Reflections on current events, politics, and social issues and what they have done to America and the American way of life.
Reflections on current events, politics, and social issues and what they have done to America and the American way of life.
I am a first-generation immigrant. I have now been in this country for almost 40 years. I have also lived in a half dozen other countries, before I moved to the US. I have worked in or travelled through at least 20 more.
People immigrated to this country for different reasons – most came because of the economic opportunities; some came to flee political persecution; others came because it was a best place to bring up their families, or educate our children. I came here for one reason, & one reason alone – our moral fiber!
I brought my family to America because it was the most innocent; nicest society I had ever come across. Irrespective of our politics, & what our politicians did, we as a Society almost always did the right thing. What is different about today is that our politics is all that defines us – we are demonized if we are a part of the other team, and we become ‘patriots’ if we are on the same team. We are so busy demonizing the other side, that we have forgotten who we ourselves are, or at least were!
We seem to have given up everything – our humanity; our morality, and our empathy. We have become our politicians, and worse. Democracy today is in peril all over the world, but history has shown us that leaders will come and go, but eventually the Will of the people will prevail. I think it was Mahatma Gandhi who had said "When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it - always."
This moment in history shall no doubt pass. The question, each of us has to ask ourselves, is how much of ‘us’ is left, when it is all said and done. It is that ‘us’ that will determine whether we can look our children & grandchildren, in the eye. It is that collective ‘us’ which will be reflected, in the annals of history.
I just want to be clear that I am not suggesting that America has been perfect - far from it! We have been plagued with racism; economic inequity; starvation (unforgivable in a country that has so much); infant mortality; hypocrisy in our domestic & foreign policies and so on BUT, as an immigrant who has travelled the world, I can tell you with some conviction that America – with all its flaws – was still the nicest country (by far) I have ever lived in, or travelled to. Imperfect as we have been, our intent has always been to keep chipping away so that every tomorrow, is better than today.
The last few years have seen the precipitous destruction of that very morality which brought me to this country, in the first place. Our rhetoric has become toxic; women’s rights have gone back a century; civil rights have already gone to back to the 1960’s; our voting rights are under attack; our immigration policy has gone back to the 1940’s... The bottom line is that, for most of us, ‘today’ is worse than ‘yesterday’, and has been for a long time. The question is what are we going to do about it?
My brain could always justify as to why it is not my fight - first it was my own health issues: I have undergone brain surgery; spinal surgery; detached retinal surgery; Diagnosed with Parkinson’s & a bunch of others not worth discussing.
When those came and went, the excuse was the welfare & safety of my wife & children; that was replaced by “I am living a comfortable life why mess with a good thing”; then came “They will take away my Nationality & deport me……to a country that is not my country of origin” or “ I will end up in a concentration camp & on and one and on…..
I woke up this morning and realized that it will never be the right time for me to get off my couch, unless the ‘fire’ is at my door. Then came the ‘epiphany’ – when the world is on fire; the fire will seldom ring my door bell, when it reaches my door! More importantly, came the realization that allowing the destruction of the very reason I brought my children (when they were babies) to this country is not only unfair to them, but also unfair to the country that has given my family and me so much!
For what it is worth, I have voted both Democrat & Republican in the past. I have done so based on who I thought was right for the country, and not the Party they came from.
Having said all that, I am proud to say “I am; have always been & will always be a NEVER Trumper”. This is not because of his or my politics, and nor a judgment of his competence or lack thereof (I do have view on that as well but that is for another time). He and I were brought up with different value systems and I thought -apparently incorrectly- those value systems; ethics & morality mattered in America. It did not:
• The America I loved would never elect someone who talked about playing with women’s p##sies, without their consent. In fact, it would not have even been up for discussion!
• The America I loved would not have even considered electing someone with so many accusations and litigations against him, be they from women; creditors or Constitutional lawyers, and yet here we are
• Electing someone who talked about walking into the dressing rooms of young women at a beauty pageant would also not have been up for discussion….
• It was political suicide to demean a veteran, particularly one who has sacrificed his or her life; limbs or been a prisoner of war, and yet here we are ….
