Yesterday, I attended Indianapolis’ March on Washington–one of the “sister” marches held all over the world. As anyone who listens to the news or has seen the photographs already knows, turnout was massive everywhere. At the Statehouse in deep-red Indiana, the crowd was huge; I’m told it was easily the largest demonstration in Indiana in the past twenty years.
There were lots of clever and poignant signs, but the one that summed up America’s situation for me read “Left or Right, We Know He’s Wrong.”
This was not a normal partisan election. It wasn’t a contest between candidates with different policy preferences, a contest between conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats. It was a battle between White Supremacists led by a dangerously unstable demagogue and time-honored, inclusive American values.
Trump has no political philosophy–he isn’t remotely like the Republicans I served with “back in the day.” But then, most of those who call themselves Republicans today have nothing in common with the Grand Old Party I grew up with.
These rabid ideologues aren’t conservatives; they are a collection of reactionaries, oligarchs and bigots. Whenever I hear one of them piously intoning “I want my country back,” I want to respond “Well, I want the real Republican Party back!”
This New Yorker article made me nostalgic for the party I used to know….
The article was about Scott Pruitt, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the EPA, but it began by harking back to Bill Ruckelshaus, the first EPA Director. He was from Indianapolis, he was admirable, and he was typical of the GOP of which I was then a part.
In the early nineteen-sixties, a young lawyer named William Ruckelshaus was assigned to Indiana’s state board of health to prosecute cases of toxic dumping. At the time, it was commonplace for manufacturers to discard untreated industrial swill—ammonia, cyanide, pesticides, petroleum waste, slag from steel plants, “pickle liquor” (sulfuric acid)—into the nearest sewer, river, or lake. Sometimes, it formed piles of noxious froth nearly as tall as a house. “Those rivers were cesspools,” Ruckelshaus told me recently. He and his colleague Gerald Hansler, an environmental engineer, began touring the state in a white panel truck. They collected water samples and snapped photographs of fish corpses—bluegills, sunfish, and perch, poisoned by the effluent that gushed from industrial outfalls. Then they wrote up the evidence and brought charges against those responsible. Yet, however diligently they worked, their efforts were often regarded with suspicion by Indiana’s governor, who wanted to keep businesses from moving to states with even laxer environmental standards. “I just saw how powerless the states were to act,” Ruckelshaus recalled.
Ruckelshaus brought this lesson with him to Washington, D.C., in 1970, when President Richard Nixon appointed him to set up and run the newly created U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. From a modest cluster of rooms on L Street, Ruckelshaus led the agency in its first swift actions. After less than two weeks, he announced that the E.P.A. planned to sue the cities of Atlanta, Cleveland, and Detroit unless they made a serious effort to stop polluting their rivers with sewage. Later, he refused to give automakers an extension on their mandate to install catalytic converters in all new vehicles—a requirement that eventually resulted in large cuts to toxic, smog-forming emissions. And, in 1972, Ruckelshaus’s E.P.A. banned most uses of the pesticide DDT, a move that helped save a national icon, the American bald eagle, from extinction. More than four decades on, the E.P.A.’s enforcement of the Clean Air Act has averted millions of cases of respiratory disease and continues to save hundreds of thousands of Americans every year, according to a series of agency analyses. For the most part, urban rivers are no longer cesspools, and beaches once fouled with sewage are swimmable. Lake Erie is troubled but no longer deemed dead, as it was in the sixties. Lead levels in the coastal waters off Southern California have dropped a hundredfold.
Ruckelshaus, who is now eighty-four, has watched the ascent of Donald Trump with some trepidation. In August, he and William Reilly, the E.P.A. administrator under President George H. W. Bush, endorsed Hillary Clinton, lambasting Trump as ignorant of the G.O.P.’s “historic contributions to science-driven environmental policy.”
Science-driven policy. How quaint!
When I consider the Republicans I knew, like Ruckelshaus and Dick Lugar, and those I worked with, like Indianapolis Mayor Bill Hudnut and Indiana Governor Robert Orr, I can’t help thinking that it isn’t just Trump. Appalling as he is, he’s the consequence of a party that has been transformed by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and the pathetic group of bigots and know-nothings who comprise what has been called the “lunatic caucus.”
We aren’t going to get our real country back–the America of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the America that welcomed “huddled masses yearning to breathe free”–unless we get a reasonable, respectable Republican party back.
