Time Change

 They tell me the time change is tonight, but I fear it is actually on Tuesday, when we may be falling back to 1933.

What took everyone so long to say the F word about 45?

I have been shouting from the cyber-rooftop (a.k.a. Facebook, mostly) since 2016 (possibly 2015) that Trump is a fascist.  Actually, initially, I shouted that he was a "wannabe fascist".  He graduated to actual fascist with his family separation policy, in which he KIDNAPPED babies and children from who they belong with, put them in cages in concentration camps with nothing but a "Mylar blanket", neglected them and traumatized them for life, and orphaned many of them as he didn't record who they belong with.

I've been shouting DANGER, DANGER, FASCIST, FASCIST for 9 or 10 years.  It's amazing to me that suddenly now, just days before this treasonous traitor of a sociopathic fascist could actually assume power again and will, if that happens, take our country into fascism, people who were very high up in his administration are speaking out and the news media is actually covering it.  While I'm saying hallelujah to that, I'm also saying WHAT THE BLEEP TOOK YOU SO LONG?!  So long to say it, in some cases, and also so long for the news media to pick up on it and actually USE THE WORD and talk about it.  The F word.  FASCIST.  FASCISM.

We have ONE chance to stop 45 the fascist from becoming 47 the fascist and, this time, with the guard rails of our amazingly strong constitutional republic so weakened by his first term and all that his COMPLICIT party has done since, from taking America into fascism.

For anyone thinking of not voting for any reason, I must quote Cher's character in the movie "Moonstruck":  SNAP OUT OF IT!

VOTE!

SNAP OUT OF IT and VOTE!

Short and Sweet

The only walls and bans that all of 45's xenophobic othering attempts to appeal to his equally xenophobic base are going to get him this time around are a big, beautiful wall of voters who are going to ban him from ever entering the White House again!

Stop the Train! (VOTE in November against 45 ever becoming 47!)

I was up way past midnight, watching 45's absolutely horrifying and terrifying speech to the RNC.  I don't know which is more frightening:  the fact that he engages in such blatantly dehumanizing, hate-inducing othering, or the fact that his cult following is so rah-rah fueled by that.  The way 45 dehumanizes immigrants is horrifying.

He kept lying, first of all, and saying that the current administration is somehow bringing in thousands upon thousands of illegal immigrants from "mental hospitals" and "prisons", and that all these thousands, upon thousands are an "invasion" of "murderers and rapists".  He kept using the word "invasion" and talking about how all these murderers and rapists and violent criminals are "invading" by the thousands, as soon as Biden somehow (per 45's lies that he kept repeating last night) is releasing them from mental hospitals and prisons (I didn't realize that Biden somehow was in charge of mental hospitals and prisons in Mexico and/or Guatemala and/or wherever, but, according to 45's lies, somehow Biden is just bringing in this "invasion" of murderers, rapists and, oh yeah, I left out that they are all terrorists, too, into "our country").

This is how dictators, how fascists, instill and/or nurture existing HATE, which they can then run on as their very fuel, weaponizing the masses to be in lock step with whatever they do.  This is how you "Other" human beings so that various groups of same are no longer looked at by the majority that the dictator wants with him, wants behind him, as human beings, and so that the dictator can then do anything he wants to those "Others" because they aren't human beings or even innocent sentient animals deserving kindness and respect, no, they are all subhuman and evil, they are all "invaders", "murderers", "rapists", "thugs", and "terrorists".

Yet when 45 was POTUS, the immigrants I saw him kidnap from their family, throw into cages in concentration camps, with nothing but a Mylar "blanket", neglect and traumatize, thereby torturing and orphaning were just BABIES.

Now he is saying that he will do mass, mass, MASS deportations the likes of which haven't been seen in American history, if he gets back into power.  And he went on and on yet again/still about how the 2020 election was stolen from him (never mind that its been litigated massively and the 2020 election was found to be totally legitimate), setting things up to not accept the results of this coming 2024 election, which, per the news last night being discussed during the RNC by the journalists on air, something like 20 states already have MAGA officials in place, in charge of certifying the election results, who are saying they will refuse to certify the results if 45 loses in 2024, which could thereby muck up the electoral college being able to proceed normally.

So we have a fascist (not a wannabe fascist, as I used to call him, years ago, until the aforementioned babies in cages, but an actual fascist, which he became upon implementing that policy) who is wanting to get back into power, who now, thanks to his despicable, complicit, disgusting party has people who have been systematically put into place over the last few years while most people assumed that the January 6th coup attempt was over (oh, it wasn't, it was just getting started), and who are now poised to basically and actually OVERTHROW THIS NEXT ELECTION IN NOVEMBER, if they have to, to get this man back into power.

Once back in power, 45 is GOING to engage in mass deportation and, in my strong opinion, WORSE--he will have concentration camps, again, and they won't just be for all the immigrants he is continuing to "Other", to dehumanize so that no one among his followers will bat an eye as the trains roll by, he will be putting American citizens onto trains to deport and/or to throw into concentration camps, too.  Mark my words, because even though, as the fictional Dr. Ian Malcolm from "Jurassic Park" said, "I hate being right all the time" (and I, in fact, am not right all the time, but I've been right all the time about everything I predicted 45 would do in his first term), I was right about everything I predicted in 2015 and 16, and throughout the 45 administration, about what he would do, even though quite a few people told me I was being over-the-top.  No, I was listening to 45 tell us and show us who he was, and I was, as Maya Angelou said in a famous quote is important to do, believing him the first time.

