The day had finally come.
Donald J. Trump was going to take the oath of office and officially become the President Of The United States Of America. I was gong to watch him do so by sitting in front of my television screen, but my seating was delayed by a trip to the liquor store.
I didn’t need a drink to numb the pain of this coming moment. I had no interest in offering a celebratory toast. I just wanted to make an occasion out of it by enjoying a glass of wine. At least the dreading of this happening would be over. That was call for some enjoyment. There was a television on in the liquor store. The political conversation I over heard there went like this, “Oh there is Melania in a Ralph Loren dress. I love Ralph Loren dresses.”
As I seated myself in front of my TV, I watched live as the crowd filled in the space in front of where the swearing in would take place. As the time drew close I thought it odd that there was so much empty space in the aerial views of the scene. Then the television told me that reason being, was that security hadn’t let many people be seated yet. When they did, the space filled in and the show went on.
The next day, I saw on my computer screen an image of the crowd 45 minutes before President Obama took the oath in 2009, along side an image of the same scene 45 minutes before Trump did the same thing. I thought that the article illustrated by these images was going to be about why the delay in seating people for Trump. It wasn’t. I could not believe what I was seeing and continued to see as this meme spread and major media defended the truth they claimed it represented.
Major media started to laugh about “alternative facts” in response to questions about what is going on here. I tried to reassure myself that major media would get to the truth about major media lying, but remembered that it is not always good to trust a lier who claims that that it is a lie that they are lying. I thought it better to get more used to being lied to.
For the Million Women March I chose to march in Woodstock, NY. This is the Woodstock of the song lyric, “by the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong,” written and sung by Joni Mitchell and sung some more by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Never mind that this group was actually marching to Bethel, New York to smoke cannabis and hear some music, Woodstock got the credit for being counter-cultural capital of the World anyway. How the crowd at Bethel got estimated to be 500,000, I don’t know.
Woodstock was a small village then and is so today.
The Million Women March drew about a thousand marchers, if you can believe the local newspaper, The Daily Freeman. The Freeman reported on what a lovely event it was. The only trouble reported was that a man who was a Trump supporter was elbowed in the ear by a man who wasn’t. It seemed like there was some lack of ‘peace, love and understanding,” there. I think it might have been a bigger story if a Trump supporter did the elbowing.
One of my favorite signs at the March was one that read, “Free Melania.” I thought that it would be good if women everywhere could be freed from wanting to imitate the sullen facial expression worn by the new First lady through out much of the Inauguration festivities. The sullen look of the fashion model is till quite fashionable. And while we are at it, why not free the look of hopeless exhaustion of those who make women’s (and men’s) apparel at slave wages.
The Woodstock crowd featured a good deal of people with gray hair, many of whom seemed excited that people were taking to the streets once again to express their displeasure as to what had been going down lately, just like in the 1960’s and 1970’s, although not exactly like that. Some senior marchers were big on trying to get others to sing, protest marching tunes like , “We Shall Overcome.” Some marchers were too busy looking at their cell phones to join in.
What was great was to see so many children of all ages, some carrying signs.
A girl, who looked like she was about 8 years old, danced by me, as I was marching. She stopped to ask the man walking near her, about the funny red knit caps being worn. I wondered about the best way to explain what a “pussy hat” was, and why it was so popular that day, to a young girl. The man’s answer was , “If you keep dancing like that you will be too tired to finish the parade.”
Adults shouldn’t have to explain sexism to children. Children shouldn’t have to suffer it’s horrible consequences. By anybody’s count, more women marched Worldwide that day then ever before, to express that they were more than tired of the denial of their human rights. That little girl seemed to be having nothing, but a good time moving on down the road. She didn’t seem aware of why all the fuss. I hope she grows to hear a chorus of “we are overcoming” someday and that she will be able to dance to it.
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Photo credit: Getty Images
It’s almost like people participating in the march were made up of coastal elites who could either: (i) afford the well-document exorbitant hotel prices charged to attend the protests and the inauguration (see, e.g. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hotel-prices-in-dc-up-927-ahead-of-trumps-inauguration-and-the-womens-march-on-washington-2017-01-17 ), or (ii) by virtue of being “coastal” did not need to pay for a hotel in the first instance. Meanwhile, a quick glance at that 2016 electoral map demonstrates that Trump’s supporters were decidedly not located on the coast, but rather in poor areas much further inland (e.g. more rural areas of Kentucky, Tennessee, Iowa, etc.). These people would have to spend substantially more… Read more »
David….Baffled….your takeaway from watching the Presidential campaign for a year and a half…..is that the “Media Lies” and that there’s a vast conspiracy to “Get ” Trump……. just how much reporting, how many links would you like me to show you to prove the crowd size comparison………..And think….about it……..any “normal self assured individual” would laugh off comparisons anyway….explain that maybe it was the rain…or the cold or something rational….instead he/they claim “alternate facts’……….which is just code for BS……Mike I know lots of “Common folks who bused in from PA and NY state….and didn’t get a hotel at all…….to address the… Read more »