September 2018

It is time for us to make some changes in our consciousness individually and collectively, and in our societal practices.   What do we expect from and for our sons and daughters?  None of us who have sons would want to see them imprisoned for some early mistakes in expressing their sexuality and we tend to make more excuses for our sons than we do our daughters.  ‘Boys will be boys’, ‘locker-room talk’, ‘rough horse-play’; minimizing in our thought and speech, calling groping … fondling, calling attempted-rape ….groping.  There are too many mixed messages for teenagers growing up in today’s culture.

I found the 9/21/18 Register-Mail Guest Opinion very thought-provoking; the socialization of our boys needs to be more circumspect; we need to pay closer attention to the messages that our sons and daughters are receiving, about what values and qualities we deem most important.  These messages are expressed in myriad ways; when the best paid jobs revolve around sports and action-movies, we tell males that toughness, aggressiveness, competition and looks are the most important goals …. and our daughters, that looks and manners should be their path to success.  We have for far too long given the message to our daughters that being compliant and obsequious are highly-valued traits.  Protect our daughters!

I applaud Scott Reeder for his courage in sharing with us recently the detrimental effects of a sexual assault he experienced at age 12, that he essentially kept secret for 40 years.  Why do we doubt women but believe men who come forward years later with experiences that were terrifying, confusing and shaming; like the middle-aged men who came forth recently to tell of their recurring abuse at the hands of numerous, trusted priests.  Sexual violence is prevalent in our society.

Columnist Dahlia Lithwick explains, “we bury trauma, excavating it and hiding it again, and promise ourselves that if the man ever is poised to do real harm to others, we will surely speak up; how many know how difficult it is to speak up at all and why?”   I was 9 and 10 years old, being sexually-molested by a stepfather, and I can tell you that it is truly harmful to one’s psyche and self-esteem; it is guilt and shame-inducing; it is a larceny of one’s innocence from which we never fully recover.  Dahlia intuits, “of course men want to dismiss us as liars and hysterics.  Men want us to take our abuse stories to our graves.”  Too many have.  Let’s refuse to keep doing so!   #MeToo

Trish Forsyth Voss

Andrew Gillum, a charismatic African-American candidate, won his Florida gubernatorial primary race 8/28   His opponent, Republican Ron DeSantis, speaking of Gillum 8/29, on Fox & Friends stated that Florida was recovering and “the last thing we need to do is ‘monkey this up’  by trying to embrace a socialist agenda” (and electing the first black governor).  Backlash was immediate, DeSantis’ spokesperson answering that he uses that phrase often and meant no racist slur; amazingly Fox & Friends stated, “we do not condone this language”.  But Laura Ingraham, never reluctant to join a racist argument, chose to play Peter Gabiels’s “Shock the Monkey” song on her 8/30 radio show, leading into her interview with Florida’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, Ron DeSantis.  Ingraham appeals to many people who claim to be strong Christians; ‘conservative’ seems to me to be synonymous with ‘bigot’.  Film-maker Judd Apatow remarked, “Racist evil person.  But Lachlan and James Murdoch and @foxnews are fine with that. They monetize it. So evil.”   Jesus didn’t preach hate and guns; he urged us to welcome the foreigner, to love one another.

What makes it so difficult for ‘conservatives’ to embrace diversity?  They seem so offended by brown-skinned people and others.  Racism in America is encouraged, incited by President Trump; furthered and exacerbated by the likes of Laura Ingraham.  She recently went on a rant about, “massive demographic changes have been foisted upon the American people, that none of us ever voted for and most of us don’t like — it’s related to both illegal and legal immigration, that of course, progressives love!”   Wrong!   What of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W Bush Jr. and others who argued for immigration , even granting amnesty to immigrants?  Ingraham didn’t vote for them?

Googling Ingraham, I listened to her rant on “dumb jocks — like LeBron James and Kevin Durant”, whom she ridiculed for speaking differently than she does, and for expressing political views opposite hers.  She retorted, “No one voted for you, so keep the political commentary to yourselves.  Shut-up and dribble!”  And asked, “Why do they have to run their mouths like that?”    Trump said he thought “the midterms should be a consensus on what it means to be an American”.   Malcolm Nance, former intel-officer stated, “America is NOT a race or a color; it’s an IDEA.  It’s an experiment in democracy, that many have died for, and most of us mightily wish to continue!”

Trish Forsyth Voss

Walls closing in!  Don McGahn, Legal Advisor for The White House, (not the president’s attorney) will be OUT this fall, “after Kavanaugh is confirmed (hopefully) for Supreme Court”.   McGahn was notified via Twitter.  That decision came days after Trump discovered that McGahn had been talking to Mueller (for some 30 hours).  Trump tweeted that he ‘learned’ via Fox, that “China hacked Hillary’s server” (as Sec of State) and obtained “many Classified emails”; the FBI rebutted this, but Trump wants us to believe that FBI and DOJ are corrupt.  He attacked Google for “rigged searches”, acting as if he might need to control it;  if any information doesn’t fit his narrative he labels it”fake news”.  In Trump’s alter-universe, the Fox & Friends TV station-anchors are his cabinet secretaries, his ‘go-to’ people for encouraging counsel.

After hailing Manafort as a “brave man”, who didn’t “break”, he then heard that Manafort’s lawyers were trying to obtain a plea-deal (while the jury was deliberating) to avoid more charges.  In a Trump interview with a Fox-anchor recently, he renewed his attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom Senators like Graham and Grassley were strongly defending last year, but they’re now singing the tune: “the President deserves an AG he can trust”.

Trump is beseeching his base to disbelieve “anonymous sources” in news stories; rich irony, as Donald Trump, for decades, used to call news agencies to plant stories, pretending to be John Miller or John Baron.  Today’s journalists don’t work that way.  Allusions to the Orwellian novel “1984” have been discussed; “a dystopian novel, published in 1949, was set in 1984, when most of the world population have become victims of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation”.  Trump mouthpiece, Rudy Giuliani recently said, “Truth isn’t Truth!”  Trump urged followers at a Missouri rally, “Just remember, what you are seeing and reading is not what’s happening.”

Steve Schmidt stated, “Forty percent of the country has surrendered their intellectual sovereignty to Donald Trump.  There is, for them, no such thing as objective truth anymore.  What is true is what the leader says is true.   We are moving very quickly towards an hour where we’re going to test the premise in this country whether the president is above the law or not.  Trump is pursuing the strategy to try to incite his base, smaller but more intense; extraordinary and frightening; it is not the majority of the country!”

Trish Forsyth Voss