The Unraveling…

Terrible truths and horrific lies are unraveling the American ideal.
unraveling… unraveling… unraveling, frayed
A once proud nation bowed ‘neath hate
poor brown refugee babes’ cagèd fate
…stolen from pleading mothers’ arms
for believing America’s charms
all meaning now lost in that flag…
Liberty’s steel skin reduced to slag

unraveling… unraveling… unraveling peace
Old Glory’s red, white, and blue spoiled
unraveling… before our eyes soiled
Poisoning our land and our air
Sowing seeds of impending despair
Reaping humanity’s demise
demonizing the words of the wise

unraveling… unraveling… unraveling love
All meaning stretched to fit
an unconstitutional remit.
Suppressing the majority…
“We the People” — no priority
…stolen voices of the nation
rendered perfidy’s coronation

unraveling… unraveling… unraveling, hope© 09 July 2019, by D. Denise Dianaty

Original artwork created with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, 08 July 2019, by D. Denise Dianaty

No… Democrats and Republicans are NOT the same.

So… you say yet again, “It’s not just the GOP. It seems almost all our lawmakers are way, way out of touch. The very real fact that all of us often struggle for basic needs means they’re [all] failing us. Near the top of the list of things I hate, is articles… that highlight the fact that the [offending person] is a Republican, as if to intimate that the Democratic solution is better. All it does [is]… create a false narrative for the purpose of getting votes.”
You could — perhaps — have comfortably made that argument 25 years ago — or, for the very generous of heart, maybe even 15 years ago. And then we could have discussed how both parties needed improvement.

However, I’m sorry, today it is NOT a “false narrative” that Republicans keep espousing repugnant ideas and working to ensconce those ideas in official policy. We have watched the GOP, for at least the last quarter century, descend ever more rapidly into our current nightmarish authoritarian extremism. Not only do the worst of them spew vile and hateful rhetoric, when they do, their Republican peers don’t do anything about it. Democrats are constantly accused of the “circular firing squad” for speaking and acting to hold peers to the higher standard. While, just as an example — yet again — the GOP primaries an actual card-carrying nazi in Arthur Jones, elected blatant racist Steve King, and are right now again primarying pedophile Roy Moore.

Former House Speaker, Paul Ryan actually said of his desire to gut Medicaid, “We’ve been dreaming of this since I’ve been around,” Ryan says, before interrupting himself to clarify exactly how big of an opportunity this is, “since you and I were drinking out of kegs.” Mitch McConnell is right now gutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs. The GOP has been waging war against America’s middle class and working poor since before the Reagan era with singleminded devotion to enriching the mega corporations and the wealth class. Even in Bill Clinton’s day, the GOP controlled Congress, and rammed through their agenda against America’s middle class and poor. The GOP’s patriotic religiosity and misogyny will settle for nothing less than the systematic tearing down of our constitutional democratic republic, creating a nightmare Handmaid’s Tale-like society by imposing their vision of a Dominionist theocratic corporate feudal state. We’re three fourths there already.

No one is saying Democrats are without faults, but they hold a clear moral high ground. It’s worse than a mere false equivalency to conclude that Republicans and Democrats are not different in their intent — it is a baldfaced, perfidious LIE. Democrats have often been ineffectual, but the overarching intent, since at least the time of LBJ, has been increasingly progressive and more inclusive. In that same span, the GOP has become increasingly fear mongering and divisive and exclusionary. It has been the GOP’s calculated arch strategy; it is known and has a name — “Nixon’s Southern Strategy.” The GOP continues to hone the stratagem for maximum fear mongering and divisiveness through patriotic religiosity to disenfranchise — nay, to oppress — as many non-GOP voters as possible.

Articles like the ones you so often decry highlight the fact that the person is a Republican because, for more than half a century, the GOP increasingly emboldens and embraces repugnant ideals. They create policies predicated upon stances that would have us believe that women are so morally and constitutionally weak that we mustn’t even be permitted the dignity of personhood that comes with autonomy over our own bodies; minorities and people of color (POC) aren’t American enough to freely vote; POC are inherently criminal in all they do and are a threat while living in spaces white privilege deems its own; all religion not their Christianish ideal is evil; and, the very existence of our LGBTQ Americans is a stain upon and dire threat to the nation’s very soul.

The GOP and Democrats are completely divergent on every issue

The GOP is exclusionary. The GOP denies climate change; disbelieves fact and science; is anti-intellectual; devalues education; and promotes regressivism. Twitter says their algorithm cannot distinguish between Republican and Alt-Right accounts. Misogyny and sexism are core values of the GOP. Racism and xenophobia are key pillars of GOP control over their base. Demonizing the LGBTQ and criminalizing women’s control over our own reproductive rights is integral to fomenting anger in the GOP base. Suppressing voting rights and access is the only way the GOP can cling to power. The GOP has been waging war against America’s middle class and poor for at least the last forty years, since the Reagan era. The GOP is fighting to take away our healthcare because they seem to believe healthcare is a privilege only for those who can afford it. The GOP only care about the corporations and the wealth class.

The GOP has become completely divergent from our constitutional democratic system. They are NOT part of our system any longer. They are destroying our system. It is calculated and systematic.
Democrats are inclusive. Democrats know climate change is real and immediate; embraces fact and science and intellect; they value education; and they promote progressivism. Democrats challenge misogyny and sexism. Democrats try to recognize past errors and work to reverse the impacts of institutionalized racism and xenophobia. Democrats believe ALL PEOPLE deserve the right to control their own bodies and to choose who they will be and who they will love. Democrats are fighting voter suppression and working to increase voter access. Democrats believe healthcare is a human right. Democrats care about all Americans.

No… Democrats and Republicans are NOT the same.
This link is a collection of actual things Republicans have said about women https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10207849909589262&type=3

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.

Trump and Hillary: a comparison

In case you missed it, Donald J. Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton have led diametrically opposed lives. Permit me to make a stark comparison of Trump and Hillary. He is the embodiment of everything we were ever taught is immoral and crude and wicked and ungodly. She is a compassionate, godly woman who makes mistakes but keeps trying to do good. 

Trump has lived a life of self-aggrandizing wealth acquisition and has spent a lifetime demeaning and degrading anyone not himself. 
Hillary has spent a lifetime trying to do good, especially for the most underserved of our society.

Trump, by his nature, has made choices to directly harm others – from competitors, to rivals, to detractors, to cheering for the housing crash for his own greed, to innocent women and girls – to feed his own most venal and self-serving pursuits of bald avarice.
Hillary has made mistakes. Hillary’s mistakes occur while trying to achieve good or address some injustice. Hillary has always tried to achieve positive results for the most people in the most need – for the most underserved in society.

As a young child, as he himself told us in his own book, Trump punched his music teacher in the face. He said of that incident, that he is, essentially, the same person today as that violent playground bully of a child. 
Hillary, as a young girl, worked with her church youth group to help those in need in her town – again, working for the most underserved in society. 

Trump was repeatedly investigated, charged, and paid fines for discriminatory housing practices. In case you missed it: Court ordered fines are the same thing as a conviction.
Hillary went under cover – at personal risk – to fight for the educational rights of African American children in the South.

Trump hired and tried to cheat undocumented Polish immigrant workers and was fined for it – again, a court ordered fine is the same thing as a conviction.
Hillary went in person, to help register Latino farm workers and support groups like Caesar Chavez’s farm laborers rights movement.

Trump cheated on his first wife with a woman he courted IN CHURCH, and pressured that mistress into posing in Playboy.
Hillary taught Sunday school.

Trump wrote, The Art of the Deal. 
Hillary wrote, It Takes a Village.

Trump publicly shamed a Latino Miss Universe beauty queen over and over and over, calling her “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping,” making a national scandal about her slight weight gain. 
Hillary declared to the world, in a speech in China, that “Women’s rights are human rights.”

Trump ran a scam with his FAKE university. 
Hillary was in Bible studies and prayer groups on the Hill. 

