It's heartbreaking: A bouncy tale...

[dutch508]

KentuckyWoman (1,578 posts) https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029056915

It's heartbreaking

I'm over 70 yrs old. Being a citizen of these United States has been my good fortune and privilege.

We've had our finer moments, and our embarrassments. I've spend my lifetime advocating for "the little guy" and for a government that exists for our collective good. I've had elected representatives that performed well and with honor, and reps who used the office for the sole purpose of enriching themselves and their rich friends. I thought I'd seen it all.

I was wrong. Lady Liberty is still holding her hand high but I don't see how. 30+ years ago we opened the doors to "conservative talk radio" and now we've progressed to open hatred in the streets. We are a nation that elected a buffoon whose idea of political discourse is in sentences short enough to fit on a bumper sticker. Even if we drum them all out of public view, it will take generations of hard work to simply regain the little bit of ground we gained in my lifetime before everything started falling apart again.

We worked SO hard to turn our local police departments into a group of people who protect and serve rather than turn the firehoses and attack dogs on citizens exercising their constitutional rights of free assembly. We made so little headway and now we are to a point where the police all over this country feel free to beat up women, shoot unarmed children with no consequence whatsoever.

Donald Trump embodies everything that was ever wrong in America - well with humanity in general. He is all 7 of the deadly sins. The sheer pettiness, greed, sloth, gluttony, wastefulness, frivolousness, disrespect. Just the fact our society gave such a person the limelight at all is an embarrassment. But to exalt him to the highest office in the land is beyond all understanding.

His presidency underscores the fact we, as a group, have had our priorities all wrong for decades. President Obama did his damndest to try and pull us back to some sort of sanity, but we would have none of it. Pigs at the trough under Whistleass got put on a diet, and now put a man in office that is literally the rich flipping us all the bird.

I really don't know where I'm going with all this.... except to say that I'm heartbroken for America and what she's become.

 

Star Member northoftheborder (5,355 posts)
2. Well said. My heart fully agrees w/your sentiments.

Also over 70

spiderpig (9,278 posts)
24. Does he have a single redeeming quality?

(answering my own question)

NO

Even his relationships with his immediate family are creepy.

Norman Goldman pointed out that he's never had a pet. Even a goldfish.

Bernardo de La Paz (17,698 posts)
8. Heartbreaking, yes. But we resist, we persist, we win victories. . . nt

Star Member lunatica (33,626 posts)
10. I'm 69 and feel much more hopeful

We've seen a lot of really great things in our lifetimes. You and I have seen the greatest advances in civil rights and equality in history and the world. The most recent has been the hard earned right of the gay community to be completely equal to the rest of us. The way I feel about that is that we truly live in a country that is great.

We would never have gotten this far if we hadn't struggled very hard against all the forces of hate that stood in the way with hatred for their fellow man.

I imagine that as I did, you must have despaired that the civil rights of the Black community would ever happen when we watched the horrible attacks on the marchers in the South.

This may seem unsurmountable now but so did all the other crises. But just like this country became better and stronger before, so it will happen again.

Star Member mountain grammy (13,761 posts)
11. Good post

especially this: Donald Trump embodies everything that was ever wrong in America - well with humanity in general. He is all 7 of the deadly sins. The sheer pettiness, greed, sloth, gluttony, wastefulness, frivolousness, disrespect. Just the fact our society gave such a person the limelight at all is an embarrassment. But to exalt him to the highest office in the land is beyond all understanding.

Star Member VOX (17,239 posts)
14. Just turned 68, so I'm right there with you.

All that battling, all that blood shed, in city streets and on college campuses. All the legwork, gathering signatures, working for heartbreak candidates like Eugene McCarthy, Bobby Kennedy and George McGovern. All the riots, the growing pains, the assassinations, the Watergate hearings, the horrible grind of the Vietnam conflict. We gave everything, even our very hearts, to make this country better for *everyone*.

