Revenge and Retribution

 

                                    "Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall

                                    Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

                                    All the King's horses and all the king's men

                                    Couldn't put Humpty back together again."

So begins the Trump presidency, poised for disaster in 2025. When a man who dreams of being king sets his primary goal on ridding the country of all of his enemies, he--like Humpty Dumpty--is setting the country on a collision course that is terrifying and doomed to fail. He has an enemy list that includes several media outlets he abhors, and the likes of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, among others, and he has appointed unqualified people to his cabinet who will do his bidding. After all, it is alot easier to destroy an institution than to build one.

Let's start with Kash Patel, who in his 2023 book GOVERNMENT GANSTERS is going to head the F.B.I. and "has named 60 people as members of the executive branch deep state"-- "a cabal of unelected tyrants who posed the most dangerous threats to our democracy." He wants these political, military and media people to be dealt with "criminally or civilly." (NYT, Sarah Isgur, 12/14/2024). There are many people on this list, such as Bill Barr, who served as one of Donald Trump's attorney generals; John Bolton, who served as national security advisor; and Pat Cipollone, Mr.Trump's White House counsel." If you have spoken any word against the incoming king; if you are perceived as the opposition, you are part of the "deep state" and, according to Trump and his henchman (the future Federal Bureau of Insanity), you deserve jail time, at the very least, or the death penalty for Retired General Mark A. Milley. This is an absurd travesty of justice. Trump repeatedly said during his campaign, "Revenge and Retribution" and as professional journalists and politicians said, "Believe him!"

This insane premise would be fine if there were other guardrails, a criminal justice system that would safeguard folks against baseless prosecutions, but those are quickly disappearing. Once the Supreme Court granted Donald Trump, a clear-cut criminal, immunity under acts he committed when he was president, all gloves were off. We already know the Supreme Court, with its six Conservative justices, has given Trump a get out of jail free card, so what hope can there be for them to protect the innocent people who dare to question his authority. Plus, he has a whole cabinet of equally unqualified people, including Pam Bondi to head the justice department, who, aside from denying the results of the 2020 election, wants all "woke radical leftists" fired from the DOJ. This  spells the end of freedom for a democratic voice.

Let's not forget freedom of speech - they want NPR to end as well as newspapers who speak the truth to Trump's numerous lies. Just today Trump annnounced "I am not sure if grocery prices could be lowered for a very long time," a baseless campaign promise which people who saw through his charade knew was a bogus claim. That is what he does. But right now, as he begins policies to help claim  his demagoguery, who could possibly stop him?

Finally, there is Kari Lake chosen to serve as director of the federally funded boadcaster Voice of America, where America's achievements are boadcast worldwide. "Mr.Trump's thoughts of the media are clear: he calls reporters enemies of the people, derides critical news coverage of him as fake and muses about stripping broadcasters of their licenses" (NYT, Kate Rogers, 12/14). Ms. Lake, a former television anchor who lost her own elections, has often disparaged the press. Journalists are already reeling regarding the possibility of voicing free and independent coverage. This fear is justified. A man who bullies senators to support his appointees by intimidating them with fears of not being reelected will surely attempt to squelch all opposition, and he will likely succeed.

Yet, having such supporters and their undying pledge of allegiance to the king has an obvious pitfall. There will come a reckoning, one day, which will cause some of his minions to disagree with him. Already he and Musk are at odds with contrasting points of view about the government. History has repeatedly demonstrated all monarchies may have their day in the sun, but inevitably fail. And when, hopefully, this presidency comes tumbling down because of revenge and retribution, there will be no one left in his government to pick up these pieces based on hate. Hopefully, we can start over, perhaps in two years, when people realize the emperor is naked and was indeed so the day he first walked down the golden stairs of Trump tower.

The Free Press

 "You may be going to jail," my husband said the other day after reading my latest blog.

"You think???" I said, laughing.

"Of course, since you are admonishing the man who would be king/dictator."

