Crime and Punishment: Governments and Climate Change: gagablog #130

Do you want Hillary in jail? Do you want her pardoned? If you answered "Yes" to either of these questions then most people seem to agree with you. Does it matter? Let's not get into what the crimes may or may not be - you don't want to know, do you? Some things you can't undo so let's not go there. :Let's just talk about Why, about what Punishment for Crimes is all about.

Why Punish anyone for a crime? Why Jail? One answer is that you want to hurt people because they have done something hurtful to others. You want them to sit and suffer. That is one reason for punishment, maybe the main reason. If we don't want Hillary to suffer just because she hurt people -  IF anyone was hurt, in a way they should have had legal protection against, anyway - why would we want ANYONE to suffer just because they Hurt people? Is Hillary exceptional? If it is only because we care about her that we don't want her to suffer -  maybe she didn't mean to break any laws, maybe it was people she was mixed up with, a bad crowd - why would we want ANYONE to suffer just because they hurt people, maybe also because of who they hung around with? How can we punish anyone just for hurting other people if we claim to care about them? If we care for Hillary in this way where we don't want her hurt just because others were hurt -  and maybe it was an accident! -  then why don't we care for other people in this way?

If we don't want Hillary put in jail just for Revenge, because revenge is wrong, why do we want revenge on ANYONE?

"An Eye for An Eye Leaves the Whole World Blind" means if we keep this up there will be less and less of us who can see the way out.

There is One other reason for punishment to keep someone in Jail, besides "Punishment" for the sake of it, which amounts to revenge and is wrong, is to keep them from hurting more people. Who can Hillary hurt, now? Couldn't she do the same things even from jail? Pay for protests to distract the media from real causes like Standing Rock protecting our Water, or from the fact that she must still be trying to steal the election and has not returned or been caught for stealing millions of votes cast for Jill Stein and Gary Johnson -  she continues to "get away with it" but I did not want to get bogged down in details. You put someone in jail to keep them from continuing illegal and hurtful behavior but if you won't catch them they keep doing it and if you don't even want to catch them, because you REALLY are not concerned about those things, then you let them go and let it happen. I still suspect Trump is Hillary's Puppet and is letting her steal it out from under him because both of them want World War Three AND Civil War Two - the best of both worlds for Warmongers when we thought Civil War would be easier to sleep through and prevent, #pillowrevolution style. Does anyone care?

If we don';t care about the crimes of Theft of Democracy and End the World in War, can we please let EVERYONE out of Jail, now, for Lesser Crimes? Since ALL crimes are less than these?

I believe in Oz, The Future -  they have one infrequently used jail and it is full of nice things: They feel Doubly-sorry for the Prisoner, who misunderstood the goodness of the Law -  because all Oz-Law is based on Love -  and is therefore at a disadvantage for misunderstanding and who is deprived of liberty by being in Jail and is thus at a disadvantage. So they feel sorry for the Prisoner and give him the BEST of everything, the best food and games to help him see the Beauty of Love-Law, to Feel GOOD again so he can be at liberty as soon as possible. It works and will work for us, we have Many Nice things we can recover people from prison by using there, transforming them - but this is future-talk, let me return to Now.

I'm listening to Depeche Mode's "Songs of Faith and Devotion" after a decade or two absence. I just finished Jane Eyre chapter 19 for those who trace the media magic connections and those who have read it without spoiling it for those who don't. I saw Dr. Strange yesterday afternoon after feeling closer to the mystery of Time and Space yesterday morning after a discussion of 7-dimensional versus 10-dimensional space-time models - Base 7 Versus Base 10, or maybe the Ouspensky one I'm intuiting is Base 6. And Mention of Selena Fox's 9-way "quarter-calling" and my addition of the tenth and Twisty Path , Fairy-psychedelic-dream. "Rush" just came on and I've been writing maybe since the second song, to trace.

Ok, I had a previous theme to this yesterday but it fits into this larger theme. NPR interviewed Rev. Daryl Scott, a black pastor in Cleveland Ohio and personal friend of Donald Trump for the last few years. When the reporter tried to lead him into saying he had "broken" or lost faith (implying betrayed) the Democrats, who claim to be the Party for minority community concerns, he said they were like a Pimp of the Black Community. I don't want to insult Pimps or anyone in this comparison: the whole thing about comparisons is they rely on ideas like "we all abhor the sex industry" in order to demonize people. Pimps and prostitutes certainly deserve sympathy and understanding on a personal level -  you can say that due to circumstances the prostitutes deserve FAR more sympathy than the pimps who exploit them but that is still the result of falling into the evil of judgment based on classification instead of Persons. Look at each individual and they are committing their crimes for a reason that can elicit sympathy. The problem with using these analogies is that the System that we try to criticize is actually far worse than the People on the other side of the analogy. People are in criminal lifestyles because they get "caught up in it" like a game and they become pawns. But Systems MAKE the game, they are no ones pawn.

Maybe Hillary IS a pawn and maybe that is why people feel a basic sympathy for her that overrides any curiosity to know what she might have done. Why are we so fascinated by Crime Shows, fictional or reality-based? Are we showing we DON'T care for these "random" people by watching and hoping they get caught and punished? Why don't we feel that way about Hillary? Because we care about her? Is there ANYTHING to the idea that Punishment, Consequences, are good for the person because they teach the person how to grow and improve? If we shield someone from consequence won't they Keep doing the same bad behaviors like a spoiled child? Isn't that dangerous when it is War and Frakking and Stealing Elections?

But maybe she is just a pawn - then aren't we ALL Pawns? Should we not indict the system?

Speaking of Pawns in the system, when this was just titled "Democrat Pimps" in my mind yesterday there was another story following the interview with Rev. Scott. He called the DNC "pimps" by the way, in case this was unclear, for "standing next to the inner cities profiting off calling attention to them but not helping to change anything for them, in order that they can keep doing it" - something like that. Then there was a n interview with two immigration lawyers about DACA, the executive order-led program that Obama installed to grant immigrants who are minors to have some legal status. They seemed to be spreading the same fear and misinformation to make people panic: on the one hand they were advising clients to save their $400-dollar filing fees and trouble of filing for DACA, and even warned of the danger of submitting your information to the system for the first time in case the same system was turned "against them" by Trump -  then on the other hand, they barely mentioned that even if the DACA situation changed it might help some people to have gotten in before the changes. They basically did not know anything useful and were spreading all the fear of everything they could speculate about. I could not help thinking, "who caused this? Who created this situation?" If it is an executive order, Obama set all of these conditions when he made it. Why make something that has to be renewed every two years except to turn it into a political football? Why not just make it permanent? Because making it permanent makes people get used to it, actually improves things for THIS group of people, so we can move on to other problems. The Democrats don't want to move on, they want to keep every group oppressed and the most sympathetic, like kids, they keep in this tension in order to make Republicans look even worse for being "against kids." As I type that Sade is singing about letting folks move on, nobody in the family can  get a job, in "Feel No Pain." I foolishly left a cd thereof her first album, because it was $3, I hid it and said I would come back, then spent $50 when I went back yesterday and couldn't find it. It said "SHAR-DAY" on the side which seemed Magically Rare. But maybe it's easy to find.

The Democrats just want to turn important issues, all of them, into political footballs because all they are doing is maintaining the same rules of the same evil game. They aren't pawns, they are the Dungeon Masters, in a Role-Playing analogy. But if you want to feel sorry for one of them, think of Her, Hillary, or Him, Bernie, or ANY of them, as a Pawn - or Better Yet, as a Captured Checker. If we break their lines and reach the other side of the board, we get that piece BACK, on our heads, "King Me." When Bernie, or even Hillary, comes back to the People, t the Green Party, their respect from the people will be waiting for them. Like Dr. Strange's Cape of Levitation.

The last point, yesterday, was that Obama was in Greexe - thanks, typofairies, in Greece. He told the people something like "If your governments don't listen to their people they will end up electing nationalistic candidates." ("I couldn't love you more boy, stay exactly as you are" Sade sings as I typed that) Did he JUST learn this lesson last week? Like, Super-No-Shit, Obama. Geez. Irony much? In Greexe, or Greece, of all places, "Birthplace of Democracy?"  - Actually we say that to justify sexism but America really got it's Democracy from the Iroquois who had universal suffrage and women's reproductive rights - so we've been Backwards for a while now. But if we take this chance, Standing Rock, the only REAL protest left now that #blacklivesmatter and every other protest has been co-opted and therefore invalidated by Hillary's Move-On-sponsored "Throwtest" that MAKES it's own media attention in order to divert from real issues. I'm not saying there is not a valid movement against Police Brutality, but to the extent that #blacklivesmatter has allowed themselves to be co-opted THAT designation is no longer valid. Plus look at it, all it ever was, ultimately, was another political football. The problem is Police Brutality,against EVERYONE and ANYONE. Of course there are other issues that #blacklivesmatter focuses on but there must be focus to protest and activism. If you want to support people who are RIGHT NOW being beaten, gassed, and wrongfully imprisoned and tormented by police, Stand With Standing Rock not hill-troll bullshit.Not only is water essential to ALL life, all the other issues come together in this one Place and Time. And we can do far more good from home helping them at Standing Rock, if we can't go there, than we can going out into any streets for HRC.

That was all I was going to say until an interview with Mike Pillsbury rolled this all up in to a nice little dough and baked a cake with it. One more bowl. "Kiss of Life", thanks Sade, i love you! And I love this weed, Kosher Kush, thanks LivWell! (my store - and Keegan, I think, my budtender for it who was also excited when I gave him our new Foxzen cd, "Mystic Monsters" - hope he likes it, paints something good to it!) Ok, one more, again.

Pillsbury worked in the Reagan administration, I think, and has written three books on China and was being interviewed abut the relationship between America and China in relation to Donald Trump. He said his next book may be called Avoiding War with China and he said some things about how we could easily, accidentally, get into a war with them over disputes of territory in the South China Sea. He also made some interesting comments about "China First" and "Make America First" and how the language similarity, and Nationalistic belief, actually made the Chinese people have more respect and in common with America, this idea that we both admit we want to be first is more honorable than contentious, at least from a linguistic and propagandists perspective. But the most important thing he said to me was about our attitudes to Global Warming and restrictions based on Climate Change and how that fits in with this idea of Punishment.

We, in America, have a Lie-Machine that denies Global Warming and insists it is merely a "left-wing" attempt to stifle business. And that argument has the money and therefore government behind it so we must band together as people to stop it.  But as Pillsbury points out, in China they also view Global Warming as a ploy by the West to shackle their development. Who is right here? Is America trying to Punish China with Global Warming? Is China, or the Left, trying to Punish America with Global Warming?

See how Punishment works? We can waste each other's time by "punishment" and Revenge - but in the End Consequences are coming for ALL of us. Global Warming is NOT a scam by one government to hinder another government, or business - THAT idea is a scam. It was 80 degrees on Nov 15th, 2016, breaking the record from 1941. I could talk about how many more records are broken, and re broken, and how often, and how even basic understanding of math.... but EACH day counts. It's not about statistics - no one cares, we are two scared of math. Basically every Republican voted for Trump, Half the Democrats voted for Clinton, but people are too scared of math to realize how many votes she must have STOLEN to tie him.

