Politics Through A Rural Lens
As a historian, I am a believer in hearing things for yourself and reading primary documents. Ezra Klein has excerpts from last night’s debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Ford Motor Company had to fact check Trump on September 15th (below),
followed by some of the greatest hits from the debate:
And perhaps my favorite
Reposted with permission from Grace Kelley. The original post appeared on Tuesday, September 13, 2016 on The Millennial Falcon, All the list-icles that are fit to print.
The Truth About Interracial Marriage in 2016
Yesterday, when the shooting of Terence Crutcher started going viral, I posted this as my Facebook status:
“All my Facebook memories are about how [husband] and I were going to get married in a week this time last year, or how we were about to celebrate our one-year anniversary six years ago, but all I can think about is how I’ll have to hold him a little tighter tonight.”
I was hoping to give people a little glimpse into my reality, but I’m not sure everyone got it. So let me spell it out for you: I have to hug my husband a little tighter because he’s Black.
***
I have admittedly not been in an intra-racial marriage but I am constantly trying to show people that my marriage and theirs are not terribly different. My husband and I bicker about the normal things: chores, his front seat driving, whose responsibility dinner was on that particular day. We were asked about our biggest, most recent fight in pre-marital counseling and my husband said, truthfully, that it was about Sansa Stark’s character growth, or lack thereof, on Game of Thrones.
But the differences are pointed—notice how I said “front seat” driving earlier? That’s because I drive us everywhere. On paper he is the better driver; I have a few fender-benders on my record, and my husband will tell you that he has witnessed us almost get into many fender benders in the duration of our relationship. The short answer for why I drive everywhere is because he has terrible car anxiety. The long answer is I have terrible car anxiety, for him.
We are fortunate enough to say that we only have one sour experience with law enforcement. When we were sophomores in college, my husband was pulled over. We were running late for a play because the local Chinese restaurant had taken an hour and a half to make our food for pickup. He legally passed someone on the dotted yellow line, not going above the speed limit to pass. (And this was a small state road, so the speed limit was 35. For my husband to pass someone while still managing to go that slowly means the person he passed was going REALLY slowly.) We drove to outside the theater on the college campus, he put his hazards on, and I dashed back to my dorm room to get the tickets to the play.
When I got back, there was a cop car with blue lights flashing. The cop and my husband were arguing, benignly but bitterly, that my husband had been speeding. I sat down in the passenger’s seat and in my sweetest, most innocent Southern belle voice said, “What seems to be the problem, Officer?”
The officer said that my husband had been speeding. I said I was there and I had not seen the speedometer go above 35. The officer looked between us and let my husband go with a warning dripping with racist contempt, even using the word “boy.”
Some people I tell this story to ask me with dramatic wonder if I think my presence saved my husband’s life that night. It’s one of those questions that reveals more about the asker than the answerer. I’m his wife, not his white savior, but I digress. I don’t think it would have come to that, but a dark voice in the recess of my mind says, “So did all the victims of recent police shootings. They didn’t think stopping their car on the side of the road because it broke down or reading a book while waiting for someone would ‘come to that’ either.”
And that’s what makes my bones feel like concrete when these stories come out. My husband and I got the same degree from the same prestigious university. We were both on the dean’s list. We got the same academic awards. He was an RA all four years in school—yes, even as a freshman—and former bosses, from Taco Bell in high school to his current position, consistently say he’s the best employee they’ve ever had. He is a son, a brother, an uncle, a husband, a human being. He loves video games. He is an excellent, inventive cook. He sings as frequently as you or I might breathe. He’s not even aware he’s doing it most of the time. Where there is air, he must fill it with song.
But if the wrong cop feels the wrong sort of way, all of that won’t matter, and my husband could answer for it with his life. All that we have worked for and will work for could be gone in an instant. Marriages that don’t end in divorce end by one of the partners dying before the other, and I am frankly tired of feeling like my days with him are numbered.
It hurts to see friends and family champion “family values” and then go on to use the hashtag “#BlueLivesMatter” or “#AllLivesMatter.” They write about how police officers have spouses and children who worry that their loved one might not make it home tonight, and I want to scream that I have the SAME EXACT FEAR for my family, but no, my fear is “unfounded paranoia” despite hours upon hours of cell phone footage that says otherwise, I and my husband have nothing to be afraid of if we really haven’t done anything wrong.