The sign said it all: it isn’t left versus right. It’s right versus wrong. It’s the America I thought I inhabited versus a bleak and unfamiliar dystopia–and I want my America back.
Marching and talk are free. We better do more than that. You also need to know how to swim in shark infested waters. If not, you’ll be eaten alive. Ask yourself, can I do that?
If the answer is no, maybe you need to listen to Betty. She’s been a swimming instructor for over 30 years.
I’m glad to see someone with an authoritative voice agree with my view of the 2106 election, this was not a “normal partisan” (political) election. At all levels it was an election of humanitarian issues vs. greed…and humanity LOST…big time, no matter the result of the popular vote.
I watched the awesome marches across this country and abroad; if nothing else, Trump has finally pissed off people to a degree that they are ready to fight back. Maybe it took his election for them (us) to realize what we have lost due to complacency – the complacency that led millions of Americans to believe that we wouldn’t actually elect that mentally unstable fool to the most powerful position on earth. Those who do not understand the marches in foreign countries do not understand to what degree Trump and the GOP has already destroyed this country’s diplomatic relations with our allies. I doubt they even understand the outcry from the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Americans marching here at home. As has been reported nationally; those who were interviewed gave many and varied reasons for marching, they (we) have all been effected negatively by the current GOP and the insult of the Electoral College SELECTION – not a “normal partisan” election – of Donald Trump and Mike Pence.
The ridiculous speech by Trump after his meeting with CIA officials, after his shill Pence provided the lead-in and introduction, is further embarrassment to this country. The lengthy delay after the announcement of an upcoming press release resulted in further embarrassment. The blatant lies, exaggerations and distortions in both speeches left this viewer speechless and raised my fear level far beyond what it has been due to the election result.
Sheila is also profoundly correct in her assessment that “unless we get a reasonable, respectable Republican party back.”; we aren’t going to get our real country back. Our efforts to rebuild and strengthen the Democratic party will be in vain. Be afraid, be very afraid! But let our fear lead us to fight – not flight.
Representative John Lewis’ speech yesterday in Atlanta was inspiring; he had on his marching shoes and referred to “not let anyone turn us around”. It brought to my mind those thousands of marchers during the civil rights movement singing, “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ’round!” We must keep marching and turn “them” around to return to humanitarian leadership of this country – we can begin with the 2018 elections.
What will America do when the orange one makes a profoundly unconstitutional order? Or just a crazy one? When he orders the military to take on the demonstrators because they hurt his feelings? This could get VERY ugly VERY quickly. Can our government cope with a man this deranged? The whole world is frightened.
Yes, it would be good if the Republican Party returned to its former self, but that IMO is not likely to happen any time soon. What does need to happen, what we all need to work on, are three goals.
First: Get rid of gerrymandering. It will take enormous work, united effort, and more than one large march to rid the election process of gerrymandering. EVERYTHING else depends on this. This means letters, petitions, e-mail, lobbying, talking non-stop about the issue and making it the litmus test for all candidates.
Second: Non-stop effort to protect all rights. This will require organization and coordinated efforts to hold back the push by the far right to turn this country into some kind of theocratic oligarchy. It means standing up and speaking out… relentlessly.
Third: A full force effort to put into office, starting at the local level, liberal leaning candidates. In the red states the Democrat Party must be re-built from the ground up. This means monetary support and shoe leather and politics. This is the way to create leadership for the future.
Thank you Sheila and all the regulars on this blog. I came here to try to be a more informed voter and have learned much . I have written my representatives in the past, but for me the time has come that simply voting and writing isn’t enough and I must do more. I hope that this election has the same effect on all Americans.
Here in Fort Wayne somewhere between two and three thousand people, mostly women, many men, lots of kids, a few dogs and I showed up. It was a bright day, a upbeat, positive crowd and lots of drivers passing their horns in celebration of the people on our Court House plaza. Lots of signs, lots of songs and chants, but no one registering anyone to vote.