Trump starred in reality show telling people, “You’re fired!” 
Hillary told the world, at the Geneva Accord, that “Gay rights are human rights.”

WOMEN victim shaming Trump’s accusers?

Explain this, please. Trump proudly proclaims his sexual predation. He proudly proclaims he can do whatever he wants to women just because he’s “a celebrity.” He’s been telling the world for DECADES that he’s a sexual deviant, a predator – every woman’s nightmare! YOU, his supporters, keep claiming you like him because you think he’s more honest, with that oft-repeated refrain, “He tells it like it is.” So… he told you and the world – AGAIN, for DECADES – how it is… how he’s treated and spoken about women. But – when women actually come forward, telling you that, yes, Donald J. Trump did to them EXACTLY what he told the world he did – suddenly he isn’t telling the truth? So… when, precisely, did he LIE? Was it when he said he did those things? Or was it when he said he didn’t do those things? Which LIE is the LIE? How men can defend him isn’t really that shocking. Men have been excusing the Trumps of this world all along. What I cannot fathom is other women defending him.

Victim shaming from a fellow woman is insufferable! Saying these women are lying because they didn’t come forward sooner is not just wrong, it’s despicable. Do you really think that way?

So… tell me then… why was it thirty years later before I talked about being molested on a Trailways bus at thirteen years old? I was supposed to be sitting in the seat behind the driver, as my mother and the Memphis bus depot manager told the driver. I got up to use the bathroom and when I came back, some woman had moved into my seat. When I told the driver, he told me to grow up and just sit somewhere. I sat in the seat that woman had vacated at the back of the bus – the only open seat. I was molested. When I complained to the driver, telling him the man was “talkin’ nasty to me and kept trying to hug me,” the driver snapped, “Sit down and quit making a fuss.” Twenty-hour or so later, I didn’t tell my Gran what happened because I’d come to the belief I’d done something wrong!

Tell me then, why, as a young professional woman, I kept quiet about all those times some deplorable excuse for a man pushed past me so that he had to rub against me, touching my breasts. That kind of thing happened over the course of three decades at work, by various skeezing pricks. And, the one time I spoke up, the man’s defense was that because I’m so generously endowed my breasts were at fault – and the MEN running the review board agreed with his excuse!

Tell me then, why my college friend, who was raped by her athlete boyfriend, didn’t report it until two years later when he finally hurt someone and they reported him from the hospital and almost half-a-dozen other girls on campus came forward with date-rape accusations against him. He was never arrested and was back on the field the next semester. Those girls were all blamed and shamed – one of them tried to kill herself. It didn’t even make the news off campus!

Tell me why women would keep something like that to themselves? Tell me why women would come forward knowing they were going to be shamed and vilified – blamed for their own victimization? Tell me why Trump can repeatedly tell the world how he assaulted women – on video all over YouTube, in magazine and news articles of interviews HE gave, in his OWN books, in audio and video to Howard Stern FOR DECADES, as well as on that damning Billy Bush tape – yet, when women actually tell you that he did what he proclaimed he’d done, YOU don’t believe them?

It’s not just what I’ve endured. The thing is, most of it is what all women endure. Who hasn’t had some man accidentally-on-purpose brush up too intimately against them? Who hasn’t had some guy on a first date take advantage of the good night kiss and decide to put her hand on his already exposed, sweaty member? Who hasn’t had some man at work put his hand in the small of her back, pressing just that little bit too close? Who hasn’t had some man at work or church or the library or where ever always find some excuse to be touching you, making you uncomfortable. Who has felt some man stalking over her shoulder at work making her squirm at the border-line indecency of it? Who hasn’t had some man skeeze up to her at a party or in a club? Who hasn’t had a man take indecent liberties, even in crowds? We’ve all experienced one or more or those things and/or know women who’ve experienced it.

This fetid misogyny has always been women’s reality. This should NEVER be our reality.

I just want to make clear to any fellow woman, engaging in victim shaming, that she and we have all had to deal with the Trumps of this world. The truth is not in you if you claim otherwise. You are a direct hindrance to the start down a path to forever ending this OPPRESSION of half the human population!

