Snide Reply

Tag: politics

  • A Hopeless Case

    A Hopeless Case

    My sister asked me recently if I felt hopeless. Ordinarily, when she calls, she leads with “Hi.” But we’d been talking about aging and my attitude toward my own life, so “Do you feel hopeless about life?” wasn’t entirely out of left field.

    “No,” I said. “I feel okay.”

    “Right!” she said, and I knew we weren’t talking about me—or just me.

    A friend of hers had asked, “How are you?” My sister, who is genuinely doing well right now, responded with something like, “Good. How are you?” You know, the typical American response—sometimes not quite the truth, but given out of habit because you don’t feel like being honest, and no one expects you to be anyway.

    Of course, my sister asked the obligatory “How are you?” in return. But her friend was honest; she felt hopeless about the world and carried herself like someone who had lost hope. This immediately made my sister feel like a shallow asshole. She definitely said shallow; I don’t remember if she said asshole.

    The Americans I know and spend time with—even the Republicans—have frequently felt hopeless since January 20. I assume my readers are also news readers, or at least news followers. I’m pretty sure my son and his friends get their news from alternative media—i.e., not The New York Times, the Associated Press, or, God forbid, The Atlantic.

    No matter the source, every day brings some new horror; some days, there are multiple horrors. We aren’t even 100 days into the latest Trump administration, and our country has managed to alienate nearly every ally while cozying up to a notorious dictator and enemy.

    Overnight—at least it feels like overnight—America has gone from being the big, slightly naïve friend you could count on in a tight spot to the big, dumb bully on the playground.

    Hard to believe, but as terrible as the United States is to its neighbors, it is even more terrible to its own citizens and visitors, and worse still to the nation’s Constitution.

    The fundamental rights of American society are established in our First Amendment—an amendment even more sacred than the Second, which is regularly defended with near religious fervor.

    The First Amendment reads:

    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

    These rights are protected regardless of citizenship status. You can’t be arrested for attending a rally or holding an opinion, so long as you don’t incite a riot. Unless you’re Donald Trump. You can’t prohibit a news outlet from reporting on the government. Unless you’re Donald Trump. You can’t fire entire teams of people without cause. Unless you’re Donald Trump—or his henchman, Elon Musk.

    (Side note: Musk’s son recently told Donald that he, Donald, “isn’t really the President.” Precocious or coached?)

    And our elected Congress does, quite literally, nothing.

    Republicans are gleeful that, as repugnant as he is and as unhinged as he seems, Donald Trump is the perfect fall guy to help them accomplish their long-held conservative government agenda. Many of his supporters think he’s doing a great job—until grants that benefit them, grants that have already been approved by Congress, are suddenly canceled. Or until another social safety net crucial to their communities is put on the chopping block.

    Democrats, meanwhile, are weak-willed, especially those in power. Despite Democratic voter anger, they cave, clinging to some naive hope of bipartisan cooperation.

    And there’s that word again—hope. When the first four rights of the First Amendment have fallen, all hope rests on the last: the right of the people to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

    I’ve heard that a three-legged stool is the most stable. The United States is teetering on its last leg—the Supreme Court, which Republicans finagled into a conservative majority. Perhaps foolishly, I have some faith in the Court’s ability to recognize the many egregious affronts to the fundamental rights of those in the United States as unconstitutional.

    So no, I am not hopeless. Are you?

  • A Wild Ride Through a Bipolar Mind

    A Wild Ride Through a Bipolar Mind

    I’m lying in bed, having just woken from a nap. It’s afternoon, and I have a modestly expansive view of the outdoors through the sliding glass door to the balcony. That sounds grand but trust me—it owes more to the trailer park than Gosford Park.

    The sky is early-spring blue, and a typical Midwestern breeze blows—stronger than you’d like, but warm enough that you’ll take it. Fluffy white clouds drift by, placid and classic.

    I look equally placid. My brain, however, is not. I am bipolar; my brain knows only two speeds—light and sleep. Now, it’s spinning almost out of control, leaping from one thought to the next.

    Instead of pondering the shapes of the clouds—though one looked distinctly like a fat, ugly swan—I was thinking about adoption. Specifically, about how it’s often presented as a simple solution for building a family when all else fails.

    I’ve often heard, “Don’t worry. You can adopt,” as if adopting is like applying to college. “Don’t worry. If you don’t get into Harvard, you can always go to the College of DuPage.” I’ve adopted. It’s more like, “Don’t worry. If you don’t get into Harvard, you can just go to Yale.”

    My mind hopped from adoption to the increase in infants born in the United States due to abortion bans. That led directly to Donald Trump’s treatment of Volodymyr Zelensky. This makes sense if you make the mental leaps typical of a bipolar mind. Less so if you’re neurotypical.

    Back to Trump, Vance, and Zelensky. It was disgusting to watch the Dracula of U.S. presidents and his sidekick, J.D. Renfield, belittle the leader of another country—an ally. I wanted to be a fly on the wall when Putin reveals what he really thinks of Trump.