But no one needs to enforce Karma - no one can. Homer and Apu proved that 20 years ago. The Punishments will come. We don't need to visit punishment upon each other. We need to visit each other to avoid punishment. We are all in this together, now. It doesn't matter whose fault it was. What matters is we solve the problems and we know we need togetherness to do this. Blame only gets in the way. We can all tell what we really should not be doing - violence, silencing voices, ignoring calls for help - so we just stop doing those things and start doing the opposite: Peace, speaking up and to each other, asking people how we can help and listening to the people who are shouting for it, praying for it, Standing for it. Stand Together, united. We will win, EVERYTHING, for the People, for Mother earth, for ALL creatures and for The Great Spirit that unites us all to begin with and in whom we all are Strong and Whole. Nothing can stand against us and as the Water Protector I met in the thrift store told me the other day, "The Beginning is Near!"

Apart we fall like lonely feathers. Together we Fly.  

Trust in "This American Life": gagablog #129

Two days ago, Sunday, I heard the NPR program "This American Life" in which they featured 10 five-minute stories about the reactions to the election of Donald Trump and loss of Hillary Clinton. I noticed that Trust was a theme throughout it, and betrayal, and that the whole framework proved that the media can't be trusted when they are so blinded by their own bias or one side paying them off. It was real stories with real people but the way they use them to promote and manufacture bias is disturbing. I've heard recent news that Trump and Bernie have both called for an end to violence and hate-speech. I did finally hear something today that Hillary claims to want "her protests' to end but since they are paid for by her campaign I don't trust her. But this isn't about the bigwigs, this is about the people who want to trust them or wish they could and how the media isn't making it easier. This will be a long one: I took notes and will address each story. I will put my reactions in Parenthesis.

Story 31: Two cops in Florida (Dolphins in Blue) The first story was an interview with two Florida police officers.The reporter introduced them as having voted for Obama in '08, Romney in '12, and Trump this year. They said the Trump victory was almost as good as the Dolphins winning the Superbowl  - who haven't won since 1978 - and this made them seem like Floridians but their accents seemed Bostonian. She said they changed their names because cops were not supposed to talk to the media. (This was not shocking to me but it feels like it should be. Obviously there would be specific instances where the cops could not comment on a case. But a blanket ban on communication between the police and media seems to be a breakdown in the ability for the public and police to understand each other and come together to resolve issues.) They were calmed by Trump's victory and hoped it would signal an end to rioting. They felt that Obama had not supported police but had supported protesters instead and felt that his endorsement of Hillary and her campaign was a betrayal of them since she talked about the black lives matter protest like she "favored that side" of the issue (My quotes because don't see it that way, or even two-sided)  and they mentioned that she had artists perform for her who "sang songs against the police". (I feel like Obama did something very typical of Democrats, played both sides against each other hoping to continue to gain politically from the public demand for justice while actually standing in the way of justice, or acting like you will try and then "failing." IN one sense they ran the flawed candidate, Hillary, and tied her to the Black Lives Matter movement, even though they protested her until she bought off some of their "leadership", and by giving Trump the election they make it look like a "mandate" for a cop crack-down. I just hope Trump does not take the bait. The truth is that Obama may have flooded the police with military hand-me-downs, making everything more threatening and dangerous, but he did not provide police with any real "support", useful support, as president. He could have used his office and power to call for more investigation into police brutality and at the same time told the American people how we are dedicated, all of us, to improving the quality, image, and effectiveness of American police work. He just had to actually fix the problem of bad cops and this would help their image but he could have presented a more positive image -  by actually acknowledging the real problems and committing to fixing them  - that helped reform both the actuality and image of police work. From My perspective, since I support the protests against police brutality, I thought Obama sold the people out y calling protesters "thugs" and seeming to mostly ignore the concerns, at least as far as taking any action to change things besides just talking about it for politics. So this is the classic example, to me, of maintaining strife instead of fixing problems in order to keep an oppressed and exploited voter block, all by lying to them that you are the only one who can help. This is one reason I think Trump's claim that minority communities had "nothing to lose" by choosing him had some resonance - with some people, anyway. They've seen through the Democratic charade.) The other things the cops mentioned were that they felt embarrassed to admit they are cops, that they would tell people they are fireman or "sell pharmaceuticals", anything else. (This is sad to me for a few reasons. One is that it seems from my perspective that cops are given too much benefit of the doubt and too often blindly idolized which fosters abuse of power. On the other hand if they don't feel respected by the public that is influenced by the media but there actually is abuse that needs to be reported. More than antipathy towards cops, in most places cops are well respected and where they aren't it is probably due to patterns of abuse. But there really isn't a media narrative blowing police crimes out of proportion as much as we just hear more about it, finally. And the police should feel ashamed of those who abuse power but it won't reflect badly on Cops, altogether, if we do something about it. It's in every one's interests to get rid of bad cops and restore the more universal respect they deserve so tat more kids grow up with the good dream of being good cops without it being spoiled along the way. I was surprise to hear the story about people being disrespectful to cops as follows.) They said they were in a local joint and the Trump acceptance speech was on the TV and they asked someone to turn up the volume so they could hear. Someone threw a fit and refused, chastised them for wanting to hear it, and someone else turned it up for them without saying anything. (This struck me for disrespect to cops but also just disrespect to anyone and it made me feel like the person must have felt entitled to object to their wishes. It made me especially mad because of all the censorship Hillary's paid trolls engage in, online. They began with traditional trolling and flooding the groups with pointless information to keep people from seeing useful things then they started deleting content and banning people. I just hate the idea that people feel entitled to stifle information. Also I thought about how this speech has been seen as a pivot for Trump where he is not channeling the hate and fear he used to win the primary. It makes you wish more people would see it, maybe it would help them feel better. I didn't see it but I'm still too worried about Hillary stealing it.)

(as I typed this I watched the end of a Barney Miller. It was the episode where the lady has been following Barney for 20 years. IN the sixties she was wearing a miniskirt and some guys were harassing her and Barney told them to leave her alone. Then she followed him for years loving him and admiring him from a distance and she offers to stop but he says it okay. She asks him to smile at her if he sees her, says he doesn't have to say anything. It makes me cry to talk about it because it reminds me of that bittersweet but satisfied one-sided love I feel so familiar with. In this context it makes me think of how America really loves good cops, if she represents America. We hold out that hope that we can connect, even though we understand it can be to busy and stressful work for anyone else to understand or relate to, we understand a "distance." And we make up for that, only in the smallest ways, with occasional gestures when we can. This is all sweet and bittersweet and romantic and heroic, but it can be even better. Barney and the Lady can't be more openly in Love, he's married and maybe doesn't like her like that and maybe she wouldn't really like him, just the image. But in the analogy, between cops and the public, we can do more than smile and wave. We can do more, or differently, than "shows of appreciation." We can really appreciate each other and come together more and communicate. The police force, ideally, are not "married" to anyone but the public. If we can work this marriage out, with introspection on both sides and communication between us,and actually coming together so we Know we really care about each other, we can solve all these problems. The hope the police have is that Trump will support them. The greatest support is respect and if people can regain a goal of mutual respect it will happen. You can't do what with leaders who play  you against each other. Trump may turn out to be that type of leader as well but even if he comes down "on the side of cops" it doesn't hurt to start with increasing Respect, for either side, and when it is deserved, lived up to, it will be shared.)

At the end of the interview the reporter says, in her words, that the two of them were "shocked by Trump's comments and thought he was hot-headed but their best bet." The fact that, if they said this, their own words were not played to make the point, but she had to sum it up like that, may make more sense to show their bias when compared to the end of Story #7.)

Story #2: Janelle: (Shock and Calm) The second story started with a tweet from a comedian named Janelle but the reporter prepares us that it isn't funny. I think it was "All the older black people I spoke with are not surprised, straight-backed and calm as fuck." She said she called her grandma the next morning and was surprised that she was so chill. "Do you know where we live?" the grandmother asked, like "Well, what did you expect?"  She said racism was deep in the country and not to be shocked but to stay cool. She, Janelle, said it upset her to think that half the country voted for "this" and that she doesn't know who might be sitting next to her smiling at this shit. Then she says she used to be able to ignore it. She said there were reports of people being jerks and that Trump represents jerks -  she had not had anything happen to her but was scared of what people might be smiling about. She said talking with her grandmother calmed her down but that her body felt like she was always on alert. (This seemed to be a classic case of the dangers of being a victim of Hillary Trolling. I'm not trying to dismiss racism and all the terrible ways it affects people. I'm just pointing out that Trump has not caused any of this for Janelle - anymore than Hillary or any more of the one percent -  yet she is overcome with fear of him. The initial problem is assuming that half the country voted "for" the qualities that you associate most with Trump because you are against them, as if half the country is racist. I won't deny that racists support Trump, that a significant part of the Republican base and how the game is played - though a better leader would rise above that AND lead the party and culture well away from it. It was nice that Janelle's grandmother told her not to worry and had a calming effect, overall. But since she gained this attitude from being resilient through even worse times, it should help put the younger generations fears in perspective: it does get better. I wish she could have felt and imparted that wisdom, too. Instead of leaving with the message that things always get better and when it looks bad it's really an opportunity for progress, it seems more like the conclusion is Bruce Hornsby's "That's just the way it is...some things will never change" but without remembering the next line - "Don't you believe it". This reminds me of a cool video I just saw from Prince Ea, I believe, about how he is Happy Trump is president - basically because we get what we deserve, we become what we are in our hearts, and we need to get sick, or experience the sickness, in order to identify what is wrong and heal. He compared a Hillary victory to going to sleep, complacency, and said we don't have time for that because it will lead to death, but that we can wake up and Trump will be the shock to rouse us. And it's a very hopeful message -  not that we will rise up against something but that we will come together to fix everything. I believe it and I think the more of us who do the faster it will come true.)

Story #3: "Trump Tower" (Slave 1) Each story had a title based on where it took place but I didn't catch them all. This one was about George Lombardi, neighbor of Trump and friend for a quarter century. He mentions that he has pictures of himself with "The Pope, The Dalia Lama, both Bushes and Rudy Giuliani" which I thought was a hilarious collection. He said he talked with Trump about his presidential bid in June of 2015 and he said he was "Determined, going to do it." He predicted a big surprise when he spoke with NPR, George did, saying they may even win 48 states, and she asks him "Do You want to say 'I told you so'?" (In a way this was good-humored but it struck me that the right-wing people were the only ones the reporter 'joked' with in a way that could make the person look bad, ot trolled -  or "trailed" as I just read the call it in Jane Eyre - him into looking mean.) He said no, that the margins were so small that the only responsibility went to God since it was miraculous. (This is brilliant politics, appealing directly to millions of people who agree that Trump is divinely guided, a deep criticism of those who oppose him, like a stab at the heart  And it is just endearing to everyone on a human level when people humble themselves before Deity, which is one reason people do it so much, it makes "everyone" feel good together. When people are held up as special it is nice to remind everyone that spirit makes everyone special, that we all can be praised though our own praise and belief in what we most love. But as much as it felt good to hear him say this  - and as much as it triggered my awareness of people who reject this idea in different ways -  it bothered me simply because it added credence to this impossible idea that Hillary actually got that many votes when she really stole so many from us, the Greens, and also the Libertarians, that it can't be ignored. If someone this close to Trump is repeating this idea that the vote was really close, I hope they are just playing it cool, instead of playing a fool so she can steal it, again. You don't have to be in the campaign to see the vast differences between pledged and cast votes, online support and what seemed to show up at the polls, and the overwhelming unpopularity of Hillary - anyone can see if you look around. I guess even if they not only know it but know how they have to pretend they don't or nothing happened, for now, anyway.) Then he talks about having a victory party at Trump Tower, seeing Trump in the hall with the Secret Service,inviting him to the party and he says "Maybe for a couple of minutes?" but the Secret Service said no. His response was "I'm a slave to these guys now." At the end George says he thinks President Trump and Mr. Trump will turn out to be different people -  a compliment, I think, or an attempt to allay fears. The reporter asks if he will keep his personal twitter account and he says he does not know. ( I guess there are reasons to feel good and bad about Trump, or Obama, being a relative outsider to the White House and reasons to feel good, and bad, about them becoming more a product and part of the existing system. But of course this is a reasonable safety concern, too. It just stands out to me as an example of being in control and being controlled, a symbol for being chained to a throne.)