• A shake of the hand was considered an agreement and yet here we are cheering as our leaders tear up written agreements – both domestic & international.
• Friendship meant everything and yet here we are now distancing countries that have always had our backs, and backing countries who have always carried a knife, to put in our backs.
• Even in our jails, a pedophile had to worry about his/her safety because somehow even the most hardened criminal could not forgive someone who had molested or raped a child, & yet here we are even discussing the prospect of a pardon to Ghislaine Maxwell, after she has been moved to more of country club than a jail, by our government.
• No one, in the America I loved, would have called what we saw transpire on live TV on Jan 6th patriotism, and yet that is what our President called them, issued them blanket pardons.
• In the America I knew, it was possible to disagree and still have civil discourse. Today most of us (me included) first tries listen carefully to see if one can gage a person’s political leanings &, based on that alone, we decide on whether or not he/she is a good human being.
I can go on and on, but this blog is not about politics, but it is about my (and I hope our collective) morality. I recognize that the ‘moral’ line is different for everybody. Mine was crossed the day Trump talked about touching women’s pu##ies, and since then I cannot even remember how many times my moral lines have been crossed. Each of us has to decide as to when (if at all) that line has been crossed for us?
I have a lot of very good friends who voted for Trump and tell me that they voted for him, even though some of the stuff he does or says makes their skin crawl. “All politicians are crooks” they say “but at least we are better off economically; or we need someone like him to shake up Washington” and a host of other reasons, all of which is debatable (for another day).
The question we have to ask ourselves (even assuming we are better all off- and we are not!) is at what price? If thanks to his economic policies, I become a millionaire, will I allow him to play with a daughter’s pu##y, or even talk about it? If the roads are paved with gold and the roses that grow in my garden are devoid of thorns, thanks to Mr. Trump (or anyone else), am I willing to discard everything that my parents, grandparents and others along the way taught me? Each time I take a decision that is fundamentally against my ‘very core’ an inner voice in me always tells me wrong from right and every time I silence it, a part of me gets destroyed. If I do it long enough, I suspect that inner voice will stop talking to me then there will be no ‘me’ left! That is not a price I am willing to pay, for all the money in the world.
I fear we have already walked a path too far to see the America I knew again, at least in my lifetime. I hope someday, as a Society, we find our way back so that the next generation can see why I came to America in the first place!
I am sure there will be people who will read this and ask me to get out of their country! To them, I say “I came to this country before half of you came into this world. My children have lived here virtually all their lives. I will fight to defend every inch of this land, that has given me so much. Don’t you dare tell me to get out!”.
To that one person who does not know me, but nonetheless read this document, thank you for the privilege of your time. There are some things that I still need to get off my chest, so I will write more blogs every Tuesday following this one.
There are not enough words in the English dictionary to describe how much this country has meant to me. As I said in my first blog, we are far from perfect but I chose to come to this country because it was better than any, that I personally had lived in, or visited.
That having been said, our policies and our politics have often been hypocritical. We always had double standards, and pretended that the standards were the same – how we policed our minority communities Vs white communities; viewed a flood in New Orleans Vs NYC; addressed a genocide in the likes of Sudan or Congo Vs the Israel /Palestine conflict; often slept with the devil, in our foreign policies, and tried to sell to the world that they were Saints …. of all of them, the Palestine issue has always been the one that got under my skin the most. We have always been seen as a nation that lectures the world on morality, and yet for decades we have followed a policy that is both hypocritical and immoral.
I know that I may get the most push back on this issue, so before I go further, let me address a couple of things, so it is not seen as partisan politics:
1) Every President (Democrat or Republican) has been guilty of at least utter hypocrisy, if not immorality on the Palestine issue. All done under the garb of Israel is our ally and friend, and therefore it is incumbent upon us to support a friend.
First of all, we have left a trail of befriending nations, and then leaving them high & dry, but that is for another day. Secondly, a friend – more than anyone else – needs to be told when he/she is doing the immoral thing. The truth is that every politician, in my lifetime, has sided with Israel because the possibility of getting elected to the White House, without the support of the Israeli faction, is impossible- Israeli, not Jewish. Almost every one of my Jewish friends are for a two state solution, & intensely critical of the Netanyahu policies!
