Unequivocal Moral Imperative

In many of our differences we must find a way to compromise and move FORWARD. I understand the compassion and empathy of that ideal and I applaud.

However, the struggle we’re all facing right now is a concerted effort to force our society to move BACKWARD, back to a time of social oppression for all but the most select group. We cannot let that happen. Let me be clear: No, we cannot all just get along! This isn’t an issue of differing opinions. This isn’t people “just not getting along.” This struggle is our unequivocal moral imperative. Our children and grandchildren will look at this history being played out right now and ask what we did to resist this forced march backwards to oppression.

Frankly, letting everyone have “a right to their own opinions” is what gave room for this rise of racist fascism and social oppression we’re seeing now. We cannot continue to permit anyone the right to any “opinion” that oppresses humanity. These are not “opinions” – they are evil “ideologies.” These are ideologies no less egregious than those of the Islamist extremists. Racism, supremacist ideologies, and fascist ideologies are the same radical extremism as every Islamist extremist’s ideology. Free speech was never intended to protect hate-speech. Hate-speech is the speech of oppression.

What we’re seeing this past week cannot be allowed to continue. There is NO moral equivalency between the alt-right’s white supremacist, fascist, racist, bigoted, white nationalist, nazi, KKK, evil extremist “opinions” and those standing against them. Their “opinions” are unequivocally EVIL. It is just plain wicked to hold up those standing against that evil as equally guilty, which what Trump did yesterday – he essentially said that the protestors standing against EVIL are the same evil. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died fighting racist fascism in WWII – It is the duty of every American to honor them – we are the heirs of those WWII anti-fascist warriors – by standing unified against racist fascism rising in our very midst. It is every person’s duty to stand up and be counted… either we stand against this evil, or we continue to enable it.

There is no middle ground. This week defines for us all an unequivocal moral imperative as a nation, as Americans: Either you stand against racist fascism or you stand with it… and Trump.

My #ACA, #Obamacare story… #RESIST

I’ve had preexisting conditions all my life, from the NICU at birth: Asthma, hypoglycemia, pancreatic seizures, hereditary dishidrosis, poor eyesight, hip dysplasia, food and environmental allergies… As an adult, during pregnancy, I developed gestational diabetes plus an arrhythmia from full-blown eclampsia – post pregnancy, high BP and diabetes set in, a carcinoid tumor was found on my lung (thanks to the ACA making it possible for me to see a pulmonologist at last) and is being monitored, I developed Plantars Fascia, arthritic hips, and became disabled because of the sum of my conditions. The truth is that most of my problems may never have become serious if I’d been able to get treatment for the decades years of my adult life I was denied healthcare coverage for my preexisting conditions – that included the arrhythmia post pregnancy until the ACA. I went from 2003 until the ACA went into effect without treatment for an arrhythmia! That tumor on my lung may have been there for decades but I never saw a pulmonologist in all that time because my asthma was a preexisting condition for which I was legally denied treatment before the ACA.

My husband works full time in the service sector with NO employer provided healthcare. Oh – and we all know that employer provided healthcare ONLY covers the employee – NOT their spouses and children; spouses and children’s coverage comes at full price out of pocket paid by the employee – spouses and children were NEVER covered by employers; employer plans only make it possible for employees to buy into the plan for their dependents – at full cost out of pocket.

Without the ACA, I would probably be dead by now. I would certainly be in deep decline and my thirteen year old son would be watching his mother die. Moreover, my son, himself, would be without healthcare if it wasn’t for the ACA Medicare expansion.

Your plan is ludicrously out of touch with the reality of the working poor. Tax credits are meaningless to us. We already get the maximum tax deductions and use that return to keep paying our modest mortgage all year. And no, that does NOT mean we don’t pay taxes – as you well know. It means we get some of those taxes back which we then pay sales tax and service fees upon for every dollar of which is spent and put back into the economy – because we are surviving financially off that tax return.

Because I haven’t worked in over ten years due to my disabilities, I cannot draw my social security disability and my husband makes just barely over the limit for me to draw disability on his social security. BTW, that also means he makes just that little bit too much for us to get any kind of assistance, including food stamps. OH, BTW – I’m told (by the SS caseworker who denied my disability claim) that I will NEVER draw social security in my own right, even though I paid in for 25 working years before becoming disabled, just because I’ve not worked for more than ten years. I worked for every cent that was taken out of every paycheck I ever received. That is NOT a tax nor an entitlement – that is my earned wages being stolen by my own government with no accounting for those contributions. I WANT MY MONEY BACK!

