I had decided to take a break from blogging about the election results, politics, and he-who-must-not-be-named-but-whose-initials-are-D.T. After all, the majority of my fellow Americans had voted - fairly and squarely - for what they wanted fixed in this country - mainly the economy and immigration - and who they wanted to fix it, and so that was that. Besides, if that many Americans were now optimistic about our country's future, I figured I should try to be, too. Or at least sit back a while and see how things shake out. And so enough already, I was going to give political discourse a rest. I was determined that for the time being I'd choose my blog subject matter from among the infinite variety of other interesting and noteworthy phenomena that fill our world. That was my intention. But then yesterday morning I started going through the news and saw this: ...and this: ...and these headlines and photos from the New York Times: Which is how I learned that according to sources who've been close to Donald Trump, it's not a question of if when he gets back into the Oval Office he will carry out the revenge tour of which he talked incessantly during his campaign; it's a question of who he will succeed in getting and how harshly will he be able to punish them. Among the targets on his wish-to-destroy list are Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and the Obamas, but the thinking is that those people are simply too big for him to pursue. However some of Trump's allies are chomping at the bit to see vengeance carried out against others who crossed him, such as special counsel Jack Smith, who was investigating Trump's theft of Federal records and who Trump said should be thrown out of the country by the U.S. government. There's also New York Attorney General Letitia James, who prosecuted a 355 million dollar fraud case against Trump and for which he's demanded that she now be prosecuted, ...along with Justice Arthur Engoron, who tired that case and Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney who prosecuted Trump in the Stormy Daniels hush money case and won 34 felony counts against him. He's called for his critic Liz Cheney to be tried by a military tribunal, ...and he said that General Mark Milley, his former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should be tried for treason and deserved to be executed. General Milley has called Trump a fascist to the core and the most dangerous man in America. Also on Donald Trump's retribution list are Former FBI Director James Comey, Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and U.S. Capitol Police Lieutenant Michael Byrd, among others. There are over 100 people in all he has threatened to punish. As always, Donald Trump is once again surrounded by a cadre of minions and consiglieri who are lining up to go after his perceived enemies and do his filthy work for him. Republican Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, ...has already announced he would launch a criminal investigation of Jack Smith. Conservative mouth Mike Davis, who is under consideration to be Trump's Attorney General, ...wrote this of Donald Trump's perceived enemies on social media site X : Davis also once threatened Letitia James to stop her case against Donald Trump: And this is the vulgar little nematode who may well become the next Attorney General of the United States and will hold in his fist the United States Justice Department and the power to destroy whoever he wishes. And this is how he dared to address the woman who is the Attorney General of New York. All of this for me begs a question. Surely some of Donald Trump's most fervent disciples will be thrilled to see anyone who displeased him suffer. But I wonder about the rest of those who voted for him because they believed he would solve immigration and boost the economy: how will those voters feel when they see innocent citizens dragged before Donald Trump's tribunals, when they read about people's lives publicly ruined for speaking out or for doing their jobs? Will those voters mind? Will they say, never mind, having Donald Trump for President is worth it? Or will they even care at all? References
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/10/us/politics/trump-enemies-prosecution.html https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/06/trump-retribution-enemy-list-00187725
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This is my country, where a majority of the population voted into power a 78-year-old criminal convicted on 32 felonies and charged with theft of federal records, election fraud, and election interference, among other charges. My fellow Americans resounding handed the Presidency of the United States to a man who tried to overthrow the last election and orchestrated the violent January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol. This septuagenarian who's close to eighty and who talks incessantly about himself and his grievances, who spouts vile nonsense, lies, or violent rhetoric every time he opens his mouth and who is in league with foreign dictators and domestic white supremacists; this power-crazy old man who has threatened to use the Presidency and the Justice Department to bring vengeance against those who've crossed him; this immoral, filthy old man with a history of gross sex abuse; this is the person a majority of Americans chose to be President of the United States.
They chose him over a competent, capable, experienced woman of color who was part of the administration that rescued the country from potential economic disaster from the COVID epidemic, oversaw record job creation, passed the badly needed infrastructure bill, passed the CHIPS act to boost U.S. production of semiconductors, and created a meaningful immigration bill that could have been passed in the next administration. However, Americans have instead voted in a vile tyrant supposedly for his cotton candy promises to bring down the prices of groceries and everything else to what they were five years ago before the pandemic hit. Educated Americans, well-off Americans, good, bright Americans who should know better, my neighbors, my relatives, all these people voted into the White House a foul old criminal who should be in prison. And who may well transform our democracy into an autocracy. And this is my country. Which has me wondering: what in the world country do I live in, anyway? Tomorrow, November 5, 2024, is the day of reconning for this country. Tomorrow at this time we may not yet know who will be the next President - or Dictator - of the United States, ...but we'll be closer to knowing. And we'll be closer to the possible chaos Donald Trump has threatened to rain down on our country if he loses or the chaos he's promised if he wins. Still, I, for one, would prefer to face the former outcome than the latter. Like many thousands of my fellow Americans, I've done what I could to prevent Donald Trump and his clique of consiglieri from winning the election. I canvassed on Saturdays for Kamala Harris and the down ballot Ohio Democrats, ...and for Issue 1, backed by a group called Citizens Not Politicians, which calls for a bipartisan group of citizens to redesign the unjustly gerrymandered congressional and state legislative map of Ohio. Here's my son Tommy, who spent many of his weekends for the past few months campaigning for Citizens Not Politicians. My mate and I filled our yard with signs to show that there was a bandwagon to be jumped on, ...and I picked up signs and delivered them neighbors who wanted them. My daughter and I even did a bit of undercover campaigning, leaving "literature" in ladies' rooms around town. And I prayed. I realize that this may not be the most effective action to arrive at my desired outcome, considering that there are at least as many people praying for Donald Trump to win as for Kamala Harris; there are probably even many more folks praying for a Trump victory, since Trump appears to have most of the Christian Evangelical vote sewn up. But I prayed anyway. I spent this evening at my precinct voting site helping my fellow poll workers set up for tomorrow. I'm going to be a machine judge. My job will be to escort the voters to the voting machines. Our day will start at 5:30am and end sometime after 8:30pm when all the machines and ballots are packed up for return to the Franklin County Board of Elections. I’m glad I’ll be busy all day tomorrow working. And praying.
