by Marceline Donaldson
I can’t believe what I am seeing and hearing about. It is heartbreaking – it is beyond anger – it is evil personified – it is believably unbelievable. Donald Trump needs to be incarcerated immediately and kept in jail for decades. He seriously needs to be jailed for the rest of his life. That is being generous because I started with other much harsher things that I thought should happen to him.
I sit here with tears streaming down my face as I hear the tape of the children being incarcerated alone without family; as I hear about children being taken from their mother’s breast while nursing because Donald Trump decided that should be done; as I read about all the other things being done, lies being told, others blamed for Trump’s deliberate actions.
Clearly, the Summit and Trump’s talks and friendship with Kim Jong Un has produced much only we were looking for what it produced from the North Korean side. I suspect as long as Trump is president we will see much worse than we are seeing now. Coming back from North Korea with such high praise for a dictator who has killed his own family; who has done so much more and Trump has come back to these United States much more influenced by Kim Jong Un than Un was by Trump.
Trump has come back to continue to lie, cheat and now to steal the lives of children with no thought except that this is how he can use these children to gain a political advantage and impress his “base”. A mind set he brought back from North Korea – I am sure we will see more of this filth done by Trump because he is seeing himself as a replica of all the dictators with whom he is enthralled. There is a place in hell for people like Trump. There is no excuse for what he is doing and there is no forgiveness. You must repent to be forgiven and Trump is bragging about what he is doing and knowingly blaming those, who had nothing to do with his evil, for its results.
There was SENATOR Joe McCarthy with Roy Cohn sitting next to him whispering into his ear. We have moved on from that and we now have PRESIDENT Donald Trump who was tutored by the same Roy Cohn and is showing us that he is much greater in his evil than SENATOR Joe McCarthy was in his. What were those lessons? Failed in something? Take that to the highest mountain and claim to everyone that you have just experienced a great success. Blame others for any and everything you have done which didn’t work out the way you expected. Do evil and name others as the ones who really perpetrated the evil and you walk away free. Adults suffered under McCarthism as their jobs were taken away from them for no reason and their lives were upheaveled to satisfy the needs of a man who was seriously alcoholic among other evils. But Donald Trump has taken McCarthyism many steps further down the road and he is destroying the lives of children who already suffered much before they arrived in this country with parents who brought them here to escape the suffering they all were experiencing.
Let me not leave out Sessions – the scripture quoting Attorney General who has spent his life being “better than” and doing everything he could to destroy the lives of African Americans and others he considered less than and who he didn’t feel deserved anything except the dregs of life. He is now getting his chance to show who he really is and what he really believes. On the world stage he is showing everyone just how evil he really is and how far he will go to bring about a society in which White Supremacy succeeds beyond his wildest imaginings with himself as one of the architects of that success.
A man does not surround himself with Neo-Nazi’s, White Supremacists; and other such believers unless he shares their belief system. It is difficult to stay in such a person’s presence who has such beliefs. That is who Trump fraternizes with daily. Remember Charlottesville? We are now bringing in Stephen Miller and others on whom to drop blame, but Trump not only was the architect of that but was very clear that these were his beliefs. He saw that backfire in his face. He is not going to again call on those same people unless he is one of them and wants to see their and his beliefs succeed and be installed in this society as its way of operating. These are the people Trump calls his “base” and those are the ideas and beliefs that Donald Trump cultivates, preserves and stays close to as the seat of his power. This is the belief system in which he was raised when he was the age of the young children he is now incarcerating in tents and “camps” which degrade and tear down the human spirit at ages as young as 4 months.
We knew before we elected Donald J. Trump as president that he was an abuser and assaulter of women. He bragged about it on television – a segment we all heard and many of us apparently didn’t find it horrible enough to take seriously. Either that or we were right in the Trump camp and approved of his abuse and assault of women. There were some 19 woman who charged Trump with assault during his campaign. It was clear that he also had others pay off women so they could not bring charges against him and yet many voted for this monster. We wanted a racist, sexist, sexual assaulter, Neo-Nazi, son of a Ku Klux Klansman who raised his son in his values and on and on it goes. A man whose values are those of some of the worse dictators in this country? We have tried many times to excuse him – it is time to call out the truth and stand by it.
