Taking a Deep Breath

Welcome back, dear friends.

It's been two weeks since I checked in with my public journal of Life in Trump's America. Last weekend my husband and I went away to La La Land, where we took in some comedy, some bad ass women's wrestling, and generally avoided anything news-related.

It was great, but in the end the real world caught up to us. It does tend to do that.

I've had a lot of thoughts since returning to Real Life, and believe it or not, not *all* of them have been about the obnoxious Orange One who now inhabits the White House. Some of them have been about chocolate, for instance, and others have been about wrestling.

Indulge me in a divergent train of thought for a moment, reader. Is it weird that at the same time our nation is facing a crisis, one pillar of which is about reality itself, professional wrestling is experiencing a much-heralded revolution? Professional wrestling, an athletic endeavor whose detractors deride as being a "fake sport," is about spectacle and storytelling and seeks to wring emotions out of its followers. 

Professional wrestling is also a big business, and its billionaire administrators have ties to the White House and the Orange One himself. Linda McMahon, wife of WWE owner Vince McMahon sits on Trump's cabinet as Secretary of the Small Business Administration.

President Trump loves to rail publicly against what he calls the "Fake News Media." A very real argument can be made that he and his administration seek to shape public opinion and push policy agendas via the creation of spectacles and sowing fear and discord in our citizenry.

Is that weird? Or am I simply, as is my wont, overthinking this? Is there a connection or am I nuts?

It's weird. Anyhow. Sorry for the digression. 

Actually, no. I'm not sorry, and frankly that wasn't much of a digression. Because the rapidly vanishing distinction between what's fake and what's real--between surreality and *actual* reality--is a central problem to life in Trump's America. I'm no longer talking about the twin rise of professional wrestling and the Trump administration. I'm talking about EVERYTHING about life now. All of it.

Our President last weekend made up a terrorist attack in Sweden. In the past month, his surrogates have also made up terrorist attacks in Kentucky and Georgia.

Trump constantly refers to the media as "fake," and polls that show his low approval ratings as "rigged."

All members of the GOP have taken to pretending that the millions of Americans who now routinely protest this administration are paid agitators. At a conservative conference this past week, NRA president Wayne LaPierre said: 

“Right now, we face a gathering of forces that are willing to use violence against us,” he said. “The leftist movement in this country right now is enraged. Among them, and behind them, are some of the most radical political elements there are. Anarchists, Marxists, communists, and the whole rest of the left-wing socialist brigade.”

LaPierre also noted that “many of these people hate everything America stands for,” including “democracy” and “free-market capitalism.”

All of these activists, LaPierre continued, were funded by left-wing billionaires such as George Soros, and are also “angry,” “militant,” and “willing to engage in criminal violence.”

Read the full article here. 

Friday the White House officially banned many solid, well-respected media outlets (including CNN, NYT, BBC, and more) from its press briefing, but allowed overtly biased outlets such as Breitbart to attend.

FYI: Breitbart's twitter bio is: "News, commentary, and destruction of the political/media establishment."

For comparison: the new masthead of the Washington Post, one of the outlets banned from the White House's press briefing, is Democracy Dies in Darkness.

Did I mention that Steve Bannon, Trump's chief political strategist, was until very recently editor-in-chief at Breitbart? Or that at least two other senior editors from that media outlet now serve the administration in a national security advisory capacity? (Read the Times article here.) 

I could cite many more examples of truth-bending from the Trump administration and its advocates. But I won't. Instead I will leave you with this quote from British politician and social activist Arthur Ponsonby:

When war is declared, truth is the first casualty. 

The revolution will be tweeted. Follow me: @Literarygrrrl

Am I Losing My Effing Mind?

Greetings. We just finished the third week of our new America. We now know that it's possible for the entire nation to live in a state of perpetual shock and outrage for at least three weeks without exploding.

Today is Saturday, February 11. Yesterday I woke up with one question in mind: What horrible thing is going to happen today? What horrible revelation or new Executive Order will come out of the White House today to horrify the nation and dominate the weekend's news?

Because that's been the pattern so far. Two Fridays ago, the Executive Order known colloquially as the Muslim Ban came out and we had a weekend of detentions, deportations, and families ripped apart. Last Friday a courageous judge in the state of Washington placed a restraining order on the ban, so we got a weekend of DJT maligning that judge, and, indeed, the entire judiciary, on twitter. So I knew that something was coming. Something had to. 

