We, the People Are Not Nice...Nor Should We Be.

The blog entry I just wrote was so angry I will not post it. 

I am terrified about what comes after Friday. 

Blacks, Muslims, LGBTQ, and Jews are being targeted across the country. Hate mail, graffiti, rock-throwing, bullying, headstone-toppling...it's all out there and it's all happening.

Hate, it would seem, has become acceptable. I hear it from both sides. 

People I respect are posting hate-filled things on social media that disgust me. It diminishes my perception of them. Both sides. 

President-elect Trump's behavior requires serious consideration...from both sides of the aisle. There is nothing normal about his behavior in this transfer of power, and it should not be normalized. His tweets are a window into him...and it's a scary one at that. 

The people selected to serve in the cabinet have questionable qualifications. That's not opinion, that's fact. In no way is Ben Carson qualified to head HUD. Surgeon General? Sure, why not? The nominated AG, Senator Jeff Sessions, was denied a Federal bench because of his racist and homophobic statements. The nominee for Education, Betsy DeVos is a business person with no education experience or credentials. She is a hardline advocate against civil rights for LGBTQ citizens. 

Almost all the cabinet nominees also have ethics and/or conflict-of-interest issues facing them. 

The incoming staff of the West Wing has proposed removing the press pool from the White House. Any reporter or network that criticizes Mr Trump has been threatened with exclusion. 

The spine of national security and intelligence have been publicly belittled by the President-elect. Whether or not they deserved it, that kind of laundry is not aired in public except at the peril of these here United States. 

Donald Trump will be sworn into office on Friday. How long he remains there is, quite frankly, up to him. 

Some people think it's unpatriotic to question, comment, or criticize the incoming POTUS. I would disagree with that statement. POTUS works for ALL of us. It is our job as citizens to hold him to his promises and pledges, and to tell him when we think he is wrong. Republican or Democrat, the obligation is the same. The Constitution of the United States guarantees our right to speak up and speak out. If we abrogate that right, we are damned, one and all. 

Here's something to consider:

Nice people made the best Nazis.

Or so I have been told. My mother was born in Munich in 1934, and spent her childhood in Nazi Germany surrounded by nice people who refused to make waves. When things got ugly, the people my mother lived alongside chose not to focus on “politics,” instead busying themselves with happier things. They were lovely, kind people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away.                                                                        Naomi Shulman

I don't want to be a nice person. I will not turn away or post puppies on Face Book. 

If Donald Trump and his minions continue in the direction they are currently heading, they will have to go through me and We, the People, to get to the Constitution. 

We are We, the People, and we are not nice. 

Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

If you need a break from politics...read a book. 

Try this one....now out in paperback!

Dream Dancer by The WP 
How can you resist?

Hollywood. Foreign. Press.

I was already working on the blog when Meryl Streep delivered her Cecil B. DeMille award speech.  It was was her own opinion, something she has the right to have, but it was a textbook example if civility. Eloquent, elegant, and directed at a specific audience, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. That it was televised was inconsequential. That it was flawlessly delivered to an audience of artists and journalists was important. 

This is a transcript of her speech:

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Please sit down. Please sit down. Thank you. I love you all. You'll have to forgive me. I've lost my voice in screaming and lamentation this weekend. And I have lost my mind sometime earlier this year. So I have to read.

Thank you, Hollywood foreign press. Just to pick up on what Hugh Laurie said. You and all of us in this room, really, belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it. Hollywood, foreigners, and the press. But who are we? And, you know, what is Hollywood anyway? It's just a bunch of people from other places.

I was born and raised and created in the public schools of New Jersey. Viola [Davis] was born in a sharecropper's cabin in South Carolina, and grew up in Central falls, Long Island. Sarah Paulson was raised by a single mom in Brooklyn. Sarah Jessica Parker was one of seven or eight kids from Ohio. Amy Adams was born in Italy. Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem. Where are their birth certificates? And the beautiful Ruth Negga was born in Ethiopia, raised in -- no, in Ireland, I do believe. And she's here nominated for playing a small town girl from Virginia. Ryan Gosling, like all the nicest people, is Canadian. And Dev Patel was born in Kenya, raised in London, is here for playing an Indian raised in Tasmania.

Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. If you kick 'em all out, you'll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts. They gave me three seconds to say this. An actor's only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like. And there were many, many, many powerful performances this year that did exactly that, breathtaking, passionate work.

There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter, someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can't get it out of my head because it wasn't in a movie. It was real life.

And this instinct to humiliate, when it's modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody's life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.

