MERRY CHRISTMAS TO THE SEVENTY- FOUR MILLION

by Ruth A. Sheets

I want to wish each of the 74 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump this year a merry Christmas, and Notice, I did say Christmas.  I suspect you all are feeling pretty bad right now because your boy lost, but you should be really angry right now.  It seems Mr. Trump is turning out to be, exactly what his opponents claimed he was 4 years ago to the present, and for all of you to see.  He has tried to show you,  his entire for years in the white house, but alas, you refused to see or to believe what you were seeing. 

I remember hearing obligatory Trump supporter interviews on NPR and a variety of cable networks and late-night TV.  The best any of you could say for him and your support was that “He’s doing the things I like.”  When pressed for an explanation of what that included, responses were rare and nearly incoherent or so vague “well, I don’t like people coming into my country illegally,” or “Things are out of control and Trump can fix it – he’s going to drain the swamp,” or some other similar comment. 

There was no depth because you couldn’t speak aloud why you really support Trump.  Unless you are speaking to someone on Fox News or one of the other right-wing networks, it doesn’t work well, you think, to tell the truth.  Maybe some of the following are the real truth.  I suspect each of you can say “aye” to at least one.

1. Trump surrounds himself with pretty women so I can tell he likes women, and they have important jobs.

2. Trump is a great businessman.  Of course he avoids paying taxes, but I do that too and I don’t want to have to pay taxes at all if I can get away with it.

3. Trump likes playing golf and so do I.  I am now rich enough to play.

4. Trump loves Israel and wants to get rid of the Palestinians who are just a headache for Israel anyway.

5. Those dirty people coming into this country from Mexico and those sh**h*le countries should keep their people out of our country.

6. I like strong men and men who are loud prove their strength the way they so easily put down their opponents.

7. Those Black Lives Matter people are asking too much.  We give them everything and they just keep taking, wanting more, you know, welfare, food stamps, and all that.  I work so hard I shouldn’t have to pay for them.

8. They want to defund the police.  I need my police.  They keep me safe from the bad guys.  The only reason they go after Blacks and Hispanics is because they are drug users and thieves.   

9. He comes to rallies where we live and tells it like it is.

10. If Trump doesn’t want to wear a mask, I shouldn’t have to no matter what my mayor, governor, or anyone else says.  COVID is a hoax anyway.

Are any of these resonating with you?  If you say “no,” you are not being honest.  I keep hearing that there were people who held their nose and voted for Trump this time.  Now, why would that be?  Which of the above caused you to press your fingers to your proboscis so you could vote for someone you knew full well is an appalling human being who should never be in charge of anyone or anything.

Let’s look at the items above to see how Donald Trump has actually done and is still doing.

1. Donald Trump was a womanizer who felt he had to pay off prostitutes he visited even while his wife was pregnant.  The women he has around him may be attractive, but they do not have the interest of this nation in mind as they act on his behalf.

2. Trump avoids paying taxes and pushed for a huge tax break for the rich while claiming the break was for everyone.  For most people it was so small they didn’t even notice.  Everyone needs to pay taxes because that money supports the many goods and services people need and want, including you.

3. Yes, Trump plays golf, more days off than any other president.

4. Trump claims to love Israel, but could never find it on a map unless it was pointed out to him.  Israel was carved out of Palestine, essentially taking their land, kind of like the way Europeans took US land from the people who already lived here.

5. The people at our southern border are seeking asylum or are refugees, legally seeking entry here.  They are not animals as Trump claims, but they are people he is allowing to be treated worse than animals.

6. A big mouth that spews insults and lies does not indicate strength as anyone who studies human nature can tell you.  Trump is a weak person who has been allowed to have power solely because he claims to have a lot of money.  A man who has never sacrificed himself for anything calling those who have, “suckers” and “losers” is not strong.

7. I know it is scary for white people who don’t think they are racist that Black Lives Matter groups have a point and are in the right.  Their anger may cause some violence, but in this year’s actions, white right-wingers caused a lot of the violence.  Oh wait, they have been doing that through the entire four years of Trump’s reign.

8. Yes, Donald Trump, the “law and order” president who stands with the police no matter what they do to those they are sworn to protect, is the man who is pardoning murderers, liars, and cheaters, those who are related to him or who helped him in his illegal behavior while in office.  We are waiting for him to pardon himself from crimes he won’t name.  Uh-huh, the law and order president!

9. OMG, Trump tells it like it is?  He has lied more than 22,000 times in public since the day he took office.  Who can lie that often and still be believed by 74 million Americans?  And now, he screams out every day that he really won the election, another lie every time he says it.  Then, those rallies of his that never stopped after he won in 2016, this past year have been super-spreader events for COVID-19.  Trump has treated COVID-19 as an insignificant event that he had nothing to do with.  Yes, he tells it like it is! 

10. I get it.  Many of you 74 million don’t like masks, as if anyone does, but of course, you mistake your rights as being the ability to do whatever you want.  Well, that’s not how rights work.  Your rights end where mine begin.  You don’t have the right to spread to me a deadly disease, just as I don’t have the right to pass it to you.  Therefore, I wear a mask when I am near other people, and I try to social distance.  Oh yes, I almost forgot, you don’t have the right to threaten public officials who report the truth about COVID, order people to wear masks, and stop large indoor activities. 

Now, if you got this far, are you still glad or at least satisfied you voted for Donald Trump again or for the first time?  I suspect you still are and that you are sad this racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, homophobic, pseudo-Christian fool was not re-elected.  Well, when your relief check does not come because your hero vetoed it or you get to breathe more polluted air, or your house burns down due to unaddressed global warming, or someone you love gets COVID, thank Donald Trump and continue to believe in Trump’s ridiculous conspiracies, his lies, his inaction, and the fact that he dragged you and the Republican Party down with him, and have a Merry Christmas. 