It’s not that I don’t respect and admire cops. Far from it. I’d say 90% of my interactions with them have been positive despite the fact that cops, like doctors, often see people during the worst moments of their lives. It’s just that people bristle when I demand that cops treat me and my family with the same respect and that seems . . . off.
It would save us all a lot of time if these “family values” people would just come out and admit that my little fledgling family doesn’t have value to them.
***
On Saturday, my husband and I leave for our honeymoon. I will drive. We are visiting relatives in Selma, where the Edmund Pettus Bridge is, and then we will get to the beach. We’ll agree that he should stay in the car if I have to get gas in rural south Alabama. He doesn’t need me to “save” him like the person I wrote about before seems to think, but my white bullshit-tolerance is higher than his.
A couple of months ago, I had a dream about our son. We don’t have kids yet but there was no mistaking that this child was half mine, half his. He had dark ringlets the size of pencils. Big brown eyes that will just make you melt. A dimple in his left cheek like his father and I both have.
I woke up in pain, not normal-stiffness but those concrete bones. Something has to change before we meet this kid. Something.
Our country withstood the resignation of a President, and nine judges holding the fate of an election in their hands. Kentucky’s Governor, Matt Bevin, calls for violence if voters choose Hillary Clinton as the next President.
This is not ok. Ever. Jay Bookman spells it out in his column today.
Hillary Clinton has pneumonia.
Richard Nixon drank too much and took powerful prescription drugs while he was in the White House. Ulysses Grant drank whiskey throughout the Civil War and two terms as President. FDR and Winston Churchill stayed up all hours drinking together. Georgia W Bush choked on a pretzel, fainted, and scuffed up his cheek while watching a football game in the White House private residence. Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, threw up and fainted during a state dinner in Japan. Ronald and Nancy Reagan consulted astrologers throughout Reagan’s political life. Their son, Ron Reagan Jr., wrote that he began to suspect his father was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease in 1984.
Could Hillary skip out on memorial services for September 11th victims and claim she was doing it on doctor’s orders? No. Short of her own death, she had to put on the mandatory Kevlar vest, add a shirt and dark pantsuit, and head out into warm weather for a service. It didn’t matter that her doctor told her to take a break for a few days.
Like millions of other women, she doesn’t get a day off to be sick. Women step up every day to care for aging parents, their children, and grandchildren while they undergo chemo, recover from surgery, and work multiple jobs. There aren’t many “sit this one out” passes for women. Today’s world doesn’t allow that. After all, women make 79 cents on the dollar compared to men, so we can’t afford time off.
The grueling schedule required for a candidate is exhausting. Fatigue is brutal. Hillary got sick. She’ll get over it. We should too.
I filled out the survey. It reminded me that I needed to order a Hillary/Kaine yard sign, and make another modest donation to the campaign.
Jay Bookman’s column at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is extra brilliant today.
Over the weekend Donald Trump demonstrated his lack of, well, connection to other humans, by Tweeting that the murder of Dwayne Wade’s cousin was exactly why black voters should support him.
Today he was spinning trumped-up (no pun intended, but it sure is easy) terrorists conspiracy theories about Huma Abedin, a key staffer to Hillary Clinton.
This stuff isn’t new. Michele Bachmann tried to discredit the native-born American in 2012. The slurs were so unpalatable that Senator John McCain took to the floor of the Senate to defend Abedin.
McCain deserves credit for the times when he has stepped up to speak the truth to the birthers, “Obama’s a Muslim”, and their cronies. What he said in 2012 merits repeating.
The Friday Photo
August 5, 2016
photos by Louise Baxter
The Friday Photo
July 29, 2016
Wednesday afternoon I stopped to get gas after picking up some groceries in Milledgeville, the “big” city to the west of my home town of Sandersville. A small SUV pulled up at a pump diagonally to mine. The driver, a woman maybe in her mid 60s, jumped out of her car and started walking toward me, smiling as she approached me standing at the rear corner of my car.
With great enthusiasm in her voice she asked me where I got my bumper sticker. She looked so happy, like she had finally come across another kindred soul, that she gave me a high five and immediately started telling me how worried she is about Donald Trump becoming President.
I replied that the racism and hate people feel comfortable sharing is horrifying, adding that the judgmental attitudes about people who don’t look or behave like them is stunning.
She said she’s taken issue with people she knows who judge gay people as sinners, saying that her response has been, “Do you believe God made everyone, and does God make mistakes?”
From there she said friends and family had turned away from her after she came out as gay, and that others in her family have been treated similarly.
Think about that- a family shunned one of their own, not because she was a murderer or thief, but because she wanted to date women instead of men.
This woman then looked at my car tag and realized I live in a neighboring county, and she said, “You live in Washington County and you have this one your car? You are a brave woman.”
It’s not so hard to be a privileged, white, straight woman driving around rural Georgia with a Democratic pride sticker on your car. When it helps you find members of your tribe while doing the ordinary things in life, it is even easier.
Thank you Bonnie, for extending your hand, telling me your name and story, and saying We Are Stronger Together.
Current leadership in the Georgia General Assembly never fails to disappoint. This year’s session has been a catalog of hate-baiting legislation against LGBTQ citizens and people of faith (and no faith). Rape victims have been dismissed, and Georgia’s Guns Everywhere mentality threatens campuses across our state.
Creative Loafing Atlanta didn’t wait until the end of the session to announce this year’s Golden Sleaze Awards. If you want to hear keen political analysis of this year’s General Assembly session in Georgia, tune in to GPB’s Political Rewind at 3:00 this afternoon.
Would you stand aside if Donald Trump said these things to your mother?
October has rolled around again. Think before you pink this month.
What is missing from all the noise about breast cancer?
Breast cancer survivors for Planned Parenthood
Its October. I’m not wearing pink.
This was originally posted last year on September 11. We continue to be a badly broken country in too many ways. No photo today.
How we have failed since September 11, 2001
Tonight President Obama will address the nation about ISIS and any actions that we may take in response to the horrific murders of Americans and innocent civilians at the hands of terrorists.
Tomorrow there will be an observance in my community, and many others, to honor the thousands of lives lost to hate and terrorism, and to support the families and friends who knew someone they loved would never return home again.
Since September 11, 2001 we as a country have talked a lot about being kinder to one another and being a better country. Yet 13 years later this is what consumes us as a country:
We absolutely should remember and honor the victims of September 11th’s violence. I’m just not convinced we are a country that is a better reflection of the democratic values and freedoms which terrorists intended to destroy 13 years ago.
The Friday Photo
August 28, 2015 
Jane K Fernandes is truly #GuilfordJane now. She was presented with the original skeleton key and lock to Founders Hall during her inauguration Wednesday as Guilford College’s ninth President, and the first woman to serve in that role.
Jane preferred a community-based event that celebrates Guilford. No academic regalia was required. The lei Jane wore was a gift from her in-laws as a remembrance of living in Hawaii when she and her husband Jim were first married.
The Friday Photo
August 7,2015
With all the negative news about police actions, it was nice to see this lone officer helping people while I was on the way home from work yesterday.
I am reposting this post written by attorney Jessica Eaves Mathews. The sixth paragraph, which begins with, ” In fact,” makes several important points.
Jessica Eaves Mathews:
I say this with sincere love to my many friends who are passionate fundamentalist Christians who believe that the SCOTUS’s decision yesterday on marriage equality is an abomination to themselves and to God: As a lawyer, I need to attempt to set the record straight.
Our country was created by our founding fathers very deliberately to prevent the establishment of a national religion from our governance. The Church – Catholic or Anglican – was central to almost every other country in the world historically, especially England from which our founding fathers separated. It was critical to our founding fathers that one central religion NOT be declared and NOT be incorporated into our Constitution or governance. They understood that an establishment of a national religion would ultimately abridge the very rights they believed were fundamental and were meant to be recognized and protected by the Bill of Rights and ultimately the Constitution.
Religion-based loss of basic rights had been their experience in England and they wanted to prevent that here.