This brings me to the press. We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage.That's why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution. So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists. Because we're going to need them going forward. And they'll need us to safeguard the truth.

One more thing. Once when I was standing around on the set one day whining about something, we were going to work through supper, or the long hours or whatever, Tommy Lee Jones said to me, "Isn't it such a privilege, Meryl, just to be an actor?" Yeah, it is. And we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the act of empathy. We should all be very proud of the work Hollywood honors here tonight.

As my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia, said to me once, "Take your broken heart, make it into art."  Thank you.

To those readers who think this is whiny liberal screed, take a breath. It is not. It's not even about politics or the election. it's about something much more important.

Civility.

Are you familiar with the word? Here, let me show you a dictionary definition.

civility

NOUN

·       1  [mass noun] Formal politeness and courtesy in behavior or speech:

• 1.1civilities Polite remarks used in formal conversation:

Origin

Late Middle English: from Old French civilite, from Latin civilitas, from civilis relating to citizens (see civil).

In early use the term denoted the state of being a citizen and hence good citizenship or orderly behavior. The sense ‘politeness’ arose in the mid 16th century.

When people disagree, you need civility to take a conversation from beginning to end. Civility is the basis of civilization. Respectful discourse is the foundation. Civility is the package, the whole thing tied up with ribbons. You cannot have two sides of a productive argument without civility.

The response to Ms. Streep's speech by the  President Elect on Twitter was neither elegant nor eloquent. It was of the caliber of PeeWee Herman. Instead of "I know you are, but what am I?" he  tweeted, 

Overrated? Hmmm.  Everyone should be so overrated like Meryl Streep.

Every tweet tells Kim Jong-un a little more about who is behind the desk in the Oval Office. Every tweet reminds Vladimir Putin that the President-elect of the United States is too engrossed in his own cult of personality to notice what Russians are doing. Every tweet reminds We, the People, that we have a rank amateur in office. 

Running a country is not running a business. Nor is it running a fiefdom. And the United States is a sizable country with a very complex network of local and federal laws. This ship of state cannot turn on a dime, nor would anyone want it to.

Rather than continue showing the differences, let me ask you, gentle readers, a different question: How do you see the United States as a home to your children and grandchildren in 20 years? What are your wishes for that progeny? How do you envision their world?

To have a conversation of civility on any of the issues facing us, we need to figure out, as individuals, what we want this country to look like.

Yelling at each other, belittling each other, spewing hate at each other, and posting fake news and falsehoods (on both sides) are not going to allow that conversation to happen. We, the People are facing serious problems and this is not the time to be playing games. We have a lot of work to do.

People, it's time to  stop being assholes and start finding the common ground for civil discourse. And if there is no common ground, it's time to define our space. Either way, civility is NOT an optional element. It must be present and accounted for at all time. 

Seriously. I'm not kidding. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Stop being an asshole. 

2017: Ready Or Not, Here It Comes

July 11, 1969

One of the things I am planning to do in 2017 is to go to Israel. I've not been there since 1969 and I think I'm overdue for a visit. That said, the places I remember are much different now from when I was last there. I will be staying with dear friends, and I've already told them the point of the visit is to be in Israel. I want to shop in the markets, cook fresh fish from the Mediterranean. Yes, I will go to Jerusalem, but no, I do not want to return to that place that has its own corner in my memory, Eilat. When I was there it was four lousy hotels with no air conditioning. It was so hot (how hot was it?) we stripped the sheets off the beds and slept on the beach. I have no desire to shlep up Masada again, but I do want to walk up the Jaffa Steps.  

As Paul Simon wrote in Bookends:

Time it was 
And what a time it was, it was 
A time of innocence 
A time of confidences

Long ago it must be 
I have a photograph 
Preserve your memories 
They're all that's left you.

It's the last line that worries me, y'know. Not that Israel will be different. Of course it will. I was there almost a half a century ago. I don't expect much of anything to be the same, not even the Kotel which is suffering from an ongoing identity crisis. I'm going because it is different, because I want to see the changes. Because I have an unsettling feeling that if I don't go now, visiting Israel in the future might be a non-starter. 

UN Resolution 2334 should've been vetoed because the language was bad. This was the wrong version to let slide. This one misstated and mishandled the question of Jerusalem itself. International law does not apply to Israel the way it applies to other countries. Instead of dealing with the horrors of Syria (which, btw, is getting medical assistance from Israel) the imbeciles at the UN are busy doing this. Really?

