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Posts Tagged ‘Totalitarin’

When our children were little, we built them a sandbox in the Berkshires. And when we moved back to NJ, and the Rocker was only 2 years old, Bob got to work building another sandbox with a fort on top. I remember one of the Bride’s young friends coming over to play and being astonished – she was reluctant to get her hands ‘dirty.’ Only seven years old, this suburban youngster thought ‘shopping’ was great fun, not digging in sand.

Maybe you know where this is going?

Or maybe you’re thinking what is wrong with her, why is she talking about sandboxes when our country seems to be going down the drain. ICE is emboldened by our leaders to disrupt peaceful protests and kidnap people in broad daylight. Our allies are discussing what in blazes needs to be done about Mr T who cannot stop threatening Greenland; their ‘soft’ diplomacy is not working. Macron said at Davos, that tariffs cannot “…be used as leverage against territorial sovereignty.” And Mr T cares what French President Emmanuel Macron has to say?

In fact, T took a screenshot of Macron’s text, where he begins with, “My Friend…” Then he continues with the good stuff, how our countries are aligned about Syria and Iran. And even though Macron refused to join the Gaza “Board of Peace,” he invited Mr T to Paris and offers to set up a G7 meeting. Macron is conciliatory, he wants Mr T to play in his sandbox. You know, the post WWII playground after fascism was defeated. And finally, the reason for Macron’s DM,

“I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland.” Well join the club!

“France has publicly been much more forceful in response to the U.S. president’s threats to tariff European allies who do not support his designs on Greenland. Macron has pushed for the EU to unleash its Anti-Coercion Instrument, the the so-called trade bazooka, while other leaders like German Chancellor Friedrich Merz want to give a chance to diplomacy. France has also sent a small contingent of troops to Greenland and is planning to deploy land, sea and air forces, though the details remain unspecified.” https://www.politico.eu/article/emmanuel-macron-decoded-text-message-donald-trump/

Totalitarianism seems to be cropping up and tilting the world order toward the right. And if we think of our Allies in their own sandbox, large and in charge for many decades, we can understand why they are talking about pulling out all the stops with the diplomatic equivalent of a rocket-propelled anti-tank weapon! Mr T is like a seven year old bully who is biting and pushing his way through life, demanding loyalty and whining when he isn’t awarded the Nobel Peace Prizle.

He loves to play in the sandbox, except he throws sand in everyones’ eyes.

I lived through Watergate and I wonder when the Republicans will stop making excuses for his behavior. Maybe a journalist, maybe someone from a small, local paper say in Florida, will dig up evidence of the extent of his involvement with Epstein. Maybe someone will film one of his total mental breakdowns after not getting his way, maybe on the golf course? Someone said he is a malicious narcissist, but is that enough to invoke the 25th Amendment?

I asked my brother Dr Jim, who was an Army officer in Vietnam, if our generals would actually invade Greenland, would they follow his unlawful orders? After all, they abducted Maduro, remember? Jim didn’t think so. The rest of my family is not so sure. Maybe we Americans are preparing to jump over to a new sandbox, one full of dictators and bullies. But I hope not.

I hope we can help the Rocker and Aunt Kiki build a sandbox for the Twins. Right now, not quite 11 months, they will try to eat the sand; but soon they will learn how to dig and sculpt the sand and share their toys. I hope they will not learn the word “MINE” too soon. This is the Bride and the Rocker helping us build their sandbox around 1986.

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Three generations went shopping for a dress. The Love Bug needed just the right dress for her right of passage; something that was fancy but could also move since playing basketball would be involved. We all three nestled into one changing room – too frou-frou, too itchy, too grandmotherly! One was gorgeous, but she didn’t want to look like the princess bride. I remembered shopping for the Bride’s wedding dress, and her joy when she finally found the right one in Grandma Ada’s closet.

My joy of shopping, my retail therapy, has been tempered lately. Like most Americans who land somewhere between purple and blue on our political landscape, I’ve been living with an underlying sense of dread. Every morning I wake up and wonder what new catastrophe our commander in chief has tweeted us into; we’ve bombed Iran (!), Bebe is coming to visit (?), the UVA President has resigned :-(, and wait, SCOTUS thinks Mr T needs more power(?!!).

I cannot follow the Senate’s debate on his big “beautiful” [sic] domestic and tax policy bill, with its cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition programs, a testament to Republican greed and malice. I’m feeling helpless and hopeless, but I scan the latest updates and instead text the Bride:

“I loved the pale blue lace.”

Welcome to the hypernormalization club. I think this must be how the British felt during WWII, while bombs were falling on London and they were told to KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. We are living in a totalitarian schizo nightmare, where people of a certain means continue going to work, going to the grocery store, picking up their children from school as if nothing else matters. And if they feel like protesting something – like the Israeli hostages or ICE picking up undocumented people in the street and shipping them to El Salvador – well, they risk not just jail time but even possibly their lives.

 “….two main things are happening. The first is people seeing that governing systems and institutions are broken. And the second is that, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and an inability to imagine how to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction – give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial and dissociation.” https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/ng-interactive/2025/may/22/hypernormalization-dysfunction-status-quo

We stopped in the baby department to look for sun hats for the Twins, and I was lost among the pastel bears and embroidered flowers for awhile. Our newest granddaughters have grown into 6 month sizes! I can be grateful for each milestone our baby girls have reached, and still worry about the poor women and children who will suffer if this latest bill is passed. Even Elon is against it. But in order to do that, to carry on with sun hats and fear, we have to disassociate ourselves. And that is surely taking its toll.

When a country is fed so many lies, our response is to not believe anything. Or better yet, focus on the Bezos wedding, or the Diddy trial. Distract and demolish our institutions one by one in order to beef up the executive branch. But we must keep watch, we must call our legislators and protest, we must write letters to the editor, and never give up on our democracy. History is watching.

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