Out-of-Control Election

I am fed up! This is a rant with no excuses for it. We have hit the lowest in "political" rhetoric that I have seen in my over 50 years of being a political junkie.

For me it is summed up in a word.

 Predator:
A person who ruthlessly exploits others. 
(Oxford Dictionaries)

It came into usage as an analogy to predatory behavior in animals.

Synonyms:

• Stalker
• Tracker
• Pursuer
• Lurker

 From Psychology Today:

Among their most dangerous features are a callous disregard for the rights of others and a propensity for violating norms. They can charm and manipulate others for their own gain, conning with no regard for anyone's feelings.

They look for opportunities—taking a security job that positions them to meet potential victims, for example—and they have no qualms, when the time is right, about exploiting them. We want to spot them, but they usually spot us first.

As predators get away with their acts, they learn the best ways to deflect others from discovering their secrets, and they enjoy the lack of accountability. They devise different sets of values for different life frames, so that they can speak convincingly about socially-approved venues of right and wrong, yet have no qualms about their socially-condemned behavior. -Link

I started writing this earlier this week after the ongoing conflict with Donald Trump's behavior. I would sit and watch him and his responses to the issue and would feel "creeped out." My radar kept saying, "This guy is creepy. He is a classic predator." I watched the way he walked, the demeanor, the sneering look, the "no one can challenge me and get away with it" attitude. It all rang out.This guy is a dangerous predator.

But then I decided not to post it. Maybe I was feeling overwhelmed by the whole election fiasco. Maybe I just wanted it to go away. Then Michele Obama spoke yesterday. She spoke of the way this has shaken her to her "very core." I agree. I have to say this.

For a public person like Donald Trump to do what he has been doing since almost the beginning and now this? What in the world is wrong with us? What is the world is happening that we as a nation continue to believe he is a suitable candidate for president? Because he got so many votes? No. He is a con man that knows how to play the emotions of many who feel disenfranchised. He knows how to touch the base emotions of our lives and play on them. His language that has gotten him into the most trouble is this so-called "locker room" language.

It is the language of sexual assault. It is the language of rape. Even if he didn't actually do what he claimed to do (locker room boasting), he is setting it out as appropriate behavior. And then one of his supporting male surrogates (Rush Limbaugh) in excusing the language, went so far as to say that we give too much power to the idea of consent. Men know when "no" means "yes" he implied.

WTF?

Where have we gone as America?

Yes, there are those who say that at least no one died like at Benghazi. Well, that ignores a great deal of information on what led up to Benghazi and what the Secretary of State could have done about it.

It also ignores the many women who HAVE died as the result of the type of actions that Trump and his surrogates are now trying to excuse. Assault, forcibly pushing oneself onto another person, rape. People die from it every day. As long as we want to excuse it, overlook it, do a "Tsk! Tsk!" finger wagging at boys will be boys, we are allowing the whole culture of rape and assault to go unchallenged.

We are being assaulted as a nation by Donald Trump. We are being emotionally raped by a political predator. He is getting away with standing in the middle of 5th Avenue shooting people. He just isn't using guns. He talks about jailing his opponent as if it is something he as president could do. He talks about suing the New York Times because it published accusations against him. He banned the Washington Post for a while when they criticized him. He has denigrated women, Latinos, Muslims while upholding dictator/oligarch Putin as a great leader. It hasn't been overt, yet, but watch- he will come after the Jews next.

And the press is only just beginning to realize their own mistake in not standing up to it earlier and aren't sure what to do about it.

What will happen if he is elected? How long will it take the nation to see we have been assaulted politically without him firing a shot? He will find ways to use the executive order power to undermine who we are as a democracy in ways no president has ever done. And there is a lot more to undermine than the 2nd Amendment.

What will happen if he is defeated? That is potentially more frightening in the short run. He has implied that if he loses it will only be because it was stolen from him. He couldn't possibly lose fair and square. That is predatory behavior and thinking.

For today, though, I had to say these things. Watch him. Not as a presidential candidate, not as a politician, but as a predator. Watch the way he moves and speaks. These were some of the things that people commented on about Bill Clinton in the 90s. Clinton may have learned his lesson.

Donald Trump hasn't.