I laughed again, knowing my blogs, soon to be posted on substack, are small potatoes. However, the non-laughing matter is he will surely go after the big presses. Freedom of the press may be a thing of the past. It was bad during the first term, but this term will be arguably worse. In his first term he went after CNN because of its coverage about him, and apparently tried to push The Department of Justice to block AT& T's acquisition of the Network's owner at the time, Time Warner. He has frequently ranted and rallied against the press, calling them "the enemy of the people." Since he is a media creation, this feels ridiculously ironic; they have given him too large a platform, freqently pushing his lies as facts.They have normalized an insanely abnormal man, a terrific injustice to the American public who believe him.

This second term will be worse. According to a piece in THE NEW YORKER, "there is a fear he will ramp up the deployment of subpoenas, specious lawsuits, court orders and search warrants to seize reporters' notes, devices and source materials." The threats are so large that THE WASHINGTON POST and THE L.A. TIMES refused to endorse Kamala, their candidate of choice. Joe and Mika went down to Mar-a-Lago to try to reconcile with him. Afterwards, he made fun of them for trying to get back in his favor. It is a terrible move to try to gain favor with a man who is so unhinged, so newspapers and media, beware of your kow-towing. Stop bowing down to him; it won't work!

Indeed, retribution is in the air. Trump has already opposed a bi-partisan federal bill that would allow journalists to withold the identity of confidential sources. "Republicans must kill this bill," he has said. Already Kash Patel, a Q conspiracy theorist and potential F.B.I director, has said, "We are going after American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections," while on Steve Bannon's podcast. Trump's lawyers have already threatened or taken legal action against THE TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, ABC, Penguin Random House, and others. With one of the authors of 2025 (the 900 page document Trump knew nothing about), Brendan Carr, who is ideologically aligned with Elon Musk, to head the Federal Communications Commission, freedom of press may soon be obsolete.  Indeed, the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 proposed ending federal funding for both NPR and PBS.

We are now like Putin's Russia. Another irony is just the other day, Russian television mocked America's chaos and disarray, clearly happy to have Trump and his chaos in office. It will only make Russia stronger as American power weakens. This is, after all, "the arsenal of a would-be-autocrat who seeks to intimidate his critics, protect himself from scrutiny and go on wearing away at the liberal democratic order." He desires the silence of the opposition, which is why it is critical for people to raise their voices of dissent high over the rooftops of every building, all over the world! And so I will.

*Acnowledgment is given to "The Talk of the Town," NEW YORKER, December 9th

Disqualified

 If one were doing a search for the president of a university, a hospital or a law firm, they would scrutinize a multitude of resumes. Unfortunately, little was done when the Republican candidate was chosen.  This one man, in particular, has a HUGE fan base who would go to bat for this man, which includes, perhaps, a call to arms. His base loves him so much they will fight, destroy the U.S. capital (if need be), but they will get their man in. They will lie, but so will he; he lies so much, it is a challenge to decipher truth from disinformation. It doesn't matter; he is loud and entertaining and a classic bully. He is certainly not a role model for workers, teachers, doctors, lawyers or students. My God, parents would punish their children for doing far less. His behavior is unacceptable. Plus, he has 34 felony convictions. There would have been more charges, many more, but he has relied on massive delaying tactics. He lies to those interviewing him, but they like a strong man, a powerful man; they don't mind his derision. In the "real" world, he would never be hired. He wouldn't even get a second interview. But it is this man who was selected to be president of the United States; you can't make this level of debasement up. It is parody at its worst. No one reads the news anyway or is truly that informed, so there are zero guardrails to reign him in. He is on a mission to destroy, and indeed he will.