(I'm going to sleep and finish this in the morning. It's Tuesday morning now and I just heard the NPR newsreel for the hour. Three stories stuck out and fit together, magically. One was that UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon expressed confidence that Trump would help address climate change and continue to meet the goal of keeping Earth from warming more than two degrees centigrade. He said there are market forces at work that make environmentalism the best business. This is true.It is also my hope that these considerations -  and protective action by Activists like at Standing Rock, will prevent any stated threat to our environment from materializing. The second story was that ISIL fighters in Mosul have set fires to multiple oil wells and a sulfur plant and that it is making a smokescreen against air attacks and also poisoning the people and environment. This reminds me of when Saddam Hussein lit oil fields on fire in the Iraq war and also how all of the horrors and suffering in Iraq, Syria, and everywhere are ultimate the result of abusive policies by the US. There is a meme titled "Syrian War analyzed" which points out how the US funds and arms factions from every side. For "us" -  meaning the military industrial complex we represent and protect with our government, we don't care how many people are killed as long as we  sell weapons and wipe out any opposition to the coming pipeline. The last story was about New Balance shoes. The president made a statement of positivity bout Trump. In response, people have been sharing videos of lighting their NB shoes on fire. This is bad for the environment but I suppose these folks don't really care. Then, to take advantage of the situation, a Right-Wing or White Supremacist group expressed support for New Balance, too,making it worse. I think of how I spent months calling Trump out, online, for his KKK-connections before the Democrats, Media, or anyone else seemed to have any problem with it. Once they did make an issue of it, he disavowed their support. IN contrast another KKK Grand Dragon endorsed Hillary, the same week the Koch brothers endorsed her, and in the same language. They both said she really represented THEM and would do what THEY wanted, far better than Trump would, but just had to lie to people to take office.And she NEVER disavowed that. As I was hearing this story, reported first, I was thinking "Why don't people protest something Big, like the Oil Companies, instead of one brand of Shoemaker? Why not pour a bucket of gas and set that on fire? Probably because it would explode and this is not a good idea, but comparing it to the shoe protest, even  a Small dish of gas would be cheaper, still bad for the environment but fake "protesters"  don't give a fuck about that, do they? Then my mind wandered to the idea that if someone really wanted to make a statement against oil companies and didn't give a fuck they could start lighting gas stations on fire. As i was thinking those awful thoughts the report came out about the Mosul fires. It reminds me of Fire as the Magical Cleanser - but this is best contained in bowls and joints of marijuana. Burning things is violent and unhealthy if you aren't smoking them. I'm also reminded of the story that many different fires have been set in the North Georgia mountains where some of the prettiest trees I have ever seen are - and some of the oldest Virgin Forest in America, the Cathedral Hemlocks. I don;t care how "Mad" you are that Hillary was the worst politician ever, lied to you, stole the nomination, stole our votes, and incites violence and hatred. I don't care how stupid you are that you don't even realize she is the one who deserves your negativity for making this whole mess. It's not the Trees fault and it's not even your shoes fault. Set yourself on fire with Awareness and make some Good, positive changes in the world instead of being little piss ant junior terrorists. And stop suppressing ideas just because you don't agree with them or because tey blow away the falsehoods you insist upon believing. Stupid is stupid but enforced stupidity is evil.)

(In the car taking my son to school i heard a few more stories. One was on Syrian Refugees and the overall refugee program. The director, Chris George, said he planned to introduce Trump to some of the refugees at the White House so he can realize what it is really all about, people, and overcome his anti-refugee rhetoric. I believe in this, that conversation is the key to solving all our problems and changing restrictive perspectives.Also I thought it was telling that George, the programs director, said the problem with the program  of resettling refugees is that the public does not know about it. He said the State Department has "always" kept the program secret so the public and even lawmakers don't know much about it. He says it is a good program and nothing to be concerned about, that in fact it would work much better  - and probably be able to help far more people, in my estimation -  if the public knew about it. He seemed frustrated with this. The reporter chose to ignore the obvious word "always" and asked a question if the program was made secret, recently, to "hide it from Trump" - feeding into the Narrative that Trump's essential nature is anti-immigrant. The director repeated that it was a long-standing policy that has been in place the entire life of the program, since the end of World War 2. The actual problem is that the government would rather secretly relocate refugees so they can scare people with the idea later,like they are now, so they don't have to admit very many, relative to the worldwide demand, because when informed the Good People of America would band together in demanding that the country live up to it's ideal as a bastion of freedom. But the Government likes to control people with fear and division and uses tension in populations to exploit us -  either making large populations of refugees in one place where the existing community can be trolled into fear of them or dispersing people throughout the country with no network or connections between them. These are just my instincts about how and why the program is run the way it is, because everything our government does seems to be based upon creating present or future divisions between the people so that we Don't live up to our ideals as we could if we united.   The other story was about a former pentagon official who had denounced Trump's foreign policy but new supported it  -I did not hear the details. But it struck me that they did not even
mention her name  -though the next segment was to be more in  depth conversation with her.

Then there was the story that sums all of this up better than anything else I can say. NPR reported that there was a "mall victory" for the Water Protectors at Standing Rock, though he probably called them "protesters." He did not say what that victory was but to me, the fact that they have mentioned Standing Rock AT ALL in the media in the past few days is a victory. They used to completely ignore it and all the reported abuse of people by the police that we see video and hear accounts of online. Now, since Hillary lost, there have been stories in the media about it. This is not at all surprising to folks in the Jill Stein campaign because for months we have seen the evidence that Hillary's supporters ARE the Dakota Access Pipeline, the same supporters are entirely funding that project. So when the news starts reporting on it, after months of blackout, and that coincides both with cops finally leaving - which started over a week ago -  and with Hillary losing to Trump, it is easy to see how the reason the Media Blacked out  Standing Rock is the same reason they blocked out Jill Stein and the Green Party -   because they knew these stories would take them down if they got out enough. Now that she IS "down" there is no one to protect these unpopular and illegal actions by the Oil companies and new is finally being reported. Of course they did not say what the "small victory" was but i thought it was a victory to make the news...until they tried to twist it around. The finished the "news" article by saying that the Company was "hopeful for it's future and options" under President Trump. This is of course what they would say, trying to preserve their stock when they should crash and burn when the truth about their Nazi tactics against the Water Protectors comes out, as it will as Hillary's grip on the media loosens and is finally shaken off. She still controlls them, though, as HER DAPL backers are trying to saddle Trump with the guilt that belongs entirely to them. There is a parallel with her supporters trying to blame people who voted for Jill for Hillary's awful incompetence and unelectability.)

(And in larger sense, reporting part of a Fact, a victory for the Water Protectors  - with no specifics - then twisting it up with a Feeling - "the Oil companies say they actually Feel better under Trump" is the exact technique the media ALWAYS uses to influence us to their bias. If we just pay attention and catch them on it, it won't work. You will be able to see it in every one of these stories, putting an emotion, fear, above any actual fact or event, and putting fear ahead of hope or trying to undercut any hope that arises with more fear.)

(I wrote #7 here, at first, in place of #4 - I think my notes got mixed up.As I typed it there was an episode of Leave it To Beaver based on Tom Sawyer. Beaver gets the neighbor kid Benji to paint the barn for him and the tot spills the green all over him. At the end June is wondering if the book is safe to read and Ward says they have to "take the chance", it's worth it for all the goodness in it. I kind of feel this is an analogy for America, for a new direction, to risk it and take the chance because we know we will discover the good things and learn lessons from the bad. He talked with the boys about it and they conclude, the kids do, that it must have been easier to be a kid on those days - to be able to get away with hi jinks. He says, "lets just say it's harder to be a kid, now."  I found this a little strange -  in some ways it has gotten progressively easier to be a kid -  kids toys and games are some of the frontiers of our culture and reach awesome horizons. But in other ways it is is always harder, for all of us, to be kids and to retain youthful spirit. It's just different layers and we trade difficulty in one for the other. It reminds me of the rituals in Black Elk Speaks when the kids always played a mischievous role that was accepted. It seems like our imbalance and "out-of-placeness" for kid mischief shows how we are off track as a society and honoring these things about kids, striving to make life better for kids in every way, not certain ones at the expense of others, like toys to distract or desensitize us to problems in the world,  and for all of us to remain young-at-heart)

Story #4:  Highland Park, Los Angeles (Mother Hens and Chicken Littles): The story of Annalina the teacher kind of upset me in a new way because of how it was told, both by the teacher herself and the reporter. They said her school was 74% Hispanic and the election was on a school night so she had to face the emotions the next morning. She said she had 10 parent teacher conferences scheduled and that they "all" went the same way - both would start crying, teacher and parent, they would download about the election and cry for ten minutes and then talk about the kids for ten. Some positive conclusions they mentioned were that they hoped good would come out of it and that Trump would not do all he said he would. (When I thought about it,if she only had 10 conferences in a class where three fourths of the kids are Hispanic, chances are all of these families were Hispanic. If there was one family of a different ethnicity that did not have the same concerns then it would be kind of dismissive of them to say that "all" her conferences went the same way - but they probably just all did. I'm sympathetic to these concerns and share the hope that the fears do not materialize and I add to it the idea that we can keep bigoted actions from taking place by banding together if they ever do arise  -same for protecting the environment, we can protect each other. I did wonder, in a  school that is predominantly Hispanic, if in addition to the specific concerns of that community there were any concerns for bullying of any kids who supported Trump, or other candidates, or were perceived that way due to their ethnicity. Hopefully there simple was no discrimination that way but it there was they did not mention it. Bad ideas are usually only able to catch on when people feel like they have a majority of support. There were no reports of any hostility to Hispanic people, either, in this story,unless the next statement qualifies.) I have the note, in quotes, that someone said "Donald Trump is president." I'm not sure if this was something someone yelled at her  - and if not I feel bad and prejudiced to assume that is what it was, but if it was and I don't mention that possibility I don't want to omit anything. It could have been something a student said in class, maybe a white student said "Donald Trump is President." If so I don't know that this is supposed to be provocative, or an example of that student trying to intimidate the other students - but of course it could be interpreted that way thanks to his hateful rhetoric and the stated plans of their platform that would be hurtful to families. One student said "I'm afraid he will build a wall" and another said "He hates brown people." (You can't expect the teacher to contradict these statements, even if she did not agree - you don't have enough evidence to support a counter-claim after some of the things he said. But you could hope there would be some way for the her to help them feel more comfortable, like we can still have influence after the election to ensure that bad things don't happen and bad decisions are not carried out. You know, the basic promise of democracy and civil unrest.) She said one student came up to her after class and said "I'm going to Mexico, right now, and will never return, and I will miss you." She said she talked with him and in the end she assumed that he was not really going, it was just his way of processing all of this. (As I heard this I felt like she was being slightly crazy, or I was, because she was letting all her emotion get in the way of being the most effective teacher she could be. Instead of just sympathizing with him and assuming she knew why he said that,she could have made a call to make sure, to see if there was not a problem at his home, something she might even help prevent..Or, even worse, the kid might have worked this up so much in his mind that he would just start walking south, alone - kids can do things like this when distressed. She should have made sure that, even if this is a remote possibility, she made sure this did not happen. It just seemed like a classic example of how worries for fears in the future are being used against us to keep us from doing good things we can do, now.)   She said the anxiety was constant, all day long, and all she could tell the kids was "you are protected here and at home, I can only speak to that." (Basically she is so scared and can't assure them, even for the rest of the semester, since trump does not take office until Jan., that they can safely go outside. She led them to believe they would only be safe in hiding, had to rush home and to school and no where else and to be afraid. This is a terrible message from a teacher. I compare it to the feel-good story I also heard on NPR, at the end of another newsreel. A black teacher in a predominantly or all-black class of elementary-school kids had a similar situation the day after the election. The black community faces different and even scarier threats in many cases and the kids came in the morning after the election scared. Instead of sinking to the level of fear she used her status as a role model to change the script.She had them do their daily affirmations, the same ones they always did, including affirmations of black pride and things they could do. The line that mentioned President Obama was faded out of the broadcast but when they mentioned the video of it ha already been viewed 4 million times it made you positive for positive energy and hopefulness winning the day. I personally feel betrayed by Obama, politically, when he endorsed Hillary and played the whole game of pretending to solve issues only to leave them out there to "challenge" later and try to make yourself ineffectively "necessary"  - the DNC technique.Like he said he would close Guantanamo sine the beginning, has reduced the population from 240 to 60, and according to one expert they played on NPR could close it easily if he just bucked some congressional action. But leaving it open has allowed Trump to say we will keep it open and "fill it with bad dudes" and this prompts a whole new range of speculative fear about where the bad dudes will come from, which they report on as if anyone can tell or guess and just throw out various scary scenarios. But I will always appreciate Obama and all of us who elected him - I was a state delegate for Colorado for him in '08 - for the symbol he will always be to people of the promise of America to all people. When we really start to live up to it these will be the qualities we value in all of our leaders, in whatever ways they made it possible for us to come together over previous division. That could be the very best measure of a President in America, such a diverse and fractured land.) She wondered, with her student's parents and co-workers, will he deport 11 million people? He said so in the campaign, and has backed off, now.. (The most recent news is that he says he estimates there are 2.3 million immigrants who have committed crimes for which he wants to deport them. Someone speculated the estimate is likely based on demographics reports from prisons but no one really knows.) She said she has an autistic brother and who is Trump to talk to someone like that, disrespectfully to mock their disability? (This is another example of media manipulation. There is no excuse for making fun of anyone, except evil stuff, and I'm not going to excuse Trump for offending everyone. But I am unaware of him having any policies that target people based on disability. He DOES have policies that target people based on immigration status. It's just not right to conflate the two subjects. I know it is Annalisa's story and this is how she feels. They both fall into the category of "How Trump is a Jerk." But there are policies about immigration we need to make sure they can't enact. There are no such policies, so far, against people with disabilities. It is just an example of the snowballing effect of fear. We worry about what upsets us and if we allow people to upset us more it just keeps getting worse. We need someone, and teachers and parents can be the ones to do this, to give us hope. When parents are feeling hopeless, the teacher, who often has more connections in the system, can be the ones to provide that hope. I was disappointed that Annalisa did not take the opportunity to be that kind of teacher but there is still time and even she had glimmers of hope, at the end.) She said she has been crying all day with ALL her parents. (I assume she means the ones she met with in conference. It just seems like if she met with other parents, of the fourth of the kids who were not Hispanic, they might not have been crying about it, but maybe she didn't see anyone who was not also upset. Or she is so upset for her "own" concerns and her "own" people she is not thinking of others, another problem with fear.) She said her own son was upset and said "You said he wouldn't win, Mommy" and that he was scared about people being deported. That was the end of the story. Like she didn't know what to tell him. (You have to feel sad and sympathy for her and everyone in this situation because it is wrong to make people feel this threat. And as a parent, or having ever been a kid, you have to feel a special sympathy for her for feeling like she has "lied" to her kid by being hopeful.The truth is, and we Berners and Greens all knew it, Hillary was lying to them all the time because she never had a chance. Bernie would have easily won and everyone could have been happy about that. As wikileaks reveal, Hillary is guilty of so many crimes her only hope would be to seize power and protect herself, like any other criminal who went way too far to turn back. And this is what is sad, to me, that people still don't realize this. They feel bad, or angry at other voters, other Americans,  but they never had a Chance with Hillary and should just direct their disappointment at her and discover how much Greener it is with the Greens. )

(As i was talking about this with my lover on this beautiful, warm 70-degree Colorado mid-November day  -thanks global warming - she talked about how even if he does not have policies that target disabled people, anyone who spoke like that is disrespectful and will be bad for people. I said two things in response, that like all evil government actions it will be up to us to stop him from implementing them, with activism and better politics with the Greens. And I said we would not have been able to stop World War 3 with Hillary because all the machinery and plans were in place in place for it and ready for her to Be the Machine, like Skynet. But we broke it instead  - that is why all the pro-war establishment supported her, to keep it  - and if we can keep them from taking over Trump, or continuing their agenda with anyone, we can finally end War for good and start World Peace. People are happy that Russia and China are now talking about working with America instead of fighting each other. A NPR correspondent in Africa said all the "stick-around" Tyrants who threaten human rights are rejoicing and congratulating Trump. She said they have been tired of the Obama-Clinton administration "hectoring" them and are glad they can get back to oppressing people without Uncle Sam looking over their shoulder. My question is, how much "hectoring" were they doing if the dictators managed to stick around? Aren't we America, with the greatest resources for destabilizing governments and the greatest military resources, by far, for destroying them? Don't we also have immense economic power, especially compared to Africa? Didn't Hillary assassinate Qaddafi because he was going to make a United African Central Bank and give the continent actual economic clout? It just does not seem true that Obama-Clinton were "hectoring" them much during their reign. I hope that all future presidents will live up to the ideal of America standing for human rights everywhere and actually be effective to make changes all around the world. The best way is to lead by example, not to force others. Anything you have to force others to do is wrong.)

(I also pointed out that there seems to be increasing evidence, as it seeps through the dense Troll-screen like coffee through grounds, that Hillary and Bill put Trump up to running, as a Stooge to ensure her victory. Maybe their plans feel trough or maybe she will still steal it and he is still playing the role. But if he really becomes president it seems like their plan backfired. The fact that they paid or persuaded Trump to run, trying to "lose" from the start but doing so by directly appealing to the worst elements in the Republican party which made him very popular in the primary. He realized the hatred for Hillary was so deep and broad she had no chance, or maybe he was pushed to turn on her by her attacks on him which became so personal. But at some point he actually started trying to win, near the end, I believe. He dropped the hateful rhetoric because he was no longer trying to drive his numbers down. And all he had to do was live down that he had already said. If this is true than he really never believed all the hateful stuff he said and she should really be to blame for scripting it, basically. The same dynamic applies to the trolls she plants as Trump or Jill supporters to discourage us and give us a bad name, including paying people to support her "protest" in our Jill groups and ban anyone who disagrees with them, even though ALL true Greens and Berners disagree with them. My facebook "resume" is that I was banned from Bernie Sanders Activists in September, from Bernie Sanders Dank Meme stash in October, from "both"major chaos groups and others in the same week -  just for pointing out their "no politics" ban was supporting the KKK by providing them cover and for showing up and resisting cyber-bullying in the others. I was banned from Jill Stein's Dank Meme Stash last week and at least some of my extensive content deleted, last week for challenging the "Protests"  and the same happened this week in Jill Stein Activists. I also noticed many of these groups changing their names and taking Jill out, making them more generic.)

(As I typed this section there was an episode of The Ropers in which Roper puts his arm around his neighbor, played by Jeffrey Tambor, and is badmouthing women. Jeffrey's character has a homophobic response. I thought it was "ironic", or a magical message, in this context thinking about how today Tambor won awards for his role in Transparent. The message, to me, is that people can change,especially if they were just playing a role.)

Story #5: Long Island (Disposable Or Necessary Heroes)  The next story was two best friend who were soldiers and one was supporting Hillary and one was supporting Trump. They answered, when asked why they like each other, that they disagreed on everything but would give their lives up for each other. The Trump supporter wore a Millennium Falcon T-shirt. He said he told his friend it would be fine, that he saw it coming, and the other said e did, too, but it was not okay with him. The reporter asked which candidate would be more likely to send them to war and tey both immediately said Hillary, with total certainty. (It sounded more like they knew, for sure,that she would start war than they were just afraid of higher odds. They would know, too, more than most people, since they are soldiers. I think they mentioned how her plan for a No-Fly Zone in Syria was just the way to start World War 3. The Trump supporter said he did not want to go to war, he had been more than enough. The Hillary supporter said he did not agree with Trump's isolationism.Then they said a Republican would mean more money for the military, which seems to be true, unless Trump really is His Own Man. They said that in 2008 there were 65,000 immigrants, who aren't citizens, so "illegal immigrant soldiers" if you insist on that language, in the army. Maybe being in the army technically makes people "un-illegal" but that seems a very evil system to have, with only that kind of "shortcut" or refuge. The two soldiers agreed that they had far more faith in these people to invest themselves in politics than natural-born Americans who take it all for granted. (This makes me think of how the Democrats have always wanted to control the block of votes who sympathize with people who suffer from our racist and classist immigration policy. The just have a carrot on a stick and they never even lower it for more than just a nibble, and always threaten the others will throw it away. If they could just grant citizenship to more people, at least people they already trust to be in the army, they could solve the problem and ease people's concerns step by step. But they don't want solutions, they only want to continue whatever tensions they can in order to exploit them for political gain, always promising and never delivering. They just want a political football and this election proved beyond any doubt that all they really do is lie and cheat,which is why most of us Berners went  Green and the rest will follow and bring the duped democrats with them, eventually.)

(I'm glad they talked about this and I am glad I am writing about it and have my lover, friend, to discuss it with, and weed, because I just came up with my best political idea since the idea to ask the question "What are the last three things you would make free?" which I came up with during the primaries. I will send this idea to Trump's campaign and hopefully he will use it, or maybe he would if someone else sent it to him. Here is the idea:)

(When Obama took office he had immense support,enthusiasm, and hence political capitol, which he used to create Obamacare. He had massive support from America but also had support from All over the world. It seemed like the Planet was celebrating the Hope and Promise of Obama in 2009. If he had used that capitol to fix immigration it would have made perfect sense -  at the best possible point in the relationship between America and the rest of the world, fix the actual way America relates to the rest of the world in the most important aspect of life - how and where people live, including how we move around. Our immigration priorities are basically to maintain racial preference  - it's an essentially racist system and at the heart of the racism of the whole country. We just need to open up and be more fair and friendly. People will always want to move from worse places to better ones and should be able to  - we have hundreds of thousands of people moving here for our awesome weed and freedom to buy, grow, and smoke it, freedoms we are still increasing as more states thankfully join the future. If "good" places are becoming overpopulated, the obvious solution is to help improve "bad " places so people don't have to move as much. But here is the idea,sorry for digression, but thanks, weed -  it is important,crucial to the Harmony of the new Era, the Golden, green Age.)

(Here is the idea to fix immigration, the start that Obama could have easily done in 2009 if he really cared instead of trying to monopolize on people's suffering. Just streamline the process for people to become citizens in the army. If we trust you in the army why wouldn't we trust you to vote and be able to pay taxes, to live out of the shadows? If we value employing veterans, why should anyone who serves have a citizenship status barrier to future employment? It's the kind of thing ANY leader could get consensus on and make happen. I don't even approve of the military -  I hope one day soon we can transform it into a giant rescue squad and never have to worry about wars again. But I support this idea, as long as we have a military have it be one solution to the immigration policy  - at least for these 65,000, a great start.And there is more)

(Since I am pacifist this is not my favorite idea, yet, and I want to expand it to other jobs. Maybe they could start with the army and then when the support grew and everyone saw the sense in this they could quickly expand it to other fields. My first thought, maybe due to similarity with the army, is the police. This is a perfect idea, to me - if an immigrant can be trusted to be a cop she or he can surely be trusted to be a citizen. Just let that be a path and you will have many more good-hearted people applying to be cops. This would also solve the problems of alack of diversity in most police forces. It would really be a cure-all kind of process. And of course my next thought was to do the same thing for Fireman. And then I think, naturally, why do people have to risk their lives to be citizens in only these three fields? Why not the medical professions, too, since we have rapidly increasing needs there and many people already work on those fields by may be prevented from advancement and more training by immigration status? And then I had my best idea of all - because of course, to me, we could give you citizenship for working any job, and that will be more accepted once some professions start this process. But the main one I feel brilliant about is politics. Say you are not a citizen but you can get enough people to vote for you to win an office, at any level of government. Isn't that also a sign you could be a citizen and be trusted? Wouldn't that encourage many more people to get involved in politics, as candidates and supporters, at the local level and then have a rising effect through all of government? Isn't this a great idea? It seems like the "worst" that would happen is we would evenutally remove bans that say only Natural-born citizens can be President, but we enough people were willing to do that just for Ted Cruz or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Anyway, I hope this is an idea that will catch on - you get citizenship if you can win an office  - and gets all of our country, and the whole world, more involved to make Democracy better than ever before. And I do think it would catch on until it eventually ended every one's "concerns" about immigration and we can just treat all people equally and just have open borders, for people, and good means of protecting everyone from any potential threats. It all comes with trusting each other more, all over  - that's what all of this is about. It is because these two friends trust each other so deeply that they can address these subjects in a respectful manner, which is the best way to open up to progress.)

They discussed the danger that Trump would have his finger on the Button and they gave an insightful insider's response. The Trump supporter pointed out that in the military they are all taught that it is their higher duty, higher than any Authority based upon Rank, torefuse any order they know to be immoral. He used this as an example to say that if Trump woke up mad at a country he could not just ask the officer who held the "nuclear football" to nuke them  - the officer could and should refuse. (My first basic response to this is that the order to disobey immoral orders does not seem to be universally applied or prioritized because it seems like people end up doing some awful things in war, but maybe the only explanation of that, if they are well-trained to be moral, is that sometimes immorality takes over a group like mass hysteria  -it is the horror of war, after all. But the interesting thing to me was the two different opinions of this the two presented and what that said about the culture they believed in, relative to their choice of candidate.) The Clinton supporter doubted and questioned: "Your counting on the moral character of all of these people, because if the officer says "no" he can dismiss him and order the next one to do it." The Trump supporter countered "Do you really think a 15-year general with kids and a family would want to blow up the world on a whim?" (To me this was a very basic difference: The Hillary supporter is basically accustomed to distrusting those who are in control, in power. He "wants" to fear the outcome of people not being trustworthy. In contrast the Trump supporter wants to trust the people in Charge. He hopes for that and goes with that hope. He wants to have faith in the outcome of people being trustworthy. It just speaks to how we conform to our environment, including our mental environment. People who oppose Hillary want the truth to get out, one way or another,and believe in our ability to handle it. People who support her are afraid of what we might find out but the real fear should be if we don't find out, if it kills us behind our backs.)

Then they concluded the segment. The final thought from the Clinton supporter was that if he, personally, was the one who Trump called in to say "Nuke So-and-so" he would assume Trump had better info and agree to it. (It was like he is so mired in the distrust of Hillary he does not even trust himself,or is afraid he can't trust himself, afraid of what would happen if his very trust proves to be untrue.) They both agreed it was all built on Trust, but one seemed to have some trust and the other seemed to be too low. The reporter's final thought was it was calming to see conflict addressed with each party respecting each other's humanity. This should not be exceptional,it should become our standard. We have to respect each other first before we can respectfully disagree and if we don't ten our disagreements will only lead to greater disrespect.)

Story # 6:  Kentucky (Sitting Ducks) Billy Webster sells Hallmark cards and his favorites are the Star Wars cards. He voted fro Hillary and was worried about his health insurance since he was recently diagnosed with diabetes. The reporter said to him "We all decided your health insurance last Tuesday" referring to the election outcome. (I thought this was particularly dishonest and manipulative,showing how the media is itself manipulated by the bias of those who control them. Of course we did not "decide" anything about health care when we voted, even if many took it and meant it as a mandate against Obamacare. It was a mandate against Many things, the bad things Hillary represents, but it was also NOT a mandate for some of the things they claim, or may claim, it was for. The best government will find the difference and do what is right for the people.) He said his health care was expensive and he only made $12,000 a year and could not afford a doctor but qualified for expanded medicare. He was ecstatic to know he had diabetes after a fainting spell like an out-of-body experience and that access to health care probably saved his life, now that he could teat it. The reporter summed up that Trump has never specified what he would replace obamacare WITH.  The she said Billy is not in danger, now, like others with heart conditions and other serious ailments. (This upset me, again, for showing media bias and fearmongering: Since she just said that no one knows what Trump will do about health care she is only spreading fear of the unknown. When looking at the unknown fearfully we can always come up with more things to fear.It just seemed irresponsible,just like saying to him that we all decided his health care when we don't know what we decided, in that field, and we didn't actually decide that any more than we checked an "I'm a bigot" box. It also reminds me of the Africa reporter I heard last night. After she talked about the Tyrants all being happy about Trump, as if he is to be thought of as a fellow Tyrant joining the club, the anchor did not ask about the Moderate or Democratic leaders opinions, generally, for contrast, but instead asked about the newly elected first female president of Africa. She said that she had an emotional, devastated response but then acknowledged that the president herself said no one knew anything about Trump's policy towards Africa. So what was she so worried about? Or what was she so hopeful of for a Clinton Reign? It seemed like it was more the emotion of wanting a woman president and just makes me wish even more that anyone who felt this way would have known about Jill Stein, instead.)

At the end Billy said if he did not have health coverage but needed help he would just go to the emergency room and let the taxpayers pick up the bill, eventually, because that is all you can do. And he said that like he was defying a sense of shame that people want to place on people in this situation. The reporter asked him if Trump might replace Obamacare with something better and he replied "Maybe  -I should just give the guy a chance." (there were glimmers of hope in all of these stories but this one was one of the few that seemed encouraged, instead of discouraged, by the reporting.)

Story #7: Times Square. The Next story was Balri Imani. Her introduction is that she feels this may be the last day she will be ale to wear the Hijaab head covering customary to many Muslims. She says that when she sees a red hat-  on the streets f NYC where she lives, she gets nervous. She followed this up by saying she reads it to see if it is a Parody Hat -  if it says "Make America Gay Again" she offers as an example. (The way she said this made me feel like it usually is, that most people she sees and is scared by are actually "on her side" making fun of Trump, that there are not That many Trump supporters, at least not wearing hats, at least not as many as those wearing the parody hats. I will admit I probably have presumptions about someone in an actual Trump hat, too, including that they may be racist -  but as I have met more Trump supporters at the end of this campaign and since I will have less and less of that prejudice about them because I see how little it is true and how there is hatefulness and spite - in different ways-  -in all of us. While some feel "protected" in their racism by a racist system and this should change, others feel protected to abuse people for their votes - votes Hillary also stole from us, I can never tire of repeating -  and they feel protected by the corrupt system THEY are protecting with these hateful actions - but that system needs to change and be abolished, too. And it will as the Democrats die off and become Greens and others. Concerning actual Trump supporters her story makes me feel like she is not so nervous about these folks that she can't get close enough to read their hat, or fears to even look in their direction, and that is at least better than it could be. Maybe if, once she saw that it WAS in fact a Trump hat, instead of letting fear take over, especially if the person has not done anything "hateful" besides wear a hat -  which is technically more "hatful" than "hateful" -  then maybe she could see it as a chance for outreach and communication? If fear takes over this won't happen. It seems like she is training herself to Run the Fear Program and Run Away if she ever sees a Trumper instead of engaging. And maybe this is self-preservation, personally. But we are talking about things we wear in order to identify with a group, like I will wear Nintendo-themed clothes or look like a hippie in various ways. I want to tell people I am a hippie and gamer, and if they have a problem with that I want to help them solve it. If someone wants to advertise that they are Muslim or Pro-Trump or Pro-Safety of Others with a Safety Pin, this should be respected. Also, we do these things because the idea they represent are important to us, we want those ideas to survive. It might feel dangerous to confront someone who disagrees. It might even be a threat to your well-being, but hopefully you will have more sign and warning of that, if so, than just Hat. Hopefully we can get to a point where we don't assume someone is hateful because of a hat. We should never forgive CERTAIN kinds of Hoods, KKK, because they ARE declaring hate, but on the other hand Hoodies should in NO way prejudice anyone against people. We should be willing to give people respect, or respectful distance, based upon their actual actions and demeanor instead of making assumptions and increasing prejudice. It was not an editorial piece, like this is, but I feel there is an opportunity to change minds. The reporters did ask other sources leading questions, to take them to one conclusion or another. It would have been very simple, and enlightening, for the reporter to simply ask Blaire if she felt like maybe she was prejudging people the same way she was afraid of being prejudged for her hijaab. This is the biblical principle, "Judge not Lest You Be Judged." If we actually live by this we can all work together and tease Judgment, and Prejudice, out of our culture.) She talked about how she "only ever saw single Trump" hats before but that after the election she saw a group of five men with Trump hats on. (At this point I am already suspicious. I believe that she is telling the truth about what happened but something trips my Spidey-Sense that these are not "real" Trump supporters, in NYC, all going on Hate-HayRides together with their matching hats on to "celebrate" Trump's victory) She said the men came up to her and yelled threatening and hateful things-  or I think she said that, I can't find my note of i, maybe she was just more afraid of them since they were all the sudden in  a group. She said she feared the Racists would feel Bolder to act out against people due to Trump winning. (I am NOT trying to diminish any hate crimes that really happen because racists feel empowered to express their hate to others, that is horrible and there is no excuse or reason for it. Trump looked at the camera on 60 Minutes the other night and said "Stop it." Meanwhile Bernie Sanders has urged "protesters" to stop and calm down. Meanwhile Hillary Clinton is still paying people to engage in these violent, unsafe, and inconvenient NON-protests. Protest is necessary to draw media attention to a problem the system is trying to ignore. In this case the worst parts of the system are in collusion with the media to "create protest" / distraction from what is really happening. This is the kind of person she is and this is the reason why I suspect that the worst of the hate crimes being committed now are actually by HER supporters putting on Trump hats and abusing people in groups -   whenever i hear about "group" attacks I see this angle: Because she is organized and is confident in her organization, as evidenced by her shout-out to her Internet trolls in "secret" groups on facebook -  like we can't tell who they are. Because I can tell who they are, because I know their tactics and what their posts look like: "some one help me debate my mom who says this - insert hill-troll quote" - and the posts about abuse that happened to someone else often look just like those kinds of posts. Also they do pay people to troll, we KNOW this from millions of interactions on the Internet. And we know they pay trolls to be abusive and destructive in the name of Trump to besmirch him. If Trump supporters really burned down that black church before the election and wrote "Trump" on it then that is about as awful an act f racism as anyone can commit. The only way it could be even worse than racism, like we didn't know there was such a thing possible before, is if it is fake racism from people who claim to know better, Hill-trolls in Trump hats. The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks hate crimes and reported that in the five days following the election there were 250 reports of hate crimes related to it. They said this was the same amount as we usually have occur in 3 months or so. I know the Brexit vote was followed by a reported 500% increase in hate crimes the following week. I am a math genius and all these numbers swirl around in my head and suggest things before I ever "crunch" them -  the same way I know Hillary stole over 20 million votes from Jill Stein, it is Obvious Math when you step back and look at it. But to get to the details, here: 250 acts in 5 days is a 1200% increase, based on the 250-per-3-month figure. There are a few ways we can interpret the comparison with England. One is that in England the Brexit vote was about leaving the EU and would have no real effect on immigration except between them and the Continent but the public was Sold the idea based on the false notion, appealing to their xenophobia, that it would kick out immigrants. So it was really a racially and nationalistically motivated vote. This is one reason the older generation and more rural people were for it and the youth and urban populations, more progressive, inclusive, and able to see through bullshit, opposed it. But when it took place there were people who voted for racist reasons, encouraged to think the "country" agreed with them, and that they wouldn't have to see the people they abused again, who then carried out racist acts. This DID happen in America, too, and that is awful. But let me use math to address the SCALE of it and see if you see how we are being manipulated. In America the vote was different - not Everyone voting for Trump did so for racist reasons, in fact only a small minority intended to fall into that category, though the majority is painted that way by the way the media tells the stories. We currently have between 125-250 hate crimes reported in America. ANY is too many. If the rate of these last days continued, however, we would have 3,000 in 3 months. I don't know how many hate crimes there are in England but they have far less people there. We had a vote that was not entirely racially motivated, only partially, and our rate of hate crimes went up 1200%. They had an almost entirely racially motivated vote and their hate crimes went up 500% -  which seemed like a lot until now. One thing I want to point out before finishing this cross-country comparison: I doubt that anyone could identify a Pro-Brexit voter and if anyone could, and directed negativity towards them, it would probably be in response to their own negativity, so no or very few hate crimes would have been reported against Brexiters by others, virtually all of the hate-crimes would be committed by emboldened Brexiters, besides the first hundred percent that I suppose are unrelated because they were "going to happen anyway"  - so the actual increase from Brexit is 4 times in addition to "normal." Likewise, it is 11 times more hate crimes than we "usually" have in America. But some of those hate crimes WERE directed at Trump supporters because, as Blaire illustrates in her story, you can tell them by their hats. NPR did a story about hate crimes by kids since the election. They said one boy in Florida was punched in the face "for"wearing a Trump hat. Then they reported a girl in California was harassed for wearing a headscarf. It seemed like they were being "fair" in mentioning one of "each kind" of incident  - though of course in principle the incidents are the same, someone being abused for clothes. But you just had the "instinct," or are trained to assume from the media, that there would be a lot more of the second incident. And kids can be cruel, especially in school or when encouraged by peer pressure that can become like mass hysteria - there was some audio of a supposed "Build The Wall" chant, for example, at what sounded like a pre-school cafeteria, however that happens. Sometimes even bad teachers instigate things like that, and sometimes even hill-trolls do it just to make someone else look bad without caring that it makes everyone feel bad, truthfully, and is evil. But I would like to believe that kids are just better than us, overall, and won't fall into this same divisive bullshit. The fact that the younger kids are the more united they are tells me this is the natural way and we only "learn" division between us as we grow up. If some of the Hate Crimes in America were by Hillary supporters against Trump supporters, as we know they surely were, why would we not assume it was half and half? I'm not suggesting it is,I'm asking why we think and assume things that we do. If it was then 11 times more, additional hate crimes are split between the two camps, Republican and Democrat, so that we have about a 550% percent increase in hate crimes on each side. That seems to fit with what happened in Brexit and suggest that in any tense election the emotions come out in hate afterwords. I could even suggest that there were more hate crimes against Trump folks than against Hillary folks. Why does that offend your basic instincts and emotions? Maybe because they have been trained by the media to presume the opposite. Or maybe because your instinct is right. Does it tell you things, like mine does to me, like "But Trump supporters would be less likely to report hate crimes, at least AS 'hate crimes', for them to be counted?" Does it tell you things like "Well, there just IS a lot more racism and hate from the right to the left than from the left to the right?" Mine does, too-  I feel that way. Let us, for the sake of argument, give in to those feelings. Let's admit that SOME hate crimes were directed against Trump folks but lets put it as a low number, say 10% -  because we "all know" it is the Trump people out there being hateful. So their rate of hate crimes went up about 10 times after the election.They were so happy their guy won they decided to  go out and spew hate at people ten times as much as they usually do and say even  worse things than usual, by some of the accounts I have seen. There ARE Evil, hateful, racist and KKK people here in America. They live here. Many of them are in positions of Power. It IS entirely possible that we have enough actively hateful racists in America that if they were full force, all out, all the time, we could continue this rate of hate crimes and have 1,000 every month. Assuming each racist hates on someone at least once a day, just average out groups of them and days they can't manage to be hurtful to anyone,and say there are 333 active racists in America. The truth is there are many more -  if they each only did one really racist, openly hateful thing a month there would need to be 30 times that many to make the number, or about 100,000 hardcore racists in our country. I don't put it past America to have that many, it is totally believable. And Shameful and the only thing we can do is change our culture so no one feels motivated to be that way. But what if we really only have 50,000 super-racists in America? What if they couldn't all find someone to be racist to this week at all? Where do the extra racists come from if there aren't enough Trump racists to make 250 hate crimes in 5 days, the 20-50 being against Trump supporters lets say  -if maybe only 50 or 100 or 150 REAL Trump-supporting racists could have found the time to get out and hate people in the middle of the happiness? What if 150, 100, or 50 of these were staged by Hillary-supporters, some paid and all stupid? The less of these are staged the Better, for assessing the racism of Racism of America - we really are really racist and it does come out that often. Maybe England has a much better system of identifying and reporting hate crimes, too, and this doesn't even start to describe how bad our problems are. But I do have this feeling that some stories, including this one, are staged. Because happy people don't do angry and mean things and Trump fans are overwhelmingly happy that "they" won. Again, I would never dismiss any of the hate, reported and unreported, because that is wrong. I just have to point out a few problems with the righteousness of Hillary-supporters claiming they are standing against hate.)

(You might not know this but literally thousands, tens of thousands, of hill-trolls have been sending messages of hate to people who supported Jill Stein - Ive seen accounts of hundred of these, personally, and have received one myself. They tell people to kill themselves and the most awful things you can imagine. Like other cyber-bullying it does not get reported as hate crimes but it certainly shows the hatred that is being used to motivate these people. This has been my esperience that makes me sure that many of the hate crimes are actually by hill-trolls posing as Trump folks,because they pose as Jill folks to troll and upset and discourage us, ALL the time, and have done it for months. )

(Now I'm going to say something that makes us all very "white"for focusing on any of this. 250 hate crimes  - racially or otherwise intolerance-motivated abuse and expressions - in 3 months is our "average" that gets reported? First of all, we need a much better reporting system for the public to report on each other, but we also desperately need an actual method to report on hate crimes by the police because their activities  - the bad ones -  of racially motivated arrests and abuse FAR exceed 250 incidents a month. Some particularly corrupt departments probably hit that weekly in populated areas. Some cops probably do individually and ALL hate crimes need to be cut out of the fabric of our society. think about it - the Outburst of racism and hate following the election,awful as any of it is,is actually just Business as usual for the Bad Cops out there, or not even a drop in the bucket by comparison,and THAT is a problem that no one is stopping, unless WE do)

Blaire concluded by saying that  she decided to wear hats instead of hijaab and that she says she will feel safe. She said her most conservative Muslim family and friends are advocating wearing a hat, people she would never think of condoning that, and talked about how she was already used to it in certain circumstances, like riding an airplane. (I think it is a shame that people feel like they have to change who hey are, what they believe or how they express themselves due to "fear." And we NEED to remove the causes of those fears, hatred from bigoted people, from our culture. BUT the only way to do that is to educate people and if we can just feel safe around each other we can approach one another, converse, and talk,and work things out. I think it is sad that NPR leaves this story here - best to just wear a hat and stay safe, don't face fear, don't be too brave, don't speak out -  but I got the opposite message from a story on social media. It was a girl in a hijaab who shared her selfie with a racist Trumper and her story that went with it,which I will share if I can as my eyes well with tears. She said she saw him at the anti-trump rally, that he was protesting For Trump, against the protest. He was wearing a mustache like he rode a bike and leather with patches to match. Their picture is sweet with her in her hijaab and him beautiful in his way, too, but looking like quite an American pair. She said she walked up and talked with him and that he did express some views of intolerance, but they talked and hugged and smiled for a picture together. This is the HOPE we can have and if we go for it, and Trust each other, instead of reacting to fear, we can fix all the problems and avoid ALL the things we are afraid might happen, by working together and overcoming differences of opinions and perspectives, and finding common ground is the land we are all on. Are we asking the Native Americans if we are allowed here? Then why should anyone ask us? I met four cool people at the thrift store last time I went, Steve and another man in the same place inside, and Reno and Dorothy,a homeless couple, outside. Steve was a local, had lived in that exact area all his life, told me about cows who had been dissected with lasers and other alien stories from the '50s, told me about how when he was a kid Sheridan was just a one-lane dirt road, and we talked about politics and felt like the New America where we talk with each other -  we had very similar perspective but i was aware of how people could overhear us and I wanted to make sure they heard the hope,and assurance that working together we would not let anything bad happen. we talked a while and I gave him my number, I hope we can talk more, he was cool.He told me about his bad ass girlfriend when he was young, who was Sioux. Then I saw a man with a Water Protector shirt and said hi to him and we talked a moment and he was AWESOME  - he finished the chat with the phrase "The Beginning is Near!" and was really cool. I truly feel like talking, in public and online, but openly, without censorship and repression, will save our democracy and protect every one's rights and the environment.)

(There was already news that Trump has "no plans" to challenge Gay Marriage, and i never had any fear that he would - we passed that thresh hold and are Better for it and everyone will eventually come around. It makes me wish we could have been more patient and faithful for this because I feel like letting the DNC "press the issue" too much in 2000 is what cost us the election and started the second and final Iraq war. But that is what they do,repress us while claiming they are the only liberation. It's just a sham, but at least we have finally seen through it. Makes it all the more pathetic to see them try to continue to sell us DNC in the media and online. So when I see people share the story about keeping Gay Marriage I make the sarcastic comment "Oh no, please somebody tell me what to be afraid of NOW!")

