. Timothy Mellon is a billionaire businessman, major political donor, and the anonymous donor who gifted $130 million to the U.S. government to help pay troops during a shutdown. The two are linked through Timothy's father, Paul Mellon, who was Bunny Mellon's second husband and Timothy's father.
Here’s what I can’t stay silent about in this forum that has my name on it: the blindness and approval of so many Americans in supporting a man who is the epitome of evil. I'm good at reading people, so I should be able to Understand how people can ignore that the man they voted for loves murderer dictators; hates democracy, punishes free speech, and foments hatred towards his political critics and half the US population. How can people look the other way when their countrymen and women are kidnapped in the night, disappeared from their loved ones, and tortured in prisons. I cannot understand people condoning those events which they must know he ordered.
I thought I could help us heal here by steering our conversations toward healing—toward finding peace within ourselves despite this Continual unraveling of our democracy.
I still know that self-care, love, and forgiveness are important paths, that we need hope and a dream of peace to keep going.
But silence about the shock and outrage I feel only makes me feel worse. So in addition to finding a measure of peace and hope every single day in my own way, of being with those I love, of finding forgiveness for those whose choices I abhor, and for the gift of walking among the trees, I still have to speak out and bear witness to the debravity of this man and his minions and what they are doing in the name of hatred and greed to our Country.
John Pavlovitz captures what I feel: that even in heartbreak and exhaustion, hope lives in our outrage and compassion. That hope reminds me I’m alive, awake, and still capable of love. So if you two are balancing outrage and love On a daily basis, I’m right there with you.
And I know that this period of darkness will end.
Through it all, I hold fast to hope. I believe we’ll endure and emerge into an age of greater love and wisdom. From this darkness, something new and beautiful will be born.
@lovendures @deetoo @bluebelle @Lynnventura @cc21 @dannyboy @seaholly @tesseract @sealion @Caroline @unkp @Andy
Earlier this year, to give myself a visual to focus on that would keep my thoughts positive, I created this graphic and it has been my computer desktop ever since. It is pretty much full screen so I never thought about posting it anywhere. Today I made it smaller, hopefully not too small—it should print about the size of a business card. On screen it appears to have retained the crispness the larger graphic has, at least when I tried placing it in Word. In any case, if you like it and find it helpful, you should be able to download it and print. Digital doesn't always print well, and I had to reduce it quite a bit, but hopefully it will be crisp on screen and print well too.
Blessings❤️ Tesseract
@jeanne-mayell Here’s a little update on MAGA. This past week we had a long anticipated reunion with my brother and sister in law who are Triple Trumpers from the South. All went well. We never discussed politics or elected officials, but we did talk about some pertinent topics.
When I approached my sister in law about the state of our country, she replied that they no longer watch the news and they don’t talk about what’s happening. I couldn’t believe that at first as they have watched Fox News for decades. Then the day the East Wing was demolished, I asked my sister in law how she felt about that. She didn’t believe it had happened until I showed her an aerial photo showing the complete demolition of the building. She was shocked. She asked what they were going to put in its place and I told her about the ballroom (forever known as the Epstein ballroom in my mind.) She didn’t have words.
Later on during our visit, healthcare came up and she mentioned that they were scared of having universal health insurance like they have in England. Instead of getting into an argument, I pointed out that the United States ranks at the bottom of developed nations for healthcare and that the countries with the top ranked health care had universal healthcare. She had no idea.
We also talked about our worries for our children and grandchildren, not knowing what kind of world they will inherit and we cried. My brother and sister in law no long watch the news, but they are searching out reliable news sources online, like Reuters and the Associated Press. They recognize like we do that the legacy media can not be trusted.
Before our visit was over, my sister in law said she was going to work on ways their church could help people who will be losing SNAP benefits and help the local food bank. And I’m going to do the same.
There are cracks in MAGA, my friends, and there are ways to reconnect with one another in love and compassion.
@tesseract and @bluebelle, I want to click "like” Because I love what you wrote. And Earth angel I love what you wrote too and everyone here.
because I love what you wrote. And Earth angel I love what you wrote too and everyone here.
But the “ like” button Has decided it’s going to work in a new way right now.
If you click like it, registers your name and kicks off the last one. So if you wanna know who likes your post, you have to keep checking back in each time you’ll see new names there. We are always dealing with one glitch or another in this site, most of them you never even see although I know what they are.
We are a low budget site, with one wonderful guy named Dave Who has three very young boys, which she juggles caring for a while, fixing people’s websites. He is the only one who knows how to fix things here. And eventually, you’ll get around to fixing this light button.
It’s always a struggle, isn’t it… balancing good and evil in the world and grappling w the anger and rage within. I suppose one cannot exist without the other bc we are imperfect humans. Those who strive for inner peace, -calm, -growth, -tenacity, -love, and -acceptance are constantly confronted w opposite and adversarial people and situations and stemming from our own emotions and experiences.
