People speak, tweet, and write Ignorant and/or hateful words every day
Our tendency is to deem the speaker as crazy, joker/troll, uninformed, out-of-the-loop, or not living in our reality. Safe in our bubble, we forget the incident and live our lives as before. There is fallout. By ignoring all the signs and failing to take action, we are responsible for allowing people filled with hate, ignorance, and fear to gun down African Americans on our streets, massacre children in our schools, and murder the religious in their in churches, mosques, and synagogues.
Family, friends, and the workplace
If those who have raised, loved and love us, who share our work, play, and emotional lives, our relationships, and our community initiate or repeat hate-speak, we choose, out of familiarity, to see them as quirky, harmless, and “just the way he or she is.” So, we pay it no mind. Maybe we have a set response, “Yeah, sure.” It’s not absurd to think the speaker is kidding or kidding themselves, They would never act. It has to be sarcasm or maybe a joke. In any case, the words get lost in the wind. Forgotten. Until their actions initiate a déjà vu moment — “Hmm. I’ve seen this, heard this, knew this was coming, but how?”
Hearing is not the same as listening
Listening is a skill — so is paying attention, staying in the moment, and having an honest and truthful conversation. How we respond in word and deed is the key to keeping or rejecting personal and professional relationships, integrity, and respect.
Leadership spins information
In 2018, POTUS, by his words and grammar, provokes comments on social media and in opinion pieces that point out his shortcomings with respect to his knowledge, focus, care for all U.S. citizens, empathy, and understanding as to how government works. His critics point out his flaws, inaccuracies, and lies he uses to spin a perspective and keep his voter base.
For example, the first time I heard about “the coal crisis” was when POTUS was a candidate. What? The country is poised to embrace clean and renewable energy – not coal. My social media lit up with laughter. Not so much when later, after he took office, he encouraged coal mining and removed EPA bans on dumping processing pollutants into clean rivers and streams.
Crazy words — harmful actions
Every time I see derogatory comments, I look to the words that caused them. They appear as misspelled words, in corrupted grammar and incoherent babblings. And yet, we must not dismiss them. His messages defy logic for some of us and make perfect sense to others. They hear the key phrases like, “I’m going down in history as one of the best Presidents ever.” “The economy is strong.” “Nice people on both sides.” “I’ve brought more jobs to this country than ever before.” “I’m a winner.” And recently, “I’m a Nationalist.”
Unapologetic and unchecked by Congressional inaction
Regardless of the state of his health, without a congress or a supreme court to curb him, he has played to the White Nationalists and the entrenched patriarchy. He is on their side. In return for his public largess, not only will he solidify their votes, but he has also enabled their hate and abuse, and encouraged and approved their violence.
Words incite and followers act
Six percent of this country is now ready to show the other ninety-two percent who is in charge. Yes, I know there is two percent missing. That elite group finances the chaos, the GOP, trolls, and whoever else can distract us from the obscene billions they spend to keep our country divided so they can usurp our resources for their own power and greed.
Talk is cheap and easy
It is far easier to mock than strategize, to satirize than do, intellectually understand the problem than develop the skills to subvert the impending catastrophe. Just as Congress’s has tried to lure us into a sense of okay-ness, normalized appalling behavior, and indulged in such themselves, we can’t buy this aberrant behavior as unstoppable — there is a way and we have to take action and find it.
Can our institutions save us?
Wait. Wait! The Mueller investigation will save us. The New York Attorney General’s investigation, 45’s tax returns, 45’s charity abuse, 45’s blatant disregard for the emoluments clause, 45’s Stormy Daniels case – will any of these save the country from the Russian/Bannon-encouraged transformation of POTUS to dictator?
It’s been a long time coming
The oligarchy’s coup of our republic, lead by the kleptocracy and managed by the kakistocracy, happened while Americans fought for their piece of the American dream and were achieving it. In the boom of housing and jobs, nothing seemed wrong. The golden ring was there for the taking while capitalist machinations worked at removing the underpinning of the American worker.
Unions disappeared, wages stagnated, and jobs either disappeared or changed to part-time. It became harder and harder to make a living wage while the stock market soared. Filled with hope, people put their life savings into the housing bubble. McMansions for the price of a rental. Mortgages available on a signature. Until the bubble burst. The dream collapsed. The people not only lost their life savings — they paid for the Wall-Street bail-out.
