“It is always patriotic to protest wrongdoing.”
As a 73-years-young witness to the 50’s,
60’s, 70’s, 80’s ,90’s, and beyond, I have seen the Republicans in our
current Congress abandon morality for fealty to their rich corporate donors,
and have witnessed too many of them behave like the citizens in the Emperors’
New Clothes, none of whom could admit that their leader had fallen for a scam
and believed his tailor’s magic talents dressed him in the best of the
best…when in fact he was traipsing around in the nude. No one but a
clear-thinking child had the courage to say exactly what he saw!
This is how the Republican Congress has
behaved under Trump, with a decreasing percentage of US citizens who support them. The Republicans repaid their wealthy donors
with a tax bill that will eventually put over 90% of the country’s assets in
the hands of the 1%.
The Republican Congress has ignored the
facts outlined in The Dangerous Case of
Donald Trump. This book, written by 27 of our country’s esteemed mental
health professionals, provides their learned analysis of Trump’s mental illness
and the danger it poses to our country.
Trump’s team tried to obstruct justice in
January of 2018 by hiding evidence given to congress about actual recorded
phone calls proving criminal associations between the Trump administration and
Russian agents; the facts were recently released by Senator Diane Feinstein in
defiance of Republicans who are colluding with the crimes of the administration.
Corruption destroys democracies. Mexico’s
government has never achieved true democratic representation of the people’s
needs and values due to criminal corruption, and the country is set to explode
due to overpopulation, religious discouragement
of family planning, and the poverty-driven increase in criminal recruits.
The American Dream is dependent on a
system that supports the rule of law in a democracy designed to include all our citizens in the health,
education, and self-actualization that comes from a united citizenry. Only
patently ignorant or selfish people deny the value added to our communities
through public support for higher education. Millions of people are ready,
willing, and able to contribute greatly to our country’s fiscal health and
growth, if we can contribute to their education and training.
To respect civil rights for all citizens,
we must demand equal rights for the half of our citizens who are employed:
women. Our economy and our culture will benefit greatly. Regardless of our
political party, we must have the right to equal
pay for equal work and an educational
and work environment free of sexual
harassment from male co-workers. The right to control our reproduction and
health care choices should never be taken from us. The Pew Research Center on
Religion and Public Life states “As of 2017, public support for legal abortion
remains as high as it has been in two decades of polling. Currently, 57% say
abortion should be legal in all or most cases.” With Justice Kennedy
retiring from the Supreme Court, the Trump plan is to replace him with a
justice who will swing the court’s vote against Roe v. Wade and deny legal
abortion in the US. Less than 22% of
voters want to impose their minority religious beliefs onto citizens who do not
share their views. Since they can’t win fairly at the polls, they want to
override it by putting religious extremists on the Supreme Court.
I had two unplanned pregnancies for which
I chose adoption over abortion. I never heard any woman say an abortion altered
the course of her life (except botched illegal abortions) but thousands of
women say adoption did just that. Why? Because of the huge difference in grief
experienced, the lack of expert counseling, the social stigma, and the adoption
industry’s bias toward adoptive parents’ comfort and security over the
birthmother’s instinctive drive to know how her child is doing in their
adoptive home. Adoption was my choice
in 1963 because abortion was illegal. Adoption was my choice in 1974 because initially
I was planning to marry and raise my daughter, but marriage plans changed when
I was too far along to consider abortion. I was not willing to raise my child
alone. It had nothing to do with religious beliefs.
Women will never be in control of their
futures if they are denied control of their reproduction. The anti-abortion
movement was initially driven by the Catholic church, and evangelical Christians
who believe a man is the unquestioned leader of the family, and the woman’s
role is subservient to his. The woman’s “godly” role is to stay home and have
children, supplementing income where possible, but not in any full-time equally
paid profession. Women without economic power, like my mother who never worked
outside the home, are often forced to stay in unhealthy marriages because they
can’t duplicate the standard of living they currently have if they choose to live
independently. Considering that over half of first marriages fail, as do 67% of
second marriages, and 73% of third marriages, it has been hypothesized that
women’s financial independence as they age, makes them less dependent on
marriage. (Psychology Today, Mark Banschick, M.D. 2012).
Women’s rights are a subset of civil
rights. No one can say they love this country if they refuse to support civil
rights and education for all its
citizens. Discrimination produces conflict and violence. Without unity, we
devolve out of a true democracy, into a predator-prey paradigm. Many
short-sighted people are forgetting that our only viable competitive edge for leadership in the global economy,
fostering global health and welfare, is our unified
support for civil rights within the country and protection of free nations
around the globe.
If you are sounding the alarm with your
representatives in government, if you are working to elect legislators and
policy makers who support the programs that educate, unite, heal, and protect
our environment, our infrastructure, our diverse citizenry, our partnerships
with democracies around the world, then––at this sensitive point in history––you
are contributing to the survival of the United
States of America. If you are young, don’t be politically passive. When my
generation has passed on, you will have to set limits on greed, violence and
corruption, inside and outside of your government, or the protections you
desire for your career and your family will be lost.
If you are feeling victimized by hurtful, greedy
and immoral people, hang out with survivors and overcomers…people who have
learned how to get their power back. If
you identify as a victim, you will recover at a snail’s pace. How do you
know if you are stuck in a victim mentality? If you’re chronically angry,
resentful, bitter, and judgmental, you are either in the first few years of a
PTSD response, or you are prolonging your vulnerability with destructive
beliefs, opinions, and expectations. There is no experience from which we
cannot heal if we learn how to focus our thoughts and emotions into
constructive action.
If you are reading this, you are in the
minority…most people don’t read the entirety of any book they begin! (Okay,
maybe you’re one of those who peeks at the end before you begin). Either way,
go a bit further, especially if you enjoy the idea of evolving into the higher
powers available to you. You will find references to ideas and books that
invite you to view your humanity and your evolution as an adventure in expanding consciousness, instead of a
day-to-day encounter with a consciousness-narrowing version of pre-digested
religious dogma. If the mystical life is nothing new to you, then you really
are a rare bird…keep flying high!
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