Trump’s Ugly American Shadow is Truly a Gift

  

Toni Morrison serves as my guiding light through this post-election valley of the shadows when she writes, ‘This is the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair. No place for pity. No need for silence. No room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language.  This is how civilizations heal.’

 

As for me Trump’s election has strengthened my resolve to embrace the values that I hold dear.  Relating to others as I would others to relate to me. Realizing that, ‘but by the Grace of God, there go I.’’ And, when one of us suffers, we all suffer.

 

When trump demeans women, people of color, immigrants, and Muslims, I find myself treasuring the next woman or person of color I come upon or the next immigrant or Muslim who crosses my life’s path. I find myself being present with and connecting with a deeper sense of belonging, to fellow members of my human family.

 

Trumps’ ‘Ugly American’ shadow is truly a gift.  He reminds me of what it means to express awareness, compassion, and loving kindness, moment by moment; to acknowledge that I am a person whose Divine Essence lives within me, as it lives within the lives of each one of us.

 

Thank you, Toni Morrison!

Donald Trump’s Emotional Illness is Infecting Our American Way of Life

  

Our leaders bring with them the sum-total of who they are. Donald Trump is someone who suffers from various emotional issues, issues that he brings with him into the Oval Office. To begin with he does not tell the truth and is considered a pathological liar. The 2021 election was stolen from him when, in fact he lost the election. He still asserts this misinformation to this day.

 

He is delusional in his view of himself. He considers himself to be like Jesus or Nelson Mandela. He often has ideas and fails to see the cause-and-effect relationship between his idea and what he needs to do to bring his idea to fruition. He asserted that Mexico would build the border wall and pay for it. Mexico did not pay for the wall that Trump wanted them to build. 

 

He behaves like a racist. He has distain for immigrants and wants immigrants to be rounded up and shipped out of the country. This is another example of his not considering the cause-and-effect relationship between his thoughts and his solutions to deal with an issue.  IF he deports immigrants who will plant the crops, work in the vineyards, provide necessary services for restaurants, provide medical care for the sick or serve as teacher aides in the school, provide trained skills in the building trades? And these individuals pay taxes. What would we do with the void that his plan to deport immigrants would leave in our communities?

 

When he was President, wanted to stop the reports about the spread of the COVID virus. His solution was to stop testing for COVID so that the statistics would be reduced. He also suggested that to overcome COVID, people should drink bleach. His cognitive processing often appears to be incoherent as is his expression of his thoughts.

 

He is insecure and suspicious of others and feels and demands total loyalty from those who work with him. He wants those who work with him to believe that the 2021 election was stolen as a precondition to be on his staff in any capacity. 

 

He has been deemed to be a sociopath by the mental health community. This means that he disregards other peoples’ needs and feelings. He is often vulgar in his description of others who he dislikes; ‘who would vote for a face like that?’ He has shown himself to regard women as eye candy and as objects for sexual pleasure. One only need listen to the Access Hollywood Tapes to get a picture of his views of women.

 

He is also a staunch supporter of the White Male Christian group, the Oath Keepers, and the Proud Boys. He supports and believes in the use of violence in relation to those who are antagonistic to his will and ways. Using executive orders, he pardoned those who participated in the violent attempt to disrupt and overturn the peaceful transition of power from his administration to the Biden Administration. 

 

He loves to create shock and awe. He thrives on destroying programs and institutional ways of providing necessary services to citizens. He is interested in cutting back on veteran’s services, enforcing hiring freezes on trained medical staff. He wants to cut back on FEMA which provides monetary support to communities that have been impacted by natural disasters. He is even considering eliminating FEMA altogether and having the states take care of their own natural disasters.

 

Trumps emotional illness is infecting our country. His desire is to destroy the essence of what America is made of. He thrives on being the center of attention and will say things that are not true or behave in ways that that are deliberately provocative. As was mentioned previously his thought process and expressing of himself is often incoherent. This is who we have residing in the Oval Office, today. 

 

What do we need to do to begin to relate to this flawed, limited human being? His use of retaliation intimidates those who would stand up to him. Our need is to stand by what is true for us and express that truth to anyone who tries to control us by intimidation. Trump is the man child who craves to have limits set for him. Our need is to express our truth and by doing so, we set our limits to all whose path we cross in life.