During the presidential campaign there were many reports from those who accessed the divorce proceedings of Trump from his first wife Ivana which talked about his rape of her – she later retracted that claim – why? was it because her alimony was being held until she did just that?; the fact that he had a copy of “Mein Kampf” next to his bed on his bedside table and he read it every night and on and on were also included. I think we now see the results of such goings on. They were ignored by many of those who wanted these United States to remain and go back to the racism and sexism of the past when being “White” meant something about how great you were without doing anything except having been born the ‘right color’ – everyone knew what “Make America Great Again” meant. It was simply a more polite way of saying “Make American White Again” and Donald Trump and his minions have been about the process of doing just that. The children being taken away from their parents are the children of ‘Brown’ people. He is not keeping out nor breaking up the families of illegal immigrants from Norway for example – the country he invited to send more ‘immigrants’ to America – those are the people he has asked to come here. Those are the people Trump has said would be ‘acceptable’ immigrants.
We have quite a history in these United States of taking children away from parents and other family members and Donald Trump is adding to that history. We need to be moving in a direction which moves away from such, but that is clearly not happening. The Japanese Incarcerations – the time of taking thousands of Native American children away from their parents and families – the taking of people from African Countries and bringing them to America to keep them chained and bound and in slavery for some 250 years all during which children were stripped away from their parents and sold into slavery because the slave “owners” wanted the money and the inhumanity of what they were doing was beyond their ability to grasp because they were “better than” and they had characterized and classified these Africans as sub-human. Some of the children sold into slavery were the children of the white man who was doing the selling – his own children he sold on the slavery auction block. That takes a lot of evil inside to be able to do that and still walk the streets in this world.
Today, children are being murdered in record numbers in their school rooms and we do very little to stop that slaughter. African Americans, including children, are being killed – many times by law enforcement when they have been unarmed and have committed no crime and we do not stop that slaughter. Whole communities of Africans and African Americans have been massacred over hundreds of years by the ancestors of those who have Donald Trump’s ear and whose agendas he is carrying out. when a community of African Americans reached a substantial level after they had been thrown out elsewhere – people, who today would be called Trump’s base arrived in those communities and slaughtered the African Americans who had achieved a family life, jobs, homes, children in a very settled and on a very middle class level.
We talk in these United States about how “divided” we are today. Some claim there has never been a time when we as a people have been so pulled apart; so stressed out from the extreme divisions we see in our political lives. We need to learn a bit of United States history and remember that time called the Civil War. We were far more divided then than we are today. As we look at our divisions they are the same as they were then. It is no accident that the memorials of that Civil War came into contention just months ago when we looked around at the foul history they represented. The groups of people working with Trump today are simply the progeny of those who divided into groups which resulted in such a bloody war. they are also the people to whom it was important to keep those symbols of slavery and its affects on this country. This is what we are seeing today as Trump incarcerates children – “brown” children. The issues were defined only slightly differently than they are today, but the dynamics are the same. The difference is we had an Abraham Lincoln and many people who were in positions of power who had nothing in common with someone like Donald Trump and his administration.
It is time to call a halt to this. We have the power to do so and to claim otherwise is to acquiesce and go along with Trump’s program. If we can’t do it any other way then we need to storm those Concentration Camps, release those children and get them back to their families. Drastic for law abiding citizens, but whose laws do you abide? Do you sit and wring your hands wondering what to do? Do you allow Donald Trump’s policies which he claims as laws? It is unlawful for him to do what he is doing – if that is not unlawful then we need to close down this country. Is he going to be arrested for this extreme abuse of power?