WASHINGTON—Admonishing those responsible for failing to uphold their moral duties, Vice President Mike Pence expressed disappointment Saturday in the 200,000 husbands and fathers who had allowed the women and girls in their charge to attend the Women’s March on Washington. “I can’t tell you how let down I feel by the heads of these households who did not simply give their wives and daughters a firm, decisive ‘no’ when they asked to participate in today’s demonstration,” said Pence, noting with frustration that many of the protesters had been granted permission to travel across the country alone and stay for several days in a faraway city with no male chaperone whatsoever to guide and look after them. “There are a few men marching as well, so they must be the ones supervising this whole thing, and thank God for that. But I can’t help but feel that these ladies’ custodians—the ones who were supposed to be providing a masculine voice of reason on these sorts of matters—have really come up short today.” Pence stressed that he, for example, had told his 23-year-old eldest daughter that it was simply out of the question when she mentioned she was thinking of attending the march.
WE ARE GOING BACKWARDS WITH TRUMP…..
The following is from “Democracy in a Revolutionary Era: The Political Order Today” by Harvey Wheeler (New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, 1968) p.13. Professor Wheeler was my partner at The Political Epidemiology Institute, http://www.StrategicPower.org:
“Athens was a democracy for many years but it was always a strange example of democracy. It would be almost like calling prisons democracies if all managerial tasks were distributed among the guards by lot. Athenian democracy applied only to those who had inherited full citizenship. This was about one-tenth of the population of the city. Not only slaves but also resident aliens were specifically excluded from Athenian citizenship. Some modern critics of Athens have argued that a minority ruling class that rests on a base composed of slaves and second-class citizens can hardly be called a democracy.”
“This is much the same argument Western critics apply against the collectivist democracies and the developing countries. Socialist critics of American democracy make the same point about the inferior status of Negroes. And yet, in all these cases, DEMOCRACY WAS REAL WITHIN THE RESTRICTED REALM OF ITS OPERATION. Of course for those outside the ruling classes and parties the democracy they lived under was also a form of imperialism and dictatorial exploitation that worked the same way when it was turned against outsiders as it did inside the country.”
“This was seen clearly in ancient Athens. The government confronted the majority of the population the way modern imperialistic powers confronted their colonial possessions. And when Athens behaved this way at home, how could she behave differently toward the other Greek city-states? In fact she did not.”
It’s been 50 years since Professor Wheeler’s book was written. With the election of Donald Trump as President, DEMOCRACY IS NOW ALMOST IN TOTAL ECLIPSE. We’re back to the 60’s and STILL SLIDING. The CONTEXT has changed. Any grand strategy to regain momentum toward democracy must take that into account. If not, any effort will end up in just more frustration.
You do have your GOP back…it’s called the Democratic National Party. What we truly need is our old Democratic Party back.
You know, the one who represented the working class people against the Oligarchs. The one who stood beside us when we marched and then again when they drafted policies and laws.
Noam Chomsky says, “The country’s political spectrum has shifted to the right.”
I’d go a step further by saying we don’t even have a political body or dispersion of power between corporations and the people. The politicians all serve the Donor Class – corporations, billionaires, and special interests. You are represented in order of your ability to make campaign donations.
The elite and professional class call themselves “democrats” now. Wall Street owns the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders was very astute when he pointed out, “Not a single law in Washington gets passed until Wall Street lawyers reviews it first.”
We elected a democratic president in 2008. He said he was a “progressive”. His progressive stances helped him defeat Hillary Clinton in the primary. Remember his famous slogan, “Hillary Clinton will promise you everything, but change nothing.”
The “progressive democrat’s” cabinet was chosen by Citibank. That was a huge red flag when you consider we were facing an economic collapse caused by bank fraud within the financial industry.
Not one single banker was jailed. None of theses mega-banks were broken up. An opportunity to break up these large centralized financial centers was squandered. And, by a “democrat”.
Despite CNN’s warnings (LOL), take a look at John Podesta’s emails on Wikileaks. Also, look at the donor lists to the DNP and how influence is peddled in the White House – “You want access to the State Department or the White House, it will cost you this much.”
Here’s how I look at it, and I know Sheila will appreciate, there is a doctrine in the legal profession – “fruit of the poisonous tree” – whereby evidence gathered by illegal means must be excluded from trial for obvious reasons. If the tree is poisoned then so will its fruit.
In this case, the tree is our political system, and it’s corrupted by the Donor Class. Therefore, all the fruit, or both political parties, are poisonous as well.
Lots of explanations about the “rise of populism” in the United States. The source of the citizen frustration is caused by a corrupted political system – a system which serves donors rather than serving their constituents.
