Aging: Finding an Extra Set of Hands, or Added Muscle in Ourselves

Aging is a mystery we can’t solve no matter how much we might desire to do so. We just live it, if we’re lucky. Although it might not always feel so lucky.

 

But maybe, if we could hear the honest truth of how other people lived their aging, we might live our own more gracefully. Maybe. Or at least we would not feel isolated in ourselves.

 

So I’m now reading two very different books, Essays After Eighty by the American poet Laureate, Donald Hall, who lived 1928-2018, and The Selected Poems of Tu Fu, Expanded and Newly Translated, by David Hinton. Tu Fu lived from 712-770 C. E. and many consider him China’s greatest classical poet.

 

Hall’s writing feels very personal to me, partly because I took a creative writing class with him when I was in College. The class was engaging, challenging. At times afterwards, I contacted him to talk about my own writing or how to get published. And years later, he gave a talk at a nearby college and we reconnected. I was so surprised he remembered me.

 

We can hold such contradictory and frightening notions. We can both want to know, and yet, not know⎼ what will happen to us next week? Next year? When will we die? We can think of each decade as an actual thing, a door we pass through. “I’m thirty now…seventy, eighty, ninety.” But the door has only the solidity we give it. As Hidy Ochiai⎼ world renowned master and master teacher of the traditional Japanese martial arts, who is still teaching in his eighties and with whom I have studied for many years⎼ put it: “We’re not old. We’re just getting older.”

 

Hall says, “However alert we are, however much we think we know what will happen, antiquity remains an unknown, unanticipated galaxy. It is alien, and old people are a separate form of life.” And as we age, we enter and deconstruct that alien universe.

 

“My problem isn’t death but old age. I fret about my lack of balance, my buckling knee, my difficulty standing up and sitting down…. I sit daydreaming about what I might do next.”

 

Maybe we don’t worry often about death, but we feel it more and more, somewhere behind us and getting closer. Sometimes, we just stop, lost in thought about what to do next or whether we have already done all we need to do. We wonder how well we will be able to walk, get around. How independent. In the U. S., independence, vulnerability or lack of control is one of our greatest fears.

 

Yet so many of us say we don’t feel old. Even in our seventies, we imagine we’re thirty. I notice it is more difficult now to get up after doing floor exercises. One reason I work out daily is to stay as young in body and mind as I can, to stay limber, healthy. The aches I feel afterward are almost pleasurable, a reminder I am here….

 

To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project. 

Politics as Civil War: DT Must Be Impeached Immediately or Removed Via the 25th Amendment

Mao said “Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.” A variant of a quote by Clausewitz is “War is merely the continuation of politics [policy] by other means.” But yesterday in the U. S., blood was shed. We have in DT’s USA, politics as civil war. After 4 years of him treating politics as a slow coup, as a way to seize power for himself alone, his words and actions descended into blatant incitement to violence and close to Civil War.

 

And this followed his phone call on January 2 where he threatened and tried to force Brad Raffensperger, the GOP Secretary of State of Georgia, to “find 11,780 votes.” In a manner demented by his total focus on himself alone, he continued to try to steal the election, by spouting again and again that the election was stolen from (not by) him.

 

Before Wednesday, DT urged people to come to Washington. Saying it was “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 election,” riots were incited.

 

And then on Wednesday morning, he did it again. His lawyer, Giuliani, told the crowd, “Let’s have trial by combat.” DT then added “we are going to have to fight much harder.” He said, “We will never give up. We will never concede when there is theft involved.” He warned Vice President Pence to not allow Joe Biden to be certified as the winner of the election, despite all the facts pointing to that reality. He repeated a worn out claim with no basis in fact that Chinese Socialists were trying to take over the nation. He said he would be there with them.

 

But as they assaulted Capitol Hill, he was present only in memory, repeating his lies in their minds.

 

DT’s civil war is largely by white Christian nationalists who favor a dictatorship versus the rest of us.