God help us all.

It Can't Be Any Clearer

Seen today on Facebook from an Instagram post:

"Consensual sex" is just sex. To say that implies that there such a thing as "non consensual sex", which there isn't. That's rape. That is what it needs to be called. There is only sex or rape. Do not teach people that rape is just another type of sex. They are two very separate events. You wouldn't say "breathing swimming" and non breathing swimming", you say swimming and drowning.
Posted by guerrillafeminism

Neither is, as is pointed out in the comments on that page, "forced sex" "sex."

This whole story so clearly illustrates "male privilege", sexism, and patriarchy that it boggles the mind. The news articles are even referring to his $^%$#$% swimming times.

IRRELEVANT!

STUPID! (Yes, I was shouting!)

And then I came across another one:

If someone is a rapist and an athlete,
They aren't an athlete who made a mistake.
They are a rapist who can also swim.

Folks, this is 2016, for God's sake.

Next thing you know we will have a racist for a presidential (sic) candidate.

A Last Minute Post

Well, last minute in the sense that I am actually writing this just prior to posting it. Most of my work on the blog is, by nature, done ahead of time. That way it doesn't become a rush to get something written and posted at the last minute before midnight.

But because of scheduling up ahead of me over the next 10 days, I knew that if I waited to post these thoughts, it might be "old news."

So I decided to post this one today. That way it really is current events.

• It's about that lion in Africa and the Minnesota dentist who paid $50,000 to have it lured from a sanctuary so he could shoot it with a bow and arrow then track it for 40-hours in its agony and then kill it.

• It's also about the Cincinnati university police officer who has been arraigned for murder in a traffic stop gone bad.

• It's about the insanity of the alleged Planned Parenthood videos that purport to show that the organization is a venal, baby-killing group out to make money from fetuses.

• It's about the presidential [sic] candidates calling Mexicans rapists and accusing the sitting president of leading Jews to the ovens over a nuclear arms deal.

• It's about denying climate change because it will hurt business and profits to do otherwise and the hell with the health of the planet.

• It's about having to have 30+ women claim to be raped by a well-known celebrity- and even then saying it didn't happen until his own words describe exactly what they have claimed.

It's about our human tendency for hypocrisy, prejudice, narrow-mindedness and the belief that I am right and everyone else is wrong. (Myself included).

What got me started was seeing the incredible world-wide and national reaction to the lion killing. The reaction was far beyond that for any of the other killings we are hearing about. The reaction to a lion (and I AM an animal conservationist!), even a "famous" and protected lion, raises more anger than much else that is REAL news. Every time three is a mass killing somewhere in the country we are told to pray and NOT politicize. Yet every killing like that does have a political side to it. We are told to remember that all lives matter, not just black lives, even when it is the black lives that seem to be of far less value in how, when, and where they are killed.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE,

• all black lives matter, and when they are being killed in traffic stops or as the result of incredibly far-fetched traffic stops, THEY matter and we need to pay attention.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE,

• the lives of billions on the planet matter when we are facing potentially catastrophic changes to our environment that will put those lives in severe jeopardy.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE,

• the lives of the Israelis and the lives of millions of others in the Middle East matter enough to work hard at preventing nuclear weapons from continuing to proliferate and putting all of them at risk.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE, why do we ignore the cries of

• women who have been raped, 
• veterans who have been denied health services, 
• poor people who can't get health care, 
• police officers who are under incredible pressures and need better support, stress assistance and training for their difficult jobs, 
• bullied gay youth, 
• the mentally ill who are seen as crazy and to be held in contempt, 
• prisoners in overcrowded prisons that are filled with non-violent offenders incarcerated because they possessed marijuana
• the immigrants who, like most of OUR OWN ancestors are here to build the American dream and rape and pillage?

I could go on. I can rant on this for hours, but all I will do is get myself all worked up and feel like I am helpless and powerless to do anything about it. I had to get it off my chest, now, when it is news.

• Pray for peace
• Work for peace
• Uphold peace
• Make peace a reality 
• Live peace each day

We all matter- let's act that way and not just say it as a way to reinforce our ideology or put down someone else's life.

Let's live today as if each person we meet has a life that matters and then treat them that way.