I would add, also, for those who get their hackles up at terms like “insufferable” or “deplorable,” that the terms are accurate descriptors of attitudes such attitudes. Yes, we should always be more kind whenever possible. But, the kind of bigotry and misogyny currently on display, by other women against our own gender is both insufferable and deplorable. One can only hope such women – and men – will recognize this and not add irredeemable to the descriptors.

It is not efficacious to ignore the truth of such attitudes. The people who’ve been telling us we can’t say those things are the people to whose words and deeds those descriptors fit. Indeed, it may be unkind to call them those things, but it would be a greater unkindness NOT to call out such words and deeds for what they are. Those who are the targets of such vitriol and hatred deserve that we condemn such words and deeds in the harshest of terms.

Women victim shaming MUST NOT EVER BE TOLERATED by the rest of us women! We know that statistically every single one of us will be or is a victim, and knows or will know women who are victims.

Now, we women KNOW that most of the men in this world are DECENT MEN. We know the Trumps are a small minority. We know the Billy Bushes, those wannabe-Trumps, who are titillated by that kind of predatory machismo are also in the minority – though a rather larger minority. We also know that those of our own gender, acting as defenders of the Trumps of this world have internalized the misogyny and sexism of the Trumps and the Billy Bushes.

But, we also know that the DECENT MEN have too often responded by advising us to change ourselves or our activities to avoid the danger of harassment. We’re advised not to walk or run alone on the trail. We’re warned not to walk alone in our own neighborhoods at night. We’re warned not to get in the car with a new guy we’re dating – to meet somewhere public at first, or on a double or group date. We’re advised not to find ourselves alone with a possible predator. We’re advised not to dress or speak or walk or look a certain way so we won’t draw attention to ourselves. Throughout history, we’re the ones who were covered up and enveloped. We’re the ones who were not allowed where the men go. By DECENT MEN to protect us. Why are we marginalized and held accountable for that minority of Trumps and “Bushies” in the world? Why haven’t the DECENT MEN of the world dealt with the victimizers instead of making the victims responsible for avoiding victimization?

And, when we break with any of those advisements that have been drilled into us all our lives, how are we to be expected to NOT blame ourselves? And, being taught all our lives that we must prevent our own victimization, how are to be expected to come forward without trepidation? Why must we bear any guilt?

We KNOW most are DECENT MEN. What we don’t know is why the DECENT MEN haven’t shut down the Trumps and the “Bushies” of this world.

Trump’s fetid misogyny isn’t new.

The evidence is everywhere… in print… in video… in audio. More and more and more of Trump’s vile and fetid misogyny and sexism. Trump is a predator – the kind of predator to which you fear the women you love will be subjected. It’s not new and barely shocking anymore. I wish Trump and the pornographic nature of his attitude was a singular example of the worst in men that women face. Disturbingly, that’s not the case… Trump is only the most public example of a poison in our society women have always faced, that decent men – and we women know that’s most men – do not and/or will not see. You choose NOT to see our reality – this should never be our reality.

There’s an undercurrent of humiliation that the Trumps and the Billy Bushes of this world have made a numbing constant in the lives of girls and women. It’s part of an everyday, everywhere message that we don’t matter enough to be respected as a person. The personhood women is subsumed by the personhood of men… we are women before we are human.

I make a plea on behalf of women and girls everywhere: As long as other men continue to tolerate that kind of speech and attitude, even in the locker room, the misogyny and sexism and chauvinism and gender discrimination and sexual harassment and rape culture will continue to plague the lives of every woman you know. Please – EVERY decent man – stand loudly and always against the rampant misogyny and mistreatment of women that the 2016 GOP candidate represents. Be the voice and leader of decent men standing as one against the Trumps of this world. You’ve condemned his latest revelation of vile and repugnant sexism and predation. Please make it your personal crusade to end this assault on women and girls everywhere from men like this. It may only be a few men who think this way, but they are everywhere as we women try to navigate our lives. IT IS OPPRESSION – it makes us feel marginalized. 