Theresa; during Trump’s speech (diatribe) after meeting with CIA officials yesterday, he spoke briefly against those who are working against gerrymandering. He also stated that this country has not been in a war lately because we have been “restrained” (his word); he went on to say that other countries fight wars against each other in a tone indicating this is a good thing. I missed the next captioning regarding his reference to this country and war but it ended with him saying, “…and you will make us proud.” Those weren’t even the highlights of he ego inflating report on the results of his meeting with the CIA which had little to do with the CIA. The highlights could have been his reporting the number of times his face has been on “Time” magazine; it is difficult to know what his objective is…or if he has one.
A letter to the editor of the Star this morning is interesting, questionable, frightening and will pit state and local law officers against federal officers. House Bill 1051 will prohibit any state and/or local law officers from assisting any federal officers in various situations involving firearms. The current proliferation of weapons on our streets and the current murder rate in this city make this a highly questionable law for many reasons. The GOP is pro 2nd Amendment to it’s core; this is a GOP state, supporting 2nd Amendment right to the level of open carry and attempting to do away with requiring background checks and a license to carry. I find the law and the reason for it confusing; will it strengthen or weaken ties between local and federal GOP officials. Another Republican conundrum we may be saddled with. And, Theresa, it fits in with your reference to “protect all rights”…primarily our right to life.
Alice Groves, you are quote a satirical “publication” called the Onion. While he may well have thought that, doubtful Dence said it.
While inspiring to watch the matches around the world, while hopeful to see women and men, young and old together, I kept thinking “Where was all of this before the election? Where were these folks in the states that man barely won on Election Day?”
I’m meeting with my local NOW chapter on Saturday to discuss what we can do next (I used to belong to NOW but when we moved to Indiana I couldn’t find a close enough chapter).
I’ve joined our local Democratic Party (after being a national member for years and year) and am keeping track of what is going on, volunteering when and where I can.
As a household we are donating to two more local charities we believe in and have made a pledge (in writing) to protect anyone who comes to us because this new administration is threatening their rights.
This is just cranking up the activities we previously did but we have been very selective and careful.
Marching is fine, getting involved is better. But we must be realistic and we must be wary of burnout.
The biggest problem after Obama’s first election was burnout and impatience. Voters simply didn’t show up for the 2010 elections and if you aren’t aware of those disastrous results and how they continue to impact us today, perhaps Sheila can point you to one of her previous articles on this.
Be active, be engaged but do not spread yourself too thin financially, emotionally, or in terms of time.
Thank you all for correcting me on the Mike Pence quote I posted earlier.
I was incorrect in sharing satire..
I don’t read the Onion….
Have a great day and delete any incorrect information.
Thank you for letting me know.
Way too much time and effort is spent on trying to “fix” the facts rather then in trying to fix the problems that these facts represent.
TammyJo,
“While inspiring to watch the matches around the world, while hopeful to see women and men, young and old together, I kept thinking “Where was all of this before the election?”
It’s always after the fact. It’s a SAFE way to feel good; which in the long run is totally worthless. No one retaliates after the fact. I hope that I’m wrong, but I doubt that this scenario will ever change.
” I skate where the puck is gonna to be, not where it has been”
~Wayne Gretsky, National Hockey League great
Sheila: So right on. We have our work cut out for us. I wonder what the unbelievable 53% of white women who voted for Trump think of Pence’s patrimonial, bigoted, incredible statement exhorting the husbands who “let” their wives march–all 200,000 of them. It rather tickled my funnybone that his daughter had an inclination to march!
We’re a country of FOOLS.
I didn’t mean the above as criticism. It’s just a fact. To do otherwise could cost you everything that you have.
Beth, That report was from the Onion, a satirical site. (If you know Pence, of course, it WAS believable….)
Alice your source document on Pence from what I can find is The Onion.
Todd @ 8:29 am, I agree with your comments and conclusions. When the Occupy Demonstrations were going on all over America and the world. The Democratic Establishment stood by with their collective arms folded – Hear No Evil, See No Evil and Speak No Evil of Wall Street. Bernie Sanders had it right, – “the business model of Wall Street is fraud.”
The Trumpeters are all up in arms concerning these demonstrations. Their echo chamber is now to give Trump a Chance. Well he had his chance and he has appointed billionaires and others to his cabinet, who have as an ideology to sabotage the very Departments they are supposed to over see, like DeVos, and others.