    From Trump, I jumped to free speech. Probably not too surprising a leap. Paranoia then entered the picture, and I feared that writing bad things about the Vindictive Commander-in-Chief would get me arrested and tossed in jail with the liberal elite.

    Telling myself that wasn’t very likely—as I’m not very elite—I dove deeper into free speech. “Fuck the Draft” zipped to an anti-gun shirt my son once wore to school. Though his teachers appreciated the sentiment, he was “dress-coded” nonetheless. The shirt showed a child surrounded by crayons and a gun. “Nine out of ten children prefer crayons to guns,” it said. Those children are probably the spawn of the liberal elite.

    I pulled myself out of my head and back to the present as a woman passed by, pushing a stroller. I checked the time and wondered what state I had left the kitchen in. I told myself I should have gotten up a while ago.

    Then I did. I had to pee.

  • This Is My Country, Part 1: Americans are Ignoramuses

    My husband and I were doing something we frequently do together at home, fretting over the economy and trying not to spiral down into the deepest pit of depression where we decide it’s better to curse the darkness than light a single candle. The kids were around but I figured they were oblivious. They ignore us when we are talking to them, why wouldn’t they ignore us when we aren’t?

    I realized that my daughter wasn’t just occupying the same space when I asked my husband, only half rhetorically, “How did we get here? How did the country get so screwed up so quickly?”

    And my daughter said, “Obama.”

    My brain did a whiplash U-turn from “Poor us! We’re going to hell in a hand basket” to “Who the hell told you it’s all Obama’s fault?”

    “Who told you it’s all Obama’s fault?” I asked.

    “Oh,” she giggled nervously, “he’s just the only one in government that I know.”

    Skipping over the part where the federal government is completely responsible for everything wrong in my country presently, I said, “That’s the only person in government you know? What about your governor? Didn’t they teach you who’s Governor of Illinois?”

    She avoided my gaze, shrugged her shoulders and asked, “Sarah Palin?”

    “What!?” I asked? “Why would you think that Sarah Palin is Governor of Illinois?”

    “That’s the only other name I know,” she said, laughing. I wasn’t sure if I should be relieved that Sarah Palin isn’t our Governor or appalled that my daughter doesn’t know anything other than Barack Obama is our president and therefore responsible for all that is wrong in it. This, after just completing fourth grade where the civics units covered the United States government.

    Thinking my son might be a little more knowledgeable about his country’s government, I asked him who the Governor of Illinois is.

    “Blagojevich?” I gave him points for naming someone who actually held the office, then probed his knowledge of our judicial system. I thought he might be able to name a Supreme Court justice or two since we’re on the heels of a significant and widely reported decision.

    “Name a Justice of the Supreme Court,” I said.

    “The Justice League?” he suggested.

    I knew my country was filled with civic ignoramuses, but I didn’t know I was raising some. Our dinner table conversations aren’t always politically tinged, but my husband and I talk about all of the day’s news, not just how Katie Holmes should have seen it coming. That means Supreme Court decisions, drone bombings, Finnish family leave policies and the presidential election are hanging out there with who wants to see Brave and whether or not our son can go bowling that night.

    American ignorance is legendary. I don’t need to recite the figures. You can read them here. We are the country, after all, that went to war in Iraq, looking for weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist.

    We are the people who demand more and more cheaper and cheaper stuff, then complain when the manufacturing jobs dry up and move where people will work for less than we will.

    We are the people who are willing to send our sons and daughters to pay in blood for freedom around the world, but won’t pay an extra penny in taxes to pay for their deployment.

    My vexation sloshes over onto Facebook, where I regularly correct people who post memes declaring that kids can’t pray in school or recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I’m tired of explaining that it’s perfectly ok to cross yourself before a test and pray you get a good grade, but it’s not ok for the teacher to cross herself before a test and lead the class in prayer. I’m tired of explaining this to people who would be first in line at the principal’s office if a student did her private prayer on her knees and wearing a hijab. I’m tired of explaining this to people who wouldn’t want their child taught by a teacher who doesn’t recite the Pledge of Allegiance because of the “under God” part.

    Yes, I realize I sound tremendously judgmental and arrogant. I can’t help myself, though, because I love my country and the principles on which it was founded. I love our get-it-done approach and our generosity. I even love our naïveté, the way so many of us think that if you can dream it, you can be it. We’re the Nike country, ignoring the subtleties and attacking every problem with a “Just do it” bravado. But we’re youngsters, isolated for so long, and now more than ever immersed in world of interrelated complexities.

    We went to the fireworks this year with our daughter. In our town, one of the local radio stations puts together a soundtrack to play along with the display. Lots of people watching the fireworks with us had tuned to that station, so we were all listening to the medley of America-themed songs, from Born in the USA to David Bowie’s Young American. When they got to The Guess Who’s American Woman, I leaned over to my husband and said, “Do they know this is an anti-America song?”

  • I’ve had it with ugly political talk. Have you?

    Here’s a link to my column in today’s Naperville Patch. I’m sick of how we talk politics in the US. You don’t have to be from Naperville to find my comments relevant.

    http://naperville.patch.com/articles/let-s-put-the-civil-back-into-civic-debate