Pervasive Evil

 We had our first in-person experience with an anti-masker today as we checked out of physical therapy.  There was a loud guy spouting off at the receptionist about cancelling the rest of his PT appointments because he didn’t like being required to wear a mask.  He started ranting about the government controlling us and then out came his Biblical misbeliefs.  God wanted him to fear no man, only God Himself.  And it’s against his religion to wear a mask.

Ted spoke up.  “Where in the Bible does it say we’re not allowed to wear masks?”

The man conceded there wasn’t a verse against wearing a mask but then he began to go on the offensive.  “Why are you wearing a mask?”

And Ted answered that it was to protect himself and other people.

The man was confrontational. “So you’re afraid of getting covid.”

Ted began to answer but their voices had become loud and so the head therapist, Kari, came out and put herself between the two men.  She distracted Loud Mouth long enough for TBedand I to get away from there.  Ted was really steaming!

I’ve seen some really fucked up posts and twitters from anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers but this is the first time we encountered such a fanatic in person.

I watched the hearing yesterday, mostly horrified.  It’s not that I was shocked by new revelations.  I read about tRump’s bullying of Secretary Rathensberger of Georgia last year.  I remember there was some trashing of election workers by TFG.  The difference is that what I read was just presented in that journalistic neutral language.  There was little emotion other than tRump’s absolute arrogance and corruption.

Now, though, I was hearing how deeply it affected the people who were bullied, harassed, and threatened.  The first three witnesses were all Republicans of the old GOP style, when patriotism meant doing the right thing and defending the Constitution.  Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers became emotional when he testified about how tRump tried to get him to violate the law and the Constitution to try and keep the presidency.  Bowers said no and no and no again.  He felt that the Constitution was “divinely inspired” and he is a man of faith.  There’s no way he could compromise himself to help tRump cheat.

So, what did tRump do then?  He sent his mob to torment and harass Bowers, his wife, and terminally ill daughter.  Bowers said he and his wife dread Saturdays because people still show up in vans proclaiming that he is a pervert, a pedophile and other awful names using loudspeakers.  He testified one man had a gun and got into an argument with a neighbor.  Afraid of what would happen, he was forced to go outside and intervene.

Secretary Raffensberger was hassled over and over by tRump and Guiliani to find about 11,700 votes so he would claim victory over Joe Biden.  Raffensberger wouldn’t do it.  He said they’d counted and recounted and Biden had won.  The committee played excerpts from tRump’s 67-minute call haranguing Raffensberger to come through and find those votes somehow.  TFG went from promising Raffensberger he’d be praised for telling the 45 “truth” to whining and complaining that he couldn’t believe Raffensberger wouldn’t help to threatening the secretary with jail if he didn’t cooperate.  After that came the nasty tweets, emails, calls, and home visits.  The messages sent to poor Mrs. Raffensberger were of a “sexual” nature.  Their widowed daughter-in-law suffered a break in from loony tRump supporters/terrorists.

The third witness, Gabriel Sterling, lost his shit when he saw a tweet stating that a young man counting votes had gotten threats.  The committee showed portions of a video from Sterling’s press conference on December 1 calling tRump out, telling him to stop what he was doing because he would get someone killed.  I was really impressed with Sterling’s sign language interpreter.  He really conveyed Sterling’s emotion as he signed.  Message received … but not by tRump, who continued to terrorize anyone in his way.

I was chilled by tRump’s attitude toward Mike Pence from last Thursday’s testimony.  When Pence wouldn’t do what tRump wanted, a mob of violent insurrectionists was sent after the vice president, yelling “Hang Mike Pence” and erecting a gallows.  As bad as that was, it wasn’t nearly as chilling and heart breaking as what happened to two Georgia election workers, a mother and a daughter, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.

Giuliani and TFG posted a video of Freeman and Moss as they were counting votes and falsely claimed that they were cheating.  They both called them all kind of slanderous names and the response was almost immediate.  Messages of hate and threats began pouring in.  Moss was shocked and overwhelmed, as was her mother.  Moss had always loved her job, especially helping elderly people register to vote.  Many of the elderly had been prevented from voting years before because of Jim Crow laws.  Coincidentally, the hearing was airing on the anniversary of the murders of the three civil rights workers in Mississippi.  Suddenly, now, she was getting messages like she should feel lucky it was 2020 and not 1920.  That’s a lynching threat.

The threat became so serious, Ruby Freeman was forced to leave her home for two months.  The FBI told her it was too dangerous for her to stay home and she should stay away until after the inauguration.  And trumpers showed up at Moss’s grandmother’s house and tried to get in when she answered the door.  Now Moss is practically a recluse.  Freeman is afraid, always looking around if she goes out.

