All posts tagged: trump

What are You Pansies So Afraid Of?

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(Apologies to grammarians for this post’s title ending with a preposition. “Of what are you so afraid?” or “You’re afraid of what, you pansies?” didn’t seem sufficiently direct.) Seriously: what are you so afraid of? So the Supreme Court has upheld Trump’s banning of the trans community from military service. I’m confident this will be over-turned by lower courts since it’s fundamentally backwards and history progresses forward. (I also fundamentally believe that Trump loves to battle the trans community so he can fire up his base in the midst of the Mueller investigation, emoluments, family corruption, etc etc etc. It’s distraction by the master-distracter, himself.) And Trump needs to whip up a frenzy of fear in his base. Because this is all about fear. But fear of what? The entire Republican paradigm is about fear…fear of change, fear of whatever might be un-American (defining “American” in a very narrow context, fear of Iran/Chinag/North Korea/everyone, fear of others, fear of not being the biggest/strongest/fastest, fear of strangers/immigrants/boogeymen, fear of not facing their own demons and whatever …

The Reason for the Season

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Though I loathe the culture war centered around “putting the ‘Christ’ back into ‘Christmas’”, I’m definitely one who wants my children to know the reason behind every season, or in most cases…holiday. This applies most especially to holidays as “abstract” as Veteran’s Day. Yesterday my older kid jumped with joy as she celebrated having THREE DAYS OF MORNING TELEVISION this weekend. Uncharacteristically, I held my tongue so as not to deflate her joy. I’ll save the posturing about Veteran’s Day for the actual day. I’m feeling particularly attached to Veteran’s Day, this year, because of the 100th anniversary of the WWI armistice. I’ve always been masochistically fascinated by WWI. It never fails to send a sobering chill down my spine to reflect on the first war in which men were able to massacre acres of men without catching sight of each other. The wide-scale use of machine guns, tanks, airplanes and trench warfare that wasted a generation all because of agreements between insecure, rich white men trying to keep their place in the upper-class mastering the …

Trump. My President.

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Yesterday was my grief day. I pledged I’d be back on my feet, today. Don’t get me wrong…everything that Donald Trump embodies is what I teach my children to avoid. I hate him. And all of the hateful violence and harassment we’ve seen against people of color, immigrants, gays or people of different political stripes is un-American. (Also: I hope between now and January that Trump is convicted of all the crimes for which he’s accused and ends up in jail. Then again, Pence would also be a nightmare. C’mon Electoral College reflect the majority vote, stage an electoral coup and elect Hillary Clinton. Please.) But today, I’m moving forward. Because Trump won the most (Electoral College) votes. He is going to be President. So let’s figure some things out: I might be fooling myself, but I do have hope. He is educated (I didn’t say smart), he grew up in a city of diversity (c’mon Omarosa, minorities need your out-spokenness, now), and let’s hope he returns to his (formerly eschewed) “New York values” (assuming …

Savage Children

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Recently my boys and their friends were beating the shit out of each other. A group of families from our preschool had a group play-date using Imagination Blocks (my computer’s freaking out and I can’t insert hyperlinks. But having immediate visual of Imagination Playground Blocks isn’t something to lose sleep over.) Predictably, our wild ones used the foam blocks and cylinders to wail on each other. We parents let them get some rough-housing out of their systems as we marveled, “They really are savages, aren’t they?” That prompted more questions: “Is violence in our fundamental nature? Should we just let them go at it? Are we adults repressing our violence? Do we grow out of it? Should we indulge or deny it?” Watching the kids reminded me of my favorite college philosophy professor. She was a quintessential Boulder, Colorado, hippy: long, gray hair parted in the middle, ragamuffin dresses, Birkenstocks, patchouli aroma. I miss that world. Anyway, she marveled to the class while discussing the formation of societies: “I allow no play guns for my …