I was not political

I am not a political person. I followed politics. I was not thrilled with Bush Jr. or Sr. but I did not feel unsafe in America when they were in power. David and I were completely against the Iraq war and thought it was a load of propaganda, but I never posted any descent against it.  We talked about it at night during the news and that was about it. Again, I did not think Bush was out to destroy the United States.

I only became vocally political when trump descended from his golden escalator and commanded that all Mexicans were rapist and drug dealers (okay, maybe a few were good people) and Muslims were banned from America. 

I knew who trump was. I had followed his "Obama was not born in this country" but completely poo-pooed it as bullshit. I assumed that no one would pay any attention to this  loud-mouth, boastful, lying third-rate television personality. It all seemed ridiculous until I finally got on Twitter and saw that right-wingers were agreeing with him. The "birther movement" had spawned an entire section of our country to doubt that our chosen President was legitimate. David and I spoke of this often, that the election of a smart, thoughtful African American president was going to have a backlash, and it did.

My father and his family have always been very conservative and always complaining about how Obama (or Clinton or Carter) were going to take their guns away from them. I know I have talked about this on this blog before. But I grew up hearing this bullshit my entire life. I also grew up hearing how the Mexicans were taking over Dallas politics and how bad "gays" were. As a dutiful daughter, I ignored it and went on. But after awhile, I just could not and started pushing back about how they still had their guns and even many more of them. Asking why did they even need all of those guns? That I did not know what kind of world they lived in but David and I never felt like we needed guns to protect us or our house. I feel sorry for them, the world they must believe they live in to need all of those guns to protect themselves. I was at their house many times, and they did NOT need guns to protect them either. I consider him and my sister the typical trump supporter, uninformed on world news, overly religious while being hypocrites. Just sayin', I don't speak to them anymore.

So 5 years of complete chaos and gaslighting, we arrive at Covid pandemic that half of our country is denying even exist. Blaming Gates and Fauci, calling for Fauci to be arrested? I am tired of pointing out the stupidity of fake fox news, the anti-vax, anti-masks, anti-whatever right-wingers. Frankly, I am exhausted of listening to all the ridiculousness.

People are saying "they are done with Covid" but guess what, Covid is not done with this world. There were 3,769 deaths yesterday, totaling 882K dead Americans so far! What are they missing that seems so obvious to the rest of us? And now the Truckers Freedom Convoy in Canada, right-wing tweeting the spread to Germany, Italy, Australia? What is so hard to understand that if you are crossing state lines with Covid, that could be a major source of spread?

From CBC: Standoff over science 

Some of the protesters carried Canadian flags, while others held placards that urged people to "Think for Yourself," a slogan used in anti-vaccine circles. Some demonstrators were seen flying the Patriotes flag, an ode to the Lower Canada rebellions of 1837-38, when French-speaking settlers from present-day Quebec fought against British colonial rule. 

"I've never done anything like this in my life. I'm 53 years old and this is the hill I'm going to die on. Do not tell me I have to put something in my body," Lorraine Commodore, a convoy supporter, told CBC News on Saturday. 

Commodore said she was fired from her job as a dental hygienist because she wouldn't get vaccinated. She said she wants this protest to bring an end to mandates that cost her and others like her their jobs. 

She said her mother-in-law died in hospital and it was difficult for the family to visit her in the last days of her life because of COVID-19 restrictions on visitors. "Open the hospitals, they're public. This needs to end today." 

Her husband, Mike, said he's distrustful of the shots — skepticism that cost him his job as a community living nurse."

The insurrection on Jan 6th, the inability to hold trump and the republicans accountable. I have a horrible feeling that trump will be back in power 2024. Or someone just as odious as he is.

I am probably going to get off of Facebook. I am tired of posting important stories going on in our country that are completely out of the norm. I do not want to become like my friends who don't want to pay attention to the decline, possibly demise of our democracy, choose to focus on the other "other things going on in the world". If this is NOT the time to focus on the death of our democracy, then when is? After it is gone? Trampled to death by the likes of trump, mitch, jim jordon, marjorie, boebert? 

I just want to cry. I have the same sick feeling I did last Jan 6th watching them at the Capitol.

Interesting list of deaths: Honoring Officers Killed in 2021. Remember the trooper who quit and told Inslee to "kiss his ass"? He died of Covid.

Sorry, I just had to get all this off my chest.

The new fence looks fantastic. The kids are all dressed with a very loud karaoke microphone. Can I come to your house? ;)

LATER: After watching a few of the trump cult interviewed at the cult rally in Conroe, Tcxas, I got even more depressed thinking about how many mentally ill people are American citizens believing trump is still president. It is astounding. I was trying to find an explanation for this mass mental illness, found this. 

 “People are not okay”: The mental health impact of the Trump era (from Jan 2021) His presidency is over, but the trauma isn’t. 

The problems Trump brought to light — racism, xenophobia, and transphobia, to name just a few — certainly didn’t start with him. But from the moment he announced his campaign in a speech maligning Mexican people as rapists, he made such attitudes more explicit than ever before within the bounds of traditional party politics. 

His rhetoric helped embolden a wave of hate crimes across the country targeting Muslim Americans, immigrants, and a number of other groups he had demonized. Meanwhile, his constant all-caps tweeting, his preference for staff who enabled rather than checked his worst impulses, and his return to campaign-style rallies shortly after his election all led to a relentless news environment that subjected Americans to the president’s disjointed and frequently abusive thoughts multiple times per day. In the first three years of his presidency, Trump tweeted more than 11,000 times — 5,889 of those tweets, according to the New York Times, “attacked someone or something.” 

While Trump was able to energize a core of supporters with his mix of bravado, defiance, and racism, for many others, his presidency was, quite simply, scary. In the American Psychological Association’s 2016 “Stress in America” survey, 63 percent of Americans said the future of the country was a “significant source of stress,” and 56 percent said they were stressed out by the current political climate. In the 2018 version of the survey, those numbers went up to 69 percent and 62 percent, respectively.