Heading for a Fall of Massive Proportions

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln quoted the synoptic Gospels when he stated, “A house divided against itself will fall”. At the time, the Abolitioist Movement was growing, Dred Scott had been implemented, and the nation faced a decision: would slavery be outlawed everywhere or nowhere? It had to be one or the other.

His contemporaries were not happy with the speech or him. It was too radical, not good politics. It lost him the election to the US Senate, too.

In hindsight we see the speech as political prophecy. Three years later, America was in the midst of a bitter, violent civil war, the repercussions of which are still being felt today. We like to pretend it’s all over, done, settled, but one look at America today, and I think we can see it’s not.

So here we are, 152 years after the end of that war, 151 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, and pretty much we’re still seeing a house divided.

I have never seen the US this polarized in my entire life. Granted, I’m not ancient, but I remember my Republican grandfather swearing that Kennedy stole the election. I remember the Civil Rights Movement, Watergate, assorted Clintongates, the GWB election, the start of the Iraqi War. Those were pretty rough times in the US.

Although I very much remember the anger and the hatred spewed by the non-Left members of my family and our neighbors, I don’t remember severed friendships, threats of violence. I heard about violence, but not around us.

Perhaps we were just as polarized, but the Internet and the 24/7 news cycle has changed the world. We hear about everything moments after it happens. It’s not that we’re more polarized; it’s just that we know how bad it is.

Forty years of poor education in large parts of the US has also lead to a nation that is unable to critically think. That’s not me being elitist (though when did elite become a bad word?). That’s from a career college professor. Much of my teaching has been in urban community or four year colleges. Currently, I’m teaching the exact same demographic I started teaching in 1988.

My students today are as bright, as talented, as lovely as the students I had then. Not all are wonderful to be around, but on the whole, I teach good people. But the students today are far less prepared to be in college. Their math, reading and writing skills are hovering somewhere between 8th grade and 10th grade. I’m a writing teacher, but if you need to figure out your grade, you need to know math.

They are ill prepared for college and ill prepared for life. And they know it after about the first three weeks of college. The plaintive cry of “why didn’t I learn this in high school” is heard almost every week. I tell them they might have just forgotten, but anyone in education can tell you just how poorly American secondary schools doing.

I don’t want to make this about education–it’s about polarization and our house being divided–but I also see daily proof that education is a major part of our problem. People can’t think. People won’t think.

They also have lost the ability to listen, to reason, and to have civil debates. This is also a topic I’ve written about in the past. Slap my face and call me Cassandra. No one listens to me.

The current president is not popular, especially here in New York City where I live. But it wasn’t too long ago that I was living in Tennessee, surrounded by his supporters. There are many who do not think his actions are racist or bad for America. We can say “that’s because they are racist” but that’s not the whole story.

He’s also called an illegitimate president because he lost the popular vote. He’s not the first, and until the Constitution is changed, he probably won’t be the last. To those who argue that he lost, I say, by three million votes. The final popular vote for the top two candidates was 62,980,160 to 65,845,063. But that translated into 304 electoral college votes to 227. We all know the numbers.

Three million sounds like a lot of votes, but according to the US Census Bureau, the US population in 2016 was 323.1 million, so that’s a less than 1% margin of the population. Of total votes cast it was about a 2.1% difference.

That’s almost half a nation’s voters supporting him. Sure, we can say sexism or Russian influence (and they are valid, Russia seeming more valid by the day), but we also have to address the fact that we are a nation ruled by fear mongering, hatred, and hysteria.

So right now, two sides of the country are at each other’s throat. I know young people who won’t even discuss politics anymore because it’s become dogmatic, intolerant, and personal.

Every day my twitter feed and even the news sources are full of ad hominem attacks against anyone who makes a point or an opinion known. If one of my freshmen tried that, I’d send the paper back with  “take this out–poor logic” in red letters. Actually, many of my freshmen do try this, because it’s what they see around them daily.

Many of the people I know are only able to do the same. I’m not claiming I’m better, but I do think I try harder to listen to people. When they spew hate, I’m more apt to ask why they think that then to spew back.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s teachings are so deeply ingrained in me that I find it repulsive when I respond with hate. I’m human. I think bad things. I’ve said bad things. But at least I know what I’ve done.