Todd Smekens – As usual, you’re right on with the poisonous tree analogy. In order to start making any change, the first thing HAS to be MONEY OUT OF POLITICS. Only if the temptation is removed will the people’s representatives start representing the people once again.
Thanks, Marv! Here are some tips for swimming in these shark-infested waters. There are many more ideas which Sheila and her other followers may wish to share.
1. Check your swimming skills. Know the risks involved.
2. Familiarize yourself with the depth of the water and the safe means of escape. Keep your
wits about you!
3. Never swim alone! Use the “buddy system”. In this present situation you will have lots of
buddies (the ones in the recent massive marches will do nicely).
4. Keep the familiar ring buoy (the law) anchored to the safety of the shore (the Constitution).
5. Stay afloat! Don’t be afraid to call for help and do it fast (your representatives and senators).
6. Avoid the rip currents in swimming for the shore (there will be some). Swim out of the
current at an angle following the shoreline.
7. Sharks (including the current crop) are unpredictable. Be MORE unpredictable!
8. Promise yourself to NEVER make the same mistake again…in water or on land!
Politics is in a state of chaos right now so there are many readings possible of the tea leaves. It’s hard to know how things work now because nobody has ever been here before.
However a simplified view is that democracy will allow us to save us if we can present a convincing sustained front that says unceasingly to specific politicians “if you don’t change your ways you will get fired at the first chance”.
Yesterday was a marvellous start. It will be sustaining that message that will make that effort not in vain.
Republicans have become confident that using the massive funding from oligarchs they can control what we think through overt and covert big media (especially TV fake news) advertising. Unfortunately our behaviour has emboldened that strategy.
What tools could effectively counter that success? IMO, social media. Numbers instead of dollars.
Of course one realism that makes that tool effective is that all young people are already fully armed with attitude and skill and hardware.
We need to add our more, huh, mature voices to theirs and keep the pot boiling.
Facebook and Twitter are ours for the asking and politicians who used to regard them as kid’s toys are learning that they are the new people’s army.
Learn how to raise hell using them and never let a day pass without firing a shot.
Perhaps it will be heard ’round the world.
Gentle Readers: I apologize for the wacky way that some of my swimming tips were broken into parts. Maybe that’s a symptom of the way our country is broken into parts right now. We’re better than that, and the clock is ticking…tick…tick…tick!
Right on again, Sheila. I was, during my young adulthood, honored to be a friend of Bill Ruckelshouse’ dad, John, an outstanding Indianapolis attorney, who inherited the acclaimed local Red Cab business. I played for young Bill’s wedding at the little clapboard St. Thomas Aquinas a few blochs from the Ruckelshouse family home.
Bill, as I saw him from the sidelines, was a man of the outstanding integrity and the desire to reason out the best solutions that he had learned from his father
Well, the Republican Party will no longer be what it used to be, a helper in making this a more perfect union. That party has been hijacked by all the worst elements of capitalism, the oligarchs. Read Jane Mayer’s fine book, “Dark Money” to fully understand what is afoot from the political right.
IT IS NOTHING LESS THAN A COUP D-ETAT! These are the real ideologues who want to control everything we do for one reason and one reason only. PROFIT! But, in its perversion, it is not profit for the betterment of the nation, it is profit for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the many. This is the aspect of capitalism that Marx warned us about in 1850 and what George Orwell warned us about in “1984”.
People, we’ve had our warnings. The oligarchs are coming to take democracy away for the sake of their own, personal enrichment. It’s a simple as that….and as complex. Our DUTY to our ancestors, founders and those who died defending our ideals is to fight back. We MUST organize like never before. We must find and train real people to be real candidates for elected office. You know, those people who actually represent their constituents instead of their donors.
We have used up all our slack time, as the “election” of Donald Trump indicates. We must act now, nationwide, to regain our viability and our republic before it’s too late. Look at Trump as a tornado warning siren. You know it’s coming and you’d better do something about it.
Yes, I want my country back so long as I can define the era I want “brought back.” I would eschew the Gilded Age, for instance, and would prefer the era following WW II with its New Deal and Fair Deal philosophies of FDR and Truman, respectively, an era in which the 99 percent’s wages rose relatively more than the 1 percent’s take, where we could afford a Marshall Plan, where we taxed responsibly, and where both parties showed some regard for the dignity and fair compensation of the working class.