 

4 people are dead. Not only those who assaulted the Capitol must be prosecuted. The law enforcement officers who somehow let these terrorists into the building to attack not just the building but stop members of Congress from doing their duty⎼ and their superiors, who either did not plan sufficiently or who did not immediately get reinforcements to the building⎼ those responsible must be prosecuted. Then there is Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and other Senators and House members who, even after this violence, still supported DT’s sedition.

 

And even after all this, DT continued to incite the destruction of our democracy by repeating his malicious lies or distortions. He told those who had stormed the capitol, “Go home, we love you, you’re very special.” “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly and unfairly treated for so long.”

 

We are in the middle of a pandemic that is killing almost 4,000 people a day. And all this President and his supporters can focus on is stealing power at any cost. This looks like deadly negligence to me.

 

The politics of grievance. The politics of hate. This is what it leads to. Isn’t threatening a public official, interfering in an election, sedition, negligence, incitement to riot crimes or impeachable offenses, and enough to get him immediately and legally thrown from office? Maybe invoke the 25th amendment? Then it would be his own supporters who are seen as acting.

 

If this nation, if we let him go free, we permit the division and hate to continue. Who knows what he or his supporters might try next? But it must be done in a way that we don’t make him a martyr for hate. We don’t let him steal anymore headlines. Not only must he personally be discredited but his brand of politics.

 

And share this with Congress members. Call them. Tell them you’re glad they’re safe. Now, our nation must be made safe, from DT.

 

Please read Heather Cox Richardson for a more in-depth treatment of yesterday’s frightening events.

 

This post was syndicated by The Good Men Project.

Waking Up to a New World

I wake up to a new world. The standing Buddha in the yard is wearing a large conical white hat and is surrounded by a foot of virgin snow. The solar lights on the deck are miniature mountains.

 

And even indoors⎼ near my bed, a painting on the wall I’ve looked at almost every day for ten years named “Golden Woods,” by the English artist Jo Barry ⎼ suddenly, the painted light flows through the artwork. It is absorbed by dark trees and adds so much life to the yellow, orange, and gold leaves and flowers they pop out and become so distinct that, for the first time, vast depths can be seen behind them. Unrevealed details.

 

And Linda, a wife, partner, and best friend⎼ is standing by the dresser, the universe seen and loved in her eyes. What a beautiful morning.

 

Already it’s different outside. The light has changed, dimmed. Near the Buddha, under the bird feeder, Cardinals, Chickadees, Blue Jays, a Mourning Dove⎼ is that a Nuthatch?

 

Writing, like a good conversation, can be one of life’s greatest gifts. Yet it can be so tenuous. It is best when words just emerge almost by themselves. When I started writing this morning, my mind was fresh from a good night’s sleep. There was clearly something pushing to be noticed and written, but I didn’t know what it was. The only thing clear was the fresh snow, the light in the painting, and that naming emerges from the nameless. Writing can be like that, when we trust the process. We pick up a pen and don’t know if we will get what we aim at or what, if we let it, we’ll say.

 

Other times, it’s amazing that we can speak at all or write about anything. One minute, we feel we are in the grip of a great revelation, only to find, on the very next day or next moment, a contrary revelation. We speak, thinking we know what we’re talking about, but so much lives in each word, each perception, that all we can ever describe is one moment’s cupful. The rest spills out or jumps from the cup as if our speaking or looking gives it feet.

 

We can worry so much about saying the wrong thing or how we will sound that our voice becomes foreign to us, as if spoken at a great distance, like an echo. And this echo can be  painful and isolating, made worse when we think only we personally carry such burdens or there is something missing in us because we do so. If only we could step right through this distance.

 

When we study ourselves closely, mindfully, study our actual sensations and feelings, we can eliminate the seeming separation between us and everything….

 

This piece was published by The Good Men Project. To read the whole post, please click on the link. 

A Holiday Wish: Ending the Deeper Dark

It’s snowing. Large flakes lazily fall. But in the distance, some light breaks through dark grey clouds.