 

 

 

 

 

The Contrast Effect: By Experiencing the Worst, We Are Put in Touch With its Opposite

 The worst of something will often put us in touch with its opposite…By seeing people being mistreated, we see the pleasure of treating others as we would want to be treated.

 

Kurt Lewin did work with this notion in the 1930’s. Interest has

been rekindled regarding this way of making sense out of our thinking process in today’s world of war and misinformation. The innocent 46,000 Palestinian men, women and children who have been killed in Gaza in the last 15 months, requires our coming to terms with the horror of this inhuman behavior.

 

In today’s political world in the United States, Contrast Effect is beginning to become a talking point in relation to Trump and the Mega group as they begin to tout the mass deportation of migrants, in the discontinuing of Social Security and Medicare, the raising of taxes on the average citizen to off-set the cutting of taxes for the wealthy and their outright lies and conspiracy theories.

 

As people suffer, the ways of doing away with such suffering can become more evident within our communities, and why might this be so? The Dali Lama has written something that speaks to who we are in our very essence. He writes, ‘Whether one is rich or poor, educated, or illiterate, religious or nonbeliever, man, or woman, black, white, or brown, we are all the same. Physically, emotionally, and mentally we are all equal. We all share basic needs of food, shelter, safety, and love. We all aspire to happiness, and we all shun suffering. Each of us has hopes, worries, fears, and dreams.  Each of us want the best for our family and loved ones.  We all experience pain when we suffer loss and joy when we achieve what we seek.  On this fundamental level, religion, ethnicity, culture, and language makes no difference.’

 

Within each of us lives an essence of awareness and compassion.

Jon Kabat-Zinn has written ‘When we are truly present, in the now, our natural state of being is to be compassionate, to feel empathy with another person or living thing.’

 

I find myself put in touch with my essence in relation to animals who are in distress and need.  There are commercials that present starving dogs, who have been abandoned, trembling in the cold. When I see these commercials, I want to hug our two Rhodesian Ridgebacks and promise them that they will never be abandoned, again. This is a simple example of Contrast Effect.

 

By our experiencing the worst, we can be put in touch with our essence and begin to heal what we see before us. This is a natural process that takes place within us and can bring us back to the present moment that connects us with our compassion and caring nature.

 

Wishing you a Happy New Year

 

 

 

It is Against the Law for Donald Trump to Serve As President of the United States

  

I am writing this as an ordinary American Citizen who is sick and tired of observing the vulgar and disregarding of other peoples’ needs and feelings that is Donald Trump. He, to my eyes, is a seven-year-old school yard bully who has never been held accountable for his words and behavior.

 

Since 1970, at least 26 women have publicly accused this man-child of rape, kissing, and groping without consent: looking under women’s skirts and walking in on naked teenage pageant contestants. 

 

On May 9, 2023, a New York jury in a civil case found Trump guilty of sexually abusing and defaming Jean Carrol in 1996. She was awarded a five-million-dollar settlement for damages.

 

If anyone needs more evidence of Trump’s attitude toward women, all they would have to do is to listen the Access Hollywood tape in 2016, while he was a candidate for President. This was exposed by the Washington Post for all to see and hear.

 

Then we have the January 6^th event that was to overturn the will of the People who voted for Joe Biden. Trump orchestrated this act of sedition, encouraging his followers to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from his Presidency to the Biden Presidency. He even called for the hanging his vice president for not supporting his act of insurrection. 

 

The Fourteenth Amendment Section 3 clearly states ‘that no one shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress or elector of President or Vice President, having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, who has engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the government of the United States, or given aide to comfort to the enemies thereof.’

 

To me, Trump personifies the worst in what a person can represent by his words, behavior, and inability to be truthful. And he is legally disqualified from being able to run for or function as President of the United States by his seditious behavior on January 6. I ask, how can we stand by and watch someone like Trump whose behaviors have been illegal and disqualifying of him to serve as our President, serve as role model for our children and serve as our national leader?

 

When will we wake up and take responsibility to correct the absurdity of having a sexually deviant, racist, an insurrectionist, a convicted felon, and a cognitively and emotionally limited 7-year-old in the Oval Office?

 

For me, according to our Constitution, Trump is ineligible to be my President. His being allowed to continue moving into the Oval Office is illegal. Anyone who has facilitated his illegally becoming President, should be held accountable to the full extent of the law.