It makes us afraid to go alone to public spaces like clubs or restaurants or the gym or even to walk alone in our own neighborhoods at night. It hurts us when the men who should defend us just say we shouldn’t have been in the public spaces where we are harassed and abused. It breaks us to be held accountable by the men who should defend us for the abuse by the Trumps of this world.

If you love a woman… if you know a woman, get out front and lead all decent men to stop the Trumps of this world, to educate the next generations of boys who will be the men in the lives of your daughters. Be the leader of change!

As a woman who has faced the groping Trump describes from early adolescence onward, too many times to count…

As a woman who has faced gender and sexual harassment in public leisure spaces…

As the friend of women I’ve known (most of them) who also had to and still have to face gender and sexual harassment in public leisure spaces…

As a woman who has faced gender and sexual harassment in the workplace…

As the friend of women I’ve known (again – MOST of them) who also had to and still have to face gender and sexual harassment in the workplace…

As a woman who has more than once been personally inundated by such vile speech…

As a friend who has heard and hears other women subjected to such vile speech…

As a woman who is a surviver of an incestuous pedophile…

As a woman who has more than once dealt with attempted acquaintance rape and dealt with acquaintance rape…

As a sister of a sibling who was a victim of acquaintance rape…

As the friend of a woman who was the victim of incestuous rape…

As a woman who, as an adolescent, lived through violent, attempted gang rape IN MIDDLE SCHOOL…

As the sister of another sibling who was a victim of violent rape…

As the friend of a woman who was stalked, raped, and nearly killed…

As the mother of a young son whom I know has already heard this kind of puerile and VILE speech from some of his peers…

I wonder how many men have listened to such reprobate and repugnant humiliation of women from their peers? I wonder how many men have watched porn and admired characters who, like Trump, revel unchecked in such narcissistic self-entitlement?  I wonder how many men perhaps saw that character’s sense of entitlement as a kind of power they wish they held? I wonder how many men, now so appalled by Trump’s degenerate speech towards women, laughed and tittered over it just as Billy Bush did when they heard one of their own peers talk that way in the locker room?  

I wonder if the men, now so appalled by Trump’s contemptible denigration of women will finally understand that every single woman you know has been and will be subjected to that kind of misogyny throughout our lives. No… it’s not everyday. No… it’s not ALL – nor even MOST men… Yes… it’s only a few men – BUT THOSE MEN ARE EVERYWHERE as we women try to navigate our daily lives.

Once again, Trump didn’t originate the poison – he only displayed the putrid rot that everyone was ignoring. He’s not the only man who thinks and behaves this way. Billy Bush isn’t the only man to empower such disgusting misogyny with his skeeze reveling. This is… and has been… and continues to be the reality of women’s lives.

Your mothers… your sisters… your wives… your daughters… We live every day of our lives with the knowledge that our bodies – our personhoods – are not safe. This kind of predator has been and continues to be our reality – dismissed… demeaned… ignored by the men who love us, befriend us… by the men who should be on the forefront in holding the Trumps of this world accountable. Every time you DON’T speak out… every time you DON’T intervene, you enable the sexual predator.

YOU personally know women who have been subjected to the Trumps of this world. If you do nothing, you put your own hand with his grabbing at us, groping us. PROCURER!

If you, the decent men in this world, do not hear us now and stop Trump and all men like him then how can we trust any of you?

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

To you defenders of Trump…

To you dismissing those tapes as “locker room talk…”

SHUT UP! Just slither back under the rock you oozed out from under and SHUT UP! Women have had to face the Trumps of this world all our lives! ON OUR OWN because of people like YOU! YOU and every enabler are more guilty than the Trumps of the discrimination, harassment, abuse, assault, victimization, marginalization – OPPRESSION – that is the reality of women’s lives! YOU make women’s oppression our reality because YOU DO NOT STOP the Trumps of this world! There is no defense! There is no joke! That you think there is any humor or that it is in any way appropriate to dismiss the kind of sexual predation Trump has ALWAYS – YES ALWAYS – lived out, screams FREAKING volumes ABOUT YOU!

