No, not here in America

I have so much to write about.  My head is spinning.   Originally, I was going to write about climate change.  The whole world is on fire and Mother Nature is very angry.

 

Other stuff keeps happening!   The FBI raided Mar-a-lago and retrieved 10-12 boxes of what may have been classified nuclear information.  tRump had his first wife buried on his golf course.  She was cremated and yet had a coffin so heavy it had to be carried by extra pall bearers.  Now I wonder what else was in that coffin.  It reminds me of Ocean’s 12, an old movie about a group of ex-soldiers plotting to raid several Las Vegas casinos.  They pulled it off but one of them died and the friends thought it was a good idea to put the money in the coffin.  The big twist was that the guy was cremated, coffin and all.   The whole tRump team and followers are reminding me of organized crime.  TFG is “the godfather”—the Don.  He was a hierarchy of people that serve different roles for him so that he doesn’t get his hands dirty.  They threaten anyone who is against them and willingly resort to violence to scare/silence the other parties.   So look now at what’s going on here.  You’ve got the “Teflon” Don still a large force in the GQP.  There aren’t enough of the true Republicans who will willingly cross him, especially since so many legislators, state AGs, and even regular employees have been threatened and harassed.  The whole January 6th committee have gotten death threats, particularly the two “traitors” Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.  The GQP thugs and assorted morons have come out in strong support of the “Big Lie” and now, defunding the FBI.  That’s a retaliation tactic for the raid on tRump’s home.  Oh, and the judge who signed permission for the raid has been receiving death threats from tRump’s loyal white supremacist violent followers.   All of this is not only like organized crime families, it’s also the tactics of rising dictators.  TFG is practically in lockstep with Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Josef Stalin, Putin, and all the other current dictators of the world.  In a dictatorship, the rights of the people are wiped out.  People who resist or rebel are jailed or executed.  What the white supremacist extremist violent groups want is an all-white “Christian” country.  So what’s to happen to people of color or different religious beliefs or different sexual orientation?  I know:  we’ll have places like Auschwitz all over again if those people don’t escape first.   Do I sound hysterical?  My imagination running away with me?  Do you think, “No, this won’t happen in America!”  My answer is to do some reading and exploring of topics and don’t rely on just social media or friends.  Start with that Lewis Powell memo and then google topics like Christian nationalism.  Review European history from the 1930s to the declaration of WWII; learn about Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin.   I used to be in that “No, this won’t happen in America” group until I got busy reading.  Now I realize how deeply in peril our democracy is.  It’s up to us to stand up and try to stop the overthrow.  The legislators aren’t going to do it.  They are too busy hating each other.  It has to be us, voting and speaking up.   Here is one of several pieces about former Justice Lewis Powell’s memo that set the Rethuglicans plotting: https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-worst-memo-in-american-history?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share   The actual memo: https://law2.wlu.edu/deptimages/Powell%20Archives/PowellMemorandumTypescript.pdf   Christian nationalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_nationalism a good place to start   White supremacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_supremacy Read other sources too!   White supremacist militaristic goups:  https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/mainstream-presence-of-proud-boys-other-extreme-groups-creates-mass-radicalization-fears   https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/all-american-extremism-guide-1361035/   Read, learn, vote.

Not This Too, SCOTUS

It’s been 32 years since the Americans With Disabilities Act was passed.  When I was growing up, there was no such thing as accommodations for people with disabilities, like my Deaf parents.  Their education was limited by restrictive language practices at most of the schools for the Deaf.  Hearing professionals had decided that Deaf people needed to assimilate into the hearing world and, therefore, they were forbidden to use sign language.  My mom went to Lexington School for the Deaf where she was brain washed into thinking that signing was shameful and animalistic.  Luckily for my dad, his school allowed the use of sign language.

There was no close captioning when I was growing up.  My parents didn’t watch the news or most programs because they didn’t understand what was going on.  Mouths moved too fast to accurately lipread more than a word or two.  There were no interpreters in little bubbles signing what was going on.  In fact, there were no interpreters.  Deaf parents relied on their hearing children (called KODAs—Kids Of Deaf Adults) for phone calls, doctor appointments, and just about everything else.

Deaf people were limited in the types of jobs they could get.  My dad was a printer; my uncle was a machinist.  My mom was a keypunch operator.  Deaf people could work in factories and on assembly lines.  In the 1960s, Deaf people could not be lawyers, doctors, managers, or any other position that required easy communication.

Hearing people generally looked down on my parents, thinking them “deaf and dumb”.  There was this attitude that somehow my parents were lesser than hearing people.  They were dismissive at best and, at worst, patronizing and paternalistic.  It’s as though they believed that in addition to the ears not working, Deaf brains must not work either.  My parents chafed under this kind of treatment.  It angered them.

They didn’t hear everything hearing people said about them.  We KODAs did.  It was a hurt we carried within us.

Things began to change in the 1970s.  In 1973, the Vocational Rehabilitation Act passed.  Sections 503 and 504 protected people with disabilities from discrimination on the job and in education.  Wow!  Suddenly, there were rights and opportunities not only for my parents but for anyone with challenges whether it be visual, mobility or what have you. 

Yet, by 1976 regulations to arm the Act with teeth weren’t signed.  Wearied by the delay, a country wide protest and sit-in was organized.  I stayed overnight in HEW Secretary Califano’s office with a roomful of protestors who were Deaf, blind, in wheelchairs, other mobility challenged and a handful of able bodied.  That’s a whole other story I need to tell.  We got the regulations signed.

My parents were middle-aged in 1976.  They were thrilled to be able to receive captioned TV on Line 21.  Had they wanted, they would have been able to qualify for a wider variety of jobs and education.  Now they were entitled to sign language interpreters for doctor visits, court appearances, job trainings, conferences, and classrooms.  In 1978, I became a certified interpreter under the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID).

Following that came more laws to assist people with challenges.  Next was PL94-142, which provided for the least restrictive educational environment.  Deaf adults took up the study of law, medicine, management, science and just about any subject they desired.  Hearing parents of deaf children could choose to mainstream their kids in hearing schools.  The children were provided with interpreters who stayed with them during the school day.  For years, I worked in the schools as an educational interpreter.

And, finally, in 1990 the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed.

My fear now is that SCOTUS could take all that away with another bad decision.  They seem to be on a track to undo all the fundamental rights protections passed in the last fifty odd years.  They’ve already undone Roe v. Wade.  They also decided that Native American reservations are not sovereign, breaking yet another treaty.  They seem to be targeting the right to contraception next, to be followed by gay marriage.

I don’t doubt they would gleefully return people with challenges to second- or third-class citizens.

I will fight it if I see even a hint of that type of thinking anywhere.

I remember what it was like for my parents.  I remember what it was like for me.  Not again, ever.