Thank you, Jay. I, too, am convinced that America is moving towards a head-on collision with reality, a crash-and-burn disaster. My plan to move to France was realized; what wasn't considered was the strong pull our grandchildren would have on my wife. We're back in Trump Country, Umatilla County, Oregon. Helping our daughter open a business, enrolling grandchildren in martial arts, and seeing our daughter win 100% custody were the rewards for our move back from France. But. The collapse of America is like that dust storm drought driving the Joad family in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Where does this Ramser family go when it hits Pendleton? A quick escape could be to Albania. The process of applying for a D-7 visa to Portugal takes months in planning. So far, I am the only one in our group who sees the collapse coming. My plan to move to Europe failed because I could not read how deep a maternal instinct is. I wonder if others are experiencing a similar pickle?
I hear you, Dean. Julia and I are almost alone among those we know in doing what we have. Aside from most people not being personally constituted to make such changes in their lives, there is the pull of family -- children, grandchildren, aging parents. The effort to move, to flee -- to emigrate to another country, legally or not -- is one of profound dislocation if one isn't temperamentally suited. It's hard work, requiring great patience and fortitude, qualities the United States used to admire in those who distressed their lives to come here. You're right about the D-7 visa to Portugal. It is no quick solution. As I wrote earlier, we worked toward if for a year and a half. I've learned about many other countries along the way, including, FYI, Panama, where the process of achieving residence is one of the quickest.
During What's-His-Name's first term, I said I didn't think he'd go at the end of that term, that I could imagine him barricading himself in the now-gilded Oval Office, that probably only a military coup would save us. I was wrong about that. That was, however, just the first step, his mistake then surrounding himself with people who believed in America and served as somewhat effective guardrails. I did not foresee anyone possibly casting a vote for him a second time. Too many did, and this time, though they are fanatics and worse, the people whispering in his ears since What's-His-Name's re-assumption of office took that four-year hiatus to plan and execute. There are, I last read, some 60,000 people, some citizens, many here because they, too, believed in a dream, in what can only be described as the filthy hell-holes they are: concentration camps. American citizens have been shot and killed in our streets. Thousands upon thousands of books have been banned from libraries. SNAP and Medicaid benefits denied. Entire federal agencies have been gutted, and regulations that once gave us cleaner air and water and removed barriers to voting and sought to keep us safe even from ourselves have been ended with the dark strokes of a Sharpie. There are good and willing courts seeking to uphold justice, even courageous lawyers willing to fight against the wrong, of which there is altogether too too much. But there are too many fights to resolve over the next three months, and 6 justices on the Supreme Court are more then ready to end them. No one is looking out for Americans, least of all those who cast their votes for What's-His-Name. It's too late to assign blame, which is no solution anyway, certainly not at this point.
I will turn 74 the day before Election Day. I don't so much worry about myself as I do for my son. He is the sole reason I'm still here. I cannot bear the thought of saying goodbye to him. He's all I have. So, yes, Dean, I share that pickle. And I don't like pickles.
"So, yes, Dean, I share that pickle. And I don't like pickles."
You articulate clearly how much corruption of what was we have already accommodated ourselves too in living everyday lives amidst it all. But for the writer in me, the above is my favorite. :)
If we can recall that that unnameable man was convicted of some 34 felonies and his lawyer Blanche was one of his attorneys, can we now realize that the unnameable is president and the attorney is US Attorney General?
The horror! the Horror! as Conrad said in _The Heart of Darkness_!
"convicted of some 34 felonies and his lawyer Blanche was one of his attorneys, can we now realize that the unnameable is president and the attorney is US Attorney General?"
We begin now to understand in more present terms how reality must have become surreality in the tyrannies we once only read about.
The world has made its own mind up about what's going in the US. New security pacts that don't include the US are springing up. A China think tank published recently a paper with the gleeful headline of "Thank Trump". And I read this today in the FT: "I was startled recently to hear an Asian money manager say that she increasingly thought of Trump’s America as an emerging market. When I challenged her, she pointed to sudden and arbitrary changes in policy, a fear that foreign investors may be discriminated against and the deep involvement of the president’s family and friends in business. All of this, she suggested, might make foreign investors warier of holding US assets".
Jeffrey, your point is so on point. People who imagine investors, national and individual, as rational actors responding to prospects for profit and loss imagine what is described in the FT. On the hand, we have the similarly present "irrational exuberance," of Alan Greenspan coinage, of investors in the American market who respond like yo-yos on a daily basis to Trump's constant declarations and reversals regarding Iran cease fires and mother-of-all-war threats. And still US markets keep climbing, as if the direction the U.S. is headed could possibly suggest an economy for long-term investment success.
