shape
carat
color
clarity

Hope the President does a good job for USA

Is it really a surprise that decent people are fed up and don’t want to stay silent? I have no idea what the answer is.
Easy, Come up with a (D) candidate who can beat Trump in 2020.
 
Yes, we should all be outraged. It does make you want to shout from rooftops, but I don't think what Waters seems to be advocating will produce desired results.
Nope, it won't. Waters and Pelosi are Trump's greatest assets in D.C. The more they talk the better for Trump and the GOP.
 
Does anyone know why we are paying for all these rally’s Trump is constantly having?
A sitting President is a good donation earner for their party's midterm campaigns. They all go out on the stump before the elections.
 
Does anyone know why we are paying for all these rally’s Trump is constantly having?

Because rules and laws no longer matter?? Same reason morons were chanting "space force" at one of his "rallies" a few days ago?? :sick::sick::sick::sick:
 
http://www.newsweek.com/enormous-man-baby-trump-blimp-greet-president-london-996875

President Donald Trump could be in for a big reception when he visits the United Kingdom for the first time next month as thousands are backing the launch a giant blimp in his image.

Far from a tribute to the president, the so-called "Trump Baby" inflatable immortalizes him in a diaper, with one of his tiny hands clutchhing a smartphone. Almost $20,000 have been collected to make the idea happen - more than twice the original target of $9.000.

"Moral outrage is water off a duck's back to Trump,” a petition for Trump Baby explained. “But he really seems to hate it when people make fun of him. So when Trump visits the UK on Friday the 13th of July this year, we want to make sure he knows that all of Britain is looking down on him and laughing at him."

“Donald Trump is a big, angry baby with a fragile ego,” the petition went on. “He's also a racist demagogue who is a danger to women, immigrants and minorities and a mortal threat to world peace and the very future of life on earth.”

Screen Shot 2018-06-28 at 10.40.47 AM.png
 
So, Now You Want Civility?
JUNE 26, 2018 / JOHN PAVLOVITZ

Civility?

That’s the card you’re pulling now, Trump supporters?
That’s where you’ve landed?
That’s your go-to play at this stage of the game?
It’s a little late for you to roll that out now, isn’t it?

After voting for a self-proclaimed genitalia-grabber.
After he suggested dissenters at his rallies should be beaten up.
After hearing him call violent nazis “fine people.”
After he bulldozed sacred Native American lands and turned frigid hoses on tribe elders.
After he ignored mass deaths in Puerto Rico and vilified their public servants.
After he began dismantling protections to our planet and shrinking our national parks.
After witnessing Flint, Michigan go without clean water.
After watching exhausted refugee families stranded at airports.
After leveraging religion to justify all manner of discrimination.
After ignoring evidence of a Russian interference that threatens our national sovereignty.
After seeing ICE raids in hospital rooms and workplaces.
After his gross, reckless fabrications about Muslims and Mexicans and immigrants.
After witnessing him work tirelessly to take healthcare from the sick and the poor.
After he vilified kneeling black athletes and badgered their employers into silencing their peaceful protest.

After his unhinged Twitter rants against private citizens and their businesses, against celebrities and political opponents and world leaders.
After terrorizing teenage shooting survivors on social media.
After allowing the radicalized Christian right and soulless NRA gun zealots to shape national policy.
After sanctioning Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka and Jeff Sessions.
After retweeting the toxic filth of Dana Loesch and Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter.
After celebrating while he’s alienated our greatest allies and aligned with malevolent dictators.
After your silence in the face of migrant children being ripped from their parent’s arms and placed in dog kennels.
After digging in your heels for the past two years on every bit of it.
Now you want to pretend to be civilized?
Now want to talk about measured debate?
Now you want to wag your finger at us for being disrespectful?
Now you want to shame us for our supposed lack of manners?
Now you want to gaslight us into guilt and apology—as if we’ve lost our dignity, as if we’ve sacrificed our humanity, as if we’ve bastardized our religion, as if we’re the ones impervious to other people’s feelings.

With all due respect—to hell with your phony civility.

No, you don’t get to play that card. That request is off the table for you.
You lost that moral high ground somewhere between excusing his mocking of a disabled reporter—and celebrating brown-skinned kids in cages.
Your lengthy, sickening body of work over the past two and a half years is the greatest witness of your fraudulence.

You don’t really want civility, anyway. That’s not what you’re asking for. If you were simply asking for that, we wouldn’t have an issue.

You want something else:
You want consent to your abject cruelty. You’re not going to get it.
You want our silence in the face of perversions of justice. It will not be forthcoming.
You want tacit approval for a white Evangelical theocracy. That ain’t gonna happen.
You want to us to quietly witness this President dismantling democracy. We’re simply not going to.
You want us worship your white, angry, American, gun-toting God. We won’t.
You want us to join you in your blind idolatry of a man fully lacking nobility. We won’t be.
You want the steady stream of Sarah Sanders lies, alternative Fox News facts to go unchecked. We’re not giving you that courtesy.
You want us to allow you to perpetuate dangerous false stereotypes of immigrants and young black men and Transgender people. We’re not going to.
You want us excuse your supremacy and indulge your privilege and sanction your President’s bigotry and applaud this Administration’s legislated assaults on marginalized communities.It’s gonna be a long wait, friend.

No, we’re not doing any of that.

What we are going to do, is clearly, repeatedly, and unapologetically oppose it all with everything we have.
We’re going to push back hard against every divisive meme you produce, every incendiary Tweet he manufactures, every human rights atrocity this Administration generates, every effort you make to normalize monstrous behavior or excuse his ramblings.
We’re going to be unflinching, and we’re going to use our outside voices, and we aren’t going to mince words when it comes to the inherent worth of human beings, the affronts on our Constitution, or the hijacking of our faith traditions.

You can call that uncivilized if you’d like, but honestly we don’t give a damn.

We’re going to be profoundly pissed off whenever diversity is threatened or when human beings are treated as less-than or when religion is invoked to do harm or when America’s stability is under attack.

In the face of the inhumane things on display in this country right now, we’ll take the cause of humanity and our volume every single time.

We’re going to be loud in the cause of love, even if that sounds like anger in your ears.
 
So, Now You Want Civility?
JUNE 26, 2018 / JOHN PAVLOVITZ

Civility?

That’s the card you’re pulling now, Trump supporters?
That’s where you’ve landed?
That’s your go-to play at this stage of the game?
It’s a little late for you to roll that out now, isn’t it?

After voting for a self-proclaimed genitalia-grabber.
After he suggested dissenters at his rallies should be beaten up.
After hearing him call violent nazis “fine people.”
After he bulldozed sacred Native American lands and turned frigid hoses on tribe elders.
After he ignored mass deaths in Puerto Rico and vilified their public servants.
After he began dismantling protections to our planet and shrinking our national parks.
After witnessing Flint, Michigan go without clean water.
After watching exhausted refugee families stranded at airports.
After leveraging religion to justify all manner of discrimination.
After ignoring evidence of a Russian interference that threatens our national sovereignty.
After seeing ICE raids in hospital rooms and workplaces.
After his gross, reckless fabrications about Muslims and Mexicans and immigrants.
After witnessing him work tirelessly to take healthcare from the sick and the poor.
After he vilified kneeling black athletes and badgered their employers into silencing their peaceful protest.

After his unhinged Twitter rants against private citizens and their businesses, against celebrities and political opponents and world leaders.
After terrorizing teenage shooting survivors on social media.
After allowing the radicalized Christian right and soulless NRA gun zealots to shape national policy.
After sanctioning Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka and Jeff Sessions.
After retweeting the toxic filth of Dana Loesch and Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter.
After celebrating while he’s alienated our greatest allies and aligned with malevolent dictators.
After your silence in the face of migrant children being ripped from their parent’s arms and placed in dog kennels.
After digging in your heels for the past two years on every bit of it.
Now you want to pretend to be civilized?
Now want to talk about measured debate?
Now you want to wag your finger at us for being disrespectful?
Now you want to shame us for our supposed lack of manners?
Now you want to gaslight us into guilt and apology—as if we’ve lost our dignity, as if we’ve sacrificed our humanity, as if we’ve bastardized our religion, as if we’re the ones impervious to other people’s feelings.

With all due respect—to hell with your phony civility.

No, you don’t get to play that card. That request is off the table for you.
You lost that moral high ground somewhere between excusing his mocking of a disabled reporter—and celebrating brown-skinned kids in cages.
Your lengthy, sickening body of work over the past two and a half years is the greatest witness of your fraudulence.

You don’t really want civility, anyway. That’s not what you’re asking for. If you were simply asking for that, we wouldn’t have an issue.

You want something else:
You want consent to your abject cruelty. You’re not going to get it.
You want our silence in the face of perversions of justice. It will not be forthcoming.
You want tacit approval for a white Evangelical theocracy. That ain’t gonna happen.
You want to us to quietly witness this President dismantling democracy. We’re simply not going to.
You want us worship your white, angry, American, gun-toting God. We won’t.
You want us to join you in your blind idolatry of a man fully lacking nobility. We won’t be.
You want the steady stream of Sarah Sanders lies, alternative Fox News facts to go unchecked. We’re not giving you that courtesy.
You want us to allow you to perpetuate dangerous false stereotypes of immigrants and young black men and Transgender people. We’re not going to.
You want us excuse your supremacy and indulge your privilege and sanction your President’s bigotry and applaud this Administration’s legislated assaults on marginalized communities.It’s gonna be a long wait, friend.

No, we’re not doing any of that.

What we are going to do, is clearly, repeatedly, and unapologetically oppose it all with everything we have.
We’re going to push back hard against every divisive meme you produce, every incendiary Tweet he manufactures, every human rights atrocity this Administration generates, every effort you make to normalize monstrous behavior or excuse his ramblings.
We’re going to be unflinching, and we’re going to use our outside voices, and we aren’t going to mince words when it comes to the inherent worth of human beings, the affronts on our Constitution, or the hijacking of our faith traditions.

You can call that uncivilized if you’d like, but honestly we don’t give a damn.

We’re going to be profoundly pissed off whenever diversity is threatened or when human beings are treated as less-than or when religion is invoked to do harm or when America’s stability is under attack.

In the face of the inhumane things on display in this country right now, we’ll take the cause of humanity and our volume every single time.

We’re going to be loud in the cause of love, even if that sounds like anger in your ears.
Totally awesome post! Completely agree.
 
https://slate.com/news-and-politics...-now-trumps-and-so-we-grieve-for-america.html
The America We Thought We Knew Is Gone
Because countries are not people, it’s tricky to translate whatever “loving one’s country” means—it’s quite abstract—into the language of heartbreak. It sounds melodramatic. What can heartbreak mean as a civic matter? And yet it is what I feel.

A corrupt but weak president—this has been my comfort, his weakness—has been given a gift that will make him strong. After upholding the travel ban, weakening labor unions, and allowing crisis pregnancy centers to misrepresent themselves to women seeking help, Justice Anthony Kennedy announced he was retiring before the midterm elections. That decision empowers a reality-television star who lost the popular vote by millions to reform the Supreme Court for at least a generation—a court that rather than rebut his claim to power has affirmed it. In his own branch, he asked James Comey for a loyalty oath and lamented not getting one from Jeff Sessions, whom he has repeatedly condemned for recusing himself in the Russia investigation, saying he never would have hired him as attorney general had he known. There is every reason to think he will do the same for a Supreme Court nominee. When Neil Gorsuch—who took the seat Mitch McConnell withheld from Merrick Garland—seemed to distance himself from the man who offered him the robes, Donald Trump reportedly considered pulling the nomination. Trump has said he will pardon himself if he needs to, a controversial stance that would likely need approval from the high court. Now he has been given a way to assure it. He holds the power over the person who can rubber-stamp him into invulnerability.
The capitulation of two branches of government to a terrifying third, elected by a minority, is not how our government was envisioned. That is frightening. It is also, depending on the America you want to live in, painful.