That schmuck Netanyahu thinks he has an ally in President-elect Trump. I think Trump just wants to find out what happens if he pushes the big red button on his desk. 

Certain children have asked me if this is a preliminary house-hunting expedition. This is a good question. I don't know. It might be. I keep asking myself: are you prepared to leave if you have to?

I am not the only one asking the question. I fear for the future of minorities in the country and we Jews are a minority. A very small but very vocal one. I mean, everyone knows we control the banks and the media. (I wish I knew which bank that was, because I'm not wild about TCF these days and I'd like to put my money in one I own. You know...pay myself real interest. That sort of thing.) But that fairy tale doesn't help the Jews of Whitefish, Montana. Right now, they are on the front line of a very dangerous position. 

When Trump tweets something as moronic as his New Year tweet, one cannot help but wonder not only "what is wrong with this man," but how are we supposed to survive with a POTUS this stupid. And I mean that in the most BIGLY sense of the word. 

He claims to have information "no one else has," regarding the Russian hacking. And he has nothing but great things to say about that shirtless wonder, Vladimir Putin. 

I participate in a small group of bloggers. We whisper amongst ourselves these days, especially after two of them got cease-and-desist orders from the Trump legal team because they were talking about Melania. The question becomes do we shut up...are we self-editing as prevention of law suits...or do we just go on our merry way, consequences be damned?

Part of the answer came the other day, when the GOP trashed the independent Congressional ethics office. From the Washington Post:

Defying the wishes of their top leaders, House Republicans voted behind closed doors Monday night to rein in the independent ethics office created eight years ago in the wake of a series of embarrassing congressional scandals.

The 119-to-74 vote during a GOP conference meeting means that the House rules package expected to be adopted Tuesday, the first day of the 115th Congress, would rename the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) as the Office of Congressional Complaint Review and place it under the oversight of the House Ethics Committee.

Under the proposed new rules, the office could not employ a spokesperson, investigate anonymous tips or refer criminal wrongdoing to prosecutors without the express consent of the Ethics Committee, which would gain the power to summarily end any OCE probe.

Why aren't people talking about this more?

03jan2017-  BREAKING NEWS...APPARENTLY THEY ARE. GOP has reversed it's decision: House Republicans Back Down on Bid to Gut Ethics Office.

I don't know the answer to that last question, but it fits into the pattern of stripping away civil protections. Honestly, I doubt Trump has ever read the U.S. Constitution and has no idea what the Bill of Rights is, or what any of the amendments say. Y'know how I know that? By this quote...again, from the Washington Post...taken from an interview with Bob Woodward...as in Woodward and Bernstein....as in Watergate...on March 31st, 2016. Woodward asked, "And why did Lincoln succeed? Thought about that at all?" Here's the quote:

Well, I think Lincoln succeeded for numerous reasons. He was a man who was of great intelligence, which most presidents would be. But he was a man of great intelligence, but he was also a man that did something that was a very vital thing to do at that time. Ten years before or 20 years before, what he was doing would never have even been thought possible. So he did something that was a very important thing to do, and especially at that time. 

I don't know about any of you....but this sounds like when one of my kids didn't read the homework assignment. Does he even know what Lincoln did? I'm not entirely sure. Read the whole interview. It'll make your skin crawl.

We are less than three weeks from the imbecile being sworn in as POTUS. Until that day, I will exercise my free speech as I see fit. When they begin to eviscerate the Constitution, I shall go underground and eventually over an ocean or two, but I will not shut up.

This is serious stuff, folks. Do not take it lightly. Our Constitution is what has kept us going for more than 200 years; it's what made us different. It is the lamp beside the golden door.

The Wifely Person's Top o'the Week

Be careful what you wish for. Once Trump swears the oath, 

this is the line of succession..best insurance policy ever.

Ringing In 2017 With A Whisper

I had sketched out something uplifting and optimistic for this week's episode, hoping that by reminding us every pendulum does swing back and forth, there might be split second when life was not so dire and that even in the depths of our fear we could find some pinpoint of light. 

At this moment, I cannot think of a thing that would make me feel optimistic, other than the simple fact 2016 is finally over. 

I do not think we have seen  the end of the horror; I believe we are at the very beginning. Whether it's UN Resolution 2334 or the President-elect's threats to build up the nuclear stock pile, I am not seeing much that makes me thing Donald Trump is going to grow up and be presidential. Out of the goodness of his heart, he's decided to disband the Trump Foundation, lest it get in the way of his job as president. Too bad the NYS-AG won't let him do that until they complete their investigation into the misuse, mishandling, and tax avoidance. 