The plot thickens. Now this man is in charge of putting together a charlatan cabinet and staff, and he does it with speed and with one goal and one goal only: loyalty to the chief. It is like a hospital hiring the worst doctors and staff and nurses because they will honor this "fearless leader," and do whatever he wants, even if this means seeing patients die right before their very eyes. This is retribution against your enemy time; not a government. Let's start with Pete Hegseth's nomination as defense secretary. Even his own mother wrote to him in 2018 saying he was an abuser of women and a misogynist. No surprise. He is also an alcoholic, with several ugly scenes to his credit. In addition to no expereince, he wants to ban women from combat operations. Seriously? But he loves Donald Trump, so what else matters? Joining him in the list of challenges is Putin-lover Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence, sure to make foreign nations keep many secrets from our country. She is putting our national security at risk. Foreign leaders are already banning together to ban America from sensitive information. Who could blame them? R.F.K. Jr our possibly soon to be our secretary of Health and Human Services, is the man in part responsible for discouraging vaccines in Somoa, which resulted in an outbreak of 5,700 cases of measles and more than eighty deaths (many of them children) as a consequence. Personality doctor Dr. Oz, who lost his gubernatorial race in Pennsylvania, has now been chosen to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Between one bogus scientist and one non-scientist, what more could you ask for! 

Yet, there is still more. Kash Patel, whose only goal is to take care of the Don, wants to trash the F.B.I., a task he will have no problem with. He is an election denier consipracy-theory junkie, who has bounced from job to job with a level of gross inefficiency, in truth on par with everyone else. His goal is retribution. Let's not forget Kristi Noem the current Govenor of South Dakota who is well-known for two things: shooting her own dog who was a nuisance, as well as a goat, and dancing for thirty minutes at a rally with the Don, because he forgot he was supposed to speak and not dance. She is now pegged to be Director of Homeland Security, who better to serve in such a role.

Other cast members include seven people who worked on the 2025 Project, the distastrous more than 900-page document that seeks to destroy all our norms, all our institutions and all the progress we have made as a nation in the past decades. I shudder at this "shadow" government, that selects Massad Boulas (his credential: daughter Tiffany's father-in-law) as advisor to the Middle East and Charles Kushner (Jared's father) a recently pardoned criminal as ambassador to France.

I am so glad Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter, and to say otherwise, as an appalled Republican or citizen, indicates how much you have swallowed the Kool-Aid; hypocrisy is now your middle name. What Hunter did to break the law is NOTHING compared to this lowly group of sycophants who DARE to lead our government. This is not the Twilight Zone; it is not a dystopian novel; it is not even a successful parody. It is that bad! I would laugh-out-loud if I weren't crying and mourning whatever this country wants to call itself, not anything that bears any semblance to reality. Each day's selection is a new disaster.

What Will Doctors and Women Do?????

 Two years ago, after Roe vs. Wade was overturned, my husband, a retired physician was asked by a family member to prescribe abortion pills for a young pregnant woman who lived in Ohio, and was past the six week abortion mandate adopted by many states. As a New Yorker and a very humane doctor, his immediate response was, "Of course." However, he needed some questions answered: 1. Was it an ectopic pregnancy? 2. Would someone care for this woman afterwards and finally, what COULD happen to him if the state discovered he had written the prescription. The response? "Jail time, a fine and a possible loss of his license." He offered an alternative: The woman could come to New York (he would cover the cost); he would find her a clinic and she could stay with us in New York. Apparently, someone had offered the same option in Pennsylvania, so the girl was helped and saved.

What will happen as more sates fail to approve this insane six-week aboortion ban, and physicians and health-care providers are forced to turn women away who are having a severe medical crisis from the fetus they are carrying? Just yesterday in Georgia a woman died since no one would treat her bleeding from a miscarriage; this is now commonplace. It is also a gross miscarriage of decency which compels health-care providers to turn their backs on women in distress.What will happen in 2025, when this new adminstration, not to be trusted, perhaps decides to enact a federal ban? 

Immediately, more women may potetially die; others will lose the opportunity to ever have children again and some women will select to have children they can not care for. I just finished a terrifying article in THE NEW YORKER: "The Texas Exodus." Many decent ob-gyn physicians are leaving the state, because they are no longer thought of as health-care providers, but as criminals if they help a woman who seeks to have an abortion, even when medically justified. "From a medical standpoint, the treatment for aboriton and miscarriage is the same--and so, even though miscarriage care remained legal, physicians began putting it off or denying it outright." According to the author of the article, Stephania Taladrid, "After Roe was overturned, the laws in Texas were tightened further, so that abortion was banned at any stage of pregnancy, unless a woman was threatened with death or substantial impairment of a major bodily function. Violations could send practioners to prison for life."