The problem isn’t simply that Trump—who styles himself a “law and order” president—values neither: He objected to the Central Park Five’s going free, despite the DNA evidence proving their innocence. He wanted their false imprisonment. It isn’t just that he advocates against due process, tars asylum applicants as criminals, and characterizes even their children as an “infestation.” It isn’t simply that he sees black men as intrinsically guilty, the same as brown refugees. It’s that he shouts about law and order while upholding the immunity of the rich and the cruel: He pardoned Joe Arpaio, who tortured undocumented immigrants in unlivable tent cities he openly called concentration camps, and, in pardoning Dinesh D’Souza, has signaled he will pardon his cronies if they are convicted for illegally helping him.

This is open corruption, and it has been openly embraced.

That fills me with grief, but my grief can’t make it untrue. And if this benthic sadness has any value, it’s that clarity. There is no more equivocating to do. You don’t have to equivocate about Trump’s corruption—or Wilbur Ross’, or Scott Pruitt’s. You don’t have to parse whether a “falsehood” is really a “lie.” It is simply true that the president is corrupt and that his supporters celebrate his corruption. That twisted power has enfeebled the institutions that depend on the very things the president would call weak—honesty and honor and service. As those institutions collapse, so does a polity capable of reasoning without them.

For instance: Confused by the fever that’s seized it, the country has spent days debating the “civility” of a restaurant owner who asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave, after she had defended the president’s policy of putting children in cages as a “deterrent” to other migrants. He called sitting members of Congress “crazy” and pettily insulted that same restaurant’s cleanliness. But Trump’s own discourse somehow doesn’t factor into this earnest discussion of civility.

It is as strange as it is dangerous that everyone—supporters and antagonists alike—now excises Trump from this discussion about how people should treat each other. Even more shocking, though, is that this impulse to cordon Trump off, either by forgiving or excepting him, has extended to the courts, where language
must matter if the institution is to function. In upholding Trump’s ban on travel from Muslim-majority countries—which Sean Spicer spent days as Trump’s press secretary insisting was not a ban—the Supreme Court dismissed his many, many public statements that declared an intent to discriminate based on religion. (Note that the justices did the exact opposite—citing evidence that some members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission expressed “bias” against the baker’s religious belief—to rule in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.)

The result is that Trump, a man who has repeatedly said that he only responds to consequences, has faced none. His lies meet with no institutional resistance. Quite the contrary. His decision to say outrageous, incorrect, inflammatory things has paid off handsomely: His supporters believe them, and those in power will not acknowledge that he has said anything at all. The combined effect has rendered him immune to every standard we, as a country, once shared.

This is frightening enough to make denial attractive.

But it is important now to deny nothing, and to instead reiterate that he did say these things, even if the court has plugged its ears. It falls to us to state what the Supreme Court of the United States would not: His intent was to discriminate on the basis of religion—he campaigned on a “Muslim ban.” That is not equivocal. It is clear. There’s even a tweet from a before-times Mike Pence saying, “Calls to ban Muslims from the U.S. are offensive and unconstitutional.” It is necessary to point out what’s true, because (and this is the painful lesson of this week) our institutions won’t. Trump’s call for a “Muslim ban” happened—it’s not our imagination! That the court ignored this neatly proves that the organs of democracy intended to prevent presidential abuse are the ones in denial, and show no sign of waking up.
This is the sadness I’m feeling. It is deep because it is clear. There is no longer doubt.

The word hypocrisy bobs up in these discussions, but the issue—as many have pointed out—is not hypocrisy, because those who are failing us do not aspire to intellectual or moral consistency in the first place. There is no negotiating with, or appeasing, or even engaging a party that feels no responsibility to the truth. Lying is more than “uncivil.” It corrodes relationships and trust, and the damage it does it permanent. I know it’s fashionable these days to wear one’s cynicism on one’s sleeve: We predict every promise will be broken because expecting honesty is laughably naïve. This makes reality easier to live with and joke about. But it’s a symptom of national rot. Being lied to, constantly, is not the price of being governed. That we have naturalized this—that we expect nothing less, in fact—shows how far we’ve already gone down a bad, bad road. This was already an unhealthy country in many ways. But at least lies were still resented. Now they are celebrated.

The country we thought we shared is changing faster than anyone expected. I wrote last week about the
cognitive mismatch I felt at the relative normalcy outside my window as our government punished parents by taking their children away—in many cases, permanently. One week later, I cannot unsee how much even my window has changed and will change. The party ruling our country has demonstrated there is no principle it will respect, no norm it will endure. My rights as a woman are in danger. Civil rights are in danger. And the republic is in danger.

I am sad, above all, because the damage being done now no longer feels like it can be stemmed—let alone reversed—with a single election. This will last decades. The downturns my generation has already weathered—the 2008 crisis that hinged on obscure derivatives traded by a privileged few, robbing wealth from millions—were only the beginning. Education is now a luxury. Pensions barely exist. Health care is under threat. Retirement is, to those my age, a cruel joke. We’ve been waiting. For recovery, for relief, for some semblance of an American dream we can access.

It is clear, now, that there was nothing to wait for. In the time we’ve been waiting, the rich have only gotten richer and angrier and whiter, but it will never be enough for them. The good-faith ideological battle some thought right and left were waging turned out to be no such thing: Modern conservativism was never about small government. Or personal liberty—for women and people of color, anyway. It wasn’t about fiscal responsibility: The GOP passed a tax plan that has blown up our national debt, which is projected to reach 78 percent of America’s GDP by the end of this year, the highest it’s been since 1950. And Republicans are still not happy. They will pretend that this crisis they created will require “sacrifices,” gutting services poor Americans desperately need, like health care. The poor and disadvantaged will die.
Meanwhile, those in power will celebrate how much they deserve their wealth and how little anyone else deserves. And they will grab for more. You’d think they’d be happy: America now has the highest income inequality in the industrialized world. But even that is not enough. The greed is insatiable. And it is a greed not just for wealth but for domination—for permanent entitlement. What they want is to be served. At restaurants. On golf courses. In corporate offices. There is no form of protest they will respect: loud or silent, formal or spontaneous, civil or rude. Written petitions or marches on the streets. They don’t care. Those in power have been very clear about what they do care about. “We have more money and more brains and better houses and apartments and nicer boats,” Trump said Wednesday in a speech to his supporters, because he cannot help but say what he really means. “We are the elite.”

That vicious little “we” excludes most of America. Those in power have cut off diplomatic relations with the country they’re meant to govern, and the party they’re meant to govern with. The point-of-no-return polarization that pundits still feebly warn against is already here. It is sad. It is true.

