TRUMP RANT

My heart breaks, and my blood boils.  The suffering in Puerto Rico. The NFL controversy. Charlottesville. The efforts to sabotage Obamacare. The resurrection of Frederick Douglass.  When will it end?  How many times will he imply that all black people live on one dark street in Chicago, where we routinely shoot each other? How many times will he trash Mexicans, Muslims and war heroes? When will his dog whistle stop signaling that whites rule, and the rest of us don’t count? Will he ever see the beauty, the honor, the strength, and the intensity of our American mosaic?  Can he spell the word mosaic?   I wonder if he acknowledges any color other than white (or gold). I doubt it. 

When I’m in a New York City subway car, I see the embodiment of Lady Liberty’s huddled masses.  I hear a rhapsody of foreign languages, and the lilt of jangling accents. I listen to the urban slang, the New York-isms, the Transit-speak, and standard English. It’s jazz. It’s rock ‘n roll. It’s klezmer. It’s salsa. It’s R & B. It’s opera. It’s the American songbook of life.  I see faces of countless hues and features, and glorious fashions from goth to glamour to Goodwill. I spot hijabs, caps, hoodies, kufis, and pork pies. And then I marvel at the hair – crinkly, straight, braided, curly, twisted, spiked, shaved, and all over the place.  So lovely. So American. I devour it.  But this man lives in a gilded castle in the sky, with no appreciation for the multi-colored fabric he represents.     

''A gorgeous mosaic of race and religious faith, of national origin and sexual orientation.'' – Mayor David Dinkins

The mayor was talking about New York City, but in truth, he described America.  We’re all different.  But we are one, whether we’re in Wichita, Beaufort, Dallas, or Brooklyn.  Our president should be driving this point home. 

He has the great honor and privilege of serving all of us, and he doesn’t seem to care.  He’s too busy playing golf, watching television, picking fights with CNN, and enjoying the slobbering and slurping sounds of people sucking up to him. He has the most important job in the world. But he’s playing it off, like it’s a joke. Like we’re a joke. At the White House, if they serve him his two scoops of ice cream, and he can get out of Dodge on weekends, he calls it an AMAZING day.   Where I come from, we call it “getting over.” He spends a day doing as little as possible, gets a paycheck, basks in accolades, and takes Air Force One to Bedminster or Mar-a-Lago, on our dime. 

We're getting screwed.

How does one begin to describe his handling of recent disasters?  In a word - disastrous.   His disdain for any skin color other than lily white was amplified when he finally got to Puerto Rico. We know how long it took him to get there.  We heard the conversation about body counts from the “real catastrophe,” Katrina.  And we saw him tossing Brawny paper towels to people who were hungry, had no drinking water, and could not bathe themselves or their babies. They couldn’t flush their toilets. Dying people. Desperate people.  Sick people.  When he left, this is what he said to one of the traumatized families.

“Have a good time!”   

WTF?     

There is no way to justify his behavior. We all know what it is – CRAZY.  He’s unstable.   He’s taking a huge stab at destroying our country.  And he’s just getting started.

By the time  he visited victims in Las Vegas, his ”Adult Day Care Team” administration wised up.  They kept him tethered to a script at every turn, and staged each photo op. Bingo. Like a baby, clutching his mother’s apron strings, he made it through the day without insulting anybody.   Oh, wait. Didn’t he tweet his “Warmest condolences” to the victims and their families?  Guess he did it early, before any of the grownups were awake.

I agree with Rex Tillerson.  The man is a f------ moron!

Add your own caption.

As North Korea flew bombs over Japan, he thought it was as good a time as any to insert himself into an NFL protest.  So, the President of the United States of America called the kneeling players S.O.B’s. Are you freaking kidding me?  Only an idiot would insult a black man’s mother – that’s asking for it.  But they all took the high road (and so did their mamas). These black millionaires have been kneeling to call attention to the injustices experienced by African-Americans who are murdered while sitting in their vehicles, or while running for their lives, unarmed.  Who is he to criticize? Will he ever have to worry about Baron being shot, just because his skin is white? I hope not. Does he realize these athletes are exercising their First Amendment rights?   He insists they’re being disrespectful to veterans and to the flag, even though many have said they come from military families.  And how respectful has he been to members of our armed forces?  He continues to dog John McCain and he insulted a Gold Star family.  Nine U.S. soldiers – three in Niger and six in Afghanistan, died last week.  He has yet to publicly acknowledge their passing.  And when one of their bodies came home draped in our flag over the weekend, he was golfing in Bedminster.