The divide between the haves and have-nots deepened. Most Americans scrambled to keep their lives and families together and corporations fed on their pain and jumped on the perfect political storm. Desperate people, gloating capitalists, and cunning foreign powers backed those who promised to turn lead into gold.
The big reveal — the words
With each reported transgression, public safety, and private behavior, the people were blinded by a bombardment of words — fake news, lies, and investigations, plus fake accounts of abuses. For those who still didn’t believe, the Senate’s judicial hearing for nominating Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, gave us televised insight into the real and present patriarchy – white men, particularly rich white men are entitled to rape, pillage, lie, destroy, and encourage racism, misogyny, isolationism, and sexual predation without repercussion. Words of their presence were poo-pooed. Never. Ridiculous.
The big reveal — the action
Then, on that fateful day of Karnaugh’s rebuttal and mock interrogation, we saw it – the patriarchy. In full view, a woman’s experience denied, sexual abuse shunted aside, abuser posing as the victim, rage at the insignificance of the whole hearing, and assurances from McConnell that the whole hearing didn’t matter as it was already a done deal. In total disbelief, we watched as actions fulfilled the promise.
Words mocked S.O.P.
All those words we mocked in the 2016 primaries. Words and promises we couldn’t, wouldn’t believe. Words we thought would be tempered by our institutions and branches of government were ignored. The Words cropped up in executive orders, spilled out of the mouths of congresspeople, filled our airways and social media. Executive Orders disregarded Democracy. A GOP Congress offered no restraint. We didn’t listen. The joke was on us. Words turned into actions.
Actions decimated S.O.P
Actions followed rhetoric and ignored standard operating procedures (SOP) and the welfare of all Americans. They put immigrants and refugees as well as ethnic Americans, especially those of color, at risk. Executive orders poisoned our waters and our air. They permitted the pollution and rape of our natural resources. Actions that say all people are not equal. Actions that target all non-members of the patriarchy — the majority of Americans. Actions that undermine the very fabric of the Bill of Rights.
We still didn’t listen
Americans have been lulled into America first, America the brave, the free, and the land of opportunity. Society gaslighted us to believe we lived in the greatest, most benevolent, most generous country in the world. We thought our country spread democracy and fought injustice wherever we could. We believed it all – until we didn’t.
When Trump said, “We’re not so good either. We’ve done a lot of bad things,” my antenna went up. I thought he was talking about working with Russia’s Putin, but this source shows him responding to questions about the Philippine’s Duterte. In both cases, those leaders are responsible for heinous crimes. Still, “We’ve done a lot of bad things” caused me to find out what he was talking about. And, I did. And, he was right. FYI Note the simple language. No big words. Single syllables. Easy to understand. No quibbling over inflection or meaning. Straight talk. And, by listening, I went down a path of enlightenment.
Bad things – genocide and slavery
Our forefathers usurped this “land of the free” from the Native Americans by disingenuous agreements, false narratives, and genocide. Once we “owned” the land, self-entitled men built empires by enslaving others. Slavers stole and kidnapped Africans from their native country and sold them in Southern marketplaces. White men bought, abused, tortured, and worked their slaves to death. Factory workers fared only a little better. They worked ten to fourteen-hour days for pennies. Owners grew wealthy and the poor remained, well, poor. In time, slarvery moved from the open fields to the enclosed prisons. Free labor means increased profit.
The Constitution and The Bill of Rights
We knew we had a Constitution and a Bill of Rights. Reading them was a bore. There were words, lots of words. Instead of doing our own research, we were schooled with government approved books that gave us “the big ideas” without the small details. We watched and listened to media, owned and operated by “those in the power,” comforted that our country was safe and held the moral high ground. All was good – until it wasn’t.
Rhetoric became action
Actions shook our faith and stole our protections, degraded our air and water, and abused women, people of color, and children. Actions enslaved workers imprisoned and not, killed endangered species, and depleted natural resources. Actions have displaced millions from their homes and land.
Our action determines our quality of life
If we are to live, we must halt the actions that harm and abuse us. The clock is running out on humanity. While we may not be subjected to mass extinctions or genocide, we will find ourselves unable to thrive on a planet without potable water or breathable air.
Listen to the words. Understand and do research. Reject the lies. Follow the data. Take responsibility for the world your children and grandchildren will be forced to contend with. Seek the truth. Reject abusers (on any level) and abusive actions. Make your actions count.
Words matter. Our Actions matter more. #VOTE #VOTE #VOTE
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