Not a single election worker is still employed at that office.  They all quit, including Moss.

The losses they suffered is almost palpable.  Ruby Freeman said, imagine if the President of the United States comes after you.  The President is supposed to protect all citizens, not terrorize them.

That is right.  The President is NOT supposed to lie, cheat or steal an election.  He is not supposed to threaten his vice president, local and state officials, or election workers just doing their jobs.  Here is what’s scary:  election workers throughout the country have gotten death threats.  Many are quitting.  Who is going to make sure the voting proceeds legally if all the good, decent people quit?

This evil tRump started is pervasive throughout the country.  In spite of all the illegal shenanigans, sheeple are voting for 45’s backed candidates.  If they win, we won’t have a democracy anymore.  It’ll be fascist; a dictatorship.  It would be a Hitler and Mussolini regime all over again.

I wonder if my friends and family are sleeping.  I’m active on Facebook and I’m not seeing a single post from anyone expressing outrage about tRump’s evil shenanigans.  I see more posts on Twitter from supporters of democracy and that’s encouraging but I don't know them.  I want to know where are my relatives?  My friends?

It’s time for everyone to step up and speak out and not play the ostrich. 

Oh to be 9 again

 

I was just reading through my newsletters, most of which were downers.  Later this morning, I’ll get newsletters from groups that focus more on positives.  I need to read about those things to counterbalance the despair I feel when I read the more mainstream stories.  Like this one in particular: Heather Cox Richardson wrote a piece yesterday that I didn’t have time to read until today: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGpGddkngNTkZlGLvjKXgZvtNvc

She began by recalling that on June 20, 1964, a young civil rights volunteer named Andrew Goodman arrived in Mississippi to work with two other volunteers, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney.  They were there to help register black people to vote.  Jim Crow laws were still pervasive in the South and this was the beginning of the civil rights movement.  The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was angered and threatened by the movement because they were white supremacists and didn’t want blacks voting.

The three young men visited a church that had been burned by the KKK because they dared open their doors to help register people of color to vote.  After they left, they were stopped by the sheriff of the town.  He was a member of the same KKK that terrorized and abused black people.  After spending a night in jail, the sheriff then took them to a secluded area where two carloads of supremacists were waiting.  That group of domestic terrorists killed those three young men and buried their bodies.  Justice was very late in coming.

In June, 1964, I was a carefree 9-year-old, completely unaware of what was going on in the country.  I was shielded from the news.  My Deaf parents didn’t watch TV unless there was a favorite show on.  In 1964, there was no close captioning and lipreading someone on TV was next to impossible.  So, we didn’t watch the news.  When we visited hearing relatives, national current events weren’t discussed, at least not when I was in earshot.  All us grandchildren just played joyfully outside in our grandparents’ yard.

Today, though, I am very much aware of what’s going on.  On top of that, I’ve been learning all the true history of our country that was never taught to me in school.  Sometimes I miss the days when I was blissfully unaware of national shenanigans.

Now, there is a disgraced former governor named Eric Greitens running for the Missouri State Senate.  I’d seen the name on Twitter the last day or so but didn’t have the time to look him up on Google.  I got an eyeful from Heather Cox Richardson, who reported that Greitens posted an ad advocating hunting down RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) with guns.  Richardson wrote: “In the ad, Greitens is armed with a shotgun and flanked with military personnel as they burst into a house. “Today, we’re going RINO hunting,” he says. “The RINO feeds on corruption and is marked with the stripes of cowardice,” he continues. “Join the MAGA crew. Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.””

There’s a new breed of KKK mentality that’s become open and pervasive in this country.  There are people like Greitens, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ted Cruz, Lauren Boehbert and too many others who support white supremacy, tRumpism and violence.  There are no consequences for the things they say and do, and so they are becoming more hateful and inflammatory day by day. 

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican, is one of two on the January 6^th investigation committee.  Long ostracized by his own family and GQP party, he is going to retire at the end of his term.  It will be a shame to lose him to another trumper but who can blame him for quitting politics when his wife receives a hateful letter threatening not only his life but hers as well and their 6-m0nth-old baby.

Just last week, Judge Luttig warned the country that tRump and his gang present a “clear and present danger” to our democracy.  The efforts to dismantle democracy from within is well under way.  There were no consequences for the plotters of the coup attempt on January 6^th so the GQP has become quite vocal about their plans to take over.  National Memo ran these two articles on GQP interference in Otero County, New Mexico’s election: https://www.nationalmemo.com/gop-sabotage-of-new-mexico-elections-is-a-warning-to-america/particle-1 and an opinion piece from CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/20/opinions/election-disinformation-republicans-trump-tribe-aftergut/index. It was the latest attempt by the GQP to interfere in an election and it surely will not be the last.

Today the January 6^th committee will have it’s fourth hearing.  Today, they will focus on the phony electors tRump’s people submitted to screw up the election count.  One of the witnesses is supposed to be Brad Raffensberger, who was Georgia’s secretary of state during the 2020 election.  I remember him well and all the stories about how tRump kept calling Raffensberger to find more votes to help tRump win Georgia.  Raffensberger refused and then had to put up with more harassment and threats from the GQP. 

The same was true for another witness from Georgia, Gabriel Sterling, who was the voting implementation manager.  I don’t remember him but apparently, he had a press conference in December 2020 and reported he’d gotten death threats and other harassment from his own party.  He felt that tRump and his gang put the Georgia GQP up to that loathsome behavior and complained that no one was speaking out against it.

A Georgia election employee named Wandrea ArShaye "Shaye" Moss received death threats too.

Rusty Bowers, who was Arizona’s House Speaker, is supposed to testify about tRump/Guiliani’s plot to ignore the election results and appoint their own fake electors to throw the election to TFG.

It continues to boggle my mind that with all these shenanigans being made public, there are no charges coming from the Department of Justice.  I really hope that once the hearings are concluded, Attorney General Merrick Garland does something before the midterm election in November.

Some days I wish I was 9 again.

 

The Third Hearing

I read Judge Luttig’s full statement which was released before his testimony before the January 6^th committee last Thursday.  It is so well thought out and also very chilling.  Our country is still in danger of losing our most precious right to vote.  Once we lose that, we’ve lost our democracy.  Judge Luttig’s statement is here: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/22061497/jml-final.pdf

Today’s Bible Verse is very appropriate today:

What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his very soul? — Mark 8:36

As far as I’m concerned, tRump, his base, his family, and the GQP have all forfeited their souls lying, cheating, and committing acts of treason just so they could stay in power.

The fourth hearing was last Thursday and it’s taken me the weekend to wrap my mind around it.  It brought back so many horrific memories I have of watching the coverage on January 6^th.  I remember the violence of the mob, striking down police officers and beating them with American flags—of all things! —and other weapons.  I remember the poor officer caught between the doors, screaming for help as he was being crushed by the insurrectionists.

I heard them chanting “Hang Mike Pence” and saw footage of the gallows erected outside.  Other terrorists were calling for Speaker Pelosi to come out and the worst of their language was edited out.  I remember how that mob poured through the Capitol, endangering the lives of the legislators, staff, and visitors.  Those awful people desecrated the building, defecating and spreading their poop around, vandalizing property and just trashing the place.

It went on for hours and hours.

All of the came back as I watched and listened to Judge Luttig and Mr. Jacob give testimony and answer questions.  Judge Luttig spoke very slowly and carefully; he looked distressed to me and I thought it might have been because he was distraught about what happened.  He is a highly respected, conservative Republican judge and had found himself in the position of having to advise Vice President Pence about what his role was in certifying the vote.  I can only imagine how he must have felt, a patriot horrified by what had happened to the country since tRump became President.  To me, the Judge represents one of the last of the Grand Old Party.  They had morals and a code of behavior once upon a time.

The GQP now is totally lawless, fascist, and out of control.

It’s very clear from testimony just how close we came to losing the America I grew up in: a democracy where our votes counted and there was always a peaceful transition of power.  That’s all changed since the 6^th.  Now the legitimacy of all elections is called into question.  The Big Lie persists and persists and stupid people continue to believe it.

Judge Luttig’s warning was stark and frightening.  The coup goes on to this day.  After the 6^th, the GQP moved to a Plan B and began infiltrating local and state political offices.  They’ve invaded school boards, mayoralties, state legislatures and governor’s offices all around the country.  It’s scary.  Already there are Big Lie politicians talking about having the power to overturn an election when they don’t like the outcome.

America is a republic but it’s also a democracy.  We, the people, elect candidates to office.  It’s not supposed to be decided by one person or a committee of politicians.  And that’s the scary part.  I try to have hope that people will vote in November but I’m also aware that some have short memories.  Some move on to the next exciting story week-to-week.  It doesn’t help that the GQP tell people the investigation is a witch hunt that happened 18 months ago.