JUST SHUT UP YOU MORALLY BANKRUPT ENABLER!

Trump has already damaged our futures…

The TRUTH of what Trump has already done to this nation: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE ELECTION IS OVER?

How do we forget the hate, the bigots who came out in such numbers to support a misogynist xenophobe for whom no one – not even a Native American – is “American” enough not to be targeted by him and his supporters? 

Are we to believe these people will suddenly have a change of heart and stop being bigots against us?

Trump’s rhetoric and his supporters have exposed a deep chasm of hate in our national society. It isn’t something that is just going to go away after Election2016. It’s an evil revealed to be deeply ingrained in today’s GOP voting bloc. But, it’s also been exposed in non-affiliated voters, in libertarian voters, even in democratic voters. It seems half the nation’s decisions are driven by the evils of hate and fear. 

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

The evils of hate and fear cannot look forward because they lack faith and Faith. They are both backward looking attributes, fixated on some fantasy of a NEVER-WAS-time-when-things-were-better. History has shown us how our divisions may be used against us all: let us be educated by that history. It’s so easy to hate; Fear never takes effort. Fear and hate come from reaching inward to the darkest places in our hearts, the places where evil hides away from our Faith. 

Looking forward… choosing hope… that takes constant work, always reaching outward… looking up… always drawing on a self-renewing well of hope and of faith… faith in ourselves… faith in the better nature of humanity… faith that we truly are Stronger Together… faith in our Faith.

Terror from the right

How – in this “land of the free…” this would-be haven of inclusivity and democracy for all – in these UNITED States of America are so many Americans embracing Trump, making jokes or excuses for his despicable character – or worse, loudly and even violently agreeing with him? How can so many Americans who so proudly and loudly proclaim their perceived constitutional rights to freedom want HIM – that admitted from his own lips sexual predator – for president? 

He revels in the most vile misogyny, sexism, and chauvinism about women – the evidence is from his own lips, repeated again and again for DECADES! His mind, his speech, his behavior toward women and girls – even his own daughters – is the most degrading and pornographic imaginable.

He mocks the disabled. He mocks Native Americans – truly, no one is American enough NOT to be a target of his rampant and despotic bigotry. This man is a pandering, self-aggrandizing, hate-mongering, cheating, thieving, racketeering, mobbed-up, pro-Russian, incest-fantasizing misogynist, isolationist, racist, bigot, xenophobe, serial-adulterer, serial-divorcer, fraud, narcissist, sociopath, and poster child for corporate welfare who delights in profiting off other people’s suffering, and keeps putting forward outrageously UN-constitutional – if not outright illegal – plans for this country and for the world. He is the antithesis of our American ideal.

AMERICANS! We are NOT just electing our own POTUS! We are choosing the leader of the entire free world!

What is so deeply wrong in the hearts of the right that could give rise to someone like Trump for president? How can so many ignore the undeniable parallels between Hitler’s regime and Trump’s rhetoric? How can anyone look at that jaundiced countenance and listen to his demented rhetoric and not realize that he is a very sick man? How can anyone make excuses for supporting someone with whom Skinheads, the KKK, Neo-Nazis, WBC, and even ISIS agrees? When those groups agree with your positions, it’s time and past time to examine your positions and change – it’s time to examine your soul.

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

It really is frightening, especially for folks like me and my family. With kids already calling my half Persian, Christian son “ISIS” and talking about Trump sending Middle Easterners to “concentration camps” or the “gas chambers,” the prospect feels like real and present danger to me – My son has already been assaulted and injured by those same bullies. What Trump proposes is TERROR. It is terror on a grand scale – a scale comparable to Hitler… to Mussolini… to Stalin… to Mao…  to Saddam Hussein… to Bashar al Assad.

And, Trump is making the GOP over in his image… orchestrating global terror from the American right. He is making the GOP into the so-called Alt-Right… into a white supremacist party.

