Unfriend Me (from Facebook on November 10)

By Carol Noel Hawley -

I have thought long and hard about this post, but I really feel I need to make it, directing it to the Trump voters I am connected with in this Facebook forum.

The resident of the White House and his enablers have realized that courts require evidence to enable cases to go forward. They have failed repeatedly before judges, losing 33 suits so far, and winning only one small verdict that changes no vote counts. Ethical law firms and  lawyers have abandoned their cases. The occupant of the White House has decided he can no longer overturn the election by bringing ridiculous lawsuits. He and his Republican representatives continue to participate in the judicial system theatre of the absurd only to create havoc and instability. 


Since his judicial scam has not worked, now the occupant of the White House is  trying to subvert the electoral process itself- attempting to take Michigan's electoral votes, Pennysylvania's electoral votes, electoral votes from any state he can, by asking state legislatures to appoint electors, rather than allowing the electors to be appointed based on the vote of the electorate itself as is the legal requirement. To change these electors in states that Biden handily won, republicans would ignore the results of the election and thereby disenfranchise millions of voters, mostly of color. 


Trump's own Department of Homeland Security certified the voting conducted in this election as fair, secure, and completely devoid of fraud. This was a vote where nearly six million more people in this country voted for Joe Biden than for his opponent. And Biden's differentials in the states where Trump is trying to subvert the electoral process are far greater than in 2016, when Clinton conceded the day after the election. Simply overturning the democratic election process is the move of an autocrat. 


Prior to November 3, Trump lied a documented 20,000+ times.  Now he and his sycophants continue to lie by using the "firehose of falsehood" (a Russian term) to try to execute a coup on our democracy. At the same time, they ignore a raging pandemic, killing upwards of 1700 people yesterday alone, and leaving millions of Americans unemployed and facing hunger and eviction. 


If you voted for this charlatan due to ignorance, you now need to pay attention to what is really happening, and recognize what he and his party are trying to do and acknowledge it. As Heather Cox Richardson, professor of history at Boston College,  noted in her letter of March 18, “Trump appears to be doing all he can to cripple Biden’s administration before it begins. Officials have told CNN that Trump is withdrawing troops worldwide in order to box Biden in before he takes office. A senior official told CNN that the goal is to 'set so many fires that it will be hard for the Biden administration to put them all out.' "  Is this what you wish for our country? 


If you choose to continue to support this corrupt liar and his followers as he presses on in his quest to destroy our democracy, and make it into a fascist autocracy, please unfriend me. As a dear Facebook connection has said, "This isn’t about politics - it’s about morality, the rule of law, and the democratic future of this nation." And if you continue to support him, you have shown exactly who you are and what you believe; our ethics are completely incompatible. I repeat, if you still support this corrupt authoritarian, unfriend me. We may have shared memories from the past, but we have nothing in common today. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Editor in a Family of Writers

By -
The family that my husband and I created is a family of writers… and I’m an editor. You can imagine the implications of that.   My daughter, who is 33, is an undergraduate Phi Beta Kappa who has a PhD in Literacy Education. She has to write academic, peer-reviewed articles based on her research; she loves to write personal reflections based on her life. It’s therapeutic for her. Her most recent foray into the “world of the pen” is blogging at " Twin Life- Having it All ." Ironic that in the 21st century, the “world of the pen” has nothing to do with handwriting.     But her blog explores the challenges of being a full-time working mom (one who is on a tenure track at a major university, with all that that implies), the mother of two year old twins (who are the proverbial apples of their four grandparents’ eyes, but at the same time, two year old twins), and the wife of a man who doesn’t quite get these challenges (which is not at all atypical). So my daughter writes, an...
Read more

She Who Gardens Is Not Always a Gardener...

By -
I am not a gardener. My mom was a gardener-- she had a green thumb, not just an olive green thumb, or even a grass green thumb, but a deep, lush emerald green thumb. Her whole life, even when she worked outside the home full-time, which was most of the time, she had a passion for her gardens. She grew trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, vegetables, fruits... you name it, she grew it: it flourished. She got this honestly; her mother, my immigrant Polish grandmother, was a gardener. I don't know if it was by necessity or by choice, but I clearly remember my grandmother's yard-- there was none. It was all gardens. She had narrow brick paths that wove through roses and herbs; she had concord grapes on an arbor in front of a small chicken coop. (I was afraid of those nasty fowls- they sensed it and chased me mercilessly until I found protection behind my daddy's legs while my mom and her mom talked gardening.) My grandma had vegetables galore and enough perennials (at the time I...
Read more

Being Hungry in 2020

By Carol Noel Hawley -
My mother was the next to youngest child of Polish immigrants. In 1924 when she was 4, her young father died, leaving her mother to support the family, children ranging in age from 14 to 1.5.  Speaking only Polish, my grandmother was functionally illiterate in English and she had no skills, other than cleaning, cooking, and growing a garden and chickens.  When the children were young and ate less, she was more or less able to keep her family fed with her industry, but as they grew, it became more and more difficult, especially in the winter when the garden produce was not available. Finally my grandmother was able to obtain a job in the kitchen of the YMCA a few blocks from her home. At that time, with far fewer restaurants, many single men ate their meals at the Y, and some even lived there. Meal prices were cheap; portions were large. So as my grandmother scraped leftovers from their plates when they came back to the kitchen to be washed, she saved pieces of meat; she saved ...
Read more