Looking around at graduation and talking with people we realized that what we have on the East Coast is not the future of America. The future is here, as far as its population is concerned. We sat in front of a family of Vietnamese heritage, behind a Jewish family, near a Japanese family, lots of Chinese families, Latinos and African Americans, Koreans. Accents of all types were heard, with some adults speaking the mother tongue - for them - but the kids responded in English, unaccented, American English. Mixed couples of all sorts of combination were plentiful and the children were beautiful. The children mixed and played with each other though they had just met. We all cheered each other's graduate and the pride of the families with the 'primero' graduate of college in their family was most obvious and charming. These kids were stroked by grandparents and the parents were beyond words.
The same mix of peaceful people was seen at the Getty Museum - and what a place that is. If you are ever here in LA you must allow time for a visit here. In fact, several visits would be required to see the whole thing.
So were there some people who looked unusual? Perhaps. Maybe one might have been a gangbanger before his wife and kids tamed him. Perhaps one is not as honest as one should be but for the most part one could not tell people apart by their behavior. No bad hombres here. No sir!
So where are these bad hombres. They were in the gym where one was called out and the big coward denied he was Richard Spencer, the neo Nazi, he who wants to throw "Jews and coloreds out of 'our' business establishments". They are the people who sent the professor, a woman of color, nasty tweets how she would be hanged, called her a n......., and other oh so lovely names. So where are the bad hombres? You figure it out.
More places? Well, just look at Washington D.C. which has become ever more swampier since Trump entered. The Fat Cats have come strutting into town, been appointed to positions of power, in places where they can destroy our heritage and have instigated almost a civil war in their ignorance and nastiness, in their forgetting what America stands for, what it means to be an American.
The other day I watched a music award ceremony I had taped and Joan Baez came on. That woman is amazing. She stood there and very gently put Donald in his place as she sang Swing Low, Sweet Chariot". She is still as fiery as they come and so are we, the rest of us who have had it. In fact, the whole country is at dagger's edge with each other. We do not hear each other anymore. We are so angry at the current situation, at the possible future, that our better instincts are overwhelmed by our fear and determination to do something, anything, to correct the situation.
So what to do? Talk, sway people, put down the weapons and even some of the sharp words, but maybe that is not all that possible anymore. I truly do not know and am indeed fearful. All the I told ya so statements that I can make give no permanent satisfaction. Not at all. But it is hard not to react strongly, powerfully, when the slime of our reps in DC comes to the surface, the lies they have told, their non recognition of truth and how it always comes out, the treasonous behavior of our so called leader and his crew, the threats to lynch Rep. Al Green, because he dared talk of impeachment and how dare he, this African American?
So Kushner has his own motives going on here. And Ivanka goes along for the ride and talks to panels of women when her father has the biggest disgusting attitude towards women and had behaved accordingly. Hypocrite. We find that campaign promises are not kept - nor should they for they are dangerous, but people feel betrayed. And the anger grows.
I would like to quote from a column , a very good one, that Peggy Noonan wrote in The World Street Journal, or WSJ as it has taken to calling itself. It is entitled "Democracy is Not Your Plaything". "It would be good if top Hill Republicans went en masse to the president and said, "Stop it. Clean up your act. Shut your mouth. Do your job. Stop tweeting. Stop seething. Stop wasting time. You lost the thread and don't even know what you were elected to do anymore. Get a grip. Grow up and look at the terrain, see it for what it is. .......If you don't grow up fast, you'll wind up abandoned and alone. Act like a President or leave the presidency........The President needs to be told: Democracy is not your plaything."
That says it all.
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