 

News reports say tomorrow in the late afternoon, a snowstorm will develop. A large storm will be carrying over a foot of snow to the Northeast, maybe the biggest storm in the last few years.

 

Such storms generate great anticipation and emotion. Especially early in the season, there’s excitement along with trepidation. We wonder if the storm will really appear. Is the excitement, and danger, as real as we hope or fear? We often get so caught up in the human social world we forget the power of the universe that cradles us. Such storms can wake us up to this fact.

 

In normal years, we’d also wonder⎼ will schools be closed? This year everything is different. What will the effect of the snow be on remote learning? We will marvel at what nature can do, but many schools (and too many businesses) are already closed, at least to in-person attendance.

 

As we enter the darkest time of the year here in the northern hemisphere, we leave behind an even deeper darkness, a more intense cold. The pandemic, which is now killing more people per day than the 9/11 attacks, may by summer be ended due to vaccines and the policies of a new administration. The incitements to hate, violence, and attempted destruction of our voting system by the present President will be replaced with a true concern for others. For the last 4 years, DT has shown us what an utter lust for power can do to our nation, shown us the darkness and division that descends on people when a ruler is concerned only for himself.

 

But as we move toward the solstice and the darkest day of the year, we are moving also toward the spring. The winter reminds us we can endure and act.

 

I guess this is one reason I write blogs. It is a wish made physical and sent out into the universe to make explicit there is reason to hope, love, and care.

 

President-Elect Joe Biden will be inaugurated January 20th, although just saying it, making it real like that, excites yet scares me. I don’t want to jinx it….

 

**To read the whole piece, click on this link to The Good Men Project, where it was first published.

How Low Can You Go?

It is embarrassing. DT’s behavior is so obviously desperate, based on nothing but fear and a level of self-centered greed that should astound anyone who looks at it. And the desperation and blindness to anyone’s interests but his own is even getting to many of his most loyal supporters. But after 4 years of experiencing just how bad DT can be, we shouldn’t be at all surprised by his latest behavior.

 

Or rest our attention. I have been sleeping better each day with each step taken toward securing the constitutional peaceful transition of power. But who knows what despicable actions he might yet take?

 

In a recent tweet he attacked Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia for not using his “emergency powers…to overrule his obstinate [Republican] Secretary of State…” and claimed matching voter signatures to mail-in ballots would yield a “goldmine of fraud.” He also tweeted to Brian Kemp to “call off the [Senate runoff] election[s].” He was directly trying to stop an election. But the Governor and Secretary of State both refused to do so. Cody Hall, Kemp’s communications director, said the Governor does not have the legal authority to override (or cancel) the election. The only goldmine of fraud was coming from the White House.

 

Former Georgia Representative Allen Peake defended Governor Kemp and the way he handled the election results, and attacked DT, saying “I, for one, am tired of Trump’s whining. Man up, admit you got beat and do what’s right for the country.” And conservative columnist George Will earlier remarked that DT will end his presidency as he began it, by whining.

 

Trump likewise attacked Governor Ducey of Arizona for certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s win in that state. While holding a press conference announcing the certification, reporters dimly heard the tune of “Hail to the Chief” which was the ringtone Ducey linked to calls from the WH. Ducey took out his phone from his coat pocket, saw who was calling, shook his head and continued with the press conference.

 

Even some of the most ardent DT sycophants are breaking with the President’s overwrought and baseless claims and attacks on our constitutional system. The latest was Attorney General Barr, who said, in an interview with the Associated Press, that the FBI and U. S. attorneys have found no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

 

Even Vice President Pence might, according to the Daily Beast, be backing away from DT. His name no longer appears with DT’s on their fund-raising appeals. And “sources” close to Pence say he “privately views the Rudy Giuliani-led legal operation to overturn the 2020 election through the mass disenfranchisement of votes as counterproductive and doomed.” Why not illegal and immoral? “The vice president doesn’t want to go down with this ship.”

