Politics, Motherhood, and Politics

If these were normal times, a decent and just political party would tell their nominee, who was convicted of fraud, to resign. They would not want this poison in their party. They would not want fascism. Instead they are happy to drink it and rally around this demagogue, who has no morals, no shame, no humility, and the American oligarchs, like Theil (who is on the board at Facebook), Musk (who owns X/Twitter), and Murdoch (Fox News) that support him are foaming at the mouth ready to devour and destroy democracy in the name of greed and white supremacy, as they think "real" freedom no longer works under democracy. They have joined forces with the Christian Nationalists to want a dictatorship and a theocracy.  Theil for the record is a gay man, and what he doesn't understand is that his money won't protect him from their hate. I think he thinks he could escape to New Zealand. It's strange to watch the final nails of our democracy's coffin be put in place.  Mean...

  The idealist in me is slowly dying; frankly, I am surprised it has lasted this long. At age 52, I am still naive enough that people, and yes, even politicians, act on well-intended goals, even if some are within the boundaries of self-interest. We should all act on the innate ability for self-preservation of the individual, family, community, and others. It’s especially disheartening when others only care about themselves, but what is a stab in the heart, is when those self-professing people who claim to care about community and the status of the world we live in, do not.  I no longer wish to help those who only seek notoriety, political power, money, and other self-means under the guise of helping the disenfranchised when they do not seem to possess the skills, empathy, intelligence, and sincerity to do so.  Most guilty of this are political figures. In our democracy (or representative republic for the uneducated swine, who manage to learn a new word by listening to so...

  Dear Mayor and City Council Members, First, I am writing for you to vote in favor of the Proclamation Declaring October 24, 2023, as United Nations Day.  Please do something right to show that Joliet is a world city. But the irony is not lost on me, as I saw an angry mob of "concerned citizens" spewing xenophobic and nationalistic hatred at last week's Joliet Township meeting. Mayor D'Arcy fed into the frenzied mob with the request that the Joliet Township Supervisor retract his application for the grant.  And to my disappointment, the crowd that bullied you all and the Township into submission won. I have lived in Joliet for 23 years.  I love this city, and I know almost every inch of it. Since the age of 19, I have been a human rights activist, both domestically and internationally, and to see my fellow citizens (supposedly) so hateful and falling for lies and bigoted about the humanitarian crisis was a shock to me. A city that prides itself on div...

It's been a while since I last wrote on this blog. I pay $12 a year to keep the domain name, so I really need to just write more. I have been busy trying to still change the world with like-minded people.  As many of you know, I have been involved in Amnesty International since the age of 19, officially a member since 2000. Human rights are my passion, and also being a mother.  My sons are now 15 and 16, becoming young people in their own right. The 15-year-old is a fighter, as I come to recognize. The 16 is a philosopher of sorts, very good in math.  I have hope for their future.  Unfortunately, the future of a lot of our young people looks bleak.  This is why I work with others to make the world better, the world I live in. The goal of any generation in any society is to make the world better for the next generations. Smug, it may seem, but that's my aim. I just need to read the news and it saddens and motivates me. Nationally and locally, our world is violent...

 Lately, there has been so much I want to write about on this blog. So much is going on in this world. There is climate change, abortion rights, gun reform, elections, the-isms, and the list goes on and on. So much to write about...so what's my problem?  I am my problem. On an average day, my head spins a million miles a minute with ideas, to-do lists, and all the other things that encompass being a cis woman in this world, within a patriarchal structure.  Ok, maybe I am going too far with this for this writing. I will save it for another time. Though it is part of my problem.  On my dry-erase board, I still have a large list of topics that I want to write about like the Afghanistan withdrawal.  Well, that and the fucked up agreement the US signed with the Taliban. Doesn't matter what President you want to blame for it, it's our fault that we let our politicians keep supporting a 20-year war that costs lives and trillions of dollars.  I guess we might be sa...

(First a word, this weekend I should be celebrating the official holiday of my country’s birth.  But this 4th of July, I am not in the mood to celebrate.  My rights, and people like me, are seeing their rights being slowly taken away.  I will drink and barbecue and drink, but I will be only too glad that I am still on this planet.  But this country was never really completely free for the rest of us.  To say so would be lying to myself.  A country started by wealthy, hetero-white cis men seems to only be for them. Class, gender, sexual orientation, race, etc. are our divisions, remember that. The following righting are my thoughts from last Friday.  If I can, I am going to try to get a protest together for the 4th, because we are not a free nation until we all are free until ALL our human rights are protected.) F*ck, I can’t believe this! I don’t understand, they actually overturned Roe!” I couldn’t comprehend what I was reading.  I received news ...

Valdamir Putin is a demagogue.  It is not fake news or Western propaganda to say this statement.  I am not sure if you all are tired of war, but I am. Why is he interested in Ukraine? Well, Ukraine was a part of the former Soviet Union, as was Crimea and he annexed that in 2014, and I can only imagine that he wants to relive his glory days as the head of the KGB and reunify some demented version of the Soviet Union. Mind you, this is only a guess, and what do I know?  He has been in power since 2000, a long time for a demagogue to inflate his ego, his power, and his wealth. (Of course, this could set me up for the argument for term limits in the United States for elected officials, but we won’t go into that right now.) These deadly sins have corrupted him beyond respect for rule of law or human rights. For me, I truly believe power corrupts completely, and he is the prime example.  He doesn’t care what his people say or believe, (much like our leaders), and to be hon...