"No News . . . "

            I fear turning on news broadcasts! Every day another administrative atrocity bombards my sense of morality. I can’t stomach seeing or hearing others defend the amoral monster who resides within the White House. I no longer follow Trump’s twitter tantrums because he demonizes all and praises only himself. His repugnancy demands rejection by all honorable souls.

            POOF!

            He is nothing.

Copyright 2018 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

"Nothing Up My Sleeve"

 

            Yesterday our president tweeted (again) something offensive. Everyone stopped to respond to his repugnant words. As it should be. Resistance means we can’t overlook the turn of a phrase that contains an intimidation tactic that this administration uses daily and ruthlessly. The White House responded that the president will respond “fire with fire” to criticisms thrown his way. I could spend hours on the topic of the difference between evaluating the job performance of an elected official, which is one of the jobs of the media, and making demeaning statements intended to shame or enflame in response to those assessments. A “fire with fire” response would have been a series of tweets that point-by-point addressed to Scarborough and Brzenzinski the issues under debate, not shooting off insults toward their intellect or appearances.

            As disgusting as the Twitter battle became yesterday, I was also troubled by this president’s proclamation at a meeting with the Department of Energy. I found it distressing that this administration’s agenda includes an expansion of off-shore drilling to oil and natural gas companies to push our country into “American energy dominance.” Not one word of this policy went toward clean energy funding. As I resist this administration’s misogynistic positions, I must also fight against an energy policy that will unravel years of work by conservationists.

            Almost unnoticed in yesterday’s news, because of the belligerent tweeting and disconcerting energy policy, came the report that a White House panel requested from all fifty states voter rolls. This information would include “the names, addresses, birthdates, political party (if recorded), last four digits of the voter's Social Security Number and which elections the voter has participated in since 2006, for every registered voter in the country.” Fortunately, representatives from several states have already turned down this request.

            It concerns me that this administration conducts magic tricks constantly. As we focus our attentions at one overt maneuver that attacks our civility and sensibilities, they slip by other, and perhaps far more dangerous, policy.

Copyright 2017 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

"Food Poisoning and Politics"

  Last Tuesday, my psyche took a full-frontal attack that left me dazed throughout the week.  I arrived home shell-shocked after a rough day at work. One look at me, and my son suggested we eat out for dinner instead of settling for Plain Jane meatloaf. 
  Desiring to give myself a boost, I proposed that we try a new restaurant that had opened recently just around the corner. My nephew thought it would be fun to join us, and so we waited for my husband’s 5:30 arrival before heading out.
  David grabbed the first available parking spot as we could see that the new place already did a booming business. Our chippie waitress highlighted her personal favorites, and we decided to begin our meal with fried pickles paired with a Ranch Dressing and the restaurant’s special blend.
  By 1:30 AM, I knew the wrenching intestinal pain that wracked though my body could only be food poisoning. Some tiny microbe sent my entire gut into “Warning! Warning! WARNING!” alarms. That toxin, no matter how minute, drove my system into protective hyper-drive. 
  For the next seventeen hours, I flushed out every sweet potato French fry, fried pickle with Ranch dressing, and burger bit that lingered in my stomach and intestines.
  My body defenses knew to purge this danger.
  It responded rapidly to the threat.
  It won.
  And while this germ battle raged within, I barely noticed national events. My peripheral senses picked up another visceral response occurring, but on a massive scale. As protests grew, my foggy brain toggled through Facebook and Twitter feeds, and I realized many Americans simply don’t understand the psychological and sociological necessity for hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets to protest against an election they know they cannot change.  
  Protest in our country is not unpatriotic.
  Protest is not the product of childish, whining people who need to “put on their big boy pants” and “grow-up.”
  Protest provides our political “bodies” one way of purging something harmful and dangerous.
         For many of us, the placement of someone like Trump into the White House represents the beginning of an infestation of venomous mindsets. We know our election process put this man into power. We know we’ll honor the change because this transfer of power is one of the fundamental strengths of our country and the Constitution.
          But, like my gut forcing out poison, the discord of protest can possibly end with a cleansing.

Copyright 2016 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman