Sorry, no more Mr. NIce Guy.
This is where I stand. Period.
I make no apologies to any or all of my FB friends for this. I know some are tired of political postings and rants. But apart from non-committal posts of recipes, meals, flowers, dogs, seashells, balloons, pictures, cats, drama, humor, our own art, and even beautiful expressions of spiritual beliefs, FB is (until it gets taken away) a vehicle to express our outrage at how far our country has currently fallen on the humanitarian scale.
To me, FB is a useful vehicle for my passion and activism. The fevered ego currently occupying our White House, his power hungry cronies taking positions of authority in his Cabinet and administration, and the majority of Republicans in Congress are a real and active threat to me, my way of life, and all the people I love. And unless you are worth billions of dollars, they are a threat to you and your life, too. So, I will Resist and I will continue to be a part of the resistance, and proud of it. If you can join in or hang with it, fine. But, I refuse to “play nice” in the face of what these people are doing. Our country’s well-being demands that we stand and resist.
Some people are saying that we should give #45 a chance, that we should “work together” with him because he won the election and he is “everyone’s president.” This is my response:
• I will not say #45’s name.
• I will not forget how badly he and so many others treated former President Barack Obama for EIGHT YEARS…
• I will not “work together” to privatize Medicare, cut Social Security and Medicaid.
• I will not “work together” to remove civil rights from ANYONE.
• I will not “work together” to destroy marriage equality and make it a states right to deny love between two people.
• I will not “work together” to allow men to make choices about a woman’s own body, or to restrict health care for women.
• I will not “work together” to deny health care to people who need it.
• I will not “work together” to increase the profits of the insurance companies.
• I will not “work together” to deny medical coverage to people on the basis of an alleged or actual “pre-existing condition.”
• I will not “work together” to build a wall.
• I will not “work together” to persecute Muslims.
• I will not “work together” to shut out refugees from countries where we destabilized their governments, so that we could have something more agreeable to our oligarchy.
• I will not “work together” to lower taxes on the 1%.
• I will not “work together” to increase taxes on the middle class and poor.
• I will not “work together” to help #45 use the Presidency to line his pockets and those of his cronies.
• I will not “work together” to weaken and demolish environmental protection.
• I will not “work together” to sell American lands, especially National Parks, to companies which then despoil those lands.
• I will not “work together” to enable the killing in any way of whole species of animals just because they are predators, or inconvenient for a few, or because some people want to get their thrills killing them.
• I will not “work together” to waste trillions more on our military when we already have the strongest in the world.
• I will not “work together” to alienate countries that have been our allies for as long as I have been alive.
• I will not “work together” to slash funding for education.
• I will not “work together” to take basic assistance from people who are at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.
• I will not “work together” to allow torture and “black op” prison sites.
• I will not “work together” to “take their oil.”
• I will not “work together” to get rid of common sense regulations on guns.
• I will not “work together” to eliminate the minimum wage.
• I will not “work together” to support so-called “Right To Work” laws, or undermine, weaken or destroy Unions in any way.
• I will not “work together” to suppress scientific research, be it on climate change, fracking, or any other issue where a majority of scientists agree that #45 and his supporters are wrong on the facts.
• I will not “work together” to increase the number of nations that have nuclear weapons.
• I will not “work together” to put even more “big money” into politics.
• I will not “work together” to violate the Geneva Convention.
• I will not “work together” to give the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazi Party and white supremacists a seat at the table, or to normalize their hatred.
• I will not “work together” to increase voter suppression.
• I will not “work together” to normalize tyranny.
• I will not “work together” to eliminate or reduce ethical oversite at any level of government.
• I will not “work together” with anyone who is, or admires, tyrants and dictators who murder their opposition.
• I will not “work together” with #45 because I will not allow one man to feed upon the fears of the populace, blaming minorities for their condition or their inability to thrive.
This is the line, and I am drawing it.
• I will stand for honesty, love, respect for all living beings, and for the compassion and humanity that is the center of Life itself.
• I will use my voice and my hands, to reach out to the uninformed, and to anyone who will LISTEN for what’s really so dangerous about #45, his friends and the Big Lie they spin to the world:
• That “winning”, “being great again”, “rich” or even “beautiful” is anything more than nothing when others are sacrificed to glorify its existence.
PS: If you agree, please touch and hold this text you are reading and copy and re-post (we understand this results in larger numbers of people seeing a post), and if you can, sign your name below ours and add your state.
Consider this an opportunity to make a declaration of commitment, in becoming part of The Resistance.”
-Tim Rowden
-Stacey Crawford, Saint Louis, Missouri
-Kenneth Hendricks, Saint Petersburg, Florida
-Lou Castillo, Houston, Texas
-KL Rhavensfyre, North Carolina
-Char Gutierrez, Boutte, LA
-Vera Skorupski, Slidell, LA
-Marc Severson, Tucson, AZ
-Pamela Severson Vaughn, San Francisco, CA
-Penelope Warren, Minnesota
-Juan Oliver, Santa Fe, NM
-Michael Merriman, Plano Texas
Tim Rowden has done a pretty complete job of laying out the arguments as to why #45 should be resisted.
It seems sensible to use this forum as a place to point out some of the factors that led to the fact of #45’s election success…a success owed to the voters of the “flyover states”, the red middle of the country.
As I recall, it was a minority of the voters in that election (47%) that substantially tipped the Electoral College against the wishes of the majority of voters who were primarily in the blue (mostly coastal) states.
This was a clear example of the wisdom of the Founding Fathers in designing the Electoral College to protect the smaller states from domination by the larger ones such as NY. This is of course upsetting to those who don’t like the election results and who intend to resist #45.
However I expect that many #45 resisters understand that a good many of those who voted for #45 are unhappy (although not surprised) with #45’s behavior in office.
They are not surprised that a flamboyant television celebrity who bamboozled the Republican Establishment with BS and showmanship would be unchanged in his behavior.
They are not surprised but they are deeply disappointed that his behavior has not changed.
So how did it happen?
Pin it mostly on the Progressives in government and the entertainment industry, and on the behavior of #44.
The red state victories resulted in part from a convulsive rejection of political correctness, the coarsening of the culture, the corruption by public employee unions, and the actions of #44. Actions such as refusing to name Radical Islamic Terrorism, such as arousing racial divisiveness by inviting representatives of Black Lives Matter into the White House ( ” What do we want?, Dead cops. Fry ’em like bacon”). Also, #44’s demeaning of American exceptionalism though his apology tours at the beginning of his first term. Apologizing to the world on behalf of the nation that rescued the world from the Nazis, and rebuilt Europe with the Marshall Plan. The nation that props up NATO and that can take much of the credit for the collapse of the USSR, freeing the nations of Eastern Europe.
That is a good part of how it happened.
Just an observation,
Al Ward