WELL, AREN'T WE PROUD

      Oh, we can brag about so much this year. What? Okay, first that we have survived the worst president ever! On this note, please take notice that much of media now refers to Trump as Mr. Trump and not the title of his position. Humph! I understand that and why, but it does not really solve anything, does it?
     Okay, what else? Aha! We have made progress of a sort, but what progress, you ask? Well, we have gone up in our display of might and strength to the migrant community as we strung concertina wire, all the better to entangle people, put out contracts for walls and slats and bollards, wasted our military on this garbage, and ramped up pressure on the most dangerous of the migrants - the children.
      We have achieved the scarring for life of so many as they will never fully recover from the trauma of forceful separation from  parents and families and then their mistreatment, being placed in  cages, in freezing former big boxes, in being lost or 'misplaced", in being shipped around the country in the middle of the night and finally, the peak of 'powerful' treatment and that will show them, won't it? We just allow their kids to die. Period. And then we make excuses for it. Oh yes, be proud, America, the former land of immigrants. It truly boggles my mind that there is a surge of people seeking information of their ancestors, where they came from, how they got here, and when, but despise the current crop of immigrants, calling them names, denigrating them as the worst of the worst of humanity and condoning force and its consequences. We can take such pride! Oh yes.
     Then, of course, we have a President who thinks he is above the law but while he is deluded and demented, it strains the credibility of so many others who still refuse to admit they were wrong and he is so bad for us, for the country, for the world. The diaper balloon of him was perfect for that is the stage that he remains, convinced that the world revolves around him and that it is okay to lie. But his infantile actions and beliefs are practiced in an adult world and the consequences are grave.
    He is the biggest threat to our country ever. He is an existential threat, pushing our democracy to the brink, convinced that the president has powers above the law and can contravene and contradict all tradition, law and Constitutional rules. He has suborned the judiciary to a growing degree and has two more years to sow and then reap for decades, more chaos, more inhumanity, more regression, and then, of course, we have the economy.
     Oh yes, the economy, that which Trump boasted about time and again even as he took to shredding it, with threats and shouts and tariff wars and now we hear no boasts about other big numbers, but these numbers are the ones taking us down, taking value out of our economy, national and personal. We now are teetering on the brink of a worldwide Great Recession or even worse, and the blowhard just sits there and feels sorry for himself and looks for people to assume the blame.
     His answer to the issue of the funding of the wall? He will take the "shutdown money" and combine it with the funding that he will demand and presumably thinks he will get from the incoming Democratic House, and pay off the contract that he supposedly just awarded! Uh, several problems here. One, he cannot hand out contracts for that is the purview of Congress. There is also no "shutdown money" for too bad the idiot does not realize nor understand that this money will need to be returned to the furloughed and working without pay federal employees. What a moron! And aren't we proud that we elected him?
     But there are truly things that we can be proud of and take hope from. The seven year old just ignored him, was polite on the phone, and then left cookies  for Santa who ate them during the night as he left presents. So The Grinch struck out. 
     We can be proud that here in America we still have children who appreciate their parents and when enabled by their talents and the sacrifices of parents to help that talent, they pay off their parents' debts. We can be proud of the two people who have worked out a plan to pay off medical debt for so many and kudos to them! We can be proud of the protesters who persist in the fight, who have laid plans that stretch all the way to the 2020 campaign, determined to rid ourselves of this Grinch.
     But there is much to work on. When LeBron James can say, "We been getting that Jewish money. Everything is kosher." and then pleaded innocence, ignorance, of the fact that this is blatantly anti Semitic, vicious, and repeated much to the detriment of the Jewish people throughout history, then there is something very wrong here and this very wrong streak of anti Semitism has been growing apace, even unto the massacre a la pogroms and Europe but right here in Pittsburgh, right in my child's neighborhood.
     And worse than that is the growing danger. Jews, their people, their young, their rabbinical and religious leaders, were in the forefront of the marchers during the war for civil rights. They were on the Freedom Riders buses, two young Jewish men were killed along with a young black man, for daring to demand equal rights and yet this history has been wiped out.
    The African American woman who pushed out Jewish women from the committee for the Women's March, who teamed up with anti Semitic poor examples from the Muslim community, well, they have forgotten history. They have forgotten that hatred extends both ways,. They have forgotten much and to go back in time to dredge up the fact that there were some, very few, Jewish slaveholders, well, shall we then add in the act that there were African American slaveholders in the South as well and that the people who raided the villages of Africa and then sold the captives to slaverunners were also African American.
    But today we are to work together, to insure, that this attitude dies out. To put the term "Jewish money" out there in a pejorative manner is to allow the same thing should we say that "Oh, the Negro has rhythm". There are things that we must unlearn and things that we must relearn and learn anew and for the first time. There is no place for hatred here among those fighting discrimination of all types. To engage in this baseless hatred and nastiness is to give a win to the haters and to cause cracks in the unity of the protesters. A major no-no.
     Well, aren't we proud? Yes and no, but the direction for the future is up to us. Let us unite, act as one, with amity and trust and friendship between all, no matter the religion, the color, the ethnicity or whatever. Pipe dream? Maybe, but a good one to aim for.