 

As far back as November 6th, GOP began to push back against DT’s false election claims, beginning with Senators Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, and Pat Toomey, amongst others. And by 11/10, 9 GOP Senators and 5 Congresspeople recognized Biden won the election.  But, as of now, many congressional GOP still haven’t publicly acknowledged Biden’s win….

 

To read the whole post, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

Happiness and Questioning: Replacing Malignance with Loving, Greed with Compassion, Ignorance with Insight

How can we have any sense of happiness in ourselves during a pandemic, when so many are sick, and we fear getting sick ourselves? And the nation, for another 47 days or so, is still led by someone most of us recognize as malignant, ignorant of the very idea of caring for the lives and well-being of others. When a nation is led by a person who speaks and acts as DT does, every day is an assault on our lives and our humanity⎼ on our sense of compassion, love, and beauty.

 

Or every day asks us how can we create, right now, a sense of strength and caring amidst the chaos and sickness? How can we, knowing what we know, find happiness in our lives? What can we do to liberate our heart instead of allowing a would-be oppressor to subvert it? What is the payoff and what is the price for not asking or answering such questions? There is a letting go, a release needed here that I haven’t yet found.

 

In the Winter 2020 Issue of Buddhadharma, the Practitioner’s Quarterly, Akincano Weber, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist, talks about “Radical Attention,” the attention needed to touch the earth in a specific place, or a specific person or situation, and discern in it a universal truth. He talks about approaches, “life-hacks” that can help us do this, one of which is skillful questioning.

 

Think about questions. Did a question ever stick in your mind and you couldn’t let go of it? They can act as hypnotic suggestions. Ask the right question and you receive what? Attention. Your mind is directed, not just to some place, but possibly to the act of searching itself. Questions can focus the mind very narrowly, on one place, or on every place, the tree or the forest.

 

To answer a question we must leave behind any exclusive focus on self-concern or we never get to the object of concern itself. We must immerse ourselves in wherever the question takes us, live there so we can feel what that place is like, think from that perspective, and then move on. Such questioning can open us up to other practices which help us keep in our mind and heart the larger whole from which we are never separate.

 

Love, obviously, can also do this, switch us from “me” to “you,” self to other. I am sitting now with two of my cats and watch them sleeping. One of them, Milo, turns over, exposing his belly, and puts his front paws over his eyes. This gesture of his just floors me every time. The cats lie there, trusting me enough to be vulnerable. They want to be with me. Suddenly, I feel totally different. Because I love them, I feel loved in return. They mirror back to me my own feeling. Because I am open to them, they reveal myself to me….

 

To read the whole post, please click on this link to The Good Men Project, where it was published.

No Congressional GOP Dare Call it Treason

As most of us know by now, DT was elected in 2016 with the help of a foreign power, the Russians. Even a bipartisan Congressional panel has recognized that. And despite Russian influence, he was not re-elected this year. Their interference in the 2016 election was in the headlines so often, and with so little apparent effect in holding DT accountable, many of us grew sick of hearing about it. And certainly since the election, despite denying it extensively, DT has acted to serve Russian interests, to serve Vladimir Putin.

 

For example, as spelled out in detail in the impeachment hearings, DT held up military aid to Ukraine, at a time when Ukraine was fighting Russian incursion. And he did that in order to force that nation to manufacture negative headlines on the Bidens. DT also decided to unilaterally withdraw U. S. troops from Germany as well as Syria, the latter of which left the area open for Russian troops and influence. And of course he failed to do anything to hold Putin accountable for his placing bounties on U. S. troops in Afghanistan. The examples could go on and on.

 

Now, we have another blatant act of support for Russia. Last Sunday, DT illegally withdrew the U. S., from the Open Skies Treaty, passed in 1992 to promote stability through transparency. It allowed the 34 member states to have unarmed flights over the other nations to collect data on what the military forces of other nations were doing.

 

DT claimed he withdrew the U. S. from the treaty because Russia wasn’t adhering to it. He pretended he was being tough and withdrawing from the treaty was punishing Russia for its actions. But he was actually strengthening Russia and punishing our European allies⎼ who depended on the information from the flights for their national security and objected to DT’s unilateral withdrawal from the treaty.

 

Rachel Maddow pointed out that not only is DT ending the flights, he’s destroying the planes so the Biden Administration wouldn’t be able to immediately start those flights up again once they took power in January.

 

We still have satellites to observe the Russian troop deployments, but it is unclear if this would provide our European allies the same degree of information as the flights. Without the flights, the defense capability of our allies could be diminished. And after four years of Trump putting “America First,” and continuously disrespecting or openly attacking our European and democratic allies while praising dictators, they feel abandoned by us.

 

DT has withdrawn from other treaties and organizations that for many years have served the interests of both the U. S. and our allies. Organizations like the World Health Organization, and treaties like the Paris Accords, the nuclear arms control treaty with Russia called the Intermediate-Range Forces Treaty, and, of course, the Iran Nuclear Deal.

 

And just as frightening and despicable are his actions at home⎼ dividing the nation, inciting violence, racism and so many other forms of hatred, and lying about the 2020 election in order to undermine the election system. For the last 4 years, he has been turning Main Street America into a second class nation….

 

**To read the whole post, please go to the Good Men Project. Thanks.

Thanksgiving: Giving Thanks Not Only for the Food and the Friendship but the Peaceful Transition of Power

We can celebrate. Yes! Ok, maybe there are restrictions and shadows, big ones at that. But we can do it. Smile. Dance. Step #2 towards a revived future and a revived nation has been taken.

 

Step #1 was the election day⎼ or days. In some states, early voting started a month before November 3rd, and then counting went on, in some places, until this Monday. Actually, there are a few states still counting. And it is clear Biden won, or clear to anyone not wearing DT colored or white (nationalist) colored glasses. Biden won by 5.3 million popular votes and 74 electoral votes, 306 to DT’s 232.

 

Step #2 came 16 days after election day when Emily Murphy, head of the General Services Administration, a DT appointee, declared President-elect Joe Biden the “apparent” President-elect. DT managed to freeze, incite chaos and anxiety, try to blatantly undermine or cancel the election, for almost a month. Then, on November 23rd Murphy contacted the White House and sent a personal letter to Biden. Resources as well as information and access, will now be granted to the President-elect. He can officially start the huge effort to take control of the executive branch of the government and begin planning how to safeguard this nation.

 

An adult with the inclination and ability to care about the well-being of others is now President. We can celebrate. November 23rd should have been declared a holiday. It might be the day that saved our nation from the Civil War that our present and soon-to-be past President drove us toward.

 

Step #3 will be January 6th, when the Electoral College will officially meet and certify the winner of the election. Step #4 will be January 20th, Inauguration Day. Step #5 will be when the tough process of executive actions and legislation to end the pandemic, improve health care and the economic position of millions of Americans, and create democracy is clearly underway.

 

DT was the first shadow on the holiday. COVID-19 is the second. This year, Thanksgiving needs to be masked and social distanced and attendance limited.

 

For 42 of the last 43 years, my wife and I had Thanksgiving with the same group of friends despite living in 3 different areas, all in driving distance of each other. Three of us went to college together, were on the same floor of the same freshman dormitory at the University of Michigan. We became close friends. Two of us shared an apartment for the last 2 years of college. We had almost no classes together, but many discussions, protests, social events. And the friendship has continued after we left Michigan. Others have joined us, most notably and joyfully our wives.

 

I looked forward each year to our time together. Looking forward to Thanksgiving gave me life and breath over many years of working long hours. But this year it can’t happen.