Most people on earth are not horrible, soul less, evil, inhumane. In fact, they are very human. We’re not a very nice species. Racism is evil, but if they knew better, they’d do better. So let’s teach instead of firing back hate and insults. Education doesn’t always change minds, but hate doesn’t ever change a mind. Love can change minds. Love can open doors. Oh, I’ll just say it: love can move mountains.

I am, by nature, a Pollyanna, a Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, a person who is going to believe the best will happen. But I’m also a student of human nature and of history.

We are on a collision course in this country, and we’re pretty much split down the middle. There are nuances, of course, but the polarization is stretched pretty far and pretty tight. It is read to snap.

I do not want to see civil war, violent revolution, or an armed civil rights battle.

But I see it coming.

Is it Treason?

I started this  blog post on the 11th, and it was taking too much time to think about and write, so I set it aside to write about the gutless wonders in Congress–both Dems and Repubs.

So tonight, I go out with friends for a lovely dinner and come home to my twitter feed hopping like, I don’t know, a bunch of very active resistance fighters realizing that the current administration is imploding.

As I’ve been arguing since before the inauguration, if there was contact with Russia, that’s treason. For the POTUS to commit treason in support of Russia is like something out of the cold war thrillers I devoured as a young woman.

But as many reporters have said in the past (my first post-college career was political reporting), “you can’t make this shit up”.

Reports have come out in the New York Times and Washington Post stating that Trump Campaign aides had “repeated contacts” with Russian intelligence.  The parties being investigated claim they weren’t aware that they spoke to Russian intelligence. Seriously? A weathy US businessperson with ties to a person running for US president didn’t realize the Russians would be interested? And with Russians I mean the intelligence community. What did they read when they were young? Did they miss the entire cold war? Did they miss the fact that the current president of the Russian Federation is former KGB and doesn’t seem to have forgotten his early training?

OK, I admit it. It’s a jump from aides talking to committing treason. I suspect it, but it will take a while to prove, and that’s if it’s ever possible to prove.

But it’s certainly looking like the Russians interfered with the US election. At the very least, the very least, that need to be investigated thoroughly by investigators. Not Congress. Skilled investigators. Who are the best in the country?

And it’s looking very much like the US needs to void the 2016 election and have an emergency reelection with the Republicans finding another candidate. And the entire first however many days need a CTRL + ALT + DEL. It never happened.

In this country, money talks. Fame talks. I have neither. I have intelligence, I have education, hell, I even have a pretty good background in understanding politics and history. But no one listens to me. Folks read my blog, but I’m not getting any recognition, and that’s not the point. I AM A VOICE.

My voice is being added to hundreds and thousands of other voices in this country and we may just be able to drown out the voices of the super rich. That’s what democracy is supposed to do.

We haven’t been a democracy in a long time, but maybe this disaster of an election cycle really will have a silver lining. Maybe we’ll get rid of the worst of our oligarchy.

What follows below is what I managed to write on the 11th before I got a massive headache. As you can see, the past three days have been enormously eventful. The moral of the story? Do not piss off the press.

Treason is a crime I’m very interested in for personal reasons. My great-uncle, about whom I’m writing a book, was a government witness in a treason trial against an American man who had tortured him during his time as a POW in a Japanese camp during WWII. The man was convicted and sentenced to death, which was commuted to life in prison without parole by President Eisenhower. Later President Kennedy commuted that sentence to exile back to Japan.

Uncle Tom was crushed but dealt with it.  While I’m glad the guilty party wasn’t executed–frankly, I can understand killing in hot blood, but not in cold blood, especially by the state–I wish he had lived out his sentence. And when I raise questions of treason, which I’ve been doing for months now, I have no desire to see anyone executed. What I would like to see is Russian collaborators out of the White House.

Yesterday’s news was full of Michael Flynn most likely lying about his meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. I have no insider information, but I didn’t believe my five year old when he said, “I don’t remember.”

Nor do I have insider information about whether or not Putin interfered with the 2016 presidential election. President Obama surely thought so, because that’s why he imposed the sanctions in December. The question is, though, did Trump know and, if so, when did he know it?

I’ve read a number of posts about Russia’s sale of 19.5% of Rosneft, its oil company. According to sources, the supposed dossier the Russians hold states that if Trump won the election and lifted Russian sanctions, his cronies would get a 19% share in Rosneft. This was reported by the Daily Kos on January 30th. On February 9th, the story about Flynn meeting with the Russian Ambassador broke.

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That’s it, as far as I got. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow’s revelations will be.