As a contrast, there are those in present day Germany, Austria, the far right in France and neo-Nazis here who want their country back, too, their country being one ruled by fascists and free of immigrants and any pretense of regard for the rights and dignity of their citizenry. It is therefore clear to me that we must be more precise in defining just what country we want to come back and guide us into whatever our futures might hold.
I think we need to follow the will of the majority, a will that was not expressed in the recent election due to a constitutional quirk where several million people voted against Trump (the 2.8 million who voted for Hillary plus the millions who voted for third party candidates). The first rule of the democratic process is that the majority rules; that rule was violated by self-contradictory language in the Constitution itself. The great majority is not now represented; Trump was, as I often write, elected by geography and not by people. This constitutional contradiction needs repair and the sooner the better.
We need change but we need to be careful about “getting our country back” until we have determined just what “country” we are bringing back to supplant the current toxic version of government and how we choose our governors. If this were a banana republic (a status we are approaching), we would have long since had a revolution and a new Constitution every month or so. We are not there yet and yesterday’s women’s march for justice gives me hope that a revolution can be avoided by an awakened and active campaign by citizens to overturn the current charade of minority rule by a disturbed man and his coterie of gerrymandered pretenders to the democratic process. Let’s not let yesterday’s march be the last. Our democracy is at stake.
To help get our country back, we must confront Trump each and every time he hands us “alternative facts”; Kellyanne Conway’s term for “falsehoods”. Chuck Todd didn’t let her get away with her version of false information in Sean Spicer’s press release yesterday. Will Spicer rise in the Trump administration to earn her reasoning for Trump’s lies; that we should not pay attention to what comes out of his mouth but see what is in his heart? Only their second full day in office and have lost count of the lies; will this country be worth having back after four more years of this exhausting barrage of “alternative facts”?
Betty,
Great List. I would add an addendum to #6. ONLY In special cases, when you’re caught in an undertow in the ocean, you might decide to take on the current directly. Some undertows in the ocean will eventually lose their strength. That is when you can gain ground and return to shore. It will probably take multiple attempts to attack the subsurface waves but it you stay with it, you will eventually return safely to shore. You can’t panic and you have to be a very strong swimmer.
As a matter of fact, this was the subject of my presentation at the Inaugural Sun Tzu’s Art of War Conference held at Vanderbilt University back on February 27, 2016. http://www.Sonshi. com.
At the conference, I explained how we might engage the Political Tsunami that was certain to come ashore in the near future. I spent my summers, growing up in a house overlooking the ocean at Neptune Beach. It’s one of the beaches outside Jacksonville. I was a very good swimmer at an early age. When I was caught in my first undertow, I didn’t have the CORRECT instructions like Betty has pointed out in number 6. So I took on the undertow, HEAD ON, and made my way back to shore after about five or six pro-active intervals. If nothing else, it was a great political lesson.
Back in February, it wasn’t certain that Donald Trump would be elected President and accelerate the landing of the massive POLITICAL TSUNAMI OF HATRED that’s been building for generations without any alert or warning.
Marv,
An undertow and a rip current are defined as two different things. Regardless of the distinction, the swimmer must do what he/she can to stay alive and get to shore. That is more important at this moment in time than perhaps ever before!
The swamp isn’t drained! It’s full and running over, as our friends here may have noticed. They may have also noticed that we’re up to our collective ass in alligators!
Neither Bill Clinton nor Barack Obama engaged the Republicans when they had the upper hand. That why the Republican strategy of two steps forward and one step backwards has worked so well for them. Clinton and Obama encountered what amounted to an “ocean undertow.” They didn’t attack; they avoided. They swam “out of the current” like Betty advised in number 6.
Neither Clinton or Obama attacked when they could have. I didn’t say “should.” It would have made things very difficult. Like everyone else they avoided trouble.
Now we’re ALL in deep, deep, trouble.
Betty,
You’re right. Sorry for not making the distinction. However, I believe my point is well taken.
Oh now, here is some interesting news (I have tried to validate it).
Commentator George Will wrote – “Twenty minutes into his presidency, Donald Trump, who is always claiming to have made, or to be about to make, astonishing history, had done so. Living down to expectations, he had delivered the most dreadful inaugural address in history”.
Now I just read – As it pivots to cover the presidency of Donald Trump, Fox News has declined to renew the contracts of several on-air contributors, including one of Trump’s fiercest conservative critics.
A source confirms that Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist George Will, a consistent voice of American conservatism for the past 30 years, will no longer appear on the network. The news was first reported by The Hill.
Fox News has not immediately responded to a request for comment.
Fox News did announce the addition of one new contributor – Nigel Farage, the former U.K. Independence Party leader who was the most public backer of England’s move to exit the European Union. He’s also a vocal supporter of President Trump, and will reportedly be a “close but unofficial adviser” to the new president, according to Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant. http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/real-time/Several-contributors-out-at-Fox-News-including-vocal-Trump-critic-George-Will.html
It seems that FOX must purge and purify itself of any lingering Trump Critics. It will be interesting to observe if MSNBC and CNN will knuckle under to the Trumpet.
I suspect that Donald Trump will “make America great again”, but just not the way he envisioned. I’m really thankful that we are dealing with a crazy and disorganized demagogue, not a sane and organized one, because we may see an interesting cycle of events. It’s begun with one million inspiring people marching almost everywhere and the Republican hope that everyone will go back home and their jobs. Not so fast. We are aided by Donald Trump who, through his tweeting will continually stir the pot and make more people angry. This will lead to more stirring and more anger. At least that’s a reasonable outcome.
For now, we need to listen to Michael Moore’s advice along with the advice in the indivisible guide. I’ve, at last, put all my members of Congress on my speed dial, along with my right wing state rep, and when an important bill comes up, they are getting a call and a letter. If only 10% of those marchers do the same, we can become the new “Tea Party”. I think that resistance has only begun. Thanks to the courageous and outspoken women of this country, my wife and daughter being among them.
Robert Reich has a facebook thread of photos of the signs at the marches around the world…check it out.
Thanks to all of the women that marched yesterday including the Professor and Stuart’s family!
Jeremy Newberger’s Tweet:
@realDonaldTrump just set the world record for the guy rejected by more women in a single day in the history of humanity.
1/21/2017 1:59 PM from New York, USA
I LOVE THAT.
This looks extremely useful in this time of national, state and personal dysphasia.
https://www.indivisibleguide.com/
Marv,
Point taken! We’ll get through this somehow! Inauguration, no; coronation, yeah; hospitalization, likely.
Betty,
Thanks. I needed a good laugh, especially, with the worst weather we’ve had, in about 25 years, expected to come in the next 2 hours. I’m trying to recall what precautions Dorothy took in the “Wizard of Oz.”
I also attended the march with my daughter. Over 40 years ago, I participated in a NOW march on the Circle. I thought/hoped by this time that things would be different. Some progress has been made but so much is still to do. You mention wanting the old Republican Party back. Yesterday I took my daughter up the steps of the Statehouse to show her the office I worked in as a member of Governor Otis Bowen’s staff. He was a compassionate man who showed integrity through his actions. I don’t know what the next four years will bring but I know that the millions of men and women who came out worldwide yesterday won’t be silent.
I wonder when you broke with the Republican Party and what finally precipitated the break. You may have covered this is a previous blog last year. Sorry if I forgot.
Joyce, I “hung in” for a long time, but the GOP moved further and further to the Right. (I won a Republican Congressional primary in 1980, and I was pro-choice and pro-gay-rights. That certainly wouldn’t happen today.) When George W. Bush became President, I realized the party had left me. My departure in 2000 simply acknowledged that reality.
I am worried that after these marches nothing will be done to maintain the fervor. What comes next.
I will be looking for news of the next march in Indy; my daughter-in-law Anne’s sister Tammy and her two daughters were in D.C. Still exhausted and hyped up, sent Anne a text that the next march here, Anne is going with them. I have agreed to a wheelchair so I will be there; can’t wait. Hopefully; Indy will have an even bigger showing and have better publicity, one friend whose granddaughter was also in D.C. all the way from Los Angeles, didn’t know there was a march here or she would have been there. Hope we can work together to get word out before the next march…and there will be a next march and hopefully a next one. We need to maintain the momentum if we want to take our country back – not back in time but back into safer hands than the tiny ones now clutching our throats.
I wondered if “the next march” topic would come up. Look to No. Car. And the Moral Monday marches led by Rev. William Barber, the president of the NC NAACP, for a template. He has been to Indy twice this year, once at CTS, to rally progressives of all stripes to be a consistent pressure on justice issues for the Indiana legislature.