 

Instead, we invited 2 friends, a couple, former co-workers of my wife who live near to us, to join us. Actually, the invite was more synergistic than one couple inviting another. Although it took planning, it also took checking the weather report so it would be warm enough to leave windows open. We had to think about what would be safe. We brought out 2 leaves for our kitchen table to make it so we could sit more than 6 feet apart.

 

So, I wish us all, everyone, a wonderful holiday. I wish us all not only wonderful food but wonderful discussions. For those who can’t do it this year due to the necessary health restrictions or for whatever reason⎼ I wish that our new President, with our help, will not only end the coronavirus pandemic but the pandemic of hate and economic injustice. So we, more of us than ever, can share such a holiday in the future.

 

Happy Thanksgiving to us all. And may the transition of power be even less anxious and more peaceful and constitutional than it’s been.

“Read the Eternities:” Who Knew There Was Such Meaning in the Flight of a Bird?

It’s morning. The sun is hazy. So many Blue jays, Mourning Doves, Woodpeckers, Cardinals, Chickadees and a few Evening Grosbeaks feed at the bird feeder outside the window or on the seeds scattered on the ground. Their movements are first individual, one move here, another there. Then all at once, like a wave, they all take off. They’re here, then gone.

 

I find it tremendously soothing to put my attention on the birds, plants, and sunlight. The view feels sacred to me. Calmly focusing on it helps me gain some clarity in troubling times and to find something beyond the obvious in what I see. It helps me to find answers to the questions, fears, and confusions that powerfully arise or that I barely know are there. It reveals the moment has depths not to be missed.

 

We can let our eyes rest on the whole scene and then our body⎼ shoulders and belly especially⎼ relax; our hands at ease on our lap. Take a few slow, deep breaths. And then we watch individual movements, distinguish which birds like the feeder, which the ground. Who is aggressive and who can share a meal? Or we can listen to the calls of the different birds, hear one, then another, or listen to them all, together, like a concert. Standing by the window, we can feel the warmth of the sun shining on our face.

 

James Shaheen, in a Letter from the Editor of Tricycle Magazine, The Buddhist Review (Winter, 2020) titled “A Time for Eternities,” speaks to this point. He writes about Thoreau saying, “Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.” Not to totally withdraw from what is happening around us, no matter how challenging or frightening⎼ the often-disturbing news headlines, for example. When times are chaotic and frightening, it is helpful to stay attuned to what endures, “to the knowledge that illuminates the deepest matters of human meaning.” He is referring not only to Buddhist teachings, but the wisdom, “through which consciousness is deepened,” the caring for others in our best traditions.

 

This wisdom is what reveals the truths in what surrounds us. In a synchronous fashion, I by “chance” read or listened to two other authors and teachers who gave similar messages, or maybe I just saw a similarity in what they said. Heaven is not divorced from the earth; enlightenment is not separate from ordinary mind. The birds and I are not as separate as we might think….

 

**To read the whole piece, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

 

Preserve the Constitutional and Peaceful Transition of Power

Now that DT has lost the election, I⎼ and so many others⎼ would like to just ignore him and starve his malignant narcissism of attention. Ever since 2016, there was always the desire to just turn him off. And this is the best time to do so. Last Saturday and Sunday the headlines were filled with faces other than his, of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris—and Stacey Abrams.

 

We wish we could just turn him off, but we can’t. He won’t let go or concede. He is so desperate; he could put our whole nation at risk. DT and his GOP followers are blatantly working to undermine the heart of the U.S. constitution, by grasping at the power to keep himself in office. At a news conference, DT’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo called for “a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.” At the very least, DT aims to seize the headlines, and whine “I am the victim, here. I have been defrauded once again.” He has committed so many frauds, corrupt acts and crimes, so many malignant actions, they must fill his mind so entirely he sees them everywhere.

