Month: November 2016

This #%*~@ Election

To say I was dismayed by the presidential election would be an understatement. 

Disbelief would be closer. 

How……? How could thinking human beings….??? 
But it is what it is and I can’t change anything now but my own attitude. I can hope. 
I can hope that the President Elect (henceforth to be called PE because I still can’t. ) will learn how to act more like a president and less like a reality star. Because we all know “reality stars” aren’t real any more than Santa Claus. 
I have read his proposal on gun control, and while I don’t agree with all of it, it is movement forward including more emphasis on mental health issues. 
If he/they can come up with a better alternative to Obamacare, I’m all for that. I believe Obamacare addressed the wrong end of the issue. I think prices for healthcare, especially drug costs and costs for routine tests and procedures should be more fair. Last year, I was charged over $900 for a so called 3D mammogram by a hospital when (if I had known ) I could have paid one tenth of that for a digital mammogram at an independent radiology lab. And then, there’s the highly publicized increase of the cost of an Epipen. Other drugs have taken that route too. 
But then, there’s that infamous wall. The people who live in Arizona where parts of a wall between Mexico and the US has been built will tell you it’s a joke. If there’s a 10 foot wall, there will be 11 foot ladders. And you DO remember how El Chapo escaped from jail, tunnel building is a science. 

I have ridden a boat down a section of the Rio Grande between Texas and Mexico and it would be a crime against beauty and nature to put a wall there. Not to mention, in places, you would have to put it down the middle of the river and I don’t see that working out, yeah, Mother Nature would have something to say there. 
And there is the fact the PE has validated hate and made it an acceptable thing with no consequences. Like a group of white students chanting “build that wall” in a school cafeteria and the Hispanic students being so afraid, they were crying. Like a Muslim woman having her hijab pulled at and told “we don’t do that here”. Like David Duke getting back into politics. Like the KKK having a parade celebrating the PE’s election. 
I have a coworker who is bisexual and he told me he woke up Wednesday to a text from his mother asking him to start carrying his gun with him at all times. She fears for his safety that much. 
The vice president elect actually believes homosexuality can be cured by electroshock therapy. Yeah. 

Let that sink in. 

He also denies evolution. 
The PE denies climate change. 
But again, I have to hope the PE will soon learn this is not only a new ball game but a new universe and he has to learn a whole new set of rules and live with them. This not an elite Fortune 500 stage he’s playing on now, this is the real world. And actions have consequences further than his lawsuits can take him. 

I hope he will learn to think beyond himself and actually represent the people of the US. 

I hope he will not try to make this country into another Trump tower in tribute to himself. 

I believe he will bring change, I just hope it will be for the better of the majority of the little people, not just the 1%. 
I feel sorry for Melania, but by now she knows who she married. And the irony of her championing the victims of bullying almost makes me cry. I predict she will be an ornament but not a political presence like the last few First Ladies. 

One of my friends on Facebook has been a supporter of PE all along and he has posted some things I was offended by. I called him out on a couple of them and his defense was “but they were funny!” I didn’t find them so but… I think I even reported one of them as offensive. I was able to block the worst source so I didn’t have to see them anymore. And some really were kinda funny. Thing is, when I posted an opposing view with humor, he was able to laugh at them too. Neither of us expected the other to change views and were ok with that. We had what started out as another heated discussion tonight but it ended when all was boiled down, we agreed. But the key here was, we both listened and looked deeper and listened again. 

Can I say it again: we both listened and looked deeper and listened again. 

And we found out that this PE supporter and this “bleeding heart liberal” (as I was called) AGREED. 

Agreed on how to act and how to treat others. Agreed that we need to be open to change. Agreed that right now, it’s an open wound and people feel betrayed and it’s gonna hurt like crap. 

But we agreed if we ALL keep working at it, treating each other with respect and listening even if we don’t agree, it’ll get better. 

I have to hope and believe it will get better. 

But the hate HAS to stop! 
I never really considered Canada as a place to move to, they have real winter up there. But New Zealand might be a nice place to spend the next four years or so.

I was schooled a couple of weeks ago by a young man from the Taos Pueblo on how long it takes to get sacred lands back from the US government. 
Now, keep in mind, the Taoseños were never actually evicted from their home, the Taos Pueblo is the longest continually occupied city in North America. So they had a strong bargaining position. 

Teddy Roosevelt was laying claim to land to be part of his National Forest program and claimed their sacred Blue Lake as part of the national forest. This is the source of the river that runs through their pueblo and provides their water. 

This young man said every year, from two to four times a year, the Elders sent a delegation to Washington to petition for the return of their Blue Lake and sacred lands. For sixty four years. Things about that a moment. Sixty four years before the land and lake was returned to them. That is determination. That is persistence. 

Now think if they, like so many other First Peoples, had also lost their homeland. At some point, you would realize there was no reclaiming all that had once been yours. All you could hope for was some small part of what had once been, barely enough to live on. And considering, all the broken promises and all the land stolen, you would decide to live in the small parcel you were allotted. And if what you had considered sacred land, where ancestors were buried, was part of a tract of undeveloped land, with no fences around it, and no guards, wouldn’t you still consider it at least partly yours? After all, you kept the stories and legends alive and visited the land sometimes and still felt the bond. You didn’t need scientists and archaeologists to tell you it was sacred, you knew it in your heart. 

And this is where the oil company has decided the pipeline is going. And US Army Corp of engineers has agreed. It was rerouted from a route that would have brought it too close to the river that supplies Bismarck with its water. So the city is more important than the Indians who live in the way of the alternate route. 

Like all people are not equal. 

Like Indians don’t count. 

Like sacred ground only exists in the minds of the ones who remember. 

Like oil pipelines never leak.