Friends:  it is IMPERATIVE that every single one of you reading this get out (or stay in and fill in your mail-in ballot) and VOTE in November, for whomever the Democratic presidential candidate is, it does not matter who it is, you get yourself to your polling place, and you drag every single person in your life who is of voting age with you, and you vote AGAINST 45 BECOMING 47.  Period.

America, the constitutional republic and democracy that I was amazingly blessed to grow up in, even with all its pathologies and flaws, is already gone, as of the July 1, 2024 Supreme Court ruling that we now are a kingdom (and I feel that word is way too non-alarming, as we are a potential fuhrerdom and that WILL happen if 45 becomes 47), so I thought that the ONLY silver lining of that tragic truth is that, maybe now I could finally rest.  I could stop trying to do whatever little, tiny bit I as an individual could do to save America, as I've been trying to do since I came of age in 1980.  I could just rest and maybe take a vacation one of these years.  But no, because even though our special democracy is GONE, we at least have a decent person in the presidency at the present moment, so we have not gone full fascist as far as the reality on the ground, yet.  If 45 becomes 47, WE WILL HAVE A DYSTOPIAN, EXTREMELY DARK, FASCIST COUNTRY IN WHICH WE WILL ALL FIND OURSELVES WITHOUT MOVING ANYWHERE:  IT IS COMING TO US.

Vote, vote, vote, vote, VOTE in November against this terrifying, othering, sociopathic, treasonous traitor, con artist FASCIST.  Or you will hear trains in the night and you will know you didn't do everything you could to prevent them.  And you just may even be on one.

America is gone.

In America, no one was beneath the law, and no one was above the law. That was the thing (or one of the core things) that really made America great. Now that is gone. The Supreme Court has ruled that the President is basically a King or Queen, and that s/he can do whatever the flip s/he wants, as long as it is an "official act". Let me tell you something: Hitler did a lot of "official acts". America ended today.

It didn't go out with a bang. All is quiet, and seems so normal, yet it is NOT, because my beloved country is gone. It seems so sudden. Yet it isn't sudden. It's like a death that has been coming for a while, yet when it does, you are surprised at how hard the grief and disbelief hits you.

Everything looks the same yet I'm in a different country now. And I don't know what to do.

Yes, I am a Zionist.

When I listen to the news I am horrified and also terrified, but it's a quiet, oddly calm terror, because I feel like I'm watching news from 1938 in Germany, so it's like I'm a spectator watching from far away, and surely it can't be real now.  Even though I know it's real and I know it's happening and I know it's in America and I know what I was watching was unfolding in New York City, which I thought of as one of the safest places for Jews in the world, so it does terrify me, even though all of that:  I still somehow--I guess it is a survival mechanism, so that the terror won't totally immobilize me--have some kind of denial in place, so that it feels like I'm watching a movie.  Yes, I'm terrified, since I know it isn't a movie, it's real, yet the "no, this just can't be" factor counteracts that with "Just stay calm.  Live your life.  Take care of your fur kids.  Get up and go to work tomorrow and act like everything is fine."

Yet I saw what I saw on the evening news last night.  Hate-filled antisemites taking over a subway train, demanding that "Anyone who is a Zionist, raise your hands!"  "This is your chance to get off now."  "No one?"  "Good, no Zionists here!"

😮

Did that just happen in America?  In New York City?  On the subway I've probably ridden on, and that friends of mine ride on, and could have been on?

I had to think last night:  would I have raised my hand?  I had to hope that I would have.  And that I would have said "Yes, I'm a Zionist." And also followed that with "But no, I will not get off this train."  Not in America.  I can ride the train.  ...Can't I?

Where are the chants of "From Russia to Hungary, Ukraine will be free!"?

You can tell that the "ProPals", as I keep seeing them called on social media (I personally don't like that term for them, as they aren't so much pro-Palestinian as they are rabidly anti-Israel and antisemitic, so I will just stick with calling them "antisemites", but I digress) are just blatently anti-Israel and antisemitic because, if they are so against genocide (even though they throw that word at Israel utterly incorrectly/inaccurately), WHY aren't they out blocking bridges, interrupting government meetings, and taking over various and sundry public places to protest the outrage of Putin's unprovoked war against Ukraine, in which Putin truly DOES engage in war crimes (and, in fact, is now wanted by the Hague as a war criminal) and truly DOES target civilians, and has kidnapped children and put them into camps, etc.?

I don't hear a peep out of these oh-so-woke college kids about the absolute atrocities Putin is carrying out on a daily basis in Ukraine. Why aren't they right now, TODAY, as congress is deciding whether to send help to Ukraine, there demanding that congress vote to send aid to Ukraine (oh yeah, probably because aid to Israel is also in the package--okay, let me give one of the plethora of other examples of how they could protest Putin's war crimes against humanity in Ukraine, then)? Why aren't they loudly yelling on college campuses and holding up Ukrainian flags, and accusing Putin of the actual war crimes he's committing? Where are the chants of:

"From Russia to Hungary, Ukraine will be free!" ??? (It even rhymes.)

(Answer Key: they don't care about Ukraine. They don't care about war crimes. They are just plain old, garden variety ANTISEMITES, and it takes the form of being anti-Israel (po-TAY-to, po-TA-to).