 

Despite no evidence whatsoever of there being any voter fraud, a fact proclaimed by his own Federal Election Officials, DT continues with his inconsistent and false claims. For the past week, his legal team has been suing several states, at first to stop vote counting, then to dismiss or invalidate the results. He has demanded recounts, for example, in Wisconsin and Georgia. His suits have mostly been thrown out, because they have no evidence to support their claims. He made similar false claims after the 2016 election, when he proclaimed, also without any evidence, that he would have won the popular vote if “millions of people” hadn’t been allowed to vote illegally, a fact his own commission proved false.  Why stop lying now?

 

So, if anyone has interfered in the legal voting, it was DT and the GOP. He called the Governor of Arizona last week, and Rupert Murdoch who owns FOX News, to complain about news that Biden was ahead in the count and that Fox had called the state for Biden. DT supporters tried to interfere or pressure the vote count in several locations, including Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Watching the scene in Maricopa County, Arizona, I couldn’t help but flash back to the scene in Florida, during the 2000 election, and the GOP supporters flown in to interfere in the counting of ballots.

 

DT started interfering in the election months ago, falsely claiming mail-in ballots were fraudulent, stopping states from sending them out, and stopping the USPS from delivering them. In California, the GOP put up fake drop-in boxes. And let’s not forget efforts to confuse or disenfranchise voters.

 

His appointee, Emily Murphy, head of the General Services Administration, has so far failed to recognize Biden’s win and release the funds and other resources so Biden can officially begin the peaceful transition of power.

 

Peaceful⎼ for Murphy to hold up the transition, she pushes the election into a chaotic situation that encourages anger, distress, fear and outrage, the emotional feeding ground for violence. The nation has been on edge for months, or 4 years, and this additional stress on our political system just further undermines the safety of this nation.

 

Meanwhile, DT is firing government officials, anyone who has ever said “no’ to him that still has a government post⎼ a move that could make the situation in the U. S. even more volatile. For example, he fired Mark Esper, Secretary of Defense, who opposed DT’s desire to send active-duty troops to quell street protests in Portland and other cities. DT fired other officials in the Defense Department and there is evidence he plans to also fire Christopher Wray, the F. B. I. Director, and maybe Gina Haspel, the C. I. A Director.

 

And while Covid-19 cases and deaths continue to mount (yesterday 145,000 new cases, the highest single day total since the pandemic began), DT continues to lie, to fail in protecting, or caring for the health and lives of the people of this nation. He will leave the new administration with the worst health crisis this nation has faced in over a hundred years, one he did little to contain.

 

And when Biden finally succeeds in entering the White House and being inaugurated, who would be surprised if DT tries to pressure the GOP into resurrecting the “party of NO” and interfering in every government function they can interfere in? Especially if the GOP hold on to a Senate majority, they can refuse to confirm cabinet nominees as well as judgeships and hold up the filling of other vacant positions. This could force the Biden administration to be more “centrist” in order to get anyone confirmed and make it extremely difficult for Biden and Democrats to actually do anything positive for us, the American people.

 

DT fears Biden showing voters that a Democratic (or democratic) government can improve the everyday lives of Americans. He wants to continue to divide the Democratic party as he has the nation and make anger and fear stain Biden as it stains him.

 

We would all like to take a breath, and we need to do that. The last few weeks have been exhausting. Let’s give ourselves a needed break, clear our minds, assess information⎼ and act effectively. We can make calls, write postcards and get out the vote for the two Senate positions up for grabs on January 4th in the run-off elections in Georgia. If Democrats win both these seats, the Senate will be evenly divided between parties.

 

Eight GOP Senators and six House members have already broken with DT⎼ let’s energize a movement. Make calls and protest to get more of the GOP to actually honor their oaths and protect the constitutional and peaceful transition of power.

 

And we need to both support and pressure President-elect Biden to issue executive orders as well as push legislation that will foster justice, economic security, and caring for the health and well-being of Americans⎼ good health care for all and a scientifically based response to the coronavirus pandemic and the climate emergency. Then maybe student debt relief, protecting voting rights, releasing immigrant children from DT’s cages and re-uniting them with their parents. Who knows where we can go from there? We can do this, just as we won this election.