As for health savings accounts – damn! If we could save money for that, we wouldn’t be spending our tax return all year making up the income difference every month because my immigrant husband, who speaks six languages (three fluently) and graduated on the National Dean’s List is relegated to the service sector and not deemed worth even $15 an hour, let alone decent employer provided healthcare.

Detach your lips from the festering backsides of the Kochs and ALEC and open your eyes to the devastation you are wreaking upon America’s hard-working poor, sick, elderly, disabled, and children. You claim to work for Americans but you obviously believe the only Americans who matter are those rich enough to be lining your campaign coffers. Your actions sacrifice everyone else on the altar to your gods, the über rich.

You also know that the only reason the ACA is failing is because YOU – the members of the GOP – have done everything in your power to sabotage it for the last seven years! You never considered working to make the ACA better. You never tried to suggest anything else in its place. You never even started any kind of plan of your own. You just kept fighting the law of the land to suit your theocratic corporatist overlords. Stop trying to kill the ACA – Stop trying to kill honest, hard-working Americans and their families who rely upon the ACA.

Kathy Griffin’s Terroristic Sensationalism

Why We On The Left Should Be Leading The Outcry Against Kathy Griffin
Yes, the hypocrisy from the right is mind boggling and outrageous. And, yes, Trump is blight on our entire world. But this decapitated effigy of Trump stunt by Kathy Griffin was filthy and vile. It is indefensible. It is abhorrent! How can we hold the moral high ground when we defend people, supposedly on our side, who do the same things, but just targeted at the Right? Wrong doesn’t stop being wrong because your tribe perpetrated the wrong. 

Let us ask ourselves: When they strung up and burned an effigy of Obama, was that terroristic sensationalism by any stretch of our reason and imagination defensible or justifiable? If our answer is that is “no…” If our answer is that it was wholly unjustifiable… Then our answer to Kathy Griffin’s terroristic sensationalism should be identical. Any other response is pure tribalism. Wrong is wrong even when your tribe behaves badly. In fact, I would say that our side is MORE wrong for justifying this vile display precisely because WE KNOW IT IS WRONG.

We must be better.

The Left Should Be Leading The Outcry Against This Terroristic Sensationalism.
That’s what stunts like this are – terroristic sensationalism. Any defense or justification of stunts like this is social poison. I have read a few defenses and reams upon reams of justifications on behalf of Kathy Griffin over this. In my estimation, the Left’s defense and/or justification is more wrong than were the right wing stunts with Obama or Clinton effigies – because we on the left know the pain and disgust those stunts cause. If we defend and/or justify the same types of stunts just because it’s our own side, we are all the MORE in the wrong.

What do we stand for? 

These kind of tactics are evil. If we use tactics as vile, as evil as those we decry from the other side, what good can there be in our side? You cannot create good by doing evil. The defenses and justifications try to ameliorate her vile actions in light of the other side’s evil by decrying the hypocrisy of the Right who are condemning her vile stunt. We excuse her because they did it first – that, folks, is the height of hypocrisy from us!

Pure Unadulterated FACT: 

Kathy Griffin’s stunt with a Trump effigy was no less vile and filthy – no less evil – than the Right’s stunts with effigies of Obama and/or Clinton. The source of inspiration is no justification. That the other side has done similar things is no justification. That the other side is hypocritical is no justification. There is no justification. 

This horrific stunt and Kathy Griffin should face the same social ramifications as we on the Left wanted to see the Right face for their heinous, acts of terroristic sensationalism against our side. The undeniable hypocrisy of the Right decrying this woman of the Left in tone-deaf ignorance of their own side’s perfidy in no way lessons the perfidy of Kathy Griffin’s disgusting, socially and morally degrading stunt.

