From the DRAFTS Folder — June 2017. Mostly pictures.
I gathered the pictures for this post seven months after the disastrous 2016 election, but wrote nothing.
My city of Newton was trying to decide whether to submit a formal recommendation to the U.S. House in support of an impeachment investigation. It wasn’t openly in favor of impeachment, it’s important to note. It was in support of INVESTIGATING the possible bases for impeachment. And yet, it was controversial.
Of course, the second trump was inaugurated, both emoluments clauses were being violated due to his undivested business interests. By the summer of 2017, the abuses of power and other egregious behaviors had piled up to a ridiculous degree. I will spare myself (and you) the litany.
My small but focused Indivisible Group appeared before the City Council to support the measure. Our philosophy was to show up. Do what little thing you can. It seemed to matter. (Does it still, I find myself asking in today’s Texas-Handmaid mood).
Most people were going to tick off trump’s impeachable offenses, as if to say: HOW CAN WE LET THIS STAND? I wanted, instead, to specifically address one council member’s objection — that is, that it was not the business of states to makes suggestions to the U.S. Congress. I hunted down an example.
What I found was that the citizens of Cambridge, Mass. formerly implored Jefferson to undo the Embargo of 1807. The federal trade restrictions stopped U.S. ships from conducting business in foreign ports. The embargo was meant to both prevent war with Britain and to make the economies of Britain and France suffer. Unfortunately, the embargo hurt our economy as well, particularly the merchants of the Northeast.
The petition stated in part: “But such is the unequal and oppressive operation of the embargo that we cannot believe that any real, true-hearted American can consider passive obedience and non-resistance a virtue.”
Timeless words, were they not?
It seems so long ago. 2017, I mean.
A Remonstrance, if you don’t know, is “an earnest presentation for reasons for opposition or grievance, esp. a document formally stating such points.”
Today in The Guardian, this by Rebecca Solnit:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/03/republicans-texas-abortion-right-democracy
And so it continues, the seeds planted from 4 yrs ago, grown and the harvest continues to be hatred, woman injustice, racial injustice, distrust, stupidity, evil in action and “lies and violence”, two words used by Solnit. I could put down more of my words, my feelings of anger and anguish but I will simply put down some of Solnit’s words from her article because she sees clearly and speaks truth to the horror: She begins the article with the words below:
“The American right has been drunk on its freedom from two kinds of inhibition since Donald Trump appeared to guide them into the promised land of their unleashed ids. One is the inhibition from lies, the other from violence. Both are ways members of civil society normally limit their own actions out of respect for the rights of others and the collective good. Those already strained limits have snapped for leading Republican figures, from Tucker Carlson on Fox News to Ted Cruz in the Senate and for their followers.
We’ve watched those followers gulp down delusions from Pizzagate to Qanon to Covid denialism to Trump’s election lies. And rough up journalists, crash vehicles into and wave weapons at Black Lives Matter and other anti-racist protesters at least since Charlottesville, menace statehouses, issue threats to doctors and school boards testifying about public health, and plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, for imposing Covid-prevention protocols.
The Texas abortion law that the rightwing supreme court just smiled upon, despite its violation of precedent, seethes with both violence and lies.”
Later on in the article, this paragraph but I will put the last sentence of the paragraph first here: :
“A vigilante who goes after a woman is willing to see her die.” Here is the rest of that paragraph::
“But what was new about the Texas bill is its invitation to its residents to become vigilantes, bounty hunters and snitches. This will likely throw a woman who suspects she is pregnant into a hideous state of fearful secrecy, because absolutely anyone can profit off her condition and anyone who aids her, from the driver to the doctor, is liable. It makes pregnancy a crime, since it is likely to lead to the further criminalization even of the significant percentage of pregnancies that end in miscarriage. It will lead women – particularly the undocumented, poor, the young, those under the thumbs of abusive spouses or families – to die of life-threatening pregnancies or illicit abortions or suicide out of despair. A vigilante who goes after a woman is willing to see her die.”
Oh gawd. She is such a truth teller. Thanks for the quotes and the links. About to watch Nicolle Wallace’s show from yesterday. We’ll see how long I last.
(((Marti))) thank you for sharing Rebecca Solnit’s article, I am gobsmacked to see this happening to the women of Texas in my country of birth!
2017…a lifetime ago. To be honest, I could only skim the past/current causes, fights and issues. For my world on this day, it is all too much. You stated “It seemed to matter” and asked if it still does…Everything that has been overwhelming and upsetting for the past 5 years Matters, yet nothing much does. Nothing changes for the better. At this moment, we vote tomorrow on the recall election…does it matter? Yes and ?
On a much happier train of thought, I love your nature photos today (needed for balance)! The flowers are gorgeous. The branches with eyes…oh my! Love them! And the last…manzanita?
Be well
Ligularia. The plant shots, to be clear, are from June 2017.
Stopping the recall surely matters! Dianne Fienstein for one and preventing lunatics for two.
(((Dee))) this 21st C world is getting so profoudly weird, 2017 feels like a very long time ago…
It’s exhausting