election

This is NOT the behavior of a rational adult.

/ momshieb / 9 Comments

 

I am unable to tear my eyes away from Donald Trump’s Twitter vomiting.

Its like seeing a terrible natural disaster;  you are horrified. You are filled with disbelief.

And yet.

You cannot look away.

I log on in the morning, and I cringe. I see the kind of vindictive, petty, immature ego stroking bullshit that the President-elect sends out to the world.

To be honest, if I had a 14 year old who spent his time tweeting nasty lies about other people just to make himself feel good, I’d take away his devices and get him into therapy.

Things like this:

I mean…I am a student of American history. I understand the vital importance of a free press in a democratic society. So that whole “dishonest media” line scares me.

Then there is the obvious lunacy of referring to a non-existent wall between us and our Mexican neighbors as “The Great Wall.” All you can think when you see this is, “Seriously, dude? You are comparing your proposed, unplanned, maybe its only a metaphor, border wall, or fence, or something to one of the great achievements of human history?”

The mind boggles.

I decided today that I should look at the tweets of other world leaders. You know, just to see if any of them are as…I don’t know….creepy as the ones from Trump.

I started with Obama. I scrolled through about 8 weeks of his tweets. This one pretty much sums him up:

It gets his point across, and it certainly supports his political aspirations, but when you compare it to Trump’s. Well. It looks so professional.

Next I went to Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. I wondered what he was tweeting these days.

How about these:

I tried, I did! I tried to find something self-serving, something snarky, something mean spirited or vindictive. Nothing. Rien. And may I add that Mr. Trudeau tweets in both English and French…

Then I went to Germany. Surely Angela Merkel would have something as inane and self focused as our own Big Orange Menace.

That was interesting. Mostly the German Chancellor retweets other people. When she does send her own tweets, they mostly look like this:

It says, “Thank you for your trust! Chancellor of Germany.”

Not exactly the same level of self serving ego stroking that we are seeing from Mr. Trump.

So.

OK.

Surely Vladimir Putin is just as obnoxious as his neon-headed puppet. I checked his Twitter feed, too.

This one caught my eye pretty quickly.

But this one was in there, too.

I spent a lot of time on Putin’s feed. I couldn’t find one single tweet that called any of his opponents nasty names. I couldn’t find one that made it look like Putin was responsible for everything good in the world.

I tried.

I did. I tried to find one single world leader who was as immature, as self-absorbed, as mentally unstable as Donald Trump. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t find anyone in the role of world leader who came close to the obvious personality disorder that we see in Donald Trump.

So here is my question:  Who can take center stage to name the very deep mental illness that our future President is exhibiting? There are no psychologists or psychiatrists on Capitol Hill (I checked.) But can’t someone point out the obvious?

This guy is sick. He is NOT rational. He is clearly NOT able to put the needs of the United States before his pathological need to be admired.

There must be someone in the mental health field who can step onto the national stage and call a spade a spade. Whether the issue is Narcissistic Personality Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder or something else, the truth is obvious.

Mentally healthy adults do NOT use Twitter to attack those who disagree with them. Mentally healthy adults to NOT use Twitter or other social media outlets to continually point out their own successes and attributes.

They just don’t.

The United States of America is about to swear in a delusional, mentally ill President.

Who is going to save us?

 

Oh, for the love of……

/ momshieb / 6 Comments

I can NOT wait for November 9th. Partly I will be happy to have the suspense over. I am getting really tired of waking up at 3 Am wondering if Trump is going to blow us all to kingdom come.

It isn’t only the Presidential shit storm that I want to be done with though. It’s also the endless barrage of ads about the state candidates and referendum questions.

I am unlucky enough to live in Massachusetts but on the New Hampshire border. I don’t watch a lot of TV, but every time I try to turn it on to catch the news, or a movie, or a ballgame, I am slammed with conflicting ads.

And they are all pure 100% bullshit. That’s what I really hate.

Turn on the tube two weeks before the election and you will see 8 commercials in a row. I can sum them up here:

“Raising the Charter School Cap will make every child in America a Nobel Prize Winner!”

“Raising the Charter School Cap will end education as we know it!”

“Kelly Ayotte has a halo! She once saved a choking baby and then paid for his college tuition!”

“Kelly Ayotte is the spawn of the devil. She hates babies. She kicks puppies. She eats toads for breakfast.”

“Donald Trump will save us all from eternal damnation and will make America the actual center of the universe!”

“Donald Trump will blow us all up in the first day of his administration, just because he CAN.”

Oh. My. God.

In my fantasy world, I am running for public office. I create my own ads. They go like this.

“Hi. I’m Karen. I am not smarter than my opponent, and I am not a better human being. Neither one of us has a direct line to God or to the Founding Fathers. I think I have a good plan for making things better for us. Here it is…..”

Wouldn’t that be SO refreshing? Wouldn’t we all love it?

We WOULD.

We’d all be so relieved to have some positive ads and some actual plans and ideas.

So why can’t we manage to get that point across to the people who are running for office?

I mean, I don’t agree with my friends who want to raise the Charter School Cap. But I don’t think that they are all mass murderers, either.