These kinds of stunts are indefensible – no matter who perpetrates them. Something like this is like standing up in a crowded theater and yelling “FIRE!” These kinds of inflamatory are flat-out inhumane, degrading, and can only foment more fear, hate, bigotry, tribalism, and even violence in response – such acts are evil. They are incitement to hatred, fear, and violence. Evil can only ever render more evil. I don’t care whose hypocrisy is perceived as worse. It is hypocritical of the Right to have defended or justified their side’s poisonous stunts. IT IS EVEN MORE HYPOCRITICAL OF OUR SIDE TO DEFEND OR JUSTIFY SIMILAR TERRORISTIC SENSATIONALISM. I don’t care if it’s the Left or the Right who is responsible. Every single time something like this is done, it poisons our society. If we cannot be better than what we abhor, we are lost, already damned. We must be better.

Many of the anti-Trump feeds are defending and justifying Kathy Griffin’s behavior with this stunt. Most are trying to justify not condemning her or her for no other reason than the hypocrisy of other side. They may not be defending her actions, but they are justifying NOT condemning those actions. 

The right-wing’s hypocrisy or past actions should not have a thing to do with condemning such terroristic sensationalism and the person (in this case, Kathy Griffin) who uses our precious right to freedom of speech to inflict it. We shouldn’t be pausing to castigate the Right, as if they have no right to their outrage and anger because “they did it first.” The only thing we on the Left should be hearing and saying about it right now is that she was wrong and that she does not speak for our side. The Left is SUPPOSED to be the side of sanity.

Permit me a crass analogy: If you’re standing between two groups of monkeys and they start flinging feces at each other, will it matter which monkey’s shit stinks worse?

Moreover, the justifications I’ve seen are painfully similar to justifications made by thoughtful and moderate conservatives/republicans trying to justify not condemning people on their side who took their protest and anger too far. I know many republicans who said the effigies of Obama were horrible, but in the same breath justified it as an unfortunate extension of how angry people were.

We on the Left are all righteously angry right now. But, if our anger leads us to evil acts, we have abandoned righteousness and embraced evil.

We must be better.

WE MUST NEVER BECOME WHAT WE ABHOR!

What are the weapons of EVIL?

It’s a simple distinction. Ask yourself, what are the WEAPONS of real EVIL? For all of human existence, in every culture, in every society, in every country – the weapons of EVIL are: bigotry; dissent; threats both physical and existential; bullying; greed; fear and hate. You have one candidate embodying all those weapons with every utterance.

PLEASE, AMERICANS: We are NOT just electing our POTUS. We are electing the leader of the free world. The leader of the free world CANNOT – nay, MUST NOT be a cheating, greedy, thieving, adulterous, fraudulent, racketeering, mobbed-up, Pro-Russian, despotic, hate-mongering, bullying, isolationistic, misogynistic, xenophobic, bigoted, incest-fantasizing, porn fiend and narcissistic sociopath and fascist with nothing to offer except his personally branded flaming gilded sh*tstorm!

Trump is the antipathy of our American ideal. Anyone who has endorsed him should never see public office again. He has only the most degrading vision of our nation – he doesn’t even like America! His is a message of degradation, hate, and division, of pitting us against each other. Anyone in the GOP who refuses to condemn him is, by tacit approval, endorsing Trump and everything for which he stands. Trump and everyone who supports him, or in any way enables him to win the Whitehouse, are betraying our nation and the entire free world.

“Hate is an insatiably ravenous and contagious mental illness that will devour us all; it requires substantive and qualified psychiatric treatment.” ~MomzillaNC

You have Trump legitimizing the degradation of women and girls – legitimizing rape culture – and of white supremacy and he’s pitting us against each other. Then, you have the other candidate calling for more love and kindness; for us to unite and be stronger together, calling for tolerance and compassion; for unity and hope. 

   HOW CAN THERE STILL BE A QUESTION   

   ABOUT WHOM YOU SHOULD CHOOSE?  

  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *   *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  

The World and FREEDOM is being consumed by hate. America’s president remains the leader of the free world. Pay attention voters: We are choosing the leader of the free world!

There is only one candidate whose message is of what’s good in America… of our unity in these UNITED States of America. There is only one candidate calling for more love and kindness, more tolerance and compassion… and reminding us that, as Americans, we are and always have been #StrongerTogether. There is only one candidate who looks at America and sees promise… she looks forward and offers HOPE. How can there still be a question about whom you should choose? 

  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *   *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  

   * * * * *  I CHOOSE HOPE! #ForwardIntoHope  * * * * *   

  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *   *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *