March 28, 2024

It’s now January 2017 and the wheels are coming off of America…

It’s January 2017, and I haven’t written here since 2012.

In 2012, Barack Obama was about to get reelected for a second term, there were things like health care for more people than ever (per the Affordable Care Act, etc.), abortion rates were going down, crime rates, unemployment, were going down, we were recovering from the previous years’ recession. Several years later, the Supreme legalized gay marriage.

Things continued largely that way for the next 4 years, (although the Republicans blocked much of Obama’s progress, and refused to fill a Supreme Court vacancy) until a nutcase started running for president in the 2016 election, and deeply hidden attitudes of racism, homophobia, Islamophobia and much more started bubbling up, and just under 3 months ago, America went off the rails.

On November 8, 2016, the popular vote was won by a Democratic legacy, Hillary Clinton, but in three critical states, that dude that hosted The Apprentice and and kept going bankrupt and had terrible hair and liked to sexually harass people and yell “You’re Fired!” WON enough Electoral votes to be president.  I kid you not.

Donald Trump is now President of the US.  I can’t even.  It would appear that Russia meddled in the election, and that Trump is somehow connected to them.  (I know, where did Russia come from in this?  I got nothing.)

The Affordable Care Act is on it’s way to being repealed, abortion rights are quickly being reduced, birth control options are fading fast, there are plans to build a giant wall to keep Mexicans from crossing our southern border (if you were just now hearing that, isn’t that a hilarious idea?).  Countries like Syria have been insanely unstable over the past few years, with refugees escaping in droves, and now our government is poised to stop letting any in (and this goes further than these particular refugees, as Muslims here in America, and others with non-American backgrounds are terrified).

States also appear to be losing their collective minds.
Louisiana passed a law that resisting arrest can now be a felony hate crime against the arresting police officer.  (And the past few years have brought a dramatic increase in police brutality and further brought to light severe issues of racism in police and criminal systems so this is absolutely terrifying and terrible.)

Oklahoma had a court rule that oral sex is not rape if the victim is unconscious from alcohol.
NO.  Just no.
(https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/27/oral-sex-rape-ruling-tulsa-oklahoma-alcohol-consent)

Against all of this literal insanity, women are rising up, many Christians are rising up calling that this is NOT the way of Jesus, teachers are rising up to protect their students and their educational system, the National Park System is defying orders to not talk by literally leading the resistance.

Millions of women around the world marched on Saturday, the day after the inauguration, to make their voices heard on issues mattering to them (and this raised further awareness of the lack of intersectionality in feminist movements, key things to work on.)

I am so fortunate to have friends from so many different places and times of my life who are working together to fight on these issues and so many more.  I’ve been asked several times to blog, so I’m dusting off the old blog.

In addition to social/political/faith issues, I’ll also be attempting to write on parenting issues like breastfeeding, carseat safety, and peaceful parenting, because man, we’ve got to fight like crazy to raise kids who are going to tear down this damn wall that’s been proposed.

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