The Controversial Summer Of 2020
Good morning. Happy Friday! Seven months since coronavirus started and summer is coming to an end. It's the last few warm days here in New York, well we don't know, we could get more, but not many. Global warming, or I should say global B U R N I N G, has completely changed our winters here. It's no longer snow dump after snow dump, it's now mostly rain, since it's not cold enough to snow. It was pretty freaky to get rain in December the last few years and even reaching the upper 70's in December, that would have been unheard of ten years ago! That's nothing compared to what's happening out west. Is the West Coast even inhabitable anymore?! I don't live out there so I don't know what to think, I just know if every summer there was a major threat of my house burning down and dying, I personally would be thinking about getting out of there somehow.
On top of it all coronavirus. The sales of Corona beer had to have plummeted. There are people out there who undoubtedly believe that to be true. I mean if there are people who believe Trump is a successful business man and not a man stealing the success his father had, not to mention failing the business once he took it over, then there are definitely people who think the virus came from beer. It's not a stretch of a thought you have to admit. If you're reading this blog for the first time you should know, I'm a full on liberal Democrat. There are many things funny about how Trump supporters -- not Republicans, I'm not going to fall into Trump's trap and try to separate the parties -- Republicans are one thing, Trump supporters are another. Trump supporters call us "the liberals," as if it's insult. The actual meaning of the word liberal from the dictionary is: "open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values." Liberalism is what created the United States from the start. Had the pilgrims not been liberal, they would have stayed in England and not challenged a nation ruled by a monarchy and religion or "traditional values." They wanted to live in a free and open society, so they immigrated to a foreign land. This country was fundamentally founded on the act of liberalism and immigration. So yeah, it's funny when Trumpers say these things.
The election is coming up and of course it's top of mind. The most unstable person has control of the nukes and New York is always a target for everything and anything, so we're all on our tippy toes, not just New York, the whole country. The people who care about democracy and not wanting our country to turn into a dictatorship rule. It's amazing to me how Trumpers just don't see it. I guess the same happened in the Hitler days. I mean Hitler had his followers out right shooting children! The President of this country does nothing except insult people, create diversions to his failures and spends his time undoing what Obama did to make this country great. On top of it all he's a sexist, racist (sued in NY for not allowing African Americans to rent from his father's properties) sexual predator and most likely a rapist, more than ten women have filed claims of rape. He's said on video he can grab women by the genitals whenever he wants because he's a celebrity, what a great man he is!
What more do people need to see through this con artist? If Trumpers were regular Republicans that would be fine, but supporting Trump, no fn way. It's hard enough having to bite my tongue when I'm in conversations with my own family. (Yes I have Trump supporters in my family) I've asked nicely for answers as to why they vote for Trump or why they think I should. I've even said I want to have a nice, calm exchange about it, because I really do and they can never tell me. I did get an answer once which was the economy, before it tanked. "The economy is doing better under Trump." When I try to explain it was because what Obama did when he was in office (because he inherited a mess and had to fix it all) and Trump is taking credit for it, just as he did with his own dad's success, has no problem taking the credit of other people's work. The other Trumpers in the family (yes more than one, ugh), I get, "I'm not going to do this." Okay maybe they don't want to start an argument, I can respect that, but I made it clear I wanted a calm discussion and or debate. But they won't, because they can't, because the truth of the matter is they don't know why. They're definitely NOT liberal.
Trump is incredibly uninspiring. Every time I sit down to write something from the heart or about enlightenment or a little story, I end up changing gears, because our democracy is being threatened in so many ways right now and it's scary AF and something we need to stay informed on. Sending federal troops into Portland to kidnap protesters off the streets, calling Nazi supporters "good guys," not agreeing to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses, spewing lies the election is rigged; this is all in the last couple of weeks! If I listed all the threats to our democracy it would be five posts long. Putin's puppet will go down as the absolute worst President in the history of this country. I don't know what's more blind sighting, that we have the worst human being possible as the President or that almost half of the country supports him. He could win again!
The one good thing to come from Trump (and cell phones) is that it brought racists straight out of the closet. I say it's good because they were hidden or being kept hidden and have kept the country back from progressing forward. The Black Lives Matter movement needed to happen in order to further progress the end of systemic racism and discrimination. The innocent lives did not need to happen of course and that's the tragedy behind the entire thing. It's not just black people, anyone in the eyes of a racist who isn't primarily a white, straight male: Latinos, Asians, Muslims, Jewish, LGBTQ, Indian the list goes on. Innocent Black people are being racially profiled and murdered by the police though and the response to this from the President of the United States, is that the officers just "choked." A black man cannot walk the streets armed with a gun, yet white men do it as we saw in Indiana this summer and say it's their constitutional right. If a black man did what they did, what do you think would happen to them? What other horrible acts of racism have we seen? That's easy, there are so many: a man murdered by the knee of a police officer, a father brutally shot seven times IN THE BACK in front of his children, a front line worker - a hero during the pandemic - shot dead IN HER OWN BED WHILE SHE SLEPT.
Black Lives Matter is strong and proud and bringing about change however! It's brought change to places where it wasn't even thought of five years ago, the workplace. In my own job I get emails from our headquarters about culture change, awareness and compassion regarding the black community and what they're going through. Racism in corporate America is awful because it's there but no one talks about it. Black Lives Matter has brought this ongoing problem out into the open. Companies are announcing to their employees that they don't tolerate it. My company for example, is progressive and one I would consider successful, modern and ahead of the curve, they're putting all the employees through a cultural training. It started with an anonymous survey to gauge the level of racism within the company and from there will be followed by regular workshops to change negative thinking and behavior. People can change and do all the time.
Unfortunately there are many pressing, serious issues, that are all tied together, happening in our country right now and we're living and breathing them -- barely with our masks. I didn't even get into global burning much, it's loud and clear though, anyone who doesn't believe it's real just open your eyes. I can't even imagine how people are in denial about it. I think their belief is the forests are "unkept"!? Forest are natural mother earth, they don't need to be swept. It's burning because nature strikes lightning and easily ignites kindling that rages with high temperatures and wind storms. No, I'm not a know-it-all, I didn't know either, so I researched it and learned about it, you can click the word "lightning" in the sentence above to learn more too. Okay so global burning is another post and this post is already getting way too long, but please educate yourselves and please read REAL news, not facebook posts.
...The country / world is in a strange place right now. Beyond everything that's happening, I don't mind being home like we do, I like the quiet life, it's nice and relaxing, a peaceful way to live to balance out the collective sense of urgency we're all experiencing. I don't like being tied to my calendar, I'm glued to it all week for work, so when I'm not working, having no set plans and nothing on the calendar is a relief. Of course I still like seeing my friends and some of the most hardcore planners have to even relax right now. I'm more of a play it by ear type of person, like let's do this this coming weekend and if not it's cool too, we can do it another time. Having a date on the calendar a month or two in advance just kind of takes the fun out of it. I don't know, it's not that big of deal, but I'm liking this laid back lifestyle. While summer did come to an official end on the 21st, it's still warm, last week was straight Fall in New York though. As a final farewell, to the most controversial summer of 2020, one we all will never forget, here are some of my favorite moments :) ...
Thanks for checking out my pics. I hope you have a wonderful, mask-wearing, socially distanced weekend. Stay healthy and take care. Lots of hugs and kisses and add in some positive reiki energy vibes while you're at it, throw in some incense, light some candles and top it all off with a singing bowl ding *
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