Everyone is Mean

…Well, not everyone. 

But it certainly got your attention, didn’t it? 

yes???

And that’s because it’s difficult to engage with the news – which these days includes any forms of media, including the social kind – and not be slapped in the face by the type of seething rage I did my best to run away from as a little kid.

The kind of foaming at the mouth anger a bully or mean girl expressed by punching, kicking, biting, cursing – or worse – before some adult would step in, pull the plug, pull them off and, finally, calm everything down.

Oh, where have all the adults gone???

S.O.S.

Not that I myself wasn’t pissed off often at many, many, MANY people and about many, many, MANY things way back when.

I can recall my tiny existential mind seriously thinking, and with equal weight:

  • Why are people racist?
  • Why do some kids beat up others over something as dumb as a football or baseball game?
  • Why can’t I wear what I want to school, and….
  • How come my parents can be so continuously, and consistently, embarrassing ALL of the time????
The greatest

Even though I don’t have a satisfying answer to any one of those now, I can honestly state I didn’t know how good I had it back then. 

Because right now it’s far worse and a hell of a lot MEANER.

(Note:  My husband thinks I should say mean-spirited because most people are not innately mean.  But since he’s the far nicer of the two of us, I’ll stick with mean – to the bone).

And normally they’re not even that funny!

I don’t want to make this political but I’m just recovering from Covid, and a weeks worth of TV news watching, where I’ve been continuously slapped in the face by the Trump of it all. 

I mean, I’d much rather write about the brave, smart, thoughtfulness of Zelenskyy but we don’t live in a Zelenskyy world right now, do we?  In fact, it’s actually that kind of world we’re trying to get back.

Instead, what we have is this revelation from a piece in The Atlantic about the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley:

Click for more

It was in 2019, during his welcoming ceremony at a military base in Virginia.  Milley had chosen an extremely disabled, wheelchair-bound vet named Luis Avila to sing God Bless America, which he did wonderfully despite having lost a leg and endured two strokes and brain damage as a result of five tours of combat.

Yet after the song was over, then Pres. Donald J. Trump marched directly over to the general and snapped to his face:

Why do you bring people like that here?  No one wants to see that.

I can hardly believe it

This statement echoes another from a New Yorker article when, during the planning of an intended big military style parade, Trump warned his then Chief of Staff John Kelly that he:

didn’t want any wounded guys in the parade.  It wouldn’t look good for me.

Which echoes Trump’s infamous putdown line about former POW and then Sen. John McCain in the 2016 Republican primary campaign:

I like people who WEREN’T captured.

And thematically gels with Trump skipping a traditional visit in France to a cemetery containing the remains of 1800 dead American soldiers in 2018, when he told his staff:

Why should I go to that cemetery.  It’s filled with losers.

I could wager a few guesses

It’s not surprising, so much as appalling, when you consider the guy has pretty much clinched the Republican nomination for president in 2024, a party that sports as one of its primary constituent groups, the Religious Right.

You want mean, continue to vote for and support Trump, MAGA and Trumpism.  And then pray or confess to whatever your God of choice might be that at worst you are merely sometimes mean-spirited.

Sound it out…

Of course, if you think Joe Biden, 80, is too old (Note: He’s a mere three years older than Trump, 77 – and a lot thinner. Oops, now I’ m being mean! ) and too liberal (Note II: As compared to whom – Bernie?  Or me and my friends????) —

Right behind in the Republican pack, is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, 45.  A few weeks ago in a stump speech for his faltering presidential campaign, he ranted this about retired former NIH director Anthony Fauci, 81,

I’m so sick of seeing him….Someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac.

No, I am NOT embellishing.  He’s been saying it for more than A YEAR.

Someone’s trying to steal that crown

And, I just want to state for the record:

DeSantis – 5’9”

Fauci: 5’7”

The Chair: 5’6” (though I used to be 5’7”)

Population growing everyday

And that:

– DeSantis consistently wears heels to make himself look taller, hates all things Disney and shames kids on camera for wearing masks and eating too much sugar.

-Fauci is responsible for guiding us through the Covid pandemic and facilitating the invention and distribution of the five Covid vaccines/boosters that probably saved me a hospital intensive care visit in the last several weeks.

Amen to this

-The Chair has a sense of humor and has a Joy Inside Out doll sitting in his home office, alongside a poster with a quote from Hillary Clinton that tells you to keep getting up when someone knocks you down and to never listen to anyone who says you can’t or shouldn’t go on.

