism in any form.

I was sorry that the video title besmirched the name Karen, not to mention Park Rangers. Outing Beth’s real name led to real consequences for her.

Real names are better than Karen.

Then there was the video of a woman throwing boxes of shoes at a salesclerk. She was mad because it was store policy not to serve anyone who was not wearing a mask. This woman was so upset that she walked out leaving her wallet on the counter, making it easy for the police to round her up and charge her with assault.

Commenters on that video were unanimous in calling her a Karen and criticizing her actions. Some went farther and ridiculed her for being fat.

“Hey,” I thought, “wait a minute.”

Shoebox Woman was a violent jerk, yes, but it was her behavior, not her body shape, that was the issue. Come on, people. It’s racism and pigheadedness that we are fighting, not body shape or other physical attributes or lack of them.

Fat shaming is alive and well, a socially acceptable prejudice. More than once someone has dismissed me on sight because I am fat. Fat hating doctors are the worst. We fat women have plenty to say about those jerks, and I hope their ears are burning when we say it.

So. Those of us who are named Karen, or who are fat, are tired of the ridicule of Karens and fat people.

Real Karens, be patient. This trend will go the way of disco and elephant jokes.

Those of you who think you need to lose some weight and feel ashamed of your body? You know, some of us have lost and regained more than your entire body weight over a lifetime of trying to be “thin enough.” It is a fool’s game, and a big money-making business in America.

To quote Mr. Rogers, “I like you just the way you are.”

I did lose some weight without dieting this last fall and winter. My secret? I had cancer. Not a weight loss program I recommend.