Texas is not the only state where ob-gyn doctors are leaving. Any state that has criminalized the care of women's reproductive health has propelled a mass-exodus of its medical establishment, and now this is SO MANY states across the country. Not only that, according to the article, medical schools are discouraging students from going into these fields. Where, after all, can they safely practise medicine according to the Hippocratic Oath they sought to preserve. How many states will survive this political execution??

I find myself filled with grief and fury on so many levels. First of all, I am enraged with the many MEN who made these laws, and the indecency of the dysfunctional SUPREME COURT that over-turned the law of the land. WHAT WOMAN  COULD SIGN ON FOR THIS AT THE BALLOT BOX????? I am angry at all the governments--state and otherwise, who have AGREED that this is acceptable. Are ANY of these men, these people, prepared to take care of all the unwanted children being born, particularly since 2025 is poised to CUT many of the needed social services for improverished children. I am angry at a country that saw the clock turning backwards and still elected this man to be president. And I feel, with a heavy-heart, what it must be like to be a woman who is impotent when her body betrays her, and there is no one around to offer medical or emotional support. I feel for the doctors who have trained for years, those who only wanted to help, and now who could be faced with possible criminal conviction. The moral compass of this country is GONE, and I, too, am impotent as I watch our world slowly slip away. It is not a world I signed on for either!

New York

  "How could we live here?" 

  This question resonates inside me daily.  New York is not, after all, the easiest place to live. It is not always clean. It is way too crowded, especially in the theater district, and I love the theater. There can truly be wall to wall traffic. It is also at times dirty. The garbage, though picked up, sometimes still lingers on the streets, an ugly reminder you are a New Yorker, since you have learned to live with it.

And yet, and yet....I can't imagine living anywhere else for any prolonged period of time. I love its energy, even though it is hyper energy, it suits me. I love that there is so much to do here. Today I took the train to Canal Street and went to a very incredible museum, The Banksy Museum. I have discovered with TDF and groupon how to do things inexpensively. And yes, New York is terribly over-priced: the rents, the food, the amenities.

Everywhere I go, including in my building, there is a vast array of faces, religions, ethnicities, genders, ages. My own building feels like a model U.N. I love this, but even more so, I feel safe here, that the liberties of freedom of choice, a woman's right to reproductive care, the safeguarding of my DACA students, the books I read, the bible which will not appear in my public schools, my libraries which will be stocked with every book; in other words--at least for now--I feel like living in New York is living in a state where one's freedom is not inhibited, one not granted in so many states across America. I can only pray the federal government does not change this, but for now, my ob-gyn does not have to think about leaving her city and state to practice safe medicine. My local librarian can stock the shelves with any book he or she chooses. New York has many things which do not work, but its city and state municipalities do not adhere to any draconian rules.

And so, New York is my imperfect home. And as they say, there is no place like home!

And here is my love letter to New York

Overgrown Garden: A Love Letter to New York

Dear New York,

I should have left you

when it was easy

could have traipsed

into a spring of sunshine and sparrows

where miles of clean beaches

beautiful sunsets

and the stores

you might take me to

shelved with caviar, Perrier

simple breath

home baked bread

radiant of light and bright

a costume of white,

still

I allowed you

under my skin--

sweat of summer sidewalks

too much garbage

lingering like an open mouth

spewing a restless mass.

You were gritty

and dirty

feverish

without any relief,

at the corner bodega

you bought me a Slushy

and the voices

of language--

English, Spanish, Arabic, Bengali, Hindi--

a meandering queue

of faces and places

made me dizzy

with desire.

New York

youe frantic air is sifling

yet you pull me into this frenzy

of taste and smell and color;

how could I ever leave you?

Evn the daffodil

loves to linger

in your overgrown garden.