2) My greatest disappointment, in this regard, was President Biden. Whatever one may think of his policies (& I thought his legislative achievements are historic); almost no one will doubt his humanity, empathy or his love for this Nation. No one will also doubt his knowledge and understanding of international politics. It is precisely that humanity; compassion & understanding that gave us (me at least) a false of sense of security that he will do the moral thing in Gaza/Palestine. He was not only hypocritical but, in my view, complicit in this carnage. He continued to supply an immoral, genocidal leader of Israel arms, to carry out this carnage! We are now all witness to -and sorry to say party to- one of the greatest genocides in history…..Yes genocide!
America has found itself on the wrong side of history many times, but I can think of none that will be seen more shameful. The sheer hypocrisy of our leaders pretending to take the high moral ground, drove me insane.
Who knew that I would miss (sort of) those days – the good old days of hypocrisy! As someone once said to me “the thing about life is that a problem that consumes us today; will be replaced by bigger problems tomorrow…..& tomorrow you will look back at today as the good old days!”.
Today, hypocrisy does not seem so bad? Israel has wiped out Gaza; Russia will wipe out Ukraine simply because they can! We do not, any longer, have to even pretend that we care about the optics of a Nation being destroyed; the carnage of a Society or starving children because Societies that lack the military might have no cards to play! In fact, our President promises a sea side resort, once Israel has finished doing what it is doing- a sea side resort that is totally devoid of its present population!
We do not have to even pretend to be morally outraged by the actions of a despicable Saudi king, because he apparently epitomizes our definition of strength and leadership. Morality be damned! We welcome, to our shores, a tyrant like Putin with a red carpet and a flypast
Today, it is ok to be openly racist; misogynistic; disrespectful; corrupt; communal. It is ok to demean your neighbor because he/she disagrees with you, on your politics. It is ok to berate them, if they are a different color, or worship a different God, because our government itself has recruitment ads running, with the dog whistles of our white heritage. Sure the racists of the KKK and Proud boys always existed, but they hid their racists views under the proverbial carpet because the decency of our white neighbors scared them, more than any immigrant could. Today, “there are good people on both sides”; the only place where we see political persecution are the white farmers of South Africa & the only ones worthy of expeditious residency in the US. Any suggestion that that is wrong will be met with threats of “go back to your country” or worse still, we will deport you to a country that is neither your country of birth, nor your country of residence!
Today, we have no need to be hypocritical about our humanity because our strength lies in the optics of separating a breastfeeding baby, from a nursing mother or the scenes of multiple young, Huge, young ICE agents beating an old man, and telling us that this is how we will make America great again.
This is not about Trump; Miller or Kristi Noem because, to be fair, they had always telegraphed who they were – morally reprehensible, in my personal view. This is about us, as a Society, people like me (& almost half the Nation) whose ego’s cannot wrap their heads around the fact that a Trump could in fact be Democratically elected, in the America we knew. As much as it may make our soul cringe, we need to get over our pathetic self pity, because sometime democracy will sting you in the butt! Get off that stung butt & decide what YOU want to do about it!
I have a lot of very good friends who voted for Trump, both times. I do not consider a single one of these people racists. In fact, many of them, are better human beings than I will ever be! They voted Trump because they thought he would make lives better. To them, I say what I have been saying long before Trump became President the first time – decide today the price that you consider too high to sell your morality, for I guarantee that day shall come.
There are also some who voted for him because they are racists and want their white heritage back. To them I say, know that you are looking at the abyss. This thing is a like a flame – it keeps you mesmerized while it changes shape, color and size, but before you know it, it has burned your own house down. Today you are being told that if not for people like me; tomorrow it will be Mr. Trump’s own Jewish son in law and his grandchildren; the day after that it may be other immigrants – white or not. Then you may be living in or working for a Company owned by the Saudi king or some of these other non white countries, because of these big beautiful deals your President has made. What will you do then? Next they come because you are financially struggling and your house is spoiling the neighborhood and on and on.
