At the beginning of this man's presidency, I vowed never to allow his name or pictures of him on any of my websites, so that at least from this one citizen, he would not be privy to attention - because the way I see it, he is unable to live without it. As the past three years have gone by I became even more adamant about this - especially after he separated small children from their families at the border. This, in my opinion was the very last straw, although, of course, there have been multiple circumstances, situations, and appalling behaviors and statements since then that have only reinforced my vow.
However, recently after seeing this picture on social media, I felt that I simply must speak out:
It alarmed me in a number of ways, and when I saw it I literally closed my eyes for a few moments and thought about the implications behind the photograph. I thought to myself: "People must really hate this man to put up a picture like this." And that's the word that comes to mind: hate. For the past three years hatred has been at the foundation of everything he has promoted. Hatred of immigrants, people with disabilities, Jewish people, women, science, and on and on. This is not the fault of this president alone. No. He has been bolstered and supported continuously by a small percentage of the population. Indeed, these policies and behaviors have been most appealing especially to people, who, I believe, must have had an emotionally devastating childhood themselves. A childhood where they were taught to repress their anger and fear to such an extent, that when they grew up to be adults, their only way of dealing with their own horrific, traumatic childhoods is to externalize the hatred to others. Rather than face their own self-hatred, that they were taught as young children from the shaming and abuse they endured.
Years ago I read Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools, by Jonathan Kozol, where he warned us of the greed that was being supported and encouraged by our politicians, who are not only greedy for money, but power as well. And then years later, I read Born for Love: Why Empathy is Essential and Endangered, by Maia Szalavitz and Bruce Perry, where the concept of developing empathy in early childhood is critical for our future survival as a human species. Both books influenced me deeply. So much so, I wrote my own books about self-reflection and our understanding of how our own childhood affect how we interact with young children. All three of my books have a concluding chapter about the importance and nature of compassion.
I know that right now we are living through a pandemic: the COVID 19 crisis. But I am thinking of it as a hostage crisis as well. For, we have been taken hostage by a small percentage of the population, who nurture hatred, greed and unspeakable, unconscionable meanness. The majority of the population are compassionate and kind, work hard, abide by the laws of the land, and do amazing things each and every day to help others, oftentimes with tremendous risk to themselves and their families. I witness millions of acts of kindness and courage, strength and humility all around me and through the Internet.
This gives me great hope for all our futures, because I know that the man and his small rogue government will not be able to destroy us all in the end. We are hostages right now, but we are able to extricate ourselves from this situation. It doesn't take much. Just the right to vote. And by hook or by crook, we will vote even, as one person "tweeted" recently, if we have to walk on broken glass to do it. We will rise up and take back our land - our world - and move forward with hope and courage again. We will value compassion and goodness, and cast aside greed and meanness. We will turn around this horrible blip in history and leave it behind us before this horrific picture (above) could ever become true.
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