Confession

I must confess. I want to reflect the characteristics of a Heather Hier who gave her life in Charlottesville protesting against right wing nationalism and extremists.  She stood for the causes in which I believe. I feel, in part, that I am like the person they say she was. She was a person who stood for justice, had empathy for the poor and wanted to provide hope to those who had none. 

It is the injustice of the Trump presidency I cannot bear. It is the lies and the fact that he stands for the 2% richest while he says he stands for the opposite. He is using, I believe, this presidency and the people who should not support him, for one thing -- the money he can make from it and them.  I get infuriated by the injustice he has perpetrated, the minorities he has hurt and the death his policies will cause against those who can tolerate these injustices the least.

I am angry at the lies Trump tells but I am even angrier at the persons who believe his lies and cement a low base that supports him. I am so saturated with anger, fear and disbelief at this unjust and unfit-for-the-presidency man who captured the the most powerful office in the world that sometimes I verbally Vesuvian erupt when the situation does not warrant I should. I fear I become more like the hardened opposition I loathe then the people with whom I truly identify. So I will say here, I am sorry for those things I say in anger; things that should not be said by me. I say them because I am frightened for the first time in my life by my country in which I had so much hope.  This nation which is capable of much humane social change has become in this era at times unrecognizable to me. I begin to feel hopeless that those in this nation who need help will not get it or, indeed, have the things for which they worked so hard get taken away by the richest among us who want it all and found a leader in a zero conscience Trump who will give it all to them and take his helping of it as well.  

The last thing I would want is to become so hardened in my position that like the opposition I do not see the real forest through the trees. The real lush forest of our nation, I believe, is its ability to change and to rescue those who face hardship in this nation and those who face it in the nations of their births; those who face poverty, disease, disenfranchisement and death in nations they once called home.  Facebook offers one the ability to state one's beliefs in a public forum. It is so powerful that things stated in the heat of debate with faces hidden from view can make one immune and not listen to opposing beliefs and worse say things one would not say to another's face.  I do not want to become like that.  I want to stand for humane policy, for understanding, for empathy, for inclusion and, perhaps, most of all for the tolerance I would want others to bestow upon me.

In this New Year I will at least try to not say unto others that which I would not want to said unto me.  I will, in this New Year, I hope, try to do better.

Happy New Year to all my friends and even to those who are not.