We wondered why he pardoned Arpaio? Can you see that a bit clearer now as Trump has given his go ahead for tent cities to be built in the most desolate, hottest places he could find in this country so he could do to children what Arpaio did to adults? Is Arpaio one of his consultants in these tent city dreams he is bringing into reality? His goal seems to be to torture children to get adults to do his bidding. I can’t think of another word to use because evil is what this is all about. Evil walks this earth whispering in Donald Trumps’ ear and he is constantly doing its bidding.
What happens when the children start dying? What happens when children and parents do not come back together again because they can’t find one another. Do the children then get turned out to roam the streets and live homeless on the street because their parents have been deported – they can’t find their parents and their parents can’t find them and the horrendous trauma of these events incapacitates many of these children for decades? The United States Government under Donald Trump is not going to find family and parents of the children so separated. They will get back together again somehow in spite of Trump and if they don’t – he certainly won’t care – and what about the rest of us!!!!!!!!!!
As this man moves closer to Kim Jong Un and all the other dictators he glorifies he is also moving the United States closer to being the kind of country they lead doing the kind of things they do. One step at a time, but that is definitely the path he is on and to see otherwise is for us to lie, put our heads in the sand, put our hope in an evil, corrupt human being. Are we ready to kill, maim, lie, expand the patterns from the past in these United States? Let’s not con ourselves into thinking this will soon pass. It took years for the horrors we have perpetrated on others to pass and we still have not made amends nor have we changed our system in ways to make sure those things don’t come back again.
Who are the people helping to bring about this policy of Donald Trump’s? Who are the people working in these Concentration Camps. Are they not as guilty of this evil as is Trump? Shouldn’t they pick up their pocketbooks and other things they own and go home? If Trump wants this separation of families to happen it needs to be done by Trump himself – any self-respecting citizen needs to be gone. But we are too concerned about our “jobs” – about our middle-class lives, about how others will look down on us for what we are doing.
You are only helping this evil as others helped Hitler achieve his goals in Germany. Leave those Concentration Camps immediately before you get caught up in the evil. You are not helping anyone. You are not doing good. You will not make a difference you are simply aiding evil and destroying innocent lives. It may be hard for you to walk away from the children, but that is exactly what you need to do.
And then there are the “good” people who do nothing. To them, I have nothing to say.
Some things need to be done immediately:
- John Kelly needs to be stripped of his stripes – his “four star general” title and everything that goes along with it immediately.
- Nielsen, the Homeland Security Secretary, needs to be removed with a letter discouraging anyone from ever hiring her again for anything.
- Donald Trump needs to be removed from office and sent to jail soonest.
- Donald Trump’s son needs to be taken away from the family and sent to one of the places where Trump has incarcerated children after having stripped them of their parents and other family.
- The United States needs a Truth and Reconciliation process to help citizens through a horrendous time because the aftermath of Donald Trump is going to be something which will take years, incredible resources, and something extraordinary to get this country on a track to a better way of being governed and governing__________________________________________________________________
You who are reading this needs to fill in
6. Donald Trump needs to be charged with using his position and power as president of these United States to kidnap children.
7. International Organizations need to intervene to stop this child abuse by the United States Government and being to trial all those complicit.
8.
9.
10.
etc.
It is going to take at least that – and working together to try to bring goodness out of this incredible evil.
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Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.
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Omarosa – you go girl!
Tuesday, August 14th, 2018“Don’t diss me until you have walked in my shoes.”
It should be amazing to hear, see and read all of the press coverage about Omarosa and her firing by the White House, but it isn’t. What should be amazing about it? The fact that she lasted as long as she did even though she was over the area set aside for minorities. To remain for any length of time in such a position in the Trump White House must have taken a lot of will, political skill and knowledge of self-preservation.
We are seeing the racism of those doing the anti-Omarosa reporting come through like spotlights. It is historical.
