Telling the Truth

connecting the dots of my life

Tag: Election 2020

May 25, 2020

Resisting Mr. Trump


Civil Rights March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama (1965)

What is the content of my character? The question haunts me. I’m in the golden to fading-golden years of my life. Until early this year, all my ducks (as many as I could herd) seemed to be lining up in a neat row, with plans and documents in fairly good order.

The appearance of Mr. Trump on the overtly political stage distressed me in 2016. Today it horrifies me that he’s still there.

This isn’t about who wins the next election. It isn’t even about Covid-19. It’s about resistance and the content of our character.

Mr. Trump doesn’t seem to lose sleep over the content of his character.

I wonder about myself.
Do I understand true resistance?
And what is the content of my character right now?

For decades I minimized the circumstances of my childhood. I thought that if I got on with my life as an adult, the baggage of the past would gradually fade away.

That didn’t happen. It never does. I had to resist openly. I had to open my mouth, and say what I needed to say to the people who most needed to hear from me–my parents. Which I did on the eve of my 50th birthday.

I grew up under the strict, sometimes harsh tutelage of a father who contantly reminded me that he was in control, and I was not. But power is never a sign of ‘rightness’ or even (as in my ordained father’s case) ‘righteousness.’

When I look back at my internal resistance to my father’s heavy-handed methods of control, I wonder how I did it. Stubborn? Yes. I was stubborn–though not in the way my father thought I was.

Instead, I learned to embody stubborn resistance in the face of overwhelming odds. Sometimes it worked to my advantage. Overall, however, it did not. My body paid a high price.

It would not be fair or true to say my father and Mr. Trump were cut from the same cloth. Still, there are obvious overlaps, including unhealthy narcissism. The kind that tries to eradicate healthy narcissism in others.

It doesn’t matter whether Mr. Trump wins the next election or not. He has already wreaked havoc here in the USA and abroad. It won’t do for me to hold my nose and wait for November.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 25 May 2020
Photo of 1965 March from Selma to Birmingham, Alabama found at americanyawp.com

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April 15, 2020

Fighting Voter Suppression in the USA

One of you kindly sent me three articles in response to yesterday’s post. Even if you don’t live here in the USA, please take a look at any of them. They tell the truth about our nation’s current crisis in governance.

League of Women Voters: Fighting Voter Suppression

Common Dreams: How Advocates Are Fighting Voter Suppression

Brennan Center for Justice: How to Fight Voter Suppression Nationwide

Our nation has many visible and invisible problems to resolve. It seems only fair that we begin with the most egregious problem of all: the right of each citizen to cast and have counted his or her vote in local and national elections. Mail-in ballots for all is an option. If it’s good enough for POTUS, it’s good enough for us!

What just happened in Wisconsin was deplorable, thanks to last-minute political wrangling. Nonetheless, those who were able and willing to vote in person were uncommonly brave. Do we have the same courage?

The stakes are high. We say we’re “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” It’s time to step up and be counted on the side of freedom, courage, and justice for each qualified voter.

Yes, we’re in the middle of a pandemic. All the more reason to be alert and active on behalf of our citizen rights.

Thanks for reading, and for finding opportunities to make a difference wherever you live on our shared planet.

Elouise

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 15 April 2020
Photo of Wisconsin Primary voters found at hawaiitribune-herald.com

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April 14, 2020

What matters most in Election 2020?

Some say we’ve lost our way
Or never found it in the first place

Ask anyone where we are
and you’ll get a different answer
or spin on today’s evils
deplored by many yet
tolerated by others who keep
peering into their fat pockets

Some even higher on the ladder
hide behind protective measures
meant to procure a place
at the Right Table if not a voice
in anything but business as usual
which means nothing when we’ve
lost our way and don’t know how
to get out of this endless loop

Others say we’ve lost our way
Yet leaderless non-governance
guarantees we’ll do that because
it’s part of the campaign
for another America already lurking
behind niceties and small talk
masked by forever grins on faces
of perpetrators at the top and bottom
making their way one stolen vote at a time

As I see it, voter suppression has become a tragic tradition in the USA. The thought of Honorable Stacey Abrams becoming former Vice President Joe Biden’s running mate (no, he hasn’t invited her to do this) gives me hope and clarity about what matters most.

There’s a lot that needs to be restored in the USA. Yet talk about important plans is vain if we can’t come up with a plan to abolish voter suppression. It stares us in the face every day, not just during election campaigns. Abrams is more than ready for this fight.

Abolition of Voter Suppression!

A goal worth pursuing with all our hearts before the door slams shut.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 14 April 2020
Image found at learn.kqed.org

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March 6, 2020

From where I sit today | Politics

We have yet again reduced our integrity as a nation by resorting to a white-male-only race for the Grand Prize, President of the USA.

Cloaked in our national Trance, we appear unwilling to acknowledge our collective history, or make changes from the top down. Instead, we find ourselves yet again fighting from the bottom up.

I know whom I don’t want as President of the United States after the next election. I also know I won’t have as President of the United States a woman of any color at all.

Our nation remains deeply invested in Trance mode. After centuries of practice, too many of us are highly skilled in stepping around and over our inglorious past, making nice, and believing we’re the greatest.

In addition, we’ve been bought and/or sold to the highest bidder so many times we don’t always recognize when it’s happening.

This doesn’t mean past elections were simply another version of what we’re seeing today.

Forget about Russian or other foreign intrusions into our elections. We have uncounted, unaccountable home-grown intruders flying under the radar as well as in plain sight. They’re enabled by our current President plus too many national and local leaders willing to tolerate injustice in order to maintain their own political agendas, life styles, or access to the Good Life.

For each woman who announced her candidacy to become President in this environment, I say Kudos! The crushing weight of USA-style white male dominance began early in our history. What you have done was daring, courageous, and visionary.

I’m not saying women are perfect. Nor are we, on our own, the solution to our descent into warring madness.

I am, however, saying we, as a nation, cut off our own hands, feet, and huge portions of our brains and hearts when we ignore, belittle or misappropriate the gifts of women in leadership.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 6 March 2020
Image found at learn.kqed.org

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