I know some of you think that you voted for Trump and therefore it will always be the ‘other’ guy who will lose his job; the other guy whose daughter will make accusations of molestation or rape; it is the other guy whose child will need health care and have no means to to pay for it. It will not be you because, after all, you voted Trump.
I have a few neighbors and friends who had not only voted Trump but some were some of those who had 20 Vote Trump signs, on their lawn. Some even had signs asking immigrants to go home. They would say to me “You are ok. I do not mean you”. It drove me insane when they said that, & I would say to them “you may not know it but it is in fact me”!
Three of them – I am sorry to say – have since been laid off from their government jobs. My point is that you are that ‘other’ guy- if not today tomorrow, I guarantee it. I do not want you to think that I am wishing that you – far from it. I hope you never see that day. I am as distressed to see my three friends lose their jobs, as I would if one of my own children was laid off.
There is also a significant percentage of you who sat out the last election, because all politicians make you sick! I do not wish to judge you, or lecture you, but all I will say is that you too under the mis conception that as long as you have not taken sides in this divided world; you are safe. ….that other guy is also you!
I still hate hypocrisy but until our Nation can return to civil discourse; I would rather some things remain under the carpet! That statement itself is an example of how a part of us getting destroyed every day. A decade ago, it would inconceivable that I could complete a sentence that suggests hypocrisy, in any form, would be acceptable to me, and yet here we are a world full of lowered expectations, and a re-defined normal!
To that one person who does not know me, but nonetheless read this document, thank you for the privilege of your time. There are some things that I still need to get off my chest, so I will write more blogs every Tuesday following this one.
In the mid 1980’s I used to work in London, England. In those days, I made a couple of elderly friends – one happened to live in a Hitler Germany and the other a Mussolini Italy. Every now and then, we would go out for lunch and I would ask them about what it was like to live in those two countries, at the time. The conversations were many but three things stood out to me because they kept repeating them and – even though they did not know each other - these were the common denominators:
(1) Some of what he (Hitler and Mussolini) said needed to be said. We would have probably used different words to say it, but at least he had the courage to say it, is what we thought initially.
(2) The rest of the stuff was garbage and we dismissed it as political theater, because we know that we were better than that as a nation. We did not think it could happen to us.
(3) If all else failed, we were confident that we had enough safeguards in the system to protect us!.
I wonder how many of us will be asked the question, sometime in the future, about what it was like to live in America today and what our answer will be:
"I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab 'em by the p##sy. You can do anything." Donald Trump to Billy Bush of Access Hollywood about a month before he was elected in 2016. We elected him twice since!
“I moved on her, and I failed. I'll admit it. I did try and f##k her. She was married and I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said, "I'll show you where they have some nice furniture." I took her out furniture—I moved on her like a b##ch. But I couldn't get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she's now got these big phony ti#s and everything. She's totally changed her look”. Trump referring to Nancy O’Dell (ex colleague of Billy Bush) same Access Hollywood tape.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” We elected him twice since.
…..” Good people on both sides after the Proud boys” after the Proud Boys marched in Charlottsville, VA. President Trump. I remember the outrage when he said it but today if that is all he has said, we view it as a good day!
“These people come from shithole nations” referring to African nations; Haiti and El Salvador. We would rather get immigrants from Norway. Trump said in 2018….I think of this in the context of my conversations with my two old friends from Germany & Italy: “Some of what he said needed to be said but ……”
“The participants in January 6th were patriots who were treated very badly” Trump before blanket pardoning them. Think about it in the context of my conversations with my two friends we “had enough safeguards…..it could not happen to us”.
I could probably write 50 pages and still not run out of material that makes my blood curdle, but I will not:
Democracy; individual liberties; the ability to have civil discourse or even the right to maintain our value systems is a privilege that we have to fight for, and not an entitlement.
The arrogance of “it cannot happen to us” or “we are better than that” is, to me, much more dangerous than the fights we see coming. We are so busy feeling ‘warm’ and ‘fuzzy’ about how much better we are than everyone else in the world, that we forget to be who we are.