And despite all those decades of effort, THIS is how we wind up? With a seriously ill, jumped-up fascist buffoon and his gang of miscreants who aren't fit to lead a banana republic? With whom Republicans just approved at an insane 84% in the most recent Gallup weekly average? I've thought about walking away from it all and just going off to enjoy what time I have left, as best as I can in a fascist dictatorship. But *******it, I cannot stand to see the less fortunate continue to get get steamrollered, or justice not served, or witness our very reality being called into question. I'm tired to the soul right now, but I will continue to fight. I cannot NOT fight-- not while I still draw breath.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/05/12/the-one-little-number-that-so-far-is-all-of-the-protection-donald-trump-needs/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_number-850a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.cadbdd6d545f

marlakay (5,187 posts)
16. We are in 60's and wondering

if we will ever get to see things being run right again. I feel we are in a deep spiral down. And not just Trump.

Private prisons making slavery legal.

Even many democrats going along with keeping the bankers and wall street out of jail.

State by state women are losing their rights.

Racism is worse than ever. Even locally a murder happened in my liberal area of a black college kid and things weren't handled right by either the college or local police.

Health care is to the point unless you are covered by work who pays a good chunk of it unaffordable for most people.

It's getting harder to vote, and harder to get people to care to vote because they don't feel like their vote matters.

I feel like we are a nation of people living in a "fight or flight response mode". We are expecting so much to be screwed at all times we are tense waiting for the next thing.

That's why it is no surprise to me when I read how many people are on anti depressants, drinking, doing drugs, emotional eating, etc. we are all looking for something to numb us.

Star Member localroger (1,036 posts)
25. I'm 53.

A little different perspective. I'm not old enough to actually remember the activism that led to the civil rights victories of my youth. I was told about and read about how bad it was before. But I do remember Nixon resigning in disgrace, electing a generally decent guy nobody had heard of in 1976, and a general air of hope that we were going to stop killing our kids in stupid wars, make women my equal and take the stigma out of sex and pleasure and fix hunger and poverty and preventable disease.

Then we elected Ronald Reagan, and started the long process of rolling it all back. Bill Clinton seemed to make it better for awhile but he only slowed the pendulum temporarily, he never reversed the direction it had been falling for my whole adult life. When Obama was elected I thought I might finally see it turning around, because frankly I never thought I'd see either a POC or female person elected President.

Then of course Trump, who makes Reagan look like both a genius and a saint. Sure he shouldn't have won and wouldn't have in a more fair system, but it was only possible for him to win because a depressing number of people really were able to look at and listen to the guy and say to themselves sure, that's a guy I want appointing Supreme Court justices and keeping his finger on the nuclear trigger. Maybe the fools who think that way are also victims of a generational propaganda campaign, but even if so the fact is it is working much better than it should be able to. Our Founders understood that the structure they created would be fragile without the wisdom of voters and the strength of those we elect to uphold it.

Because of the betrayal of all my expectations when I entered adulthood I never allowed myself much hope for the future, but today I feel the strongest sense I ever have that it all might actually shatter, leading to an entirely new and most likely far more unpleasant political reality. The lesson of history is depressing as to our chances. And with that, if you don't mind, I will take my leave and pour another glass of wine.

Star Member calimary (44,381 posts)
59. I'm heartbroken, too, KentuckyWoman.

I'm 63 and I've been keeping track for a fair amount of time. I can't EVER remember a time when people in this country started turning on each other like we see now.

Everything seems upside down. Now, it's okay to grab a woman like that.

Now, it's okay to lie openly, and change one's story several times in a single day.

Now, it's okay to poke fun at a disabled person - not only in words but in physical actions.

Now, it's okay to instill fear in vast swaths of the population in this country, and elsewhere around the world.

Now, it's okay to threaten people openly.

Now, it's okay to sanction beastly behavior in others around you.

Now, it's okay to joke about proving how popular you are by shooting somebody in public.

Now, it's okay to sow chaos and uncertainty everywhere around you.

Now, it's okay to speak without thinking, and ignore the fact that words have consequences.

