When Rock Bottom Isn't.

Every time we think we have hit rock bottom in the current political situation, someone in President  Trump's orbit takes out a more powerful jackhammer.  This week we have the President and voices from the right attacking Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a decorated war veteran and Ukraine expert for going to Congress to testify to the call that shows President Trump asked the Ukrainian President to investigate Vice-President Joe Biden and his son.  Vindman was listening to the call and reports say that when the so-called transcript was being created Vindman wanted to add words the President deleted. He was ignored.  Col Vindman showed real concerns that the President was working against the interests of the United States during this call.  So of course the President's allies attack him.

On Fox on the Laura Inghram show, John Yoo, the author of the famed torture memo and a person seen by many as an apologist for war crimes suggested the Vindman was acting as a spy for Russia?  Ukraine?   Sean Duffy, former reality star and Congress person and current Trump cultist who is inexplicably was hired by CNN as a political commentator, suggested that Vindman might be working for Ukrainian and not US interests.  Let me tell you about Vindman.

Vindman's family fled Ukraine, then part the former Soviet Union in the 80s.  His Jewish family was leaving persecution and the dictatorship that had little hope for a country of pure hope.  He lost his mother at an early age and was raised in Brighton Beach surrounded by other Ukrainian and Russian ex-pats.  He grew to love the United States and joined the military, along with his twin brother, after college.  He found himself in Iraq where he was wounded by an IED and earned a Purple Heart.  Often decorated he moved up the ranks and served on the National Security Council and in embassies in Russian and Ukraine.  His expertise on the region cannot be challenged and his patriotism should not.  Especially by people like President Trump, who paid for a doctor's note to stay out of Vietnam, joking about his youth paying for sex as his own Vietnam.  Nor the likes of John Yoo, a man banned from countries having been tried in-absentia for war crimes.  And certainly not Sean Duffy who is only relevant to anyone for being a nonsensical character on a reality program when Vindman was defending the country. 

We have seen the Trump administration set a tone that is both destructive and hurtful as people have attacked decorated military veterans, life-long members of state department and of course members of Congress.  But questioning Vindman's loyalty and patriotism to cover for a President who admitted out loud and in front of people in the act being investigated and Vindman is confirming it with facts is a such a disgusting strategy that all who continue to promote it must be shunned by polite society.  While I don't expect Fox to do anything, CNN should fire Sean Duffy and no show should book a member of Congress who repeats this nonsense.  Voters and reporters should ask everyone of Trump's supporters if they feel a decorated war veteran is a spy or traitor and if not they should stand up and call it for what it is, as Rep. Lynn Cheney did yesterday. 

We cannot allow true patriots to be denigrated by people who aren't worthy of carrying Vindman's bloody fatigues.  We are a better country.  

As A New Person Emerges, I Too Am Changed

Two years ago I posted this on my Facebook page and reminded of it today:

 So when I got to work in my box was a book of poetry written by Noah. It is called "Valedictorian of Detention" and it chronicles some of his inner-most thoughts from high school to college. There are some stunning lines my favorite from a poem "Musings of the Damned"

"Life is like a puzzle that forms no clear picture and half the pieces are missing."

This poem is a deep dive into his frustrations with anxiety and those that tried to help. A look from the other side backward. I am proud and amazed and a little ashamed that I didn't see deeper into this at the time. I am glad he found a voice. At times angry but the last poem entitled "Back from the brink" ends with

 "I am uranium, I am energy, Fire and knlife and heat and wonderous ecstasy. I AM ALIVE
And I wouldn't trade if for anything."

I am so proud of this man.....my son....(now saving money to help pay for what I hope will be an MFA).

When I read this I thought I had insight into my child.  What I missed was that my child was struggling with identity.  This summer the child known as Noah changed.  Well, not changed but found a true nature.  The child who was Noah told us that he was now N and gender non-binary.  His pronoun is THEY.  So they told me that it was the first time they felt complete and whole.

For decades I have spoken about the idea the gender is a social construct, I have always taught that our two-gender culture norm is simply opposed to reality.  Gender, different from biological sex, has always been something that is far more expansive than the masculine and feminine images that the Western World adopted in the last 1500 years or so.  In some places like among Native Americans and parts of the Indian Sub-Continent, non-binary people were seen as valued and in some classes closer to the divine.  Some times they were seen as negative, a violation of religious law, but even in those situation they were all recognized as existing and part of the world.  At times, even when confronting a religious law, people found that humanity in individuals who didn't fit into a simplified cultural definition of gender.  Now as religious traditions evolve and reform, gender differences are welcomed and more and more embraced by many in the mainstream faith and more and more by greater culture.  People are open about their own expression and as a culture we are learning to embrace the wide diversity that is human sexuality and gender in the human condition.

But here I am, thinking.  I am proud of N for finding an authentic identity.  I am proud of N for standing up for what they truly feel.  But I won't tell you it isn't hard.  There were reasons we chose the names he had carried.  Noah for their maternal grandfather and middle name Francis for my dad.  Giving those up feels weird to me.  I use to call N "the boy".  On occasion I would say Booooyyyyy like Flava Flav.  N couldn't match it and say Bweeeeeeeee  which led to my gmail address.  Bweesdad.  However I realize this is not about me.  N is an adult and as a parent of an adult my job is to love my child and to help N negotiate a world with advice but to not stand in the way of them growing into themselves.  I don't want to look at this intellectually, but that has always been my safe space when confronted with an issue that I face.  I can and have made the argument that gender is not static and cultural defined, that is not an issue.  However, as a parent, expectations of who your child will be are very emotional.  But I realize that my major goal was to have a child that knows who they are, is happy with who they are, and sees a future that they can build for themselves.  I thin what N is telling me is that he is getting there.  I will stand where N needs me to stand with him to help as much or as little as they need.  So know my own education begins on how to be that parent.  I will stumble, I will use the name Noah on occasion, I will refer to they as THE BOY in a moment of thoughtlessness, I will suggest things that are not helpful.  But I will never give up my love for the child I helped raise and for