Tag Archives: #Hillary Clinton

Let Us Not Be Afraid Of Bullies

This week I am posting a lot about the recent election and my reaction to what has happened. I decided to check out Huffington Post Women because I suspected the women who post there would be talking about this. That is where I saw the reference to Lena Dunham’s Lenny Letters. She posted a quote from Sojourner Truth, and if you don’t know who Sojourner Truth is look it up.

“I am not going to die, I’m going home like a shooting star.” —Sojourner Truth

Here is an excerpt of her letter to Hillary Clinton:

A lot of people have been talking about how we need to try to understand how this happened and what’s going on in the minds of the people who voted for Donald Trump. Maybe. Maybe. But maybe let’s leave that to the strategists, to the men in offices who need to run the numbers. It should not be the job of women, of people of color, of queer and trans Americans, to understand who does not consider them human and why, just as it’s not the job of the abused to understand their abuser. It’s quite enough work to know about and bear the hatred of so many. It’s quite enough work to go on living…..

Thank you, Hillary, for bravely taking every shot and standing tall, for weathering assaults from every direction, for telling us that no, this wasn’t politics as we know it, and no, you were not going to let a chronic interrupter with a limited vocabulary of catchphrases stop you from speaking coherently about your dreams for this country. Thank you for 30 years of public service. Thank you for showing our daughters something beautiful to aspire to. Thank you for reminding us what we are capable of when we are focused and ferocious. Thank you for 30 years of that. Thank you for not abandoning us now.

So no, the work isn’t done. It is only beginning. We will stun ourselves with what we are capable of. We will laugh with surprise like kids who finally threw a punch back at the schoolyard bully. We will watch our friends in awe as they step forward and demand more, as they recognize and wield their politicized identities. We will not be governed by fear. We will show our children a different way. We will go home like shooting stars.

I’m proud of you,

Lena

I remember when I was a little girl there was a bully on our street and he took pleasure in terrorizing the little kids. One day he and his buddies had surrounded my best girlfriend’s little sister and they were taunting her. She called out to me to help her. I was very scared too but I am proud to say that the little girl who was me went into that circle of bullies and put my arms around my friend’s sister and escorted her out. The bully became very upset that I did that. He hit me as I walked past him. His mother later explained to a group of us that he had problems and asked for our understanding.

It is important to stand up to bullies. I am afraid now too, kind of like when I was little, and hope that I will again have the courage to walk into that circle with the bully and stand up for the things I believe in. To put my arms around his victims and walk them to safety.

This post is for Stream of Consciousness Saturday hosted by Linda G Hill. The prompt for today is “mem.” Featured image of Hillary Clinton speaking at Brown University by Gage Skidmore on Wikipedia.

What Hillary Clinton Meant to Women

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I have been reading so many posts about what happened in the recent Presidential election. Many are blaming the Democrats for choosing Hillary Clinton as their candidate. I read one post where the author said the Baby Boomers are to blame because they didn’t vote for Clinton. I am not sure about that because I think many Baby Boomer women (and men) did vote for Clinton. I have heard negative remarks made against the Baby Boomers before. That we are to blame for everything wrong with the world. I am always shocked to hear this type of rhetoric because the people who are making these claims most likely are the children of Baby Boomers. Not my children but other people’s children. And I wonder why they think it is right to talk this way. I did not personally create all the world’s problems and supported many causes to attempt to correct them.

I am inspired to write this because of a post in the Huffington Post by Amanda Terkel,

“For Many Women, It Wasn’t Just About Defeating Donald Trump. It Was About Electing Hillary Clinton.”

She writes,”But many women in this country have wanted Clinton to be president for as long as they can remember. They didn’t just want to have the first female president ― they wanted her to be the first female president. And they took it as a given that she would be. Many diehard Clinton supporters described how Clinton was the most qualified woman they’ve ever come across. If she couldn’t do it, who could?”

It is because women like me lived through all the oppression against us in this country for so many years. We watched Hillary Clinton stand up for women’s right to be equal. We heard her say ” Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.” I thought she would have a better chance of working with Republicans in Congress than Bernie Sanders. She didn’t want to blow up the system but was more pragmatic. As we get older, I think we get more pragmatic. When I was young I was definitely more radical but I have not lost my ideals. And I don’t think she has lost her ideals either.

I do think there was fear and resistance to having a woman President. After all these years, there are still those who can not see a woman in a top leadership role. The glass ceiling is still in place.

This loss has been painful. In the day after the election, I looked around for comfort in reading others reactions that were similar to my own. One place I found comfort was in the words of a young woman, that I voted for, who has been elected State Senator for California. I heard Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech and found these words very comforting,

(From Tin Hay via You Tube)

I wish her all the success in the world. She is one of my champions now.

Featured image by Gage Skidmore on Wikipedia.

McGuffins Are Not Just In Novels

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There is “high jingo,”as Harry Bosch would say, involved in the Clinton investigations by the FBI. Something fishy in their culture if we are to believe some of the stories coming out about about agents with a big hard on for Hilary Clinton. I am not talking about sex. It bothers me because politics is not supposed to be involved in police investigations but like Harry said about the LAPD in his story there seems to be “high jingo” here.

Another interesting aspect is the McGuffin plot device of the “emails.” This theory was advanced by Neal Gabler, Alfred Hitchcock explains James Comey, the Media and 2016’s ‘McGuffin’….that the emails are a McGuffin, a plot device, objects to build a whole controversy around, that are virtually without any real meaning. Per Gabler:

“This has been true of the Clinton emails since the beginning. It was always something of a hoax — a new chapter for a hungry media juicing its audience. Not one in a hundred voters can tell you the awful crime Clinton was supposed to have committed or why it matters. Not one in a hundred — and I would include journalists — have any idea of what really went down with these emails, as I discussed in an earlier post that highlighted the one reporter, Garrett M. Graff of Politico, who actually did something it appears no other reporter thought of doing: read the FBI’s summary account of the investigation.”

I am always disappointed and disillusioned when I read about “high jingo” influencing justice and the truth in fictional stories and real life. And I really hate the state of much of the media which satisfies itself by creating scandal where there is none. When it uses McGuffins and tabloid journalism instead of working at honest reporting.

This post is for Stream of Consciousness Saturday hosted by Linda G Hill. The prompt for today is “novel.” Featured Image is “At Breakfast” by Laurits Andersen Ring. I am usually perusing the news nowadays on the internet every morning instead of in a paper. It wasn’t that long ago when we enjoyed reading the paper.