Fine, Joy and Hillary (Note: Ugh, and The Chair) are not perfect, and there are certainly some meanies in the Democratic Party. 

But…mean to the bone?

hmmmmm

This past week I watched a wrap up of the legal woes of Trump, our twice-impeached former president and cult leader.  It began by telling us that He is the FIRST U.S. PRESIDENT in our 234 year HISTORY to be INDICTED for crimes and that it has happened FOUR DIFFERENT TIMES this year.

  1. In Washington, D.C. for the Jan 6th insurrection.  Among the crimes: a sustained effort to prevent the vote from being counted in a federal election; interrupting Congress’ counting of the vote; conspiracy to deny citizens the right to vote nationwide.
  2. In Georgia: Running a Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organization that, among other things, tried to get its secretary of state to overturn the election; change the votes by finding illegal votes; throwing out already existing votes.
  3. In Florida: Thirty-two counts of willful retention of classified documents, hiding them in boxes and then lying about it.  (Note: And my fave, testimony that he used them as “to do” and “doodle pads” where he wrote notes to his assistant).
  4. In NYC:  Faking business records to reimburse a personal lawyer ordered to pay off  $130,000 to a porn star the defendant had sex with.  And in doing so, accruing 34 felony charges of lies about the various businesses and corporate holdings used to bill the reimbursement money from.

This is all to say, in the oft-quoted words of one 13th century Turkish philosopher:

The fish rots from the head down.

… and it stinks in here

If we really want to clean up this mess of meanness we’re in, we might follow that lead.

Metaphorically, of course.

Taylor Swift – “Mean” (Taylor’s Version)

F THE COURT

Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas and the four other Supreme Court judges who voted to take away a woman’s right to choose on Friday can go f-ck themselves.

And kiss my gay ass.

So can anyone who wouldn’t vote for Hillary in 2016 because she wasn’t progressive enough or who just didn’t like or trust her.

As for those who cast their vote for Trump, I hope hell does exist so you can spend eternity there with him.   You will see what an immoral, lying prick he always was up close as you both burn in perpetuity/forever. 

This x 1000

Yeah, I’m pissed off.

In overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that allowed women the freedom of choice over whether to terminate their own pregnancies, the Supreme Court has ruled the majority of the population does not have equal protection under the law.

That right is guaranteed under the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  The amendment was enacted in 1868 and is credited in great part for ending slavery.  Its primary text is pretty simple.  It states:

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

well… except women

Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion overturning Roe based on his view as a constitutional originalist.  What this means is that he strictly wants to adhere to the literal text of 150 years ago AND what HE interprets as its intent.

In this case, Alito reasons the amendment only protects rights that he claims were already understood to exist in 1868Since numerous states banned abortion 150 years ago, Alito claims the reasoning behind the 1973 Roe case encompassing the right to an abortion is wrong.

He neglects to also mention that in 1868 no woman had the right to vote in the U.S.  Anywhere.  And certainly not one to serve on any court in charge of making laws.

Time to buy winter coats

Or that in citing logic from 17th century judge Sir Matthew Hale in his Roe ripping decision, he is quoting a man who sentenced women to death as witches; and a man who originated the legal notion that husbands can’t be prosecuted for raping their wives.

Go f-k yourself, Sam.  Again.

Here’s an interesting fact amid this insanity.

Judge Alito is a 1972 graduate of Princeton University.  Princeton was an all male school until 1969, when its board finally agreed to admit women for the first time in its 150-year history.  This was a few months after Yale University did the same and was the beginning of a nationwide trend giving women equal opportunities under the law.

But this evolution of social mores made a small but very vocal minority of Princeton graduates real angry.  So they formed an organization called Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP) in 1972 in opposition to that and other evolving…um…changes.

Can you guess who was among that small group of concerned men in CAP?  If you guessed Alito, that doctrinaire originalist, you would be correct.

Look who’s at it again

This, of course, is not the most interesting part of the story.  More fascinating is that there have since been many female graduates of Princeton University.  Among them is a brilliant African American activist.  Her name is Alexis McGill Johnson. 

Ms. McGill Johnson graduated Princeton in 1993 with a degree in political science, 20 some years after Alito did with a similar major, despite his best efforts to thwart any female’s attempts to do so.  She also went on to receive her M.A. from Yale in 1995 in that same subject. 

And this was exactly 20 years to the date after what happened?  Anyone?  Well, Judge Alito also graduating from Yale with a Juris Doctor, of course!