And indeed it did. It came to the nation's attention yesterday that Trump's promised mass-scale deportations of undocumented immigrants have begun. As it turns out, the operation began the previous Monday, but it ramped up towards the end of the week. You can read about it here. 

Yesterday when I turned on my car and NPR's Morning Edition poured from the speakers, I heard a report about an ICE detention that happened just two hours earlier less than half a mile from where me and my family live. A family of undocumented immigrants were stopped on the highway. Why? It wasn't reported. The driver, an adult male, was detained. ICE says he has a criminal record, but they won't provide details or evidence. He and his family fought back, and an ICE officer was taken to the ER with minor injuries. I'm positive there will be repercussion from that.

This shook me. I immediately texted my husband with what little I gleaned from the half of the news report that I heard. He looked online but couldn't immediately find any other news. By yesterday evening, however, there were reports coming from around the country.

That's exactly what I thought would happen. That's this administration's pattern: dump scary or ugly news Friday evening to whip the nation into a frenzy and encourage more protests in the nation's cities. That serves two functions: it puts on a big show of force, and it mobilizes the opposition, which will play into the federal government's hands whenever they decide to go ahead and criminalize protests and demonstrations.

Do I sound crazy? Paranoid? That's what living in Trump's America has done to me. But I'm also right. Trump's administration is working hard to divide us, and they're succeeding. There are many, many Americans who will not and do not understand why we are outraged over the start of coordinated, nationwide mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. After all, the laws being enforced predate the Trump administration, and THOSE PEOPLE ARE HERE ILLEGALLY, ANYWAY. This will be the third straight weekend of large nationwide protests, and this time we've gone from marching against a ban on refugees and LEGAL immigrants from specific Muslim countries to marching against deportations of immigrants who came here illegally.

The marches, demonstrations, and protests against Trump's unconstitutional Muslim ban, border wall, and mass deportations are wonderful and amazing and I'm so very, very proud of my fellow Americans. But that's not how everybody feels. And by associating these loud, disrupting events with so-called 'Criminal Aliens' and 'Illegals' will further inflame the passions of the Americans who wish we would all just shut up and adjust to our new way of life. 

News flash: we will not and MUST NOT shut up and adjust to our new way of life.

Even if (when) things get worse. Even if (when) the new administration criminalizes protests. Even if (when) the new administration criminalizes aiding undocumented immigrants. 

We must resist. We must persist.

I ask myself at least twenty times every day if this is real. Is Trump really saying what he's saying? Does he mean what he tweets? Is Bannon really masterminding anarchy? Are they really turning our democracy into an authoritarian regime? Or do they just want us to think so, and to be paralyzed by fear? Because it's really one or the other, right? Surely they don't believe what they're doing is democratic.

I'm trying to train myself to stop asking those questions, and to stop getting trapped into the logical mazes they create. Because, in the end, it doesn't matter. In the end, it amounts to the same thing. The only reason to cripple us with fear tactics is so they can do whatever they want without challenge. 

Whether Donald Trump calls himself President or Fuhrer, and whether Bannon ever steps out of the shadows is irrelevant. They ARE what they ARE: evil, greedy, corrupt, racist, misogynist and hell-bent on a world of chaos.

Last weekend I was demoralized. This weekend I'm ANGRY. Time to #Resist!

The revolution will be tweeted! Follow me ----> @LiteraryGrrrl

3 Reasons We Need to Hold Onto the First Amendment For Dear Effing Life

How does that Lee Greenwood song go? That's right:

'Cause I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free. And I'll gladly thank the men who died to give that right to me. And I'll proudly stand up next to you to defend her still, today. 'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land. God bless the USA!

Us Americans love that we're free. We talk about it all the time. But how often do we think critically about the constitutional framework that supports our freedom? Not often enough. That better change, though, because if President-Elect Trump's twitter feed is any indication, those constitutional supports won't be there for long after he takes the oath of office. 

Today we're going to talk about why we need to hold onto our beloved First Amendment rights for dear life. Our discussion assumes that we are taking Trump's tweets seriously as they were written. This will not be a discussion of whether it is reasonable to take the President-Elect's tweets seriously, or a forum in which we mull over all of the myriad reasons why Trump tweets the way he does (Stephen Colbert of the Late Show offered an interesting explanation, however). Those are both deserving debates and they are ones we will have another day.