For example:
– Omarosa was held in the “Situation Room” for some two hours and was taken into that room, one black female, by four white men. I’ve seen that before and it is meant to scare the same way white sheets and pointy hats and burning crosses are meant to scare. However, the only thing we hear the media addressing is the fact that Omarosa recorded the ordeal and what an awful person she is for having done so. Some have even gone to the lengths of claiming that she should be prosecuted for having jeopardized the security of the United States through this act. Does that sound similar to “lock her up”? Is that a clear blame the victim?
It seems to us the only way the national security of the U. S. was jeopardized was by General Kelly using a secure room which should be used for national security meetings, etc. and used it as a setting to intimidate and restrain a black woman in a room against her will. There is no other way to describe what happened to Omarosa during her time in the Situation Room except as a time of instilling fear and intimidation. How come holding an employee of the White House against her will is not worthy of coverage? Unless, of course, this is seen as normal because it is a black woman and because we want to make sure the victim is blamed where race is concerned. No or very little blame has been incurred by General Kelly and his three co-intimidators. Holding someone against their will is generally called kidnapping – “lock him up.”
– And – One needs to go back into the history of the relationship between Trump and Omarosa before reporting how they are the same! That is the most ridiculous claim of all. Let’s paint both with the same brush! Even making the claim that Omarosa, while like Trump, is much worse. Those are flabbergasting charges.
When you look back at the history of their friendship the extent of Trump’s racism didn’t become clear until he was into his run for president. Whenever a black – especially a black woman, works with whites you have to and are raised to turn a deaf eye and ear to a lot of the racism of your friends, co-workers, acquaintances. That is just survival in these United States. Some people handle that better than others. That appears to be what happened to Omarosa, especially looking at the blacks who surrounded her and seeing the blacks who knew the way to attempt to make claims on Trump’s pocket book and power – ie Kanya West.
Looking at the Apprentice TV show, it had a fairly large number of blacks on the show and it was not easy to pick up racism. Not many of the blacks on the Apprentice picked that up – if they did they certainly kept that discovery to themselves. One assumes also that as the star of the show the people picked were chosen by Donald Trump. However, in this ‘dust-up’ we learn and we learn it from Omarosa that Donald Trump did not choose the people who appeared, there was a production company which did that which accounts for the diversity.
– We have yet to hear anyone talk about Omarosa’s composure, her ability to handle the press when they try to demean her in the middle of an interview, how put together she looks always and the way she carries herself.
Maybe we just don’t remember that during the transition period Omarosa was a part of what was happening in Trump Tower and seemed to be the one sitting in the back of the room closely observing the comings and goings. So – when she makes the comment that as president, people will bow down to Trump and be obsequious as they try to share his power (not her exact words, but the sentiment of the famous taping that is playing over and over on news reports) it is more a statement of truth then one of Omarosa bowing down to Trump. She is in the middle and sees people coming and going who once criticized Trump now bowing down to be included somehow – let us remind you of Mitt Romney, Al Gore, etc. etc. people who would not be expected to show up at Trump Tower because of their strong and accurate criticism of Trump. Omarosa’s character and ethics are criticized using that film clip to do the criticizing, but she is simply telling the truth. We don’t want to be faced with the hypocrisy of our leaders – we want that to slide as they become a part of this Trump Administration. That is how the game is played until along comes this black women who stands in front of the camera and articulates exactly what is happening and points out our hypocrisy in that process. She wasn’t puffing up Trump’s ego – she was truth telling.
– What is also clear is the way the press refused to interview Omarosa during her tenure on the White House staff and the fact that no one said she formerly worked at the White House so was the only staff member with any experience on such a staff. That part of her background was enclosed in silence while other parts – which reflect the stereotype of black women – is pulled out and paraded around.
– To look at the entire picture of Omarosa’s life it was clear that we were headed for such a moment as this. A doubly oppressed minority with Omarosa’s family history and her beginnings in fairly poor surroundings, it is no surprise that having been taken up by Trump as she was moving upward on her own steam, aggressiveness, life-history she would praise Trump. Who gave her such an incredible opportunity? To have moved from Omarosa’s beginnings to Senior aid in the White House is an awesome achievement. She was grateful as many are who experience a life beginning of serious and severe oppression.