Now, it's okay to ignore the facts, period.

Now, all this and more - this mean-spirited, anti-social, greedy, sneaky, inconsiderate, duplicitous, loutish behavior is OKAY.

Every time I see a republi-CON in the news, usually defending Agent Orange, I find myself mumbling - "and this is okay with you?"

I feel like some of these assholes should be given a hammer, a chisel, and a free ticket on the ferry out to Liberty Island. Let them chisel the plaque inscribed with THAT poem off the front of the pedestal on which the Statue of Liberty stands. The plaque that features the landmark quote: "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." Maybe they should knock it off its mounting and let it crash to the ground. Because that's not us anymore, to a tragically statistically large percent. Agent Orange has even made a liar out of that poem. Turned that precious passage into a cast-in-bronze lie. He's managed to bring out the worst in everybody, and let all their demons get out and run free. America, and far too many Americans, lost something very big when he grabbed the White House. Like maybe our collective soul.

I've NEVER seen it this bad. All those things I've loved about my country - to a great extent, they're gone.

And we have to get them back.

[I_B_Perky]

So the OP and one other dummie are both over 70. They are the ones that ****ed this country up.

Good news is it means they will be dying soon.  This pleases me.

[franksolich]

So the OP and one other dummie are both over 70. They are the ones that ****ed this country up.

Good news is it means they will be dying soon.  This pleases me.

The primitives don't understand that for each of them who feels pessimistic about America and Americans, another person feels optimistic, confident.

They forget that at least half of us don't share their world-view.

[jukin]

TLDR but I might later.

ALL I KNOW is.............

schadenboner status, cutting glass, out around Pluto.

[Mr Mannn]

Old hippies threatened by Free Speech and Free Elections.
after 50 years of smoking pot, what has this world come too?

[fatboy]

If being a retard were a career option then the DUmmies would be a success.

[franksolich]

If being a retard were a career option then the DUmmies would be a success.

Really, the primitives need to be broken of their delusion that the ways they see things are the only "right" ways.

[Delmar]

spiderpig (9,278 posts)
24. Does he have a single redeeming quality?

(answering my own question)

NO

Even his relationships with his immediate family are creepy.

Norman Goldman pointed out that he's never had a pet. Even a goldfish

Never had a pet--creepy?  Barry eats dogs, now that's what I call creepy!

[DUmpsterDiver]

>I've NEVER seen it this bad

Missed the Witch burning did ya?  Well your beloved islams are still getting it done.  Go join them moron.

[FunkyZero]

geez, it's like a suicide watch conference call or something over there.

[98ZJUSMC]

So the OP and one other dummie are both over 70. They are the ones that ****ed this country up.

Exactly. 

Good news is it means they will be dying soon.  This pleases me.

geez, it's like a suicide watch conference call or something over there.

Good.  It's working!

[98ZJUSMC]

Really, the primitives need to be broken of their delusion that the ways they see things are the only "right" ways.

If they didn't come out of their comas under Ronaldus Maximus - indeed, they went past insane - there was never any hope of that.

Just die, you lying, clueless, disgusting puss bags.

[thundley4]

Never had a pet--creepy?  Barry eats dogs, now that's what I call creepy!

Whatever happened to the two dogs that the Obama's were fattening up?

I know the news reported on it when President Bush's dogs had passed away. (old age)

[DumbAss Tanker]

If being a retard were a career option then the DUmmies would be a success.

 

At LEAST one, that is...

[98ZJUSMC]

Whatever happened to the two dogs that the Obama's were fattening up?

I know the news reported on it when President Bush's dogs had passed away. (old age)

I recall seeing it once.  Never again.  But, that's just me and I don't watch the news, whatsoever.

[SVPete]

KentuckyWoman (1,578 posts)

It's heartbreaking

I'm over 70 yrs old. I never grew up, and now the country has again rejected my 1960s hippy-ideas. First it was Reagan, and now it's Trump! Waaaaaaaaaa!!!

Improved with brevity and accuracy.