THE ART OF TRASHING

by Ruth A. Sheets

I just finished reading the book Ms Gloria Steinem, A Life by Winifred Conkling.  It presents an amazing worker in the field of women’s rights.  Gloria Steinem has been a hero of mine for decades.  She spoke and wrote about issues I felt were the essence of what women needed, or at least, what we thought women wanted.  Ms. Conkling reminded me of the trashing that Ms. Steinem and her colleagues faced because they stood for those needs.  Due to the misinterpreted media concept of equal time, the trashers got enormous coverage that expanded an anti-feminist movement that was really pretty small at its beginning.  As time went on, it became larger and more personal, virulent, and nasty, although not a majority.   

Trashers become disgruntled that a minority is demanding rights the trasher believes are either unnecessary or undeserved, or might make life different for themselves.  “You don’t need that.  You’re being treated just fine, I know.”  The trasher takes up a position against what many people might think are fair demands.  In order to make such a stand work, however, reality must be manipulated.

Trashers from the trashed group (in this case women), need to be recruited as the spokespersons against the demands.  It would not work as well to have men speaking against women since that is not particularly unusual and would not get much attention.  The anti-Women’s movement hero had to be a woman, tried in the crucible of hate, in her case, anti-Communism, Phyllis Schlafly.  Ms. Schlafly was opposite of what she wanted women to be, but she worked to convince women they wanted what she said they did, like  The right to not work outside the home.  They also didn’t need access to reproductive health services, fair treatment on the job (if they dared to step away from their sphere), or anything but what they already had.  How very white middle-class!  She encouraged conservative women to feel ostracized by those horrible women’s libbers. 

Trashees must always be kept on the defensive, rarely getting to present their message fairly for the general public.  The media orchestrates this by pitting them against the trashers on a one-to-one as though their positions had equal support in the broader society and were equally valid.  The entire interview was spent trying to answer the charges of the trasher egged on by the interviewer.  The trasher’s trumped-up anger (or at least indignation) was seen as justified while the one being trashed was seen as an angry b***h.

The true art comes in when the trasher gets to pin labels, a descriptive term to evoke negative images for the trashee and positive ones for themselves (like “baby killers, man-haters, bra-burners” while for themselves, “pro-life).  The label “pro-life” has lasted as has baby-killer even though neither label is accurate, at least not for the ones to whom it has been pinned.  Listening to the “pro-life”er speeches on the National Mall every January on the anniversary of Rowe v. Wade,  it is clear their “pro-life” stance stops at “pro-birth” or actually,  “pro-forced-birth.”  And, no feminist I know has ever killed a baby, but not wanting to financially support those children forced to be born has led to deaths..

In addition, and maybe most important, the trasher makes trashees appear less than human for even daring to make any demands let alone the particular ones being trashed.  Those feminists were really all lesbians so didn’t deserve even to be heard – they’re not real women anyway.  

Trashing has been used against people for a very long time, possibly as long as humans have been around.  The description of trashing above can be applied to any group that has tried to gain rights:  Blacks, Indigenous persons, LGBTQ persons, Latinex and disabled persons, and so forth.  Just because it has been done forever does not mean we should be participating in it in the 21st century. 

The “Trasher in Chief” is trashing everyone he can before he leaves office next month, keeping up his trashing pace.  His usual targets:  immigrants, people of color, Democrats, women, scientists, people who don’t agree with him, anyone who is not utterly loyal to him.  We know he is trashing people, yet his every tweet, his every rally speech is covered, the excuse, “well, he is the president.”  His followers rarely choose to hear the position of the persons being trashed, but don’t worry, they would do nothing even if they did.  Their trasher must know something that lets him do his trashing, Right?  Wrong!  The truth is he will manufacture a reason so he can practice his art, probably the only thing he is good at (except whining, perhaps).

I admit I have done a little trashing myself now and then, lately directed toward Mr. Trump and the people who choose to follow after him rather than think for themselves.  I have to keep reminding myself that I don’t want to get good at the art of trashing.  I don’t want to call my Trump-loving acquaintances something nasty, short, and crushing.  It is hard sometimes when I find myself with a full trash can cocked hearing one more Trump supporter yelling that the vote was a fraud, even in the face of the truth that this was the most secure election in history, or their complaining that a vaccine can’t be trusted because those evil scientists are going to kill us, when that science is what will ultimately save us from the pandemic.  I mostly hold on to it, but, let’s face it, sometimes trashing is fun.  Being the trashee is not.  It seems to me, there is room in this world for everyone to have basic rights and that those who don’t have the rights need to be heard and believed.  We should be going for rights over restrictions, but weighing both in light of what is best for those who have been denied the rights of full citizenship or even humanity for centuries and more.  

I believe we can do that, but we will need a lot of help.  We need to do away with false equivalencies.  All arguments are not of equal value and some are simply not true.  The media in all forms need to step up on this one and stop putting the trash out there for people to pick through than fling. 

Voters need to hold their representatives accountable when they choose to trash someone with a lie rather than give an honest answer.

I keep wondering what Phyllis Schlafly got from trashing feminists who wanted more options for women.  She did get a lot of attention and a lot of women to support her trashing project.  And here we are  50 years later and women still lack rights that would make life better for most, but Gloria Steinem is still standing up to the trashers.

We don’t need any more trash artists unless it really is an artist who makes awesome things from the trash they find (or hear), changing it into something special that lets us see people as beautiful, worthy of our respect.