Blaire finished her story by saying she had positive interactions since then, too - that some people made eye contact and smiled. (I always do this if the person I am passing seems willing and I believe in it, it's magic.) She mentioned the lady at the store when she bought the hats being kind to her and mentioned her again when the reporter asked her if she would be safe. (she sounded like she was concerned, but almost not a genuine concern,like, 'let me sound afraid to remind you to be afraid, because I 'care'") She said yes. Then the final words she had was "Despite what the polls say, more people are good than are bigoted." ( As compared with Story #1, why is she allowed to say this in her own words? If they wanted to report it, sum it up for her, like they did for the two cops in story one, whom they claimed were "both shocked by Trumps comments and hot-headedness but thought he was the best option." - how many ways could what they really said be interpreted? What she says at the end, suggesting that the polls say a majority of Americans are bigots, is just wrong. There was never a poll that asked "Are You a Bigot?" and over half the people said yes. She is referring to polls that show support for Trump. Why not clean this up and summarize it for her instead of broadcasting that idea, that all Trumpers are racist? Because that IS the media message they want out there - and they are the ones who make - and skew - the polls in the first place! If you don't know they always just hung up o 3rd party voters so they would not be counted. Actually reporting on us would have let everyone know they had a real 3rd option, could vote against Both Parties and actually elect Jill. If this had happened, instead of almost winning the election and having most of our votes stolen by Hillary  - and no one seeming to care - we would have won in an undeniable landslide. Oh well. We had the DNC and media against us, selling the lie that Hillary was the only option against bigotry. We lacked the faith or awareness to go for the REAL No Bigotry candidate and instead of Secret Bigotry we ended up with Bigotry Maybe.)

(When NPR was interviewing local representative and Berner Joe Salazar this morning, who I assume is part of the Salazar political family, he said a LOT of good things about Bernie and critical of the DNC. But when asked at the end if he would join or work with Trump's administration, since the call has been made to all Americans, he said not because of the bigotry. The reporter reminded him that Trump told the people to "Stop it" -  referring to hate crime actions -  and Joe said it did not matter, that you can't "walk back" rhetoric like that. Ever. Well, if you can't walk that back, how can Hillary walk back calling black people superpredators? She can't, and NEVER can, y that standard. And how can Bernie ever walk back saying that we should support Hillary? He can't -  he would have won if he had gone third party and taken Jill's offer to lead the Greens, replacing her, or if he even endorsed Jill over Hillary it would have helped ensure our victory and that our votes would actually be counted. I believe we have to give people a chance to change, especially if they are willing to change what they say. It seems like Trump is playing people and must be smarter than he let himself appear when he was always spewing bigoted bullshit -  very few people, altogether, are that stupid but he locked up their votes first. It's not really possible to act smarter than you are, fro long. We know he is smart enough not to do some of the things he said,lets just hope he is smart enough or will learn enough to not do any of it, besides some good stuff like Wall Street regulation and ending corruption, if he is still talking about tat.  If everyone is willing i propose we All "Walk Back" to the start and proceed, together, from there.)

Story #8: The South (Could Be Anywhere  -forgot location) They called up the Chisolm brothers whom they have reported on before and say that they used to "call in and crow about Trump" to the local radio, or talk radio. When he answers the phone he asks her if she is "safe up there in NYC walking around?" ( This is kind of odd, he seems gleeful but also teasing, as if he expects people to be overcelebrating in a dangerous way, or being hateful to"certain" people. But now I think he meant was it safe to walk around in New York with all the Liberals there, if they were violently protesting. I don't know if he said it or her, that people were "not too happy" about the result -  I think it was him speculating about the liberals in New York all being mad.This would explain his gleeful tone, like he knew the liberals who were "protesting" were hypocrites about democracy and also kind of glad they were upset that they lost, but even happier that he lived in the South where people were not acting out or felt that way, predominantly, as evidenced by his next comment.) He said "we feel pretty safe here in the South, wearing our Trump hats, lots of hi fives all around. He said they were celebrating, not gloating, and that the difference is that gloating is being happy that someone else lost and is sad. He said they were happy they won and it didn't go past that, then joked "remember when we rioted when Obama won?" then laughed and said that they were upset but not THIS upset, not upset like the "protesters" are, and that no one punched anyone. (he may be looking back with rose-tinted glasses because there was negativity expressed after Obama won, but there was not organized and paid for protest by Mitt Romney or John McCain and was not massive and dangerous, violent demonstration in the street or arson in the forests.) The other brother said his hope is that everyone will be included  - all citizens, he said-  and that the economy will go well. She asks him if he is still mad at Hillary and he says "No- well, wouldn't you be mad with people calling you racists and xenophobes?" She asks him what he is happy about. He says the removal of regulations, the go-ahead for pipelines. (Of course I personally hope that either Trumpor the public will disappoint these hopes as long as it is to protect the environment.) And he said e was excited that we have the opportunity to do this now. She then said "you still sound mad!" and he said he is not mad, just excited and she said "That's your 'excitement'?"(it seemed like this response, questioning his tone and mood over the phone, said more about her than it did about him, in the story, like she just could not resist continuing to mildly troll him  - "are you SURE you aren't mad?You STILL aren't mad?" which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of irritation.) They concluded by saying they did not see Trump as a savior. (This reminds me of the middle of the primaries when Bernie said he was not a savior. This is the best way for any leader to be, to realise their leadership is at the will of the people and works best the more of us are involved.)

Story #8: Immigration Law office -  uncertain of city (Cirinists) This story was presented with the idea that "there are two types of worries, those that are based on a threat and those based on a feeling." The story was intended to show how these two categories were handled by an office of immigration lawyers. (Sadly, they were treating everything like actual threats when it seemed like the main threat was that they had been trolled into being scared.) They said the whole office was women, had been unanimously cheering for Clinton for two years, were talking of a "matriarchy" and were in total shock and disbelief that she lost. (this was one of the only things in this whole show that really upset me besides the bias of reporters. The word "matriarchy" i like but now how it was used here. I've always believed we need more women rulers but the main reason I am for it is because women seem disposed to being better pacifists. There was a NPR story honoring the first woman to serve in Congress, I believe her name was Rankin. It said she was a folk hero with people writing songs and plays about her. She voted against World War one since she was a pacifist and was not re-elected but then was re-elected just in time to vote against entering World War 2, as well. I just never want a woman president who tries to prove her qualification by being more willing to go to war than a man, that's just not what I'm looking for, sorry if that makes me biased or sexist. I don't want men to be warmongers, either, if it makes any difference that I think this is best for all of us and just believe women will be better at leading us there. But it seemed like their support of a "matriarchy" was just to have a woman, any woman, in office no matter how evil she might be, secretly, they would just prefer not to care. If they had spent the two years this involved but with an outside voice to their echo chamber they surely could have found out about Jill Stein and supported her even better because she is easier to support since she actually believes what she says and says even better things. They seemed to be so upset that their discernment was effected and they could not d their jobs, the whole office.) They said clients would call in and ask about seeking asylum in Canada, if they needed to. The lawyers asked why and the reply was that the person came from a country that accepted Syrian refugees. The lawyer said "that's just insane..... but on the other hand it makes sense." (You can either blame Trump for such an "insane" immigration policy that this does make sense, or you can realize that there IS no policy, yet, and it does not help anyone to consider if what is "insane" might be the real truth, especially when they rely on you for legal help! They just seemed like they didn't know anything useful anymore now that their world had been turned upside down. I hope they could at least have the confidence to tell the very most insane questions that they were just being scared for no reason) They said they had never even considered that Trump could win or that his ideas could change the laws. They mentioned DACA which is renewed every two years and worried that it would not be renewed - but no one mentioned any evidence of this. (It seems like a popular program which Trump could easily soften the impression that he is anti-immigrant by quickly indicating he will support it.) She said she does not think they will take it away, but does fear that they won't renew it when it comes back up. The way the lady phrased it was this: "I don't sugar-coat it - I tell them I think they will take it away." (You could say this is responsible, that this is preparing her clients for the worst that they could experience. But one problem is that she has no idea what Will happen so why focus on the negative? And the problem is even worse when, in an attempt to take off the Sugar-coating she strips away the truth, too  - she Just Said she does not think they will take it away, just not renew it, to the reporter, and in the next breath recalls that when the people actually affected by it call her, she says they WILL take it away, turning what was once a vague and uncertain fear of the future into a more immediate and uncertain fear, but with certainty leaning towards fear. This is the whole problem with putting trust in people who then falter to fear, their worst instincts, instead of living up to the trust you place in them by offering some kind of hope.) They said for people calling concerned about Green cards they tell them that ICE is already aware of them, that there should be no change or worries for them - then say "I hope" and "no sign of change." (once again they almost convey a positive message to the people who should be the easiest to reassure, then end up planting doubt in their minds as well by saying they "hope" there will be no change and mentioning that, without ANY indication, they still suspect there COULD be a change coming. Not only is it irresponsible for them to tell their clients this,causing them to Panic, it is irresponsible of NPR to promote this idea, this fearmongering, like yelling fire in a theater, without editorializing into the broadcast, as they do in other places in this show, that there is no fire in the theater, or any actual threat to people's immigration status besides statements of intention, and even those barely focus on this issue that I have heard about.)

They said they were all panicing. In the last five years they could help people - save people from arrest, but that they did not know if they could any more and they would not know until the arrests started happening. (Again, they are describing their panic and how it causes them to send a message to people that no one will be ale to help them and they certainly are not helping people, themselves, as well as they could if they calmed down and thought instead of continuing to "work" in freak-out mode.) They said it would be different i each city. (This reminds me of the news story today that the LA police department said they will continue their policy, from the 70's, of not doing immigration officer's job for them, meaning they will not be used a branch for immigration enforcement This points out two things that can be cause for relief in the Hispanic community and anxiety in the black community. If departments choose how they prioritize enforcement this is a good thing because it allows good departments to resist and effectively nullify any bad policies. On the other hand, when we finally get some good policies to reform police work, will some departments just ignore them, too? Instead of worrying about this and where the power lies I choose to focus on good things and outcomes being possible no matter what happened. I like to believe that eventually all people, cops and politicians, too, will eventually just be motivated the most by doing what is right and good for everyone.) The ladies said that it was making them feel very anxious and that they knew it was not even their lives that were directly affected by any changes that may come. (This really gets to the heart of the problem with "trust" in this whole situation. The clients are trusting them to be able to think clearly and help them out of their concerns and problems. They should be able to be Less emotional about it, more realistic, since it is NOT their life that any changes will effect. Instead, they all have driven themselves into group hysteria. because they became so emotionally invested with certain ideas they related to Hillary being elected. They know it is not their life but they are letting themselves get so upset they can't even do their job for the people whose lives it does affect, whom they claim tocare about. And then the media uses the story to frighten even more people with their fear and hsyteria.) They said they can usually figure it out, to get answers for clients if they just ask each other, but no one knew how to navigate these unfamilar waters. (Even though they had nothing but "the unknown"to "specifically" fear -  then they said the most astounding thing that to me shows the depths of stupidity possible from giving in to unknown fears.) They said they had all this paperwork for clients they could not file because they don't know what will happen. (I could not believe this - how can they just say "we are scared!" and throw up their hands and stop doing their jobs? You NEVER know "what will happen" but the immediate truth, today and for at least the next few months, is that no laws have changed. If they weren't sitting on the paperwork they might get some help for people before changes, if any, take place. Either way they are being the ones who are now threatening people's immigration status, the very ones who are supposed to help them, because delays could have bad consequences for the people but they are too wrapped up in their own fears and emotions to care about anyone but themselves. This is the outcome of such a trolly campaign. Hillary never was raelly going to help anyone but just because they are disappointed by the one they relied on does not mean they need to disappoint the people who rely on them. She lied to them that she would help and now she has turned them into liars, where they were helpers before.) They joked that they HOPE Trump will focus on the wall, first, and not get around to legal changes until later. (This shows the sickening short-sidedness of "liberalism" versus progressive ideas that aim to help everyone. A wall would keep more people from coming, cause those people more suffering, but they can joke about that because it is not "their" people, the ones who are already here who they are trying to help. Of course it affects everyone but people get too caught up in protecting "their own" as they see it, especially when they are afraid. This also reminded me of another disturbing feature of this story. It seemed like every time they read a client's email someone in the background chuckled at the end. You can say this is just nerves, the fact that the people felt tension over the fear and panic and a chuckle is one way to relieve tension. But to me it seemed symbolic of the culture of the campaign. They claimed to be here to help but when actually presented with our concerns they laughed them off. It's like Hillary herself, laughing during the debates whenever Trump mentioned death, war, and atrocities against people. She just laughed because it made her uncomfortable to be called out for being responsible for supporting these things. What these lawyers were doing was not nearly as bad but was the same kind of thing with the same kind of flaw: They are in a position to help, claiming to help, and the link in the chain that people need to seek help. Yet they are so caught up in their own disillusionment, fr themselves, that they have become an obstacle in the way of help instead of a stepping stone. This is the problem of vanity, of raising yourself up too high above the Muck, down here where all of us are needed to help each other. If you are dry, with your head above water, you can be a stepping stone for others,But if you raise yourself up to height you become an obstacle to every one's progress along the chain.)