The insurrectionists need to be brought to justice, all of them and especially tRump.  The right-wing white supremacist extremist group Proud Boys are very up-front claiming that if they’d found Mike Pence, they would have killed him.  They would have killed Speaker Pelosi.  They came very close to capturing the Vice President.  They came within 40 feet of Pence as he and his family and staff were being evacuated by the secret service.

I can feel my mind boggling again.

I don’t understand why the Vice President didn’t denounce tRump and his cronies from the get-go.  I don’t understand how the threatened GQP members of Congress could criticize what happened one day and defend the insurrectionists the next.  They continue to support tRump’s claim that it was a just a protest that got a bit out of control. 

No, it wasn’t.  It was an attempt to overthrow our democracy.

It’ll happen again.  Robert Reich wrote a rather disturbing article about why the January 6^th hearings are NOT going to make a difference in GQP’s strategy to undermine and destroy our democracy.  Half this country is too lame-brained and gullible to believe it. https://robertreich.substack.com/p/why-the-january-6-committee-is-failing?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share

 

God help our country.

Happy Heavenly Father's Day, Dad

 

My dad passed away in 2009 at the age of 80, just before he and Mom were to move in with us.  We’d just been to Maryland from New Jersey, to join my brother and Mom in a gentle intervention to get him to give up the car keys.  He had glaucoma and was nearly blind.  When I signed to him, I had to have my hands close up to his eyes.  He’d put his hands on my wrists to follow any movements I made to make sure he understood what I was signing. 

My mom and brother were scared to death because he continued to drive in such a condition. In fact, Mom wouldn’t even get in the car with him anymore.  He countered that they were in a rural area and he needed to drive to get necessities: groceries, gas, a lottery ticket.  To counter that, we suggested that he and Mom move into our house with their own private space.  We could drive Dad anywhere he wanted to go.  Ted knew that Dad loved to go on walks and mentioned how close we were to the parks.

Dad cried.  He put his arms around me and said: “My daughter, I’m so happy.”

But then he died.  Had he lived, he would have been 93 tomorrow.

This year, I am having many fond memories of Dad in spite of many times that we were on the outs.  It wasn’t Dad’s fault.  Mom had an undiagnosed mental health issue that plagued her throughout my childhood and adulthood.  She was verbally and physically abusive to my brother and me.  When we were very small, Dad would come home from work and whisk us away for an ice cream treat, a swim in the bay, or just a nice drive around town.

I was never afraid of Dad.  He and Mom would drink to excess and then get into these horrific fights that led to violence.  He never turned that kind of anger on me.  Mom did.  In the mid ‘70s, when I was about 22 or 23, she chased me with an ice pick.  She was drunk and in a rage.  I managed to get free and bolted from our apartment, taking refuge with friends.  Dad showed up the next day, apologizing for her behavior and begging me to come back.  He promised it wouldn’t happen again but I knew it would.  I didn’t go back and he left, crushed.

My Dad taught me to swim on those visits to the bay beach in our neighborhood.  When I was older, he taught me how to ride a big two-wheeler.  He proudly clapped his hands as I pedaled away down the street.  I felt as if I were flying.  He even tried to teach me how to drive, although that didn’t work out so well.

I have a vivid memory of a Father's Day/birthday celebration when I was about 12.  We went to a miniature golf course with plans to eat out at our favorite restaurant later.  However, when I moved out of the way for Mom to take her turn, I stumbled and fell onto a cracked pipe hidden by unmowed grass.  The pipe gashed my knee to the bone, although I didn't know that until later.

Off we went to the emergency room.  In shock and terrified, when I was brought back to be treated, I began crying and asking for Dad.  One of the nurses left to go to the waiting room and fetch Dad.  He sat on a stool by my head and held my hand while the doctor stitched up my knee.  He was calm and soothing, very protective, in spite of the paleness of his face.  I felt comforted and safe and stayed still until the doctor was done.  Dad said to me with his voice, "You are a brave girl.  I'm proud of you."

When I was growing up and into my teen years, he would tell me he was proud of me.  He complimented my housekeeping abilities and supported my musical abilities.  Have you seen the movie, Coda?  The hearing daughter loved music and her Deaf family came to watch her perform in a high school play.  It was the same when my parents came to watch me play the guitar and sing.  They looked around while other people were on stage, Mom signing “I’m bored” to Dad.  They could see lips moving but had no clue as to what was going on.  When it was my turn, they sat up straight and watched me closely even though they couldn’t hear a single note.

Dad was so thrilled when I became an interpreter for the Deaf.  He signed to me: “You understand Deaf World.  I’m so proud of you.”

I am remembering him today and smiling warmly.  Happy Father’s Day in Heaven, Dad.