I started by talking about love. The country I believed in, which aspired to true equality of opportunity, and welcomed immigrants, and strove to make the American dream available to everyone, failed often. The ideal was never the reality, but at least there was an agreed-upon goal, one worth working toward in common. Even that is gone. The most vital trust that our government, as a whole, will protect the interests of the people has been violated.

So, yes: Today, I am sad. But there is power in calling things what they are. Other feelings will come.








 
https://slate.com/news-and-politics...-now-trumps-and-so-we-grieve-for-america.html
The America We Thought We Knew Is Gone
Because countries are not people, it’s tricky to translate whatever “loving one’s country” means—it’s quite abstract—into the language of heartbreak. It sounds melodramatic. What can heartbreak mean as a civic matter? And yet it is what I feel.

A corrupt but weak president—this has been my comfort, his weakness—has been given a gift that will make him strong. After upholding the travel ban, weakening labor unions, and allowing crisis pregnancy centers to misrepresent themselves to women seeking help, Justice Anthony Kennedy announced he was retiring before the midterm elections. That decision empowers a reality-television star who lost the popular vote by millions to reform the Supreme Court for at least a generation—a court that rather than rebut his claim to power has affirmed it. In his own branch, he asked James Comey for a loyalty oath and lamented not getting one from Jeff Sessions, whom he has repeatedly condemned for recusing himself in the Russia investigation, saying he never would have hired him as attorney general had he known. There is every reason to think he will do the same for a Supreme Court nominee. When Neil Gorsuch—who took the seat Mitch McConnell withheld from Merrick Garland—seemed to distance himself from the man who offered him the robes, Donald Trump reportedly considered pulling the nomination. Trump has said he will pardon himself if he needs to, a controversial stance that would likely need approval from the high court. Now he has been given a way to assure it. He holds the power over the person who can rubber-stamp him into invulnerability.
The capitulation of two branches of government to a terrifying third, elected by a minority, is not how our government was envisioned. That is frightening. It is also, depending on the America you want to live in, painful.

The problem isn’t simply that Trump—who styles himself a “law and order” president—values neither: He objected to the Central Park Five’s going free, despite the DNA evidence proving their innocence. He wanted their false imprisonment. It isn’t just that he advocates against due process, tars asylum applicants as criminals, and characterizes even their children as an “infestation.” It isn’t simply that he sees black men as intrinsically guilty, the same as brown refugees. It’s that he shouts about law and order while upholding the immunity of the rich and the cruel: He pardoned Joe Arpaio, who tortured undocumented immigrants in unlivable tent cities he openly called concentration camps, and, in pardoning Dinesh D’Souza, has signaled he will pardon his cronies if they are convicted for illegally helping him.

This is open corruption, and it has been openly embraced.

That fills me with grief, but my grief can’t make it untrue. And if this benthic sadness has any value, it’s that clarity. There is no more equivocating to do. You don’t have to equivocate about Trump’s corruption—or Wilbur Ross’, or Scott Pruitt’s. You don’t have to parse whether a “falsehood” is really a “lie.” It is simply true that the president is corrupt and that his supporters celebrate his corruption. That twisted power has enfeebled the institutions that depend on the very things the president would call weak—honesty and honor and service. As those institutions collapse, so does a polity capable of reasoning without them.

For instance: Confused by the fever that’s seized it, the country has spent days debating the “civility” of a restaurant owner who asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave, after she had defended the president’s policy of putting children in cages as a “deterrent” to other migrants. He called sitting members of Congress “crazy” and pettily insulted that same restaurant’s cleanliness. But Trump’s own discourse somehow doesn’t factor into this earnest discussion of civility.

It is as strange as it is dangerous that everyone—supporters and antagonists alike—now excises Trump from this discussion about how people should treat each other. Even more shocking, though, is that this impulse to cordon Trump off, either by forgiving or excepting him, has extended to the courts, where language
must matter if the institution is to function. In upholding Trump’s ban on travel from Muslim-majority countries—which Sean Spicer spent days as Trump’s press secretary insisting was not a ban—the Supreme Court dismissed his many, many public statements that declared an intent to discriminate based on religion. (Note that the justices did the exact opposite—citing evidence that some members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission expressed “bias” against the baker’s religious belief—to rule in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.)

The result is that Trump, a man who has repeatedly said that he only responds to consequences, has faced none. His lies meet with no institutional resistance. Quite the contrary. His decision to say outrageous, incorrect, inflammatory things has paid off handsomely: His supporters believe them, and those in power will not acknowledge that he has said anything at all. The combined effect has rendered him immune to every standard we, as a country, once shared.

This is frightening enough to make denial attractive.

But it is important now to deny nothing, and to instead reiterate that he did say these things, even if the court has plugged its ears. It falls to us to state what the Supreme Court of the United States would not: His intent was to discriminate on the basis of religion—he campaigned on a “Muslim ban.” That is not equivocal. It is clear. There’s even a tweet from a before-times Mike Pence saying, “Calls to ban Muslims from the U.S. are offensive and unconstitutional.” It is necessary to point out what’s true, because (and this is the painful lesson of this week) our institutions won’t. Trump’s call for a “Muslim ban” happened—it’s not our imagination! That the court ignored this neatly proves that the organs of democracy intended to prevent presidential abuse are the ones in denial, and show no sign of waking up.
This is the sadness I’m feeling. It is deep because it is clear. There is no longer doubt.

The word hypocrisy bobs up in these discussions, but the issue—as many have pointed out—is not hypocrisy, because those who are failing us do not aspire to intellectual or moral consistency in the first place. There is no negotiating with, or appeasing, or even engaging a party that feels no responsibility to the truth. Lying is more than “uncivil.” It corrodes relationships and trust, and the damage it does it permanent. I know it’s fashionable these days to wear one’s cynicism on one’s sleeve: We predict every promise will be broken because expecting honesty is laughably naïve. This makes reality easier to live with and joke about. But it’s a symptom of national rot. Being lied to, constantly, is not the price of being governed. That we have naturalized this—that we expect nothing less, in fact—shows how far we’ve already gone down a bad, bad road. This was already an unhealthy country in many ways. But at least lies were still resented. Now they are celebrated.