Thank you, Jay. I, too, am convinced that America is moving towards a head-on collision with reality, a crash-and-burn disaster. My plan to move to France was realized; what wasn't considered was the strong pull our grandchildren would have on my wife. We're back in Trump Country, Umatilla County, Oregon. Helping our daughter open a business, enrolling grandchildren in martial arts, and seeing our daughter win 100% custody were the rewards for our move back from France. But. The collapse of America is like that dust storm drought driving the Joad family in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Where does this Ramser family go when it hits Pendleton? A quick escape could be to Albania. The process of applying for a D-7 visa to Portugal takes months in planning. So far, I am the only one in our group who sees the collapse coming. My plan to move to Europe failed because I could not read how deep a maternal instinct is. I wonder if others are experiencing a similar pickle?
I hear you, Dean. Julia and I are almost alone among those we know in doing what we have. Aside from most people not being personally constituted to make such changes in their lives, there is the pull of family -- children, grandchildren, aging parents. The effort to move, to flee -- to emigrate to another country, legally or not -- is one of profound dislocation if one isn't temperamentally suited. It's hard work, requiring great patience and fortitude, qualities the United States used to admire in those who distressed their lives to come here. You're right about the D-7 visa to Portugal. It is no quick solution. As I wrote earlier, we worked toward if for a year and a half. I've learned about many other countries along the way, including, FYI, Panama, where the process of achieving residence is one of the quickest.
Thank you, Jay. I'll check out Panama.
During What's-His-Name's first term, I said I didn't think he'd go at the end of that term, that I could imagine him barricading himself in the now-gilded Oval Office, that probably only a military coup would save us. I was wrong about that. That was, however, just the first step, his mistake then surrounding himself with people who believed in America and served as somewhat effective guardrails. I did not foresee anyone possibly casting a vote for him a second time. Too many did, and this time, though they are fanatics and worse, the people whispering in his ears since What's-His-Name's re-assumption of office took that four-year hiatus to plan and execute. There are, I last read, some 60,000 people, some citizens, many here because they, too, believed in a dream, in what can only be described as the filthy hell-holes they are: concentration camps. American citizens have been shot and killed in our streets. Thousands upon thousands of books have been banned from libraries. SNAP and Medicaid benefits denied. Entire federal agencies have been gutted, and regulations that once gave us cleaner air and water and removed barriers to voting and sought to keep us safe even from ourselves have been ended with the dark strokes of a Sharpie. There are good and willing courts seeking to uphold justice, even courageous lawyers willing to fight against the wrong, of which there is altogether too too much. But there are too many fights to resolve over the next three months, and 6 justices on the Supreme Court are more then ready to end them. No one is looking out for Americans, least of all those who cast their votes for What's-His-Name. It's too late to assign blame, which is no solution anyway, certainly not at this point.
I will turn 74 the day before Election Day. I don't so much worry about myself as I do for my son. He is the sole reason I'm still here. I cannot bear the thought of saying goodbye to him. He's all I have. So, yes, Dean, I share that pickle. And I don't like pickles.
"So, yes, Dean, I share that pickle. And I don't like pickles."
You articulate clearly how much corruption of what was we have already accommodated ourselves too in living everyday lives amidst it all. But for the writer in me, the above is my favorite. :)
Thank you, Jay.
If we can recall that that unnameable man was convicted of some 34 felonies and his lawyer Blanche was one of his attorneys, can we now realize that the unnameable is president and the attorney is US Attorney General?
The horror! the Horror! as Conrad said in _The Heart of Darkness_!
"convicted of some 34 felonies and his lawyer Blanche was one of his attorneys, can we now realize that the unnameable is president and the attorney is US Attorney General?"
We begin now to understand in more present terms how reality must have become surreality in the tyrannies we once only read about.
Those news pieces from 1933 are devastating.
Thank you, Jay, for laying it out so clearly.
Aren't they ever, Holly? History doesn't just rhyme -- it does it with a bullhorn if we only listen for it.
Well said! Now if we can just hear that damn horn!
The world has made its own mind up about what's going in the US. New security pacts that don't include the US are springing up. A China think tank published recently a paper with the gleeful headline of "Thank Trump". And I read this today in the FT: "I was startled recently to hear an Asian money manager say that she increasingly thought of Trump’s America as an emerging market. When I challenged her, she pointed to sudden and arbitrary changes in policy, a fear that foreign investors may be discriminated against and the deep involvement of the president’s family and friends in business. All of this, she suggested, might make foreign investors warier of holding US assets".
Jeffrey, your point is so on point. People who imagine investors, national and individual, as rational actors responding to prospects for profit and loss imagine what is described in the FT. On the hand, we have the similarly present "irrational exuberance," of Alan Greenspan coinage, of investors in the American market who respond like yo-yos on a daily basis to Trump's constant declarations and reversals regarding Iran cease fires and mother-of-all-war threats. And still US markets keep climbing, as if the direction the U.S. is headed could possibly suggest an economy for long-term investment success.