For those folks contemplating not stopping Trump, please consider: When you enter the voting booth, remember, you are not – NOT – choosing for YOU when you vote. This election is not some philosophical exercise in democracy. You are choosing with your vote FOR every parent and child in America, FOR every woman and girl who has been or ever will be victimized and oppressed by the self-entitled Trumps of this world… FOR every not white, not male, not rich, not ChristianISH child in America and around the world most imperiled by a Trump presidency… or you are voting against them.

Even when Trump backs off hateful, Hitler-esque rhetoric, as with his “Ban on Muslims,” he really just finds a new way to double down on his plans for targeted marginalization (creating an avenue for genocide) of now EVERYONE from Muslim majority countries. Everything he says and plans specifically targets peoples of already marginalized ethnicities – You are deluding yourself if you believe he won’t ultimately target everyone who are the NOT-white-rich-ChristianISH-men of the world.

Every vote for Trump is a vote AGAINST women and girls. Every vote for Trump is a vote AGAINST Americans like my husband and son, Hamid and Graham Mehrzad (“Mehrzad” means “born of love”). Every vote for Trump is a vote AGAINST every ordinary, hardworking Middle Eastern-American family and every immigrant family and every minority family in the UNITED States of America.

This is my plea – When you enter the voting booth, remember these names: Hamid and Graham Mehrzad. 

Hamid is the kindest, gentlest man I’ve ever known. He’s proud of his citizenship and he always tells people that they don’t realize what they have in America; he says there’s an essential “freeness” that exists no where else he’s ever been. And, he traveled throughout the Middle East and Europe, and has lived in three countries. 

Our son, Graham Mehrzad is a brilliant, funny, loving boy whom we are raising Christian. He made his personal commitment to Faith four years ago. He’s just been invited into the Duke Talent Identification Program (Duke TIP) for academic excellence. Graham Mehrzad has always had a heart dedicated to charitable service, from personally raising thousands of dollars for the AHA, to charity walks for ALS and Cancer, to homeless outreach, to volunteering in the local food pantry, and more… and he’s only twelve years old.

Remember Hamid and Graham Mehrzad. Remember their faces pictured below when you enter that voting booth. These are the real people for whom you are really voting.

Graham Mehrzad and Hamid through the years

Is America becoming the monster?

What is this movement in our nation that has wretched-up Trump as the GOP’s best and brightest hope? I think it’s symptomatic of a deeper society wide disintegration. It’s so distressing I cannot adequately express how despicable and bone-deep horrifying I find it. It’s yet another layer of Hitler-esque rhetoric.

If elected, Trump will have his Muslim database,

Trump will have his wall and Latino immigrant expulsions;

McCroryism (that’s best way I’ve seen to define this new Jim Crow or McCarthyism standard codified by McCrory and his NC cronies, a standard spreading disease-like all across the nation) will criminalize transgenders, and won't stop until it encompasses all LGBTQ folk;

The entire GOP continues waging war on the middle class and working poor, and continues to grind the middle class down to join the ranks of the working poor wage slaves;

The libertarian styled agenda of the GOP would like to even abolish the minimum wage, but certainly wants to end Social Security and Medicare as we know it;

They want to go backward and penalize the sick and poor for needing healthcare… (the Nazis called them “useless eaters;”

The fundamentalists and evangelicals will have women at home, barefoot and pregnant with no right over our own bodies;

Higher education is already being priced out of reach and the GOP/libertarian agenda includes ending public schools;

…and an endless litany of much more.

It fully looks like history repeating itself. The way things are going, I fully expect Trump’s database to lead to internment camps at the least – the history of the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII overrides anyone’s disclaimer of that not being possible in America. A Muslim database will not stop with Muslims – those things never do. They’ll add every element of society that doesn’t fit their narrow vision to that database.

There seems to be a diminishing of the American ideal we’ve always cherished and held out to the entire world. America is supposed to be the safe haven… the bastion against the intolerance of hate-fueled fascism. Are we becoming the evil from which the world turned to us to escape? Is America becoming the monster we need to escape? Is that American ideal fading? Is it already lost?

by D. Denise Dianaty

© 14 May 2016

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