3 Reasons We Need to Protect the First Amendment with Our Every Breath

• The President-Elect Wants to Strip Citizenship from Dissidents

I can not believe that I actually had to type that last sentence. Everything about it feels surreal, and yet here we are. Last week (on November 29), out of the blue, President-Elect Donald Trump tweeted that those who burn the American flag ought to have their citizenship revoked, or at least spend a year in jail. And when I say "out of the blue" I mean out of the blue. Although the constitutionality of flag burning does pop up every now and again, it's been awhile since this discussion has been on the national radar. There haven't been any flag burnings in the news. It would seem that Trump woke up that morning, shrugged his shoulders, and thought to himself: "What the hell, I'll tweet about flag burning." 

In fact, as the picture above reveals, the flag-burning tweet came sandwiched in between a tweet denigrating CNN (a constitutionally problematic tweet in its own right) and a tweet offering condolences to the victims of Gatlinburg, Tennessee's recent wildfire.

In other words: out. Of. The. Blue.

I'm not going to waste your time or insult your intelligence with a long, passionate speech about why the President-Elect shouldn't speak out against constitutionally-protected free speech and constitutionally-protected political dissent. We are starting with the assumption that we can all agree on those things. What I am focusing on here is the fact that the President-Elect is suggesting that American citizens should be stripped of citizenship for political dissent.

In America, we have birthright citizenship. (For a primer of what that means, click here.) If you are born here you are a citizen, and that can never be taken away from you. It is one of the many things that distinguishes Americans, and it is one of the many things of which we can be proud.

And President-Elect Donald Trump, weeks before assuming office, made a public statement in which he threatened to take that away from us. If you're not terrified, you're not paying attention.

• The President-Elect is waging a constant war against the free press

Since Donald Trump was certified as the President-Elect, late on the night of November 8, he has tweeted 121 total tweets (as of 8:18 pm Central Standard Time 12/06). I have poured through all of them (you're welcome) and separated them into four troublesome categories, along with a category of "other." The four troublesome categories are: anti-media, anti-first-amendment otherwise, whining about the election, and self-congratulatory.

Here is how Trump's 121 tweets divide up:

Anti-media: 21 tweets, or 17%
Anti-First-Amendment Otherwise: 5 tweets, or 4%
Whining about the election: 21 tweets, or 17%
Self-Congratulatory: 10 tweets, or 8%

That leaves 64 tweets, or 52% as "other." But don't let that fool you. These tweets aren't wholly benign. All of Trump's antagonizing tweets about China fall into this category, for example, as do all of his tweets about Carrier (and the other businesses he's calling out by name, like Boeing).

What I want to highlight in this section, however, is the anti-media category, which currently comprises a full 17% of the President-Elect's tweets. Below are a few gems from this category.

ANTI-CNN

ANTI-ALL MEDIA

ANTI-NY TIMES

(These tweets deserve some special attention. It needs to be noted that the Times only found out that Trump cancelled the meeting through this very tweet. He never called them. Then, when the meeting finally took place, he spent most of it railing at the journalists for what he deemed unfavorable coverage. Reminder, this is the PRESIDENT-ELECT.)

ANTI-ALL MEDIA

• The President-Elect's Family is Calling for FBI Investigations of Political Dissidents

Jared Kushner is Trump's son-in-law, and he is also owner/publisher of the New York Observer. On Friday last the paper published an op-ed titled "Comey's FBI Needs to Investigate Violent Democratic Tantrums." Read the full text here. This is how the article begins:

It’s time for the FBI to conduct a detailed investigation into the violence and political thuggery that continue to mar the presidential election’s aftermath. A thorough probe of the protests—to include possible ties to organizations demanding vote recounts—will give the Bureau’s integrity-challenged director, James Comey, a chance to sandblast his sullied badge.

Director Comey must also include “elector intimidation” on his post-election investigation list. Reports that members of the Electoral College are being harassed and threatened by angry, vicious (and likely Democratic Party) malcontents require Comey’s quick and systematic attention.

In other words, the author is calling for the FBI to embark on an all-out investigation of citizens who are expressing their constitutionally-protected right of free speech.

Think on that for awhile, friends.
Until next time, my fellow Americans!

The revolution will be tweeted! Follow me: @LiteraryGrrrl