The fact is that this decision yesterday was a LEGAL decision about the scope of our Constitutional rights as humans and US citizens. It was not about religion, religious beliefs or religious freedom. It is about equal rights, just as the decisions to give women the vote and the decision to abolish slavery were about equal rights.
Rights are not and should not be up for a popular vote or up to the states to determine. Rights are absolute and cannot be dependent upon anything other than the fact that the person is a human being and is a citizen of the US. If those two conditions are met, YOUR belief system about what is MORALLY or spiritually right or wrong does not matter and should not. You should be glad that is the case, because it would be just as easy for another religion to take over and curtail your rights as a Christian (something that has happened throughout history).
In fact, one religious party believing they know the truth for all humans is how terrible oppression starts – that is how Naziism started, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, the Klu Klux Klan, Al-Qaeda and now ISIS – the most destructive, hateful, murderous periods of human history have arisen directly out of one religious group (ironically, most of these examples were lead by Christians) believing their religion and religious beliefs were THE truth, and therefore they had the right to take away the rights (and lives) of those who lived or believed differently than them.
Our founding fathers wanted to prevent that outcome. So does our current Supreme Court. THAT is the law of the land and I could not be more grateful to be an American than when human rights are protected. I don’t have to agree with you to believe with all my heart and soul that YOUR rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness should be protected against oppression or prejudice. LGBT US citizens deserve exactly the same treatment. God Bless America.
p.s. Those railing against the decision of marriage equality as a basic constitutional right are confusing the idea of constitutional (i.e human) rights with certain types of behavior (the stuff they call “sin”). But human rights are inherent in all human beings and US citizens – not doled out based on who is behaving “well” and who isn’t. All US citizens should have the equal right to pursue life, liberty and happiness, regardless of the “sins” they commit. The only behavior that should curtail your constitutional rights is if you commit a crime (a felony) and are convicted. But even then, criminals can still marry, have kids, own property, work and live in our communities. The only things they can’t do is vote and carry firearms. If committing a sin was a barrier to receiving basic constitutional rights in this country, we would all be in big trouble, not just the LGBT community.
A look back at a January 2013 post, Being present
Today is Memorial, or Decoration Day, a day of pause begun decades ago for decorating the graves of Civil War soldiers.
The long weekend is now dominated by stores holding big sales, high school graduations, blockbuster movie openings, and the unofficial beginning of summer.
Today media outlets will provide us with beautiful photos of thousands of small flags doting the graves of the heroes buried in Arlington. The President will lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown and make some remarks. Local television will update viewers on local ceremonies at 6:00 and 11:00 tonight.
Before the day ends, our country will have 22 more veterans to mourn, soldiers whose lives where cut short due to their willingness to serve in our armed forces.
The United States spends billions on waging wars with no exit strategies. Our fighting forces are built on the backs of the poor, officers who tolerate sexual assault and intimidation, and military families who can’t afford to feed their children without food stamps.
Even worse, when our soldiers return, we fail to provide them with the services they need and deserve.
Our failure as a country is why 22 veterans will kill themselves before Memorial Day comes to an end. Twenty-two brave volunteers who came forward, and survived, will reach their breaking point today and succeed in ending their pain and agony. Twenty-two families, made up of parents, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters, will begin preparations to bury their soldier.
Because there are war injuries we can’t see with our eyes, we fail to see them with our hearts.
I didn’t post a photo last Friday because I didn’t think I had anything that was worth posting. What I did think about a good bit on Friday, and other days, was about putting Rural and Progressive on hiatus to figure out if I should continue.
It takes me A LOT of time to crank out posts that are heavy on politics. Fact-checking, reading a variety of sources, double checking, proofing, maybe asking for a review before posting, and triple checking take time. When I worked at home and my schedule was flexible I could pick up and put down posts throughout the day.
And then today Hillary announced. So I signed up and donated to her campaign.
This election isn’t about electing the first woman POTUS (even though we’re behind the curve on electing women to national leadership in America). This election is about children, women, seniors, people of color, my LGBTQ friends and family, the middle class, the working poor, our veterans, energy production, peace, public schools, rural communities, national infrastructure, the arts, health care, housing, food shortages, and our natural resources.
So I ‘m figuring out what Rural and Progressive will be in the future.
Got a suggestion? I’d love to hear it.