They closed by saying that once there were new rules, there would be anew strategy. (I wanted to reach through the radio and slap them and say in the meantime, stick with the old strategy and get back to work if you care more about the clients than your own negative emotions! muster the positive emotion of hope and determination and use the better thoughts that come with those to actually help people, maybe even discover something new!) They said at the end that it was a painful time for lawyers. (I don't feel like crying for them, personally, and wish they had used their law savvy to help Bernie or Jill so none of us would be crying or scared, now.)

Story #10: NPR Office ($Hill Central) They closed the show with a story from their Producer and his phone conversation with his mom after the election. (I will address it more at the end but this was one example of Media Bias and giving more weight so some stories and sides than "the other" (I would say "others" but more on that, later, too.) - it's the closing, final thought of the show but also the Producer of the show -  this both makes him seem more of an Authority, as a presumably trusted news source, unbiased, and at the same time reveals, all too clearly, that the producer of the show has an obvious, very strong bias and literally "becomes" the news by making a segment of his conversation with his mom. It's just so Favoritism, and so obvious yet they act like, as just another story, they don't expect anyone to pick up on what an obvious proof of bias it is.) His name is Emmanuel and he was the last person in the office and called is mom in Ohio. (I just realized it now but this also means, as the last one, that no one else had the bright idea to record his conversation, on their own, as a piece of journalism, but that he himself chose to share it and maybe intended to from the start. This is fine, he deserves to tell his story, too, and it has some of the most interesting "twists" in it, but it shows what kind of bias the media has, that they are now incapable, at least on this channel  - and most of them  - of possibly being unbiased or even presenting a fair view if they try really hard for the sake of integrity.) They were the only black family in their neighborhood in Toledo growing up. She said her neighbors often express their anti-immigrant views to her, maybe assuming she is not an immigrant. (She has a very thick British accent so maybe it is more that these people don't think that the laws they favor would apply to "certain" immigrants, from countries like England. In a way this is probably true because the immigration laws are all about preferential treatment. But of course she is concerned with realities that can effect everyone by systematic changes, including keeping her Green Card updated, every few years, I think,on the H1B visa.) She said Trump specifically denounced the kind of visa she uses, the H1B, and says she feels unwanted and unappreciated for it. He said they both discussed getting citizenship and six months ago he applied but she did not. She said she had a very nasty experience in the Kroger parking lot. She said she was parking next to a guy and had to wait for him to get his kids in the car and he yelled abuse at her for speeding. (I know the feeling of pulling into a space and stopping suddenly to notice someone is standing there and i always feel bad even if I am not going fast because it is startling - I'm afraid she may not have realized she made this innocent mistake and did not appreciate that the man, with kids, could be legitimately upset and think she was driving too fast.) She said she got out, or came closer in her car and he yelled "don't touch my car and that he was calling the police. At this point her daughter tells her to just go, just leave it, and "Look at his face, he is a racist  -why talk with him, he is a white man with two kids and if the police had come they would take his side. You don't know, mommy, bu I grew up here and I know." The mom concluded from this that it was "time for their American experience to end. Time to move back to England. (first I want to say that it is all too often true that cops are racist and will take racial preference in sides of disputes -  if it ever happens it is too much and it probably happens more than people realize, is what I mean. In a sense the kid was right. And that is something we should not tolerate and accept, we should change it. It should not be that some people do not feel like they can get equal justice from the police. But it was "safer" to take the kid's advice and avoid escalating the situation, especially when it was over that kind of misunderstanding or mistake. It could be true but I thought it was presumptuous, and shows how fear narrows our focus to more things to be afraid of, that she assumed by his angry face, and the fact that they were black and he was white, that he was a racist. It makes it seem like any time someone has a problem with someone with another race that makes them angry it is because they are a racist. If he felt like they had almost ran over his kid he was probably scared, upset, and angry and was yelling because he was angry. Racism did not have to figure into it at all, she might have yelled as much at him if the roles had been reversed. This just shows how when we are scared we can jump to even scarier conclusions. She didn't mention that he used any racial slurs, just that he was white and angry. IN this way it seemed like she as looking for the reason, for the event that proved the worst was true, that this country would never accept everyone, and decided that this was her final proof of it. )

His response was that he did not want to leave and did not want to live so far apart from her. "Where will we go?" he asked. "Is Britain any better?" (He invoked Brexit and how anti-immigrant, or white nationalist, sentiment was rising there, too, and that they could face discrimination there as well  -though i always had the impression England was famously less racist against black people than America but I probably am just Romanticizing based on the experience of artists and musicians who could have a more charmed life and for most people it is similar oppression as in America.) She replied that it was "all about the Devil you know." She said she does not understand the US and she mentioned fears he has not heard in a long time. "Why live here if you don't have to?" she asked. (It makes an even stronger point to this, at the end, to say "for the people who don't have a choice" - but I wanted to say it now.) She said she was happy to be a "symbolic black" - I think that is what she said (which I assume means to be  bridge between cultures and set positive examples) -  but that she did not feel valued enough by this society to want to make it better, to rise to the challenge, immense as it was. This contrasted in Emmanuel's mind with how she raised them, with the ideal that if they were the only ones  - the only black people in the community -  they should want to be better to make it easier for the others who came after them. She then sums up that the people get the government they deserve, that they vote for, and that she has decided the only response is to look out for herself. (That was how the program ended, which seemed pretty bleak. She had given up on her whole American Experiment, and not just for herself but gave up any belief in it at all, in the whole thing. Because Trump was elected and her neighbors were always xenophobic and finally started talking about it. She gave up that ideal of being  a good example to make it easier for those who can't even be where she is to get there and be accepted. She gave up on all of that throughout this campaign, before the election, when she felt she could not speak up for herself and other immigrants to her neighbors, to change their minds and maybe even have a ripple effect and change some of the culture of Ohio. It's too bad that they concluded this way but also too bad that the producer of the show was not able to find, for his mom or for his segment, a positive twist to put on it. But can we be surprised when they want to sell us Doom and Gloom with no alternative?

Epilogue: This is probably the longest Gagablog I've ever written and I'm sorry. I spent all day on this, off and on, and some last night, but I have a few general things to conclude with. When they started the story they said they were presenting 'both" sides so "some things that are said will probably upset you." IN writing this I noticed very few things that the Trump supporters said that could be upsetting, unless the image of them in their hats is scary enough and hi fiving makes it worse. Or if you object to that one guy saying it was a miracle, the will of God  - I can understand how that could be upsetting on some levels but we generally accept it from Sports and entertainment stars when they credit "The Good Lord" with their success. There were however a number of things that were upsetting from the Clinton supporters, mostly just because they were spreading fear. Doing this intentionally is just trolling. It is what we have come to expect from all mainstream media but NPR has become so obvious about it, about trolling in this and other ways, when it used to be decent, that it is especially disappointing. Look at the agenda  in how they pieced this show together. Six Trump supporters were represented in three and a half stories: two cops, a soldier, his friend and two talk-show calling supporters. Janelle and her mom, Emmanuel and his mom, Billy, Blaire, Her mom (slightly), Analisa and her parents and students by her report, a soldier, and a single-minded room full of lawyers were all represented, or given voice, for Hillary. That is between nine and over a dozen people, depending on how you count them, represented over six and a half stories, or almost twice as much. And they claim to present "both sides".

The worst of all of this is that there are at least three sides. They still never mention Jill Stein or Gary Johnson. They didn't interview anyone who suggested anything outside of this false "either-or" choice. And that could be the most disturbing thing about how they try to play "both" sides against each other is the way out ands all of it and they just keep us distracted so we don't see it

Democracy is built on Freedom of Speech and the Press at it's very core. If we don't have that, i doesn't work. Freedom of the press does not mean just the freedom to print and televise whatever you want, although i guess it can include that and rely on the public demand for Truth to make you tell it. It DOES mean that the Press is Free from Influence, a concept we probably can barely imagine, now. But we need people who are dedicated to spreading the truth, the news, instead of people who just want to be in the charade of the news media. luckily, this campaign has identified thousands of these people, online, who just want to get the truth out there. We have, in our spare time, become the real media -  just as we are doing the job of the FBI, courts, and vote-counters in our spare time, as best as we can manage it. We are ready to replace all these hill-shills when we can them  - their shelf life has already expired and they just need a way out.

It's like they always misspelled "unelectable" as "inevitable" to describe Clinton and hypnotized themselves into it. How can we ever trust them again when we spent all this time telling them we knew they were lying? What is almost as remarkable tome as the media's blindness to breaking our trust is our own blindness to the fact that it truly is broken, like people hanging on to a bad relationship. We need to accept it, we can't trust them and they need to know we aren't coming back. This goes for Bernie and the whole DNC as well  - its over for that Party but we will welcome and accept him when he comes back to us. I just can't understand how we decided we were 100% that we could not trust the media, during the whole campaign, and more and more people agreed and saw why, then the day of the election everyone seems to trust that same media for the "results" -   and since they are still trying to decide whether or not we legalized smoking weed in businesses in Colorado  -which is apparently a close vote we are winning, they had to report that they are still counting thousands of votes in Colorado. I guess the easiest way to explain it is just that people are all ready for it to be over and are altogether so exhausted from fighting to get the truth out there that they are just willing to accept any "result"and be over with it  - part of the whole media plan, I'm sure, to just wear us out with emotion about it. I hope this does not work, this time, that we actually enjoy being awake and wake back up, even if there is not an election around the corner. What backfired on the media for all their ability to black out news of Standing Rock and Jill stein, the result of that is we built a loose but strengthening network of activists and information-sharers that will ultimately supplant the media and even government roles for "taking care of each other" because we are getting so much better at it, in our spare time, than they ever were, being paid for it and paid off, too.

They have perverted and corrupted our media and politics to serve their own interests and it is high time we took them back for the people, for the Common Good and Collective interest, the way we always intended.

Thanks for reading and sharing this, be your own media and Go Green! I will talk about Gaga more when she breaks from this evil network she is in so she starts to shine again  - they are stealing her light for their lies! It's wasted in these fruitless efforts.