I don’t agree with most of Kelly Ayotte’s votes. But I don’t think she’s a monster, either. And I don’t think her opponent, Maggie Hassan, is an angel. I just agree with her ideas and her political positions.

Good Lord. Why can’t Democracy be based on some truth for a change?

I plan to drink a whole bottle of champagne on November 9th. And not because I am so thrilled with any of the election outcomes.

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What We Need To Fear

/ momshieb / 7 Comments

I know that Donald Trump is telling us that the world is crumbling all around us. He paints an apocalyptic picture that goads us into fearing everyone outside of our own circle.

I’m not actually afraid, on a daily basis, of ISIS or of my Muslim neighbors or Mexican rapists.

Here’s what I fear.

The ignorance of far too many of my fellow citizens, that’s what.

Yesterday we woke up to find that our router wasn’t working. We headed off to the nearest coffee shop to use their wifi and cheer up with pumpkin lattes.

The lattes were great, the wifi was spotty. We were talking about our frustration with unreliable internet service when another customer chimed in. He asked if the wifi was up and running, saying that he had planned to get some work done, too.

“The internet everywhere is acting up,” he said. I agreed, thinking about new cable being laid and the recent hacking.

“It’s another Obama move, you know,” the man said. “Another executive order. He turned over control of the internet to the U.N.”

This man was not crazy. He was not a beat up smelly derelict. He was a guy about our age, from our town, drinking coffee and getting some work done.

There was a silence for a few seconds. Then I shook my head. “Uh, no…,” I began. He interrupted me to repeat, “Yes. Obama passed an executive order giving control of the internet to the U.N. It’s all part of the globalization plan.”

Now, my husband is both smart and non-confrontational. He shrugged and said, “Who know. Maybe so.”

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t let that go. I mean, that statement was ignorant on so many levels!

“That’s not true.” I said to the man. “That isn’t even possible.”

“Oh,” the guy said, turning away. “You’re Hillary supporters. OK. I’m for Trump. All about Trump.”

It would be easy to dismiss this guy as an idiot. But I don’t think that’s the problem. What I wanted to do, what I want to do now, is to ask him “Did you check your sources?”

It would be SOOOOO easy to look up “Obama Executive Orders.”  Or to research, “Does Obama control the U.N.?”  It would be a snap to google “Who controls the internet?”

It’s so easy to find out information. Easier than it has ever been.

There is no excuse for ignorance.

That’s what I fear. The ignorant and uninformed.

 

Lies Told By Lying Liars

/ momshieb / 7 Comments

Sometimes I have to step away from the news. Even the news I write over on Liberal America.

Sometimes things happen that make me so mad I scare myself.

Today was one of those days. I watched news coverage and read a whole lot of online news. I was nauseated by all the reporting on the Orange Menace. The Cowardly Liar. The Dump.

He Who Shall Not Be Named.

I was disgusted, but I didn’t explode.

Not until I started to write about a new ad that the damned, accursed, loathsome NRA has taken out to run in key swing states.

It is an ad that is calculated to create unreasonable fear in citizens so that they will behave in a particular way.

It’s terrorism. It’s all lies. I was shaking and in tears by the time I finished it.

It’s a damn good thing I’m a pacifist……

Please read this. Please share it with your friends who live in those key swing states.

“NRA’s Dramatic New Ad Targets Women”Uzi_of_the_israeli_armed_forces

 

Anne Frank, and history’s lessons

/ momshieb / 2 Comments

When we were in Germany, we were both struck by how present the past remains. There are images, buildings, museums, memorial to all that happened here in World War II.

Berlin still shows where the wall once stood. There is an entire museum dedicated to recording what happened when the city was cut into pieces by those bricks and that mortar.

The city has a huge, somber, stark memorial to the victims of the holocaust, too. It’s both beautiful and haunting.

SONY DSC
SONY DSC

They bear the guilt of what was done in their country decades ago. They do not want to forget it. They talk about it often.

Why?

I think because so many people in Germany are afraid to let it happen again.

One thing that we noticed on our trip was how often people asked us about Donald Trump. What was going on in the US, they asked us. Didn’t Americans learn anything from the story of Hitler?

I didn’t have an answer. I never knew what to say.

Now we hear that Anne Frank, the young girl who wrote about the beauty of life while she was hiding in an Amsterdam attic waiting to be murdered, was denied asylum in the United States. Her father, Otto, applied for a refugee visa. He went through his brother in law, who was living in Boston.

The family was highly educated, well connected, ready to come to the US.

Their application was denied.

When I read why, every hair on my arms stood up in horror. It was as if Donald Trump had been in charge of the application.

I wrote this article, published in LiberalAmerica. I hope you’ll read it. I hope you’ll think about Anne Frank and about her family. I hope you’ll think about all of those modern Germans, asking why Americans have failed to learn from the terrible lessons of Nazi Germany.

I hope you’ll talk about this, pass it around on Facebook, bring it up at your book group.

I hope, most of all, that you will vote. And that you will vote carefully.

Anne Frank’s Tragic Story, and What We Can Learn From History