To her credit, however, Omarosa was not tone deaf. How she conducted herself in what had to be horrendous surroundings in the middle of people who showed themselves to be totally racist and sexist is nothing short of brilliant. That she woke up from those surroundings to take such a clear, strong, stance and came out of it with what she needed to prove what her life was like during her time in the Trump bubble shows who she really is and the strength of her character.
When you compare that to others who came out and felt they had to sign the NDA AND ACCEPT the $15,000 or other figure per month to keep silent speaks volumes about Omarosa, who was offered the same deal and refused it instead, opened the door to the White House for the rest of us to see what her life had been like and what life in the White House is like. Omarosa gave us another pathway to understand what is happening in these United States.
Do you know what it is like to be in a situation and treated in the horrendously negative way she was treated? What do you do? Some would move out, resign and be grateful for the $15,000/month offer.
“Until you walk a mile in my shoes don’t let your self-righteousness cloud your eyes and ears and keep you from learning from my experience. Is your life so pure you can so negatively judge me?”
When you come from Omarosa’s background to double down and try to make a success of where you are because you know those opportunities are not overwhelming determines your daily life and decisions. She was alone in a White House that was very hostile to her yet she stayed and still worked to attempt to open doors for blacks and that in spite of the fact that neither blacks nor whites reached out to her, but instead negatively characterized her, judged her and treated her like a piece of disposable dirt. It is pretty bad and it is a trap from which it is hard to extricate yourself.
Omarosa had to have a sense of justice to tape, write and go out in the front of a storm to confront and expose. She also has to have a strong sense of who she is to go up against all the negative comments about her “lack of credibility.” What lack of credibility. She was rarely covered by the press for anyone to know who she was – lots of assumptions because she was a friend of Donald Trump and backed him even when his extreme racism began to show. That is not lack of credibility.
At one time I would have said that is lack of good judgment. However, seeing what she was doing with her time in the Trump White House and how she documented what they were doing for a future release time I have changed my mind about that. It seems to me Omarosa was taping people and situations during her time with Trump because her way out was going to be to document everything she saw and experienced. To let all of that out in a book which she probably saw as an alternative to the abyss which awaited her whenever she did decide to leave or would be removed from the White House. She certainly has eliminated the prospect of being called a “go for coffee girl.”
Omarosa is a touch stone for a whole lot of blacks. Those still in the Republican Party and feel they are contributing to moving blacks ahead – staying to be able to document history correctly; feeling that they are keeping really horrendous things from happening to blacks inside and outside the Republican Party; being present to document their experience which could be skewered by others if she didn’t. That is just a few – there are many more.
Omarosa is no better nor worse than the black attorney who is called on to represent clients accused of racism – that happens so much it is automatic and to be expected, We see the black attorneys complimented for their work not dissed for allowing themselves to be so negatively abused; women called to diss other women because coming from a woman it is a stronger dissing; blacks called on to make negative claims against other minorities and so much more.
Omarosa is and has been a black woman whites don’t understand; don’t like; don’t want around because she violates everything about blacks and the black experience that they think they know and understand – she can’t be trusted therefore her character and ethics are in question; but mostly she is the foil against whom we see sharply the failings of other blacks, male and female, those who parrot and are promoted by whites to do their bidding in exchange for 20 pieces of silver and a brief time appearing to be considered equal. She uncovers those blacks as they try to put her down and uncovers those whites who desperately want to protect and continue to cultivate “their” black who helps them hold the line against the onslaught of equality.
Put all of the above against what you will hear over the next few days about Omarosa. You can agree or disagree, but this is what we see.
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Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.
Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.
Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net
Tags: African American history, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, breakfast table talk, Donald Trump, Racism, Sexism
Posted in African American history, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Breakfast Table Talk, Donald Trump, Guest comments, John Kelly, Omarosa, racism, sexism | Comments Off on Omarosa – you go girl!