You realize, of course, that by writing that last sentence, I have opened myself up to be sued by the Trump Machine. Melania is going after a 70-year old blogger (not that age has anything to do with his) because he wrote about a story that happens to be fake news.  This is just an opening salvo, people, so get ready to duck'n'cover. 

Face it, we are all worried about a guy who cannot deal with tweets from Alec Baldwin AND has his finger on the big red button. 

Recently there was an article about how to deal with Trumpenistas in one's own family. There was a wonderful suggestion: at a break in the harangue, change the subject. Ask the hollerer what their dreams are for the children and/or grandchildren. Get them to talk about their hopes and aspirations...and how they think the kids are going to get there. You can learn a lot about who you're dealing with from that question. If nothing else, it might buy you some time to breathe.

For the next week, I will be busy with the galleys for DREAM DANCER. Sometime in the next week or so, the book will be available in paperback on Amazon. I will tell you that holding that book in my hands was about an emotion and surreal experience imaginable. I'll let you all know when the book is up for sale, and I hope you'll buy a copy. It's a good read, a good adventure, and I promise you'll love the characters. We're all gonna need escapist literature for the foreseeable future. 

Wishing every one a safe and happy New Year,

The WP

Drinking The Sand

The Electoral College has voted and Donald Trump is POTUS-elect.

There are insufficient words to describe my disappointment. It's not just that he did not win this election, just as George Bush did not win his election. Both lost the popular vote. Trump's margin was significantly higher than Bush II, and here'a the chart with all presidents who lost the popular vote. You can see this one is quite significant.

                             

Trump has put forward his choices for cabinet secretaries and advisers. Most are assigned to posts in departments they have openly despised. You can read the newspaper to see who hates what. The nominees are not the ones he promised, but are big donors lacking experience in government or diplomacy. Like Mr. Trump.

He has given permission and voice to groups who hate. There is a significant increase in hate crimes across America. He has engaged his own private security force. Their presence and performances at his "thank you" rallies has been, according to eyewitness accounts, scary. 

He has provoked other nations with whom we have diplomatic relations. He has declined to receive security briefings. After maintaining the elections were rigged and dishonest, he refuses to address the specter of Russian hacking into our election process....yet he continues to say it is rigged. By whom? He won. What else does he want?

I listened to President Obama's interview with Steve Inskeep on MPR today. What struck me about the conversation was his careful measured tone. If you've neither heard nor read the interview, take a moment to do it now. It's worth the few minutes it will take you to read it. 

At Talmud class tonight, Rabbi Allen said that he was disappointed there was no voice of the opposition... like shadow cabinets in the UK...and that Hillary had gone silent. My initial response was what is she supposed to do? But the more I think about it, the more I agree with the rabbi. (Don't tell him I said that.) The silence from the other side has been strangely deafening. It's as though the Democrats have abrogated their responsibilities to the mob instead of presenting some sort of reasonable alternative. Who is monitoring the Trump nominees? Who is presenting an "official" counter to their points. Right now, we have no voice of reason to speak to our concerns.

Thus far, he is setting himself up for an imperial presidency and, to be real honest, that's what people who voted for him voted for. I just find it odd that all these anti-flag burning super-patriots are supporting a guy who wants to severely limit (if not repeal) the freedom of the press section of the First Amendment. So far, he has refused to hold any press conferences, choosing instead to invite journalists for "off-the-record" conversations. Hardly the transparency he yammered about. 

Trump did not, as he likes to claim, win by a landslide. As the chart above shows, he lost the popular vote. He has no mandate. But I don't think that will make a hill o'beans difference. 

Louis 

The America People want leadership. And in the absence of genuine leadership, they will listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They're so thirsty for it, they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand. 

President Andrew Shepherd 

We've had Presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand, because they're thirsty. They drink it because they don't know the difference. 

                                                The American President - Aaron Sorkin

In the absence of leadership, We, the People will keep on drinking the sand. Right now, we have no real leadership in the wings; we have only autocrats posing as autodidacts, and kleptocrats poised to serve in cabinet posts. What we don't have is anyone seemingly prepared to lead the opposition center stage. 

Rallies and protests are not going to stop the progress of this administration.

Meanwhile.....in other news......

The Russian ambassador to Turkey was assassinated mid-sentence while delivering a speech at an art museum this afternoon. And someone drove a truck into a Berlin Christmas market this evening, killing 12. 

Frankly, I have no idea what comes next.

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Windchill is no joke. Dress accordingly.