The country we thought we shared is changing faster than anyone expected. I wrote last week about the
cognitive mismatch I felt at the relative normalcy outside my window as our government punished parents by taking their children away—in many cases, permanently. One week later, I cannot unsee how much even my window has changed and will change. The party ruling our country has demonstrated there is no principle it will respect, no norm it will endure. My rights as a woman are in danger. Civil rights are in danger. And the republic is in danger.

I am sad, above all, because the damage being done now no longer feels like it can be stemmed—let alone reversed—with a single election. This will last decades. The downturns my generation has already weathered—the 2008 crisis that hinged on obscure derivatives traded by a privileged few, robbing wealth from millions—were only the beginning. Education is now a luxury. Pensions barely exist. Health care is under threat. Retirement is, to those my age, a cruel joke. We’ve been waiting. For recovery, for relief, for some semblance of an American dream we can access.

It is clear, now, that there was nothing to wait for. In the time we’ve been waiting, the rich have only gotten richer and angrier and whiter, but it will never be enough for them. The good-faith ideological battle some thought right and left were waging turned out to be no such thing: Modern conservativism was never about small government. Or personal liberty—for women and people of color, anyway. It wasn’t about fiscal responsibility: The GOP passed a tax plan that has blown up our national debt, which is projected to reach 78 percent of America’s GDP by the end of this year, the highest it’s been since 1950. And Republicans are still not happy. They will pretend that this crisis they created will require “sacrifices,” gutting services poor Americans desperately need, like health care. The poor and disadvantaged will die.
Meanwhile, those in power will celebrate how much they deserve their wealth and how little anyone else deserves. And they will grab for more. You’d think they’d be happy: America now has the highest income inequality in the industrialized world. But even that is not enough. The greed is insatiable. And it is a greed not just for wealth but for domination—for permanent entitlement. What they want is to be served. At restaurants. On golf courses. In corporate offices. There is no form of protest they will respect: loud or silent, formal or spontaneous, civil or rude. Written petitions or marches on the streets. They don’t care. Those in power have been very clear about what they do care about. “We have more money and more brains and better houses and apartments and nicer boats,” Trump said Wednesday in a speech to his supporters, because he cannot help but say what he really means. “We are the elite.”

That vicious little “we” excludes most of America. Those in power have cut off diplomatic relations with the country they’re meant to govern, and the party they’re meant to govern with. The point-of-no-return polarization that pundits still feebly warn against is already here. It is sad. It is true.

I started by talking about love. The country I believed in, which aspired to true equality of opportunity, and welcomed immigrants, and strove to make the American dream available to everyone, failed often. The ideal was never the reality, but at least there was an agreed-upon goal, one worth working toward in common. Even that is gone. The most vital trust that our government, as a whole, will protect the interests of the people has been violated.

So, yes: Today, I am sad. But there is power in calling things what they are. Other feelings will come.


So well written and expressed. I too am deeply sad and frightened. But at least we know what we’re up against.



 
Thank you both for sharing these. Trump supporters have absolutely no standing to demand civility. None.


So, Now You Want Civility?
JUNE 26, 2018 / JOHN PAVLOVITZ

Civility?

That’s the card you’re pulling now, Trump supporters?
That’s where you’ve landed?
That’s your go-to play at this stage of the game?
It’s a little late for you to roll that out now, isn’t it?

After voting for a self-proclaimed genitalia-grabber.
After he suggested dissenters at his rallies should be beaten up.
After hearing him call violent nazis “fine people.”
After he bulldozed sacred Native American lands and turned frigid hoses on tribe elders.
After he ignored mass deaths in Puerto Rico and vilified their public servants.
After he began dismantling protections to our planet and shrinking our national parks.
After witnessing Flint, Michigan go without clean water.
After watching exhausted refugee families stranded at airports.
After leveraging religion to justify all manner of discrimination.
After ignoring evidence of a Russian interference that threatens our national sovereignty.
After seeing ICE raids in hospital rooms and workplaces.
After his gross, reckless fabrications about Muslims and Mexicans and immigrants.
After witnessing him work tirelessly to take healthcare from the sick and the poor.
After he vilified kneeling black athletes and badgered their employers into silencing their peaceful protest.

After his unhinged Twitter rants against private citizens and their businesses, against celebrities and political opponents and world leaders.
After terrorizing teenage shooting survivors on social media.
After allowing the radicalized Christian right and soulless NRA gun zealots to shape national policy.
After sanctioning Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka and Jeff Sessions.
After retweeting the toxic filth of Dana Loesch and Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter.
After celebrating while he’s alienated our greatest allies and aligned with malevolent dictators.
After your silence in the face of migrant children being ripped from their parent’s arms and placed in dog kennels.
After digging in your heels for the past two years on every bit of it.
Now you want to pretend to be civilized?
Now want to talk about measured debate?
Now you want to wag your finger at us for being disrespectful?
Now you want to shame us for our supposed lack of manners?
Now you want to gaslight us into guilt and apology—as if we’ve lost our dignity, as if we’ve sacrificed our humanity, as if we’ve bastardized our religion, as if we’re the ones impervious to other people’s feelings.

With all due respect—to hell with your phony civility.

No, you don’t get to play that card. That request is off the table for you.
You lost that moral high ground somewhere between excusing his mocking of a disabled reporter—and celebrating brown-skinned kids in cages.
Your lengthy, sickening body of work over the past two and a half years is the greatest witness of your fraudulence.

You don’t really want civility, anyway. That’s not what you’re asking for. If you were simply asking for that, we wouldn’t have an issue.

You want something else:
You want consent to your abject cruelty. You’re not going to get it.
You want our silence in the face of perversions of justice. It will not be forthcoming.
You want tacit approval for a white Evangelical theocracy. That ain’t gonna happen.
You want to us to quietly witness this President dismantling democracy. We’re simply not going to.
You want us worship your white, angry, American, gun-toting God. We won’t.
You want us to join you in your blind idolatry of a man fully lacking nobility. We won’t be.
You want the steady stream of Sarah Sanders lies, alternative Fox News facts to go unchecked. We’re not giving you that courtesy.
You want us to allow you to perpetuate dangerous false stereotypes of immigrants and young black men and Transgender people. We’re not going to.
You want us excuse your supremacy and indulge your privilege and sanction your President’s bigotry and applaud this Administration’s legislated assaults on marginalized communities.It’s gonna be a long wait, friend.