Did you ever do something as an adult that made you really feel like a grown up? Maybe something you never imagined you could do, but then you womaned up (or manned up) and did it and afterwards you felt like throwing up your hands and shouting, Look at me! I did a thing! I'm a real grown-up! I had such an experience last week on my last day in Los Angeles (see previous post, www.ailantha.com/blog/patience-pays-sometimes). It was Monday morning after the family-and-friend event for which I'd come to LA. Though I'd be leaving the following day, the other guests staying at my host's house were now heading back to the various and sundry points on the map from which they'd come. Some left by car, others Ubered to the airport. One of the guests had been graciously offered a ride to LAX - as the airport is locally referred to - by a seasoned L.A. driver and had graciously accepted. However at the very moment the ride to the airport was required things got a weence topsy-turvy at the house and the person who was going to give the ride was needed for a more urgent issue. As it turned out I, with my rental car (see previous post) was now the only one in the house with wheels. Hence the lot fell to me to give the traveler their ride to the airport. And the thought of doing so made my hair stand on end. Now, it's not that I've never driven anywhere in the Los Angeles environs. I've driven around Hollywood, ...once even tackled the notorious 405 freeway, ...and I can tool around the South Bay area like ringing a bell. But none of those places is LAX, the busiest airport in the whole USA. (Okay, second busiest after Atlanta). And the truth is, though I'll normally drive wherever is expected of me, I'm always happy to let someone else take the wheel. Because, in truth, the passenger seat is my comfort zone. But when I was asked to drive deep into the kishkes of the Los Angeles International Airport, here's what flashed into my mind as to what I'd be up against: Now, let me say, I was not required to do this LAX drop off. I could have said what I was thinking, which was OH, HECKS, NO! And the person needing the ride would have gladly called an Uber. But, alas, as great as was my fear of facing my fear, I had even more fear of being seen as the wimp that I am. Dread of being seen as a wimp has been a motivating factor for me on more (many more) than one occasion. And this was to be another of those occasions. So I sucked in my breath, girded my psychological loins, whistled a happy tune and headed out with my passenger (who had no idea of the mortal fear I was also transporting) to LAX. I made it into the airport. And, perhaps because I had steeled myself for the airport being the nine fiery rings of hell all rolled into one, it wasn't nearly as bad as I had feared. Not that it was all that good, either. Initially I felt as if as if I were piece in a moving chess game, the goal of which was to switch lanes. I decided to keep my distance and let anybody who needed a space in my lane have it; ...because it occurred to me that chances were that eventually I was going to need to change lanes, too, and you can never stock up on too much karma. As it turned, out I needed to collect on some of that karma soon enough when I needed to get myself over to the Departures lane, ...where once I made it over I was set, realizing that one needed only to stay in this lane, passing by the numerous terminals, ...until one arrived at one's terminal of destination, which in the case of my passenger was Terminal 4. I started singing to myself the words of Leo Bloom from the musical "The Producers:" I can do it! Karmic payback again arrived when I needed to pull up to the drop off curb and someone pulled out of a space - which I gave them room to pull out of - which allowed me to pull in. I left off my passenger and was jubilant. Until this behemoth pulled up right in front of me. Another vehicle pulled in close behind me, two lanes of traffic whizzed by me, and my hopes of getting out of this place before the next millennium began slowly sinking. As previously pointed out, I am no fearless rocket girl behind the wheel. But then, glory be, karma came through again, this time most spectacularly, when the car behind me - apparently manned (or womaned, I didn't notice which) by a much more virtuostic hot-rodder than myself - zipped out into the traffic fray at the same moment that a driver in the traffic lane stopped to give me enough time to back out and pull out front of them (so that they could pull into my space. Karma sometimes hands out double gifts). I needed karma to deliver one more time: this was when I needed to pull left to get into to the Century Boulevard lane. And karma did deliver, though after that last lane change I figured I had zeroed out my karma account.
By the time I made it back to the house all was calm again and I was asked how it went at the airport. "Oh, fine," I replied as nonchalantly as can be and feeling very brave and grown up - and sweaty - indeed. Books by Patti Liszkay available on Amazon: "Equal And Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888 "Tropical Depression" https://www.amzn.com/B0BTPN7NYY |
"Tropical Depression"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTPN7NYY "Equal And Opposite Reactions"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa or from The Book Loft of German Village, Columbus, Ohio Or check it out at the Columbus Metropolitan Library
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