I will end with a personal story. In 1979, I worked for a British bank and was sent, at relative short notice, to Uganda. This was soon after Idi Amin had been overthrown. I had heard a lot about Kenya but knew very little about Uganda, at the time. I remember staying a couple of nights in Nairobi (Kenya) enroute to Kampala (Uganda), and being struck by the sheer beauty of Kenya. I then reluctantly left Kenya & boarded the flight from Nairobi to Kampala. At some point, the flight was crossing the border between Kenya & Uganda and I looked out of my window. I have never seen a prettier country than Uganda – no country was comparable. It seemed like a picture post card, but that is neither here nor there (I just had to get it off my chest because no one I have ever talked to expects me to say that Uganda is the prettiest country I have ever seen…or at least it was in 1979).
I arrive in Kampala and, am greeted at Entebbe airport by 16 year old Tanzanian troops, with machine guns. I am told curfew starts at 6pm, every day. Someone forgot to tell me that there was a civil war on!!
In the months that followed, I was reminded of that curfew by the sounds of machine gun fire outside my window every night, at 6pm sharp. I frequently saw dead bodies on the street outside my window and, in case I needed further reminders, one day I was sitting with the Chief Teller, at the bank. Her phone rang and I could see her expression change. She was speaking Swahili, so I could only understand bits & pieces, but I could tell her from her expression that it was something serious. She hung up the phone and told me she must go home. I asked her if everything was alright & she said “my son called to say that my brother had been shot”.
The next day I saw her at work & asked her how her brother was? She told me that he had been shot by the Tanzanians, & had died. I asked her why she was at work? Her answer is still stuck in my head – I do not have that luxury of staying home because I have to feed my kids…and now my brothers kids.
I remember being struck by her dignity and realizing, at that moment, that even sorrow is a luxury of us, the economically privileged.
I learned, from her, in the months that followed that there was virtually not a single staff in that branch who had not lost family or a friend to either Idi Amin or the Tanzanian troops who followed but looking at them & talking to them, I would never have guessed.
My point of this long-winded story is that there may be dark days ahead, for us, but who will we be on the other side of it?
To that one person who does not know me, but nonetheless read this document, thank you for the privilege of your time. There are some things that I still need to get off my chest, so I will write more blogs every Tuesday following this one.
I have followed Donald Trump from the early 1980’s. At the time, there was no talk about him standing for the Presidency, and there was no thought, on my part, to move permanently to the US. Those days, he would talk about why he was the only real estate developer who could save Manhattan. There was absolutely nothing that came out of his mouth that I could relate to, or stand!
Here we are, some 40 odd years later, he is the President and I am an idiot! The only thing that has remained consistent is that I can still neither relate, nor stand anything that come out of his mouth.
First let me eat some humble pie, and give him some credit:
Trump spent years first trying gain the acceptance of the old NY elite – he now has most of them serving him, at his pleasure.
He was also always about the nouveau riche glitz – the gold toilets; the chandeliers; the show, more than the substance. He thought that that is what America should like, and today, our White House has become just that.
Along the way, he convinced us that not paying contractors or banks or declaring bankruptcies was just good business, enroute to a bigger business empire – his business empire today is, in fact, enroute to becoming the biggest in the world. Also, the ones bigger have all bent their knees, and now serve at his beckon call.
He was elected to the most powerful office in the world, twice – He said he would, and he was right again.
Despite all that, there is still absolutely everything about him that still makes my soul cringe, and my blood curdle:
· No Mr. President, ‘arrogance’ is not the same as ‘confidence’. The more confident you are, the less the need to toot your own horn, is what I was taught.
· No Mr. President, ‘humility’ is not synonymous with ‘weakness’. …and before you ask, I learned my English in India!
· No Mr. President, the road to a good business is not through ‘gypping’ your contractors or creditors. In the home I grew up, my word was my bond.
· No Mr. President, it is not manly or machismo to touch a woman in her private parts (or anywhere else), without her consent. I am secure enough to be a man and respect women, at the same time.
· No Mr. President, it is not alright to invite a friend to your home and then publicly humiliate him, as you did President Zelenskyy.
· No Mr. President, you do not know better than everyone else on ANY subject; let alone EVERY subject, as you seem to think.