No, we’re not doing any of that.

What we are going to do, is clearly, repeatedly, and unapologetically oppose it all with everything we have.
We’re going to push back hard against every divisive meme you produce, every incendiary Tweet he manufactures, every human rights atrocity this Administration generates, every effort you make to normalize monstrous behavior or excuse his ramblings.
We’re going to be unflinching, and we’re going to use our outside voices, and we aren’t going to mince words when it comes to the inherent worth of human beings, the affronts on our Constitution, or the hijacking of our faith traditions.

You can call that uncivilized if you’d like, but honestly we don’t give a damn.

We’re going to be profoundly pissed off whenever diversity is threatened or when human beings are treated as less-than or when religion is invoked to do harm or when America’s stability is under attack.

In the face of the inhumane things on display in this country right now, we’ll take the cause of humanity and our volume every single time.

We’re going to be loud in the cause of love, even if that sounds like anger in your ears.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics...-now-trumps-and-so-we-grieve-for-america.html
The America We Thought We Knew Is Gone
Because countries are not people, it’s tricky to translate whatever “loving one’s country” means—it’s quite abstract—into the language of heartbreak. It sounds melodramatic. What can heartbreak mean as a civic matter? And yet it is what I feel.

A corrupt but weak president—this has been my comfort, his weakness—has been given a gift that will make him strong. After upholding the travel ban, weakening labor unions, and allowing crisis pregnancy centers to misrepresent themselves to women seeking help, Justice Anthony Kennedy announced he was retiring before the midterm elections. That decision empowers a reality-television star who lost the popular vote by millions to reform the Supreme Court for at least a generation—a court that rather than rebut his claim to power has affirmed it. In his own branch, he asked James Comey for a loyalty oath and lamented not getting one from Jeff Sessions, whom he has repeatedly condemned for recusing himself in the Russia investigation, saying he never would have hired him as attorney general had he known. There is every reason to think he will do the same for a Supreme Court nominee. When Neil Gorsuch—who took the seat Mitch McConnell withheld from Merrick Garland—seemed to distance himself from the man who offered him the robes, Donald Trump reportedly considered pulling the nomination. Trump has said he will pardon himself if he needs to, a controversial stance that would likely need approval from the high court. Now he has been given a way to assure it. He holds the power over the person who can rubber-stamp him into invulnerability.
The capitulation of two branches of government to a terrifying third, elected by a minority, is not how our government was envisioned. That is frightening. It is also, depending on the America you want to live in, painful.

The problem isn’t simply that Trump—who styles himself a “law and order” president—values neither: He objected to the Central Park Five’s going free, despite the DNA evidence proving their innocence. He wanted their false imprisonment. It isn’t just that he advocates against due process, tars asylum applicants as criminals, and characterizes even their children as an “infestation.” It isn’t simply that he sees black men as intrinsically guilty, the same as brown refugees. It’s that he shouts about law and order while upholding the immunity of the rich and the cruel: He pardoned Joe Arpaio, who tortured undocumented immigrants in unlivable tent cities he openly called concentration camps, and, in pardoning Dinesh D’Souza, has signaled he will pardon his cronies if they are convicted for illegally helping him.

This is open corruption, and it has been openly embraced.

That fills me with grief, but my grief can’t make it untrue. And if this benthic sadness has any value, it’s that clarity. There is no more equivocating to do. You don’t have to equivocate about Trump’s corruption—or Wilbur Ross’, or Scott Pruitt’s. You don’t have to parse whether a “falsehood” is really a “lie.” It is simply true that the president is corrupt and that his supporters celebrate his corruption. That twisted power has enfeebled the institutions that depend on the very things the president would call weak—honesty and honor and service. As those institutions collapse, so does a polity capable of reasoning without them.

For instance: Confused by the fever that’s seized it, the country has spent days debating the “civility” of a restaurant owner who asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave, after she had defended the president’s policy of putting children in cages as a “deterrent” to other migrants. He called sitting members of Congress “crazy” and pettily insulted that same restaurant’s cleanliness. But Trump’s own discourse somehow doesn’t factor into this earnest discussion of civility.

It is as strange as it is dangerous that everyone—supporters and antagonists alike—now excises Trump from this discussion about how people should treat each other. Even more shocking, though, is that this impulse to cordon Trump off, either by forgiving or excepting him, has extended to the courts, where language
must matter if the institution is to function. In upholding Trump’s ban on travel from Muslim-majority countries—which Sean Spicer spent days as Trump’s press secretary insisting was not a ban—the Supreme Court dismissed his many, many public statements that declared an intent to discriminate based on religion. (Note that the justices did the exact opposite—citing evidence that some members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission expressed “bias” against the baker’s religious belief—to rule in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.)

The result is that Trump, a man who has repeatedly said that he only responds to consequences, has faced none. His lies meet with no institutional resistance. Quite the contrary. His decision to say outrageous, incorrect, inflammatory things has paid off handsomely: His supporters believe them, and those in power will not acknowledge that he has said anything at all. The combined effect has rendered him immune to every standard we, as a country, once shared.

This is frightening enough to make denial attractive.

But it is important now to deny nothing, and to instead reiterate that he did say these things, even if the court has plugged its ears. It falls to us to state what the Supreme Court of the United States would not: His intent was to discriminate on the basis of religion—he campaigned on a “Muslim ban.” That is not equivocal. It is clear. There’s even a tweet from a before-times Mike Pence saying, “Calls to ban Muslims from the U.S. are offensive and unconstitutional.” It is necessary to point out what’s true, because (and this is the painful lesson of this week) our institutions won’t. Trump’s call for a “Muslim ban” happened—it’s not our imagination! That the court ignored this neatly proves that the organs of democracy intended to prevent presidential abuse are the ones in denial, and show no sign of waking up.
This is the sadness I’m feeling. It is deep because it is clear. There is no longer doubt.