Thankfully, that is where the similarity ends.  While Judge Alito became a lifelong originalist, refusing to bend his views towards anyone or anything happening around him, Ms. McGill Johnson has used her education to help poor and minority communities.  This culminated with her becoming president and CEO of Planned Parenthood in 2019. 

Worth a follow!

So let’s hear her take on how to fight her fellow Princeton and Yale alum’s decision to dump Roe v. Wade and take away a woman’s right to choose:

…We are not going back and we are not going to back down.  We are going to take this fight STATE to STATE.  Every single person who is running for anything is going to EAT. THIS.  DECISION. FOR. BREAKFAST. 

And you wonder why I like her?

I happened to hear this quote on a segment Katy Tur was hosting on MSNBC and it intrigued me to see that Katy was a bit taken aback by the colorfully blunt imagery Ms. McGill Johnson used to categorize the path going forward.  It was unlike the forceful  but more politely intellectual jargon most guests on news programs use these days and it took Katy everything she had to restrain herself from asking if this was her best course of action. 

This is the vibe we need

But, well, how else DO you react on the DAY of this decision?  Do you bring a knife to a gunfight, to quote Chicago cop Jim Malone (as played Sean Connery) as he tried to take down organized crime mobster Al Capone and his gang in the 1987 film The Untouchables?  (Note: A reference I hesitate to make as it was thought up by The Untouchables screenwriter David Mamet, a very talented guy I once admired who has since become a right wing crazy).

Well, I say you can’t.  Bring a knife to a gunfight, that is. 

Not when the concurrent nauseating opinion striking down Roe this week was written by the even more conservative and much more morally questionable Judge Clarence Thomas, wife of conspiracy theorist and 2020 election denier Ginni Thomas.

In his support for Judge Alito’s POV, Judge Thomas writes:

In future cases, we should reconsider ALL of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, specifically citing Griswold v. Connecticut (contraception), Lawrence (same-sex marriage), and Obergefell  (same-sex marriage). Because any substantive due process decision is ‘DEMONSTRABLY ERRONEOUS, “’ we have a duty to ‘CORRECT THE ERROR’ established in those precedents.”

This is only the start

In simpler language this means he is itching to repeal laws that allow you to obtain birth control, enter into a same sex marriage or to have whatever kind of sex you like with another consenting adult behind closed doors.  Aside from, I assume, the missionary position (Note: No offense to that well worn sexual preference but I’m not sure there was much more you could do, at least legally, back in 1868).

Curiously enough, Judge Thomas made zero mention mention of the landmark 1967 Loving vs. Virginia decision, which banned laws against interracial marriage.  That decision was won by citing the same due process/equal protection precedents that enabled the passage of Roe, same sex marriage, et al.

Or course, it is up to you to decide if the marriage between Judge Thomas, a Black man, and his wife Ginni, a white woman, had anything to do with that, um, omission.  But here’s 2022’s honorary Oscar winning Black actor Samuel L. Jackson on the subject the day Thomas’ viewpoint was released:

The gang of right wing activist hypocrites now sitting on the Court might feel, to some of us, unrepresentative of a representative democracy that overwhelmingly believes in a women’s right to choose.

Until you think about our  representatives and we, the people, who voted them in.

Maine senator Susan Collins is very concerned that Roe repealing judges Kavanaugh and Gorsuch lied to her in their confirmation hearings when they privately told her Roe was precedent and that they would not be inclined to repeal it.

Really???  Or did she choose to believe a word dodge for her own political survival, or at least expediency.  I, for one, don’t think Collins was dumb enough to believe them.  Despite my disdain for her morally.

What say you, Senator Collins?

It is also worth noting that justice Thomas was appointed by George HW Bush, Justice Alito was anointed by George W. Bush, and Judges Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett were Trump appointees.

Those of you who voted for those presidents because of your pocketbooks, or sat out those races because you didn’t like or wanna hang out with Hillary, Gore or Dukakis, what the f-ck did you think was going to happen????

It bears repeating!!!!

Democracy is a very imperfect form of government but unfortunately just about every other form of government pales in comparison.   As they say.  Or someone once said.

You never get everything you want.  But if you choose not to enthusiastically participate for some of the things you prefer, you run the risk of receiving everything you hate, and then some.

We can only rag on these mother f-ckng judges and Trump for so long.

If we don’t learn from our mistakes and adjust accordingly, f-ck us.  Because we will be f-cked.   For good.  In a very bad way.

Olivia Rodrigo – “F*** You” (feat. Lily Allen)