I watched as my president took the stage and looked so confident.  He looked as though he was ready, able and knew he would successfully take on and make an overwhelming speech for this crowd which was not his own, but he was the United States President.  He’d done this multiple times to thunderous applause and this would be no exception.  The smug look on his face; the arrogance of his stance; the assuredness of his expression said it all.

He started with how great he was as president of the United States.  He didn’t list his accomplishments he just said they were better than the accomplishments of any other administration in U. S. history.  …..And they laughed.

I didn’t laugh.  My mind went back to all I had witnessed of his accomplishments and how he has affected my life.

I went back to Charlottesville, VA and the neo-Nazi’s, the White Nationalists, the KKK and others coming down that mountain with tiki torches re-enacting Crystalnacht.  The people in that United Nations building knew all that.  Their countries had been negatively affected by the actual Crystalnacht and what happened after.  The United States came to the rescue of more than one of those countries when Hitler reduced them to violence, viciousness, and years of a horrible existence.

This U. S. President and my family are forever intertwined in my mind.  I remembered my grandmother while listening to the laughter. I never met her.  She was taken, before I was born, to one of Hitler’s Concentration Camps where she worked under extreme conditions and finally was killed in the most barbarous way with her body thrown into a ditch so we have no grave nor gravestone for her.  I can only keep her alive in my mind with imaginary conversations I wish we had been able to have over the years.  And today I am standing, listening to  this U. S. President, who called the people, really good people, who re-enacted Crystalnacht, all of those neo-Nazi’s, White Nationalists and others, who acted violently against those who protested against that for which they stood.   This president in front of all of these world wide diplomats talked and they laughed at him.

This U. S. President went on talking and expounded the Nazi doctrine adapted for the United States called “America First”.  A movement initiated by the neo-Nazi’s and fairly successful in America.  A movement started in small ‘cell’ groups to get this doctrine accepted across the United States as one stage in their plan to bring back Hitler’s Germany, reincarnated in the United States.  This president talked positively about that America First campaign and they laughed.

I thought of all the pain and suffering of the little children in these United States, who had experienced some awful things in their own countries which made them and their parents flee.  After months of experiencing everything new and negative as they traveled to reach the safety of the United States arrived to what they had never been able to conceive nor thought possible – being taken away from their parents – their safe harbor – and put into American Concentration Camps so their parents, legitimately or not, could be prosecuted and ejected from the country to which they came seeking refuge.

I heard again, in my mind, people talking about these Concentration Camps for children as though they were summer camp – as though they were private school equivalents – and I watched in my mind all of those children suffering the pain of separation from parents who promised them safety and couldn’t produce it for them because of this U. S. President and his administration. And the background for my memories was the laughter.

Listening to that laughter, I thought and saw again the image of this president selling out the security forces of  the United States while speaking on a platform in Helsinki making clear statements that he trusted Vladimir Putin and Russia, but not the FBI – the CIA – the National Security forces of the government which he was standing there representing as its president.

Having been a victim of sexual assault I stood there remembering how awful that was and remembering the  19 plus women who made even worse charges against this president and in spite of that he was still elected – by who?  Who could be so callous, so cold, so unbelievably vicious as to push forth such a person as leader of America?  And here we were as I listened to the laughter and thought of my pain and the pain of so many other women.

I see an America where a president who has bragged about sexually assaulting women as though he had reached some great level of achievement appointing others to top positions who have done the same thing and turning over to them different parts of the governing of the United States.  I thought of William Shine – a man this president appointed after he knew of the substantial way Mr. Shine supported Roger Ailes, president of Fox, throughout Mr. Ailes sexual assault against many women trying to make a living inside and outside of Fox television.  By this time I was standing there shaking because the realization hit that Mr. Shine was only one of many such sexual predators and enablers of sexual predators with whom this president associated, had as his close friends and who he appointed to serve in this United States Government.  And through those thoughts came the laughter.

So many sexual assaulters in high places and now possibly another being elevated to become the second such person on the United States Supreme Court.  This time, a man accused of sexual assault who claimed, as his defense, that he really did not engage in sex with anyone throughout high school and many years thereafter, didn’t drink and worked very hard at his studies.  It is too much to comprehend.  My mind is totally blown that this is how low we have been brought and still they were laughing.

So much more of this ugliness has happened during this President and his family’s ‘reign’ over these United States, but my mind can’t comprehend anymore.  My reaction to the U. S. President and the comments he made as an introduction to and throughout his talk at the United Nations was to walk out.  Why are they still sitting and laughing and not walking out with me, beside me, for me, around me?

And as I reached the door I could hear the laughter still ringing in my ears.

Will we ever………………

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