The word hypocrisy bobs up in these discussions, but the issue—as many have pointed out—is not hypocrisy, because those who are failing us do not aspire to intellectual or moral consistency in the first place. There is no negotiating with, or appeasing, or even engaging a party that feels no responsibility to the truth. Lying is more than “uncivil.” It corrodes relationships and trust, and the damage it does it permanent. I know it’s fashionable these days to wear one’s cynicism on one’s sleeve: We predict every promise will be broken because expecting honesty is laughably naïve. This makes reality easier to live with and joke about. But it’s a symptom of national rot. Being lied to, constantly, is not the price of being governed. That we have naturalized this—that we expect nothing less, in fact—shows how far we’ve already gone down a bad, bad road. This was already an unhealthy country in many ways. But at least lies were still resented. Now they are celebrated.

The country we thought we shared is changing faster than anyone expected. I wrote last week about the
cognitive mismatch I felt at the relative normalcy outside my window as our government punished parents by taking their children away—in many cases, permanently. One week later, I cannot unsee how much even my window has changed and will change. The party ruling our country has demonstrated there is no principle it will respect, no norm it will endure. My rights as a woman are in danger. Civil rights are in danger. And the republic is in danger.

I am sad, above all, because the damage being done now no longer feels like it can be stemmed—let alone reversed—with a single election. This will last decades. The downturns my generation has already weathered—the 2008 crisis that hinged on obscure derivatives traded by a privileged few, robbing wealth from millions—were only the beginning. Education is now a luxury. Pensions barely exist. Health care is under threat. Retirement is, to those my age, a cruel joke. We’ve been waiting. For recovery, for relief, for some semblance of an American dream we can access.

It is clear, now, that there was nothing to wait for. In the time we’ve been waiting, the rich have only gotten richer and angrier and whiter, but it will never be enough for them. The good-faith ideological battle some thought right and left were waging turned out to be no such thing: Modern conservativism was never about small government. Or personal liberty—for women and people of color, anyway. It wasn’t about fiscal responsibility: The GOP passed a tax plan that has blown up our national debt, which is projected to reach 78 percent of America’s GDP by the end of this year, the highest it’s been since 1950. And Republicans are still not happy. They will pretend that this crisis they created will require “sacrifices,” gutting services poor Americans desperately need, like health care. The poor and disadvantaged will die.
Meanwhile, those in power will celebrate how much they deserve their wealth and how little anyone else deserves. And they will grab for more. You’d think they’d be happy: America now has the highest income inequality in the industrialized world. But even that is not enough. The greed is insatiable. And it is a greed not just for wealth but for domination—for permanent entitlement. What they want is to be served. At restaurants. On golf courses. In corporate offices. There is no form of protest they will respect: loud or silent, formal or spontaneous, civil or rude. Written petitions or marches on the streets. They don’t care. Those in power have been very clear about what they do care about. “We have more money and more brains and better houses and apartments and nicer boats,” Trump said Wednesday in a speech to his supporters, because he cannot help but say what he really means. “We are the elite.”

That vicious little “we” excludes most of America. Those in power have cut off diplomatic relations with the country they’re meant to govern, and the party they’re meant to govern with. The point-of-no-return polarization that pundits still feebly warn against is already here. It is sad. It is true.

I started by talking about love. The country I believed in, which aspired to true equality of opportunity, and welcomed immigrants, and strove to make the American dream available to everyone, failed often. The ideal was never the reality, but at least there was an agreed-upon goal, one worth working toward in common. Even that is gone. The most vital trust that our government, as a whole, will protect the interests of the people has been violated.

So, yes: Today, I am sad. But there is power in calling things what they are. Other feelings will come.
 
Ain't that the truth.

Screen Shot 2018-06-29 at 10.35.20 AM.png
 

Everything that is happening, both in the outer world and in my family (meaning with my daughter) is disturbing me greatly lately. My daughter, who has a bad cold, is back to sleeping in my bed against my will. She said I was screaming into my pillow last night. She called the police on me the night before while I was sitting on my bed sorting her meds for the week. (That is an hour long production with hundred of pills and a printed list of what she takes nights and mornings.) The police came in and asked me to come downstairs to talk. I was so fed up that I initially balked at that! They cajoled me and I tramped down the stairs saying, "Whitney, I have really had it with you!" to everyone in the room (Whitney and two policemen). She claimed I hit her with the phone (which is not why she called them). One policeman said, "I don't see any marks on you" and later said, "If I were your mother, I'd be tempted to hit you with a phone myself". But he didn't say it in a mean way. He was really trying to negotiate peace between us. She wanted to go out with some heroin addicts, one of whom had pushed her out of a moving Jeep about two weeks ago. I was threatening to follow her in her my Jeep if the "friends" picked her up. She called the police to tell me that she was 25 and could go where she pleased. As the police heard the names of her her friends, they kept asking things like, "Isn't he in jail?" and she'd say, "No, he's out now". It was just a scene from hell. But I guess I am off the topic of immigration....

I started on this rant because what Alec Baldwin brought up got me upset. Everything about Trump's victories over justice now gets me into an absolute frenzy. I feel he can do whatever he likes to me and I have no rights in the United States. I identify with all his victims. The rage I feel as I put myself in the place of a baby torn from a parent or someone he scorns with that disgusting smirk as he defies all our laws, makes me froth at the mouth.

I feel powerless over everyone. Which I am. Except over myself. So I did go to a protest yesterday.

Deb/AGBF
 
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Hi,
Deb--

I think you need a rest. It is rather overwhelming. There was a brief point in the past where you were toying with the idea of putting your daughter into a group home. Some of those homes that I have heard from folks who know(my sister-in-law worked in one many yrs) and a social worker I know has a daughter who is almost 40 now who resides in one. I have met her and gone to a jewelry show with she and her mother. She loves her group home. Her mother moved to Florida to retire and left her daughter here. Jill is developmentally disabled.

I have a bad situation now as well. My son has been diagnosed with a mental illness. This came to a head after 2 of his cats died. It was the vets fault. He turned loco and has been a torture to live with. I have offered to pay his rent if he moves, but he won't go. Scenes and more scenes and police and more police. I just wanted peace before I die. Just can't get it.

So, I do know what you go through, and think you need some peace as well. I think their may be some help out there.