It takes courage to kneel – to protest, in full view of millions of Americans. I don’t know If I could do it.  They're receiving death threats; they should get kudos.  Unlike the president, who stirs up hate at all-white rallies, these men are peaceful. Silent. They are posed on one knee, as suggested to them by a veteran.  I believe they will persevere, just like Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Muhammed Ali, and so many others who came before them. 

“Do what you feel in your heart is right – for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do and damned if you don’t.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

This president will never understand.  Here is why they kneel. 

MAGA.  What does it mean?  I believe it is code for Make America White Again.  But that will never happen, because America was never white in the first place.  Ask our Native American brothers and sisters.  They will never forget. And we should not forget that slavery predates the founding of the United States of America. We’ve been here forever and we’re not going anywhere.    

He doesn’t seem to care how many Americans, white or otherwise, are proud of their country’s depth and breadth of colors, religions and cultures. He's hell bent on making this nation white as snow, from coast to coast. So, he writes executive orders, to get rid of Muslims and immigrants.  He shows his ass in Puerto Rico, letting the world know he doesn’t care about its people, his people - American people.  He said black Americans have nothing to lose.  Truth is, we'd like to lose him.  We've had his number for years. Here’s a quote from one of his black Atlantic City casino workers.

“When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” Kip Brown, a former employee at Trump’s Castle, told the New Yorker for a September article.

“It was the eighties, I was a teen-ager, but I remember it: they put us all in the back.”

He also disparaged his black casino employees as “lazy” in vividly bigoted terms, according to a 1991 book by John O’Donnell, a former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino.

And we all know about the Central Park Five.

What does he know about African-Americans? This country was built on the backs of my ancestors. We should never be minimized or characterized as a race of ne’er do wells or thugs.

“I, too, am America.”  - Langston Hughes     

We are all important.  We have equal rights.  We are Americans.

My parents were freedom fighters.  My mother picketed in front of Woolworth’s in New York City, in support of black southerners who were fighting for the right to sit at the counter for lunch. Note the different colors of the people picketing in this photo.  That's my America.  Our America. Not Trump's America. Still, some passersby and haters spit in my mother's face. Yet she never gave up on the Civil Rights Movement.  She marched and sat-in until she was too weak to fight anymore, and God took her home at a young age. That’s my heritage.  That’s my history.  Her spirit is in me.  Her love of country is in me. That’s why I will use my voice to call him out, and my vote to get him out of office.  

People of all colors and creeds have struggled and sacrificed their lives to make this country great – and that includes immigrants.  Great contributions to science, technology, agriculture, and more, have come from all ethnicities.  It’s not about white people.  It’s about America.  

There are so many more puke-worthy, un-American Trumpisms.  Like “fake news.”  Birtherism.    The Putin bromance. Pussy-grabbing.  Tweet storms.  Interviews peppered with talk about women bleeding from various body parts, and press conferences lauding “very fine” white supremacists. Then there's the narcissism. The lies.  The unpredictability. Un-presidential. Unthinkable. Unprecedented. Uncouth.  But dammit!  Not unstoppable!  He will NOT win this one.

Keep the faith.  No living president would endorse him.   All is not lost.

The presidency should exemplify strength, truth, honesty, dignity, grace, patience, and wisdom.  He has no scruples and he cannot lead.  He does not unite us.  He’s fueling a race war. We’re seeing swastikas.  Aryan Nations are marching in our streets. KKK members no longer hide under white sheets.  Some people in Charlottesville were shouting, "Heil Trump!" What’s next? "Strange Fruit"?*       

This country is in trouble.  POTUS. Does. Not. Embrace. American. Values.

We must continue to do the things he can neither fathom nor carry out. We must condemn white supremacists, KKK and Neo-Nazis.  We must stand up (or kneel) so that black men, women and children won’t die while driving, or walking, or while just being black. Because Black Lives Matter.  White Lives Matter. Blue Lives Matter.  All Lives Matter.

“We must fight till hell freezes over and then fight on the ice.”   - Verner Tandy Woodson 

No more Sandra Blands.  No more Philando Castiles.  No more Heather Heyers. No more Tamir Rices.  No more Carmen Yulín Cruz Sotos, pleading to save the lives of a people – American people.

There is no master race.   This is America.

It’s 2017.  Don't let him turn the clock back.     

Stay woke.  Vote.  Resist.

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*"Strange Fruit" is a song performed most famously by Billie Holiday, who first sang and recorded it in 1939. Written by teacher Abel Meeropol as a poem and published in 1937, it protested American racism, particularly the lynching of African Americans  - Wikipedia

“Southern trees bear strange fruit,

  Blood on the leaves and blood at the
  root,

  Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees…”  -