I always told my high school students that life is a roller coaster and we must enjoy the thrill and endure the nausea. In life, we often or sometimes make the worst decisions. Bc that’s what life is—good and horrible. We’re in the thick of it now.
I’ve disagreed—not proudly—in the past w Maria Shriver’s belief that we must sit down w those who vote for truly evil people and to never stop trying to reach understanding. And I know this practice is valid and important and also how she grew up, daily dinner table debates. I also realize it’s an act of love, esp w family, to endure the contrary views but as Jeanne said, we’re at a terrifying turning point. I’ve tried to be present, but it’s very difficult for me to be in the presence of his voters’ darkness.
I accept this is my reaction and my individual need to find ways to protect myself in their presence. Ties have been severed already w many of my cousins (by them) and I can feel their disdain for me… I have 30 first cousins, at one time all close and loving vibes but now some really dislike me and my progressive views.
I choose to accept that I release those with whom connection isn’t available. I care about them from a distance and hope that my dual messages that I share on social media—joys and sorrows, hurts and support, worries and sighs of relief—portray everyone’s duality and, maybe, helps them also to find the beauty and light in the darkness within. This is my prayer.
One way we can help our community right now is to ask a restaurant with a outdoor power outlet to host a community fridge.
People cut off from snap or who are working unpaid can drive by anonymously and pick up donated food and essentials by other restaurants and neighbors in the area. East village has been doing something similar since the Covid crisis, and it's a great way to keep peace, dignity, and stability in our local neighborhoods.
What would each of us do if we had the power to do it, and if we thought we could get away with it? And also, if we could suppress our own sense of shame and remorse (or worse, if we had none)?
Unfortunately for civil society, really bad people exist. On a spiritual level, we may call them young souls or unevolved or whatever, but in the crassest of terms they are bad people. We all know them. The really cruel kids at school who made fun of the weakest and most vulnerable. The boss that pushes you to the brink of a nervous breakdown, and seems to enjoy it. The abusive parent, or sibling, or spouse. And we know who they are not just by their actions, but because we can feel their emptiness, as if their heart chakra area is completely vacant. They feel creepy and soulless.
In the U.S. right now the bad people have been empowered, and they are gleefully running amok. There are good people who are fighting them, and neutral people who probably just want things to return to normal without having to do much about that.
How does this play itself out? I don't know at this point, although I have said on this forum that I think it gets worse, but it's so bad now we may be at the bottom. I don't know anymore. It's so hard to know when everyday is just an assault on anyone's sense of what's right and wrong.
Anyway, my point is, bad people exist, and they suck, and they ruin it for the rest of us.
@lynn T-Y. I am always uplifted by your posts because they are so true. You reflect the whole of reality. This most recent post reminds of John Steinbeck's famous 1941 New Year's Day letter to a friend (most recently excerpted and reposted by Brain Pickings in 2017, when Trump became president the first time)
As Hitler was storming across Europe, he wrote:
Speaking of the happy new year, I wonder if any year ever had less chance of being happy. It’s as though the whole race were indulging in a kind of species introversion — as though we looked inward on our neuroses. And the thing we see isn’t very pretty… So we go into this happy new year, knowing that our species has learned nothing, can, as a race, learn nothing — that the experience of ten thousand years has made no impression on the instincts of the million years that preceded.
Not that I have lost any hope. All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn’t that the evil thing wins — it never will — but that it doesn’t die. I don’t know why we should expect it to. It seems fairly obvious that two sides of a mirror are required before one has a mirror, that two forces are necessary in man before he is man. I asked [the influential microbiologist] Paul de Kruif once if he would like to cure all disease and he said yes. Then I suggested that the man he loved and wanted to cure was a product of all his filth and disease and meanness, his hunger and cruelty. Cure those and you would have not man but an entirely new species you wouldn’t recognize and probably wouldn’t like.
BTW, Steinbeck, using the same logic that we have used here that you can only cage a free people for so long, he predicted the Nazi regime, which was far more clever and efficient than the clowns running America right now, would ultimately fail:
It is interesting to watch the German efficiency, which, from the logic of the machine is efficient but which (I suspect) from the mechanics of the human species is suicidal. Certainly man thrives best (or has at least) in a state of semi-anarchy. Then he has been strong, inventive, reliant, moving. But cage him with rules, feed him and make him healthy and I think he will die as surely as a caged wolf dies. I should not be surprised to see a cared for, thought for, planned for nation disintegrate, while a ragged, hungry, lustful nation survived. Surely no great all-encompassing plan has ever succeeded.
Posted by @bluebelle:
There are cracks in MAGA, my friends, and there are ways to reconnect with one another in love and compassion.
@bluebelle, your post gave me hope and brought me to tears. The blinders are slowly being lifted from people's eyes, if only we give each other the respect, space and compassion to allow that to happen.