· No Mr. President you were not even the smartest in your class. Please prove us wrong by providing us your transcripts…. and no we will not ask for your birth certificate!
· No Mr. President, the people you pick are not always the ‘best’ when you initially pick them or the ‘worst’, when eventually fire them – as you have done your entire life. After a while, it’s you, and not them Mr. President.
· No Mr. President, it is not alright to tear up agreements with friends and roll out the red carpet to a Putin, all under the garb of making world peace. Your only bedfellows appear to be a Putin, Russia; a Mohammed bin Sallman, Saudi Arabia; a Netanyahu, Israel and a Kim Jong Un, North Korea, whereas, all your so called toughness is directed at our allies. That is not strength, it is cowardice.
· No Mr. President, you have done nothing for world peace. In fact, the wars in Israel & Ukraine have gotten more bloody, since your administration took over.
· No Mr. President, it is not alright to impose higher tariffs on friends, than you have on tyrannical regimes, as you have - I have looked it up, Mr. President, have you?
· No Mr. President it is not ok to publicly call your predecessors awful names, when you are abroad, or with other world leaders. Where I grew up, we never hung out dirty laundry in front of neighbors.
Donald Trump has achieved all his personal goals – money; fame and power. He looks in the mirror, all the time, and apparently loves who he sees but:
No Mr. President, America may have decided twice that they want to be like you. I never want to be like you- not for all the money; fame and power in the world.
I think the pundits are framing this moment in history incorrectly.
The ones on the Left are framing it as a threat to Democracy. To them I say Democracy died many moons ago. Where we are today, at best may be called an electoral autocracy ( I am sure there is a better term but I cannot think of it).
The Right is dismissing it as leftist propaganda to prevent Trump from America’s next age of rainbows and a pot of gold waiting, for each of us. To them I say please read your own history. It has all been tried before – tariffs; isolationist policies; deportation of US nationals of Mexican origin; imprisonment of Japanese Americans in US concentration camps; the paranoia of a Hoover or a Mcarthy, It has all been tried before but we were never better off, in those moments.
To the international leaders, particularly in Europe, I say respectfully please stop trying to frame this as Trump trying to appease Putin (as Chamberlin tried with Hitler) and treat it more akin to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact aka the Nazi – Soviet pact of 1939.
To the Billion/Trillion dollar Companies and law firms who bent their knees, all I have to say is that you should be ashamed of yourselves. You think you that you can ride this out, until the next administration. He will come back to you either to renegotiate terms; make you sell your soul when he forces you to back one his causes, or force a sale of your equity to the government. Irrespective, I hope every consumer will remember your extreme cowardice, at this pivotal moment.
To the ones who are carrying out the Trump policies, I say:
Your boss has a history of testing and/or breaking the limits of the law, but he has alwaysmade other people do his dirty work – just ask Michael Cohen or Allen Weisselberg or the bunch of people who served him during his last administration and are now ‘traitors’. Be careful in what you do because history is littered with people who went to jail because “I was only carrying out orders” has never been accepted as a defense.
I know what you are thinking – “it will not happen to me” because I am loyal and I am smart, and he will never make me do anything unlawful or unethical. Please look at the list of people who went from being the ‘best people’ (because only he knew how to pick them) to becoming “stupid”; “low IQ” “un patriotic”. Also, look at what the likes of a General Milley and a General John Kelly had to say; the likes of whom have done more for this country, on their worst day, than Trump has done in his life.
Trump is like that child who has broken up from a million relationships, but it is always the girl’s fault. One parent needs to tell him that if he has not been able to make a million relationships work, maybe the problem his him. You, on the other hand, are like that girl who thinks she will be that one exception. Good luck with that!
Trump always told us what he was going to do, during a second administration. The fact that he was democratically elected a second time, says more about us, than him. What has surprised me is the speed at which our so called ‘guard rails’ have folded.
I still had a false sense of security in the fact that he is close to 80 years old, and he has no succession – the likes of Vance and Rubio will be eaten by their own party, if Trump is removed from the equation. Three things are happening in unison recently, that have thrown my sense of security out, the window:
1) ‘Gerrymandering’. If successful, may theoretically remove the need to name a successor.
