Turn the Other Cheek
So Melania made another horrific fashion choice, when she went to visit the Holocaust Memorial.
Her blouse said “Exterminate” on it, this time, instead of “I don’t really care. Do you?”………….Or was it “I really don’t care……….”?
The point is that she is clearly representing to the world an attitude, that I have, (on many occasions) tried to warn my fellow US citizens was prevalent in the White House.
She is putting this uncaring attitude on display for all of us to see, just as tRump did, when he ordered babies ripped away from their parents who thought that they were escaping their own personal hells, when they tried to cross the border into CA. This attitude of his was also prominently on display, when he mocked a disabled reporter, cheated on 4 wives, dodged 5 drafts; Refused to pay contractors and lawyers, until they sued him, and defrauded an entire university of his Real Estate students.
After that, as if he was trying to break some record, showing EXACTLY how little he could actually care about the American people, he made “budget cuts” to heating assistance for elderly people, to medicare, to SNAP, and to SOCIAL SECURITY which is NOT a “GIFT” from our government. It is something that our parents and grandparents paid into, all their lives, from their paychecks so that they’d be able to survive their “Golden Years”, which will be anything but golden, without their social security.
So by whatever means tRump and his family got into the White House……….they’re there, now, and still letting us know how much they DON’T CARE about the US citizens that they purport to “lead” as our “president” and “first lady”. They told us (on the back of an ugly trench coat) that they don’t care about babies in cages, AND……….. that they don’t care about Jewish people, whose parents and grandparents fought, with honor, for an American ideal of freedom, for ALL people, even ones that were not American citizens.
That war, (WWII) tells me that we USED to care.
There is an element of hope, even in a day of knowing that those who lead us don’t care about us, and are incapable of caring about anyone but themselves and about anything but profit. That element is the fact that:
CARING IS A PERSONALITY TRAIT.
Caring can be instilled and taught. Feel free to instill it and teach it to your children. If tRump’s parents had been capable of doing that, then the world might not be so disgusted with us, Today.
Those of us who care, can also keep marching, and demonstrating and committing civil disobedience, until we have made our Federal Government powerless. We can stop following their lead, if not their laws, until this administration has become impotent and until we have put a new one in place made up of people who will remember that they work for US, and that they are accountable to US.
Sadly, while most countries and their leaders recognize that our “leader” doesn’t represent us, they see a lot of shop owners putting signs in their windows that say “No Gays Allowed” and wearing MAGA hats and calling the cops when they see Black people barbecuing in parks………LEGALLY. They see our cops shooting Black people, torturing them with tasers, and attacking people in mass, with little or no provocation, or arresting them, for demonstrating peacefully.
It’s going to take some work to regain the respect and trust of the rest of the free world, and our allies, and we can start to do that, as soon as we’ve impeached and or jailed most of our current administration, including the “man” at the top, himself.
And maybe, when we stop repeating the shamefully bigoted parts of our history, I’ll be able to forgive, too……..
- Forgive the witch burnings
- Forgive the genocide of nearly six million Jews
- Forgive the slavery and lynchings of Black people that we stole from their homeland and forced them to pick our cotton, in the “Land of the Free”
- Forgive the deaths on the Trail of Tears
- Forgive that women and Black people had to fight for the vote, in the “Land of the Free”
- Forgive that Black people, women, Irish and Asian people were and sometimes still are, paid less for the same work, than White males.
- Forgive our “president’s” Pocahontas slurs
- Forgive our “president” who mocks disabled reporters
- Forgive our “president” who insults our Vets and fallen soldiers and their families
- Forgive our “president” who illegally fired Vets
- Forgive our “president’s” verbal attacks on reporters that lead to a shooting at a news station
- Forgive our “president’s” slanders against peoples that used to be American Allies
- Forgive our “president” for treating our students as being second in importance to the rights of gun owners to keep their precious pistols and military grade rifles, that they argue are for hunting.
Until that redemption is proved to be desired:
I will stand as a living reminder, of the atrocities that people do to each other, when they DON’T care:
I am a grand daughter of a woman who narrowly escaped being sent to a concentration camp. She experienced raids, called pogroms, as a young girl, and lost family in some of those raids and in the camps. My paternal grandfather headed a MASH unit, near one of those concentration camps.
I am what my ancestors made me. I am also…………
a chance at redemption for those who would rather forget the Witch Burning, the Trail of Tears, the lynchings and slavery and the near complete genocide of the Jews in Germany, because if you think about it, we’ve already committed atrocities against almost EVERY subset of people that have come across our shores, so it only stands to reason, that
ANY of US could be next.