Saturday, February 18, 2017

Fear leads to Anger, Anger leads to Hate, Hate leads to The Dark Side

41 people were arrested in ICE raids in New York City. ICE raids that President 45 (I will not use the title and Trump's last name together) has said will defend us from terrorist attacks. That was the reason for the Executive Order that was ruled unconstitutional. But less than two weeks after Trump announced that he was going to protect the nation by preventing people from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the country, ICE goes on raids and arrests 41 people in New York City, all of whom were born in Latin America or the Caribbean. Yeah, because the next terrorist attack is coming from......

You know, I was going to make a comment that's probably racist, or would certainly be taken that way, but 45 is terrifying people, tearing families apart, in the name of protecting us from terrorists, but really just shipping out people who he can pick on.
Has he even thought about this?
Two people I know have responded negatively to FB posts of mine (or shared, let's be honest) in the past few days. One accused me of living in a liberal bubble and not seeing West of the East River. The other just gave a thumbs down to a suggestion that people post a picture of President Obama as a profile pic for Facebook on President's Day.

One hurt my feelings. I have lived west of the East River for over half my life. I've only been living in the Eastern boroughs of New York City for the past 16 years, plus for two years in Astoria inbetween college and Graduate School (both at institutions on the Continental United States, and therefore very WEST of the East River. I have spent more than HALF of my life living WEST of the East River.
But she doesn't mean where I live, she means I live somewhere where I don't see "real Americans," because, well, because I don't agree with either of these women, and these women believe they are representative of "real America" because their friends agree with them and know the problems they're having.
The foreclosure crisis is nowhere near as bad as it was 10 years ago, the year before Obama was elected. In 2007 people were talking about banks failing, and the FDIC was increasing the amount it would insure people's cash deposits to $250,000. It used to be only $100,000. Detroit is no longer the ghost town it was.

When 45 one the election, one of the stories was how could the Media be SO wrong? Phrases like "liberal bubble" were tossed around, but it's not hard to shake the feeling that 45 is a fraud. That he doesn't even WANT to be President, because he isn't acting Presidential. He's acting like a spoiled child who isn't getting what he wants quickly enough.
I don't want to engage the woman who gave a thumbs down to the idea of changing your profile picture, though one of my friends did. Perhaps that's the bad thing. If you don't think that 45 is a fraud, tell me why. Come up with a good reason, but tell me what your reasons are.. Just saying "NO!" isn't helping the discussion.
And if you don't want the discussion, don't talk at all.
Fear of hurting somebody's feelings is a powerful thing, though. I could post a link to the Unemployment Statistics to my FB page, but I suspect she doesn't trust facts, and I don't *want* to get into an argument that will (probably) degenerate into ad hominem attacks because that's where these arguments tend to go, particularly when the phrase "bubble" is used. So we have fear, which leads to hate, which leads....
Enter Yoda.

No comments: