What a week, right?
No, but seriously.
This was a week where the writing on the back of a $39 military green, short trench coat spoke volumes:
I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?
It was fitting that First Lady Melania Trump wore this as she boarded a U.S. government plane down to the Texas border to visit caged immigrant kids separated from their parents.
Staying on message indeed
Though she only managed to make it to the “dorms” with teenagers who tried to sneak-migrate into the U.S. alone.
Bad weather kept her away from the places where they keep the toddlers (six months is the youngest) and all others under 10 years of age who actually did travel here with Mom and/or Dad…or an aunt, uncle, or friend.
Churchgoers might see this as an act of God but I fully believe it was literally MOTHER Nature stepping in and saying enough is enough in her own unique language.
As all of us with powerful mothers understand, a play date is likely to end the second She sniffs something fishy is going on.
We call that the Betty Draper test #sheisnothavingit
And everything was odious about this week – from the cages, to the secret middle of the night evacuations of ankle monitored youngsters to seventeen unnamed U.S. cities they’d never been in, to the presidential press conference dragging out surviving family members of those killed by drunk, illegal adult immigrants and trying to connect it to the recordings of jailed crying orphaned babies everyone in the country had heard or heard about except Homeland Security Secretary Kristjen Nielsen.
Well… she eventually heard them. #nojustice #nosleep
All the way down to that Zara trench.
At one point Holly, our @notesfromachair editor, even texted me to ask, Why even wear a coat when it’s 80 degrees and humid in every city she was in that day?
My only thought was her mate likes every abode and any plane they travel in to be ice cold because, these days especially, he’s sweating a lot.
#hurryup
Well, it’s better than any explanation being offered about the coat. Certainly, it’s more believable.
We like to tell ourselves it’s different when children are involved. Staunch liberals will counter and say, um, NO, you mean WHITE children – it’s ONLY different when WHITE children are involved.
Sure, that may be part of it. But really, that’s also an um, no. Because there were 20 six and seven year olds killed by an unbalanced young man wielding an assault weapon at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012, ALL but one of them lily WHITE, and NOTHING changed about guns, gun control or school shootings on a national level. Except that they multiplied.
So truly the children – brown, black, striped or white – can’t be the primary scapegoat on this. This one is on us – the adults in the room.
We WANT what WE want WHEN we WANT IT – and when we have the POWER to get it.
Or we WANT what WE HAVE and DON’T WANT to give an inch or two or three to ANYONE ELSE for fear that we will lose OUR power and MORE will be taken away FROM US.
we all have an inner moustache twirler #dontdenyit
This could be erroneous thinking. A compelling counter thesis could easily be argued convincingly from the other side and at the very least shift topic or more fully win you over with one or more better examples or theories.
Well, that’s all well and good on the high school debate team – where I remember they always used to assign you to argue for something you loathed in an effort to get you to open your mind to another way of thinking.
OK.. maybe I wasn’t the best on my debate team #canthelpit
Hmm, perhaps that’s the answer. Treat us all like h.s. debate students, but — the remedial kind!
Um, NO. Again. That strategy is already being used nationally – heck, it even explains the coat – but has only driven us further apart.
I took any number of classes in school that involved persuasion (Note: OK, stop rolling your eyes) and there is one basic strategy offered from most of them. There will always be a significant group of people who will ALWAYS DISAGREE with you. You will NEVER CONVINCE THEM. In fact, they probably WILL NOT HEAR ANYTHING you say.
Forget them.
TRUTH
On the same token, those who ALWAYS AGREE with you will only get you so FAR. They’re great to hang out with or grab a meal with or build an idea on, but they WON’T DO MUCH either in furthering your agenda.
What you WANT TO DO is to reach out to those who YOU DON’T KNOW, or those who are scared or hiding or disengaged for THEIR OWN REASONS. LISTEN TO THEM. They are reachable if you INCLUDE THEM, ENCOURAGE THEM to become part of your argument.
And for those of you LESS HOSTILE at the moment THAN MYSELF, there is still yet another group of people. Those with whom YOU DISAGREE on MANY THINGS but are STILL OPEN to HEAR YOU on INDIVIDUAL ISSUES.
Consider this an early valentine
They are in the PERSUADABLE GROUP if you approach them without a Zara coat and with the kind of patience you’d want exhibited towards you if your way of life was being questioned on some alien planet by any number of judgmental ETs.
I will resist the obvious metaphors about the latter. Suffice it to say they are personal and, in moments like this, often got me benched on the debate team.
Just know that any world in which Paul McCartney still sings Beatles songs, as he did this week in Liverpool, is one that is worth saving.
James Corden / Paul McCartney Carpool Karaoke
notes from a chair 