Terror and Trump

 

I was cozy in bed when the radio alarm went off. I thought that the words "Robert Kennedy has been shot" were part of a dream.

I shut off the radio, headed into the bathroom for my morning vomit. The early part of my pregnancy was not going well. Then I headed to the kitchen for Saltines to quiet my stomach and the anti-nausea pills that were still prescribed back then.

Back in my bedroom to dress for work, I learned what I heard wasn't a dream. The horror of Kennedy's shooting was on top of Martin Luther King's shooting the month before.

For the next few days, I debated getting an abortion. Many of my friends had had them either risking the backroom horrors or flying to Montreal under the auspices of the Clergy Consultation service which sent women to places where abortion would be safe. 

Never had I been fascinated with babies, but I wanted this child. Maybe it was my biological clock ringing, but my pregnancy had not been an accident. This was a much-wanted baby. I decided to not have an abortion.

I was born during WWII and the Korean War. I'd grown up with McCarthy and Watergate. My child could live with the bad things in the world as people had always done.

Bad things kept coming: Vietnam, Kent State, 9/11 where 3000 people from 86 countries were killed, uprisings in Latin America some of which the U.S. contributed to, people starving on and on, Watergate ...

Flash forward. My daughter, whom I adored through her life, I never regretted not having the abortion, arrived in Switzerland after finishing her degree. Her life had been filled with love and opportunities and the normal teenage angst and problems but not earth-shattering events.

The wars from 2000 on were at best horrible, but what war isn't?  

While she was on the plane, there was an announcement that the U.S. had attacked Iraq. "We're going to an anti-war demonstration in Bern," I told her. Most everyone I knew did not believe in the weapons of mass destruction story. 

I told her if she didn't want to go, I'd cancel her inheritance. It was a family joke, because in Switzerland, a parent can't disinherited their children, which she reminds me of regularly. She also knows I would never disinherit her.

Throughout my life, I've despaired at many things national, international. My feelings after Nixon resigned was the Constitution was a remarkable document, it held during a crisis.

I was always an active citizen, not just by voting, but calling legislators over various bills, demonstrating and doing what I could to influence society to make it fairer and better for all.

We've been heartsick since 20 January when worry about what Trump would do morphed into terror that grows and grows. 

Last night my husband set the alarm for 3 a.m. We transferred from the comfy bed to the couch, wrapped ourselves in a blanket. Sherlock, the dog snuggled down between us.

What we heard did nothing to calm us. Trump bragged on what he had done or was trying to do -- destroy the fabric of society. America is already well behind the industrialized world on protecting its citizens.

And his threats of taking over other countries only increase the terror -- worry is too mild a word.

Equally upsetting, women in pink and one or two Democrats walking out and some holding up signs responding to the lies.  They blew a chance to show how unacceptable what he wants to do to the country is. That he lied, was verified by the news stations citing 13 lies.

"America is back" he started the speech. 

Back to the days of the Robber Barons. 

Back to the days when, unless you were a white male, preferably from a well off family, no matter how hard you worked your chances of a good life were minimal. 

Back to a time in another countries where fascists rule. 

We have to fight him to not go back but forward.