CRINGEWORTHY

     I wonder how many of you read the paper or the screen and cringe while you do so. At times I scroll through, searching for something good, something to remind me that yes, there are still some good people around. The NYT has a roundup every week of good things that happened. So desperate are we these days.
     The shameful growth of anti Semitism continues as both sides treat it as a political football. Well, we are not footballs nor things to be kicked around, each hypocritical side screeching at the other. A pox on both your houses, as I paraphrase the Great Bard. Each and every one of you has condoned these nasty statements made by members of your own party and you all conveniently 'forget' or 'disremember' that fact as you accuse members of the House or Senate sitting on the other side of the aisle. And for Trump to comment on it is like having a serial murderer talk about the sanctity of life. This man, who accepts support of supremacists, of haters, who finds 'fine' people amongst them, needs to shut his mouth as he is the one who opened the floodgates to all this, making prejudice and hatred okay.
     As an aside, Trump, notice the record seizure of cocaine at the Port of NY/Newark? No little brown people there, but still, think we should build a wall here too? And yet you continue to ignore the drug smuggling that goes on in legal ports of entry along the Mexican/USA border and why is that? Do ya' thinkyour prejudices have anything to do with that? Duh!
     Meanwhile, the voiced and unvoiced plans and actions to dismantle our government continue apace. The proposed new budget cuts services and manpower via huge funding cuts of social programs, State Department; DeVos, the Secretary of Education, G-d help us, is proposing more deregulation, allowing more intrusion of religious life into the public schools and you just know what comes along with that; McConnell, the weak chinned wimp, is planning to impose yet another nuclear option on the Senate, all the better to smash through the hundreds of incompetent, biased, incapable, dangerous appointees that are in the sluice from Trump, appointees that will ruin the judiciary for decades to come, all the better to approve anti democratic rulings and laws, and all the better to use public finds to enhance their own lives. How do I know that? Because that is what is happening and has already happened.
     Tucker Carlson opens his filthy, hateful mouth on TV, past and present. The NRATV has children speaking with KKK hoods on, and Omar, that nasty thing, continues to spout hate messages. She, and others, but especially her, need to be called out, and receive the appropriate consequences. But the weak and morally defeated people of both parties seem to find it impossible to do the most emphatically right thing to do!! They have all failed us. They all think, as do children, that if one says or does something and then denies it, it simply did not happen. Wishful thinking, and yet there is Trump, there is Omar, there are all of them. And shame on us that we allow this.
     And just as an aside, we kind of have a parallel situation here, to a degree, in the Village. We have a man and his minions who have cut rules, violated bylaws left and right, denied information to those who request it or take their own sweet time before handing it over and why? The better to 'edit' it? Now there is a major push to get new by laws through, by laws that will insure the maintenance of this Village dynasty, that will make it more difficult than ever to push through reform and proper administration of the Village, and less financial chicanery and wastage. And, due to apathy and despair at ever getting rid of this man, few people will show up to meetings about these new by law proposals and they are probably correct, for the final voting is by the same delegates who are mesmerized, under his thrall, beholden to him for their little fiefdoms and for a place to go after they wake up! So why bother, people want to know. Well, bother indeed! Let our voices be heard. Appoint new delegates from your association, just as much as you vote out some pols. Raise the voices, for they indeed do have power and effectiveness if they are strong and many.
     Cringe? Yes, why not, for it all is cringeworthy. But also, then stand straight and as tall as one can and head out there to the fray, in whatever world or level you choose. But get out there. Many of us do not plan to go quietly, to be shoved out of the Village or country, shorn of our rights, our humanity. Join us. There are no boundaries to the reach of hate. No end to the damages it causes and the nastiness it sows. No one is immune to its consequences. It is not up to your neighbor, for it is up to you.