Annette

Annette
 
I have a bad situation now as well. My son has been diagnosed with a mental illness. This came to a head after 2 of his cats died. It was the vets fault. He turned loco and has been a torture to live with. I have offered to pay his rent if he moves, but he won't go. Scenes and more scenes and police and more police. I just wanted peace before I die. Just can't get it.

So, I do know what you go through, and think you need some peace as well. I think their may be some help out there.

Thank you, Annette, and good luck to you as well. I know there is a thread I can turn to here to discuss this more. I just had an explosion. But thank you for your kindness. Maybe we should meet at one of the mental health threads. I used to post at this one:

https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/when-enough-is-enough-mental-illness.218645/page-11
 
Hugs AGBF. I often wonder when you post what challenges you are facing at home because despite the very real stresses you face daily, you are always thoughtful and kind when you post here. I have to confess that I often wish you would blow off some steam on PS when you feel the need. It's healthy to do so and I hope you know you have a large number of fans here who will lend what support they can. Count me as one of them.
 
Deb and Annette, Im sorry for what you both are dealing with. Please come here to blow off steam when things get overwhelming. Matata is correct, many of us here will support you. When life gets overwhelming it’s easy to feel that you alone, please know you are not.
 
Deb and Annette, Im sorry for what you both are dealing with. Please come here to blow off steam when things get overwhelming. Matata is correct, many of us here will support you. When life gets overwhelming it’s easy to feel that you alone, please know you are not.

One million percent this.
 
Hugs AGBF. I often wonder when you post what challenges you are facing at home because despite the very real stresses you face daily, you are always thoughtful and kind when you post here. I have to confess that I often wish you would blow off some steam on PS when you feel the need. It's healthy to do so and I hope you know you have a large number of fans here who will lend what support they can. Count me as one of them.

Matata-

I do not cry easily, not because I am strong. I am fragile and broken. But just because I don't. I scream and scream and scream (even in my sleep). And have to apologize later. But when I read what you wrote, I started to cry. You are such a strong person and I actually fear you sometimes. Your kindness just undid me. I didn't know I came across as thoughtful. Sometimes when I post I feel like a madwoman ranting. I often have to apologize and confess that that I have been wrong. So thank you. Very much. And I also thank you, lovedogs and Calliecake.

Deb :wavey:
 
Deb and Annette I love you both and will be thinking of you. You both mean so much to me here and it is terrible that you are going through these troubled times with your children. Please come here when you feel like it and let us know how you are doing.
 
Matata-

I do not cry easily, not because I am strong. I am fragile and broken. But just because I don't. I scream and scream and scream (even in my sleep). And have to apologize later. But when I read what you wrote, I started to cry. You are such a strong person and I actually fear you sometimes. Your kindness just undid me. I didn't know I came across as thoughtful. Sometimes when I post I feel like a madwoman ranting. I often have to apologize and confess that that I have been wrong. So thank you. Very much.

My good woman you are denying yourself the credit you deserve. You had the strength to care for your ailing elderly father on top of the constant worry about your daughter. You have fought for a long time to provide your daughter what she needs to live as normal a life as she is able. You fought for her and you continue to fight for her no matter how hard she fights against you and no matter the consequences to your own life. That you may be ragged around the edges does not mean you aren't strong. I've yet to meet a single individual who doesn't get worn down from time to time facing life's burdens.

Obviously I'm not a therapist and arm-chair quarterbacking someone else's life is easy, but might I suggest that part of your rage toward trump is fueled in some part by feelings of helplessness, isolation, and what you may feel is lack of control of your personal life. You can't cure your daughter. You've sacrificed a lot for her. Perhaps it's time you take control of what you can and kick her out if she's capable of caring for herself or find a facility for her if she can't care for herself. That will take a different kind of strength. Turn off the news, don't read the papers until you have some resolution in your personal life that gives you some peace and a time to heal from all the hurt that I suspect you feel. You've been dealing with death, sorrow, and worry long enough. You are long overdue giving yourself permission to seek happiness. If you don't believe you have the strength to do that, take some of mine.
 
Much love to you Deb ::hugs::
 
Smitcompton, I don't know everything that is going on with your son, but please, don't "ask" him to move out and offer to pay for rent. If you are "asking" he will never move out. My oldest brother probably has some mental health issues but the primary issue is alcohol and drug addiction. Other than a few years with a girlfriend, he has either had my parents pay for his housing, or he has lived with one or the other them. They tried many half hearted attempts. They paid for apartments, paid for motels. They gave him money to relocate (which he spent and was back within 2 weeks). If they threatened to cut him off, he would escalate (even faux suicide attempts) until they backed down. He is in his 50's living with my 70 year old mother and he never learned any life skills other than manipulating his own parents and will NEVER live independently. You don't want that for your son and you don't want that hell for yourself. But it's going to need tough love and be OK watching your son fail (and hopefully get up again). I'm sorry you are going through this but it will only get worse the longer you put it off. It doesn't need to be in the next month, but it needs to be in the next year. The only way to learn to swim, is to swim.
 
I am sorry to continue the threadjack, but it is too late now. :)) Thank you all for your responses to me. I will not thank you on Annette's behalf, but I hope that she, also felt bolstered by your support. My daughter went to Virginia yesterday to visit her father, so I have a few days of respite. I cannot do anything exotic today because the plumber is coming to rip out the tiles in a bathroom so that he can replace an ancient shower head and faucets. Tomorrow, however, since it if the 4th of July I set up a shopping date with a friend. We only see each other now when her sons or grandsons have birthday parties, but she has the day off since it is a holiday and my daughter is away. (Freedom!)

My daughter has been on the list for supervised apartments for a while now. The problem is that no one is moving out. I keep her application up to date and maintain great relations with the agency. I want her placed there, not somewhere else, because I trust that place. It has several residences, but the one most appropriate for her has a wait of several years, (She has already waited for at least a year, maybe more.) She has no substance abuse problems and does not even smoke cigarettes. She cannot live on her own, however. She does really well in psychiatric hospitals. It is a pity that long term psychiatric hospitals do not exist...although if they did they would not be nice ones like the ones she attends. I think I am going to try to wait it out until her name comes up for the agency I am hoping for.

I thank you all.
 
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