2) If ‘Gerrymandering’ does not work, then watch for the presence of the National guard beyond CA & D.C. Their sheer presence will deter some minority communities from turning out to vote, and that is one of his objectives.
3) Watch out for what happens to the mail in vote – who better than Putin to tell us how to safeguard our voting rights!?....aside from a little known fact that Russia itself has something called Remote Electronic Voting (REV).
What should we do? I have no idea. My knowledge of politics, and the political system, is inadequate to answer that. I will therefore leave that for people much wiser, and more qualified than I. All I know is that I cannot control what other people do, but I can control what I do. Many years ago, a person in his 90’s gave me some advice. This was a different context but I have never forgotten it – “Things worth fighting for are always difficult. Most of the time your brain will give you all the reasons why you should not do it. When it runs out of those excuses, it resorts to what difference will one person will make? You must remember, he said, that a drop of rain never thinks it causes a flood but it does, collectively”.
I am sorry if that sounds out of a Chinese fortune cookie, but my point is each of us needs to be that drop of rain, and not worry about what that one drop will do. The America we loved is worth fighting for. The road back will be tortuous and scary but as Mahatma Gandhi said to the British (I am para phrasing) – “In order to rule us, you need to control us, and there is simply no way that a 100,000 of you can control 300 million of us”. This is that moment for us, in America – be peaceful; law abiding and civil.
I sat and watched nursing babies being separated from their mothers, and remember crying, being horrified and heart broken, but did nothing.
I sat and watched the carnage in Dafur, and did nothing because it was not in my backyard, and hence not my fight.
I watched the devastation in Ukraine and did nothing, other than admire the courage and dignity of their people.
I watched the horrendous incidents of October 7th in Israel but did nothing, other than watch in horror.
I watched (& continue to watch) the genocide of a Netanyahu in Gaza; the sight of children dying of starvation and did very little, other than express my horror and dismay, in private.
It took the sight of an immigrant landscaper named Narcisco Barranco being physically beaten by a bunch of ice agents, twice his size and half his age, for me to finally get off my couch. I thought about what I would have done, if someone tried to do that to my father. I could not stop crying.
I then saw him being interviewed, along with one of his son’s, and wondered if my sons or I would display half that dignity and love, if I was at the other end of that beating?
I also saw the interview of Andry Hernández Romero, who for no rhyme or reason, had been sent to hell and back, and yet showed more love for this country, than the likes of Trump or Miller ever can.
Apparently, the Mr. Barranco beating was my moment, to get off the couch? I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I knew I had to do something. I thought I would finally relent and become a member of FB or WhatsApp, but decided against that. I then tried to find public forums to post, but could find none that would not be deemed as liberal or left. As I said before, this is not about politics, but about morality, for me.
I finally decided that I needed to blog, except I had no idea as to how to do it. I educated myself enough to know that I needed a domain. I did that. As soon as I did, I was prompted to pay for a bunch of other services. I muddled through it all and persevered because I had stuff to get off my chest. I also hoped that, in so doing, I would influence at least one person to see America through my eyes Vs Trump or Stephen Miller’s vision of America.
For the moment, I have said my piece and no longer feel the need to blog. I have been beyond humbled by how many Trump supporters have written to me, to thank me. I also expected my share of ‘hate’ emails, but I have yet to receive one. That gives me hope that someone, someday - when I am dead and gone- will see why I came to America.
In the interim, I take some solace in the fact that this moment will inevitably pass, because history has shown us, that it always does. Each of us has to get off the proverbial couch, at least once. I am not suggesting that you buy a domain or blog. You do what works for you but know that doing nothing is not an option. I read somewhere that the number of people who were registered to vote, during the last President elections, but sat out was 66 million. Trump won the last election by 2.3 million. Just imagine where would be if…..
Thank you to all who have taken the time to read by blog, & especially to those who took the time to write. Apologies for the delayed response, I was ‘hacked’ much of last week.
Be well. God Bless!
You can send me a message or ask me a general question using this form.
I will do my best to get back to you soon!
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