Travel

When I was younger, I imagined traveing the world. I waited until I was an older teen to travel, when I could truly appreciate the wonders and magic of new places, and also when I had the money. I thought of myself as "somehwhat" of an adventurer, traveling with a backpack to England, Scotland, Italy. There were many more mysteries just beyond the horizon.

Indeed, I traveled to many other places-other European cities; other American cities; Mexico; Canada;  Vietnam; the Philippines; Iceland; Caribbean Islands. I always went with an open heart and wide-open eyes. I was never disappointed. I imagined retirement as a time when I could travel far and wide. 

Yet, here I am, and the world has grown smaller. Places such as Russia, Poland, China now seem off limits.It feels like there is more time, but less desire to travel extensively. I am more tired and I like staying home. Air travel is more fraught.

It doesn't mean I am done. I still have a bucket list of Europen cities as well as Australia, Africa, Japan. How will I fare with a twenty plus hour plane ride? I am not sure. The magic and mystery of foreign soil still beckons, but the body (and mind) are fatigued. So, too, do I feel that way with American cities whose politics I abhor. Do I want to give my tourist money to those cities? My husband says no, but for me I am not certain.

There is much uncertainty as I travel in the future. All I can say is onward and upward. To where I am not sure.

The Sorrows and Joys of Getting Older

     "What is good about getting older?" a beloved family member asked at Thanksgiving.

        "I could say, NOT MUCH, since there are so many things, not good, but there are some rewards in turning seventy and retiring.

        "What are they?" She was clearly puzzled. I, too, was puzzled by my response, since I have been feeling somewhat down since the election, thinking this political landscape is NOT the life I wanted to have during my twilight years. My moral compass has only grown stronger with age, so 2025 America is a far cry from a decent world I take pride in. I find the cabinet choices alone to be reprehensible. My God, even Pete Hegseth's mother wrote a piece published in the TIMES in 2018, where she accused her son of mistreating women for years. She said, "he was an abuser of women." In my world he could not hold ANY position in any capacity. Yet, my guess is many members of Congress will not care, so I will have to simply sit on my sorrow.

The sorrow goes deeper. My body can not do what it used to do in so many ways. Head-stands are out in yoga, but so much else is out too, including very active aerobics. I don't swim as many miles as I used to, since I can't. I used to never take public transportation, since I walked everywhere. Now I often take the bus or the subway. My knee and my hip hurt. Plus, even as I am writing this, it is Saturday afternoon, and I feel really tired. I slept well last night, which is often NOT the case for me now as a senior. Adding insult to injury, I am now totally gray-haired, by choice, so when people look at me they see an older woman. I am!

But here is the good part, too. I accept my limitations like I never did before. I push myself, but not too hard, and that is a good thing. I have gotten off the treadmill and I no longer want to get back on it. I appreciate the leisure of a planless day like I never did before. I still exercise, I still write and read, enjoy culture and am inspired to take political action, but I do so at my own pace, no one else's. I don't want to be anyone else but myself, and though my life is not perfect, I am free to be me. That same freedom means I will call you out if you disrespect me, if I don't appreciate what you are doing or saying. There is no one I am afraid of, no one I will kow-tow to. If you don't like me as a result, that is okay, too. Not everyone appreciates this style, and that is fine, which does not mean I won't make sacrifices, especially with my immediate family, particularly my grandchildren, since it takes a village and I want to be part of that village. I have learned to keep quiet and when to use my voice. Plus, at this point in my life, I need not be friends with people I feel little in common with, though I never mind challenges or differences. I am not going to be connected, ever again, out of obligation, since what I really value now is authenticity, even if your authentic is not mine.

I would like to grow old with peace and serentiy, and sometimes that will not be possible, since friction and tumult and the unexpected are always on the horizon, like this past election, which I did not prepare psychologically for in any way.  And there are health issues, too. So, as I grow older with my wrinkled face and gray hair and flab on my stomach, I have to be cognizant--even more so--of the little control I have to map the future. I will do, what I can, to make it the best possible one, and try to ride the waves of sorrow that sometimes might make their way onto my map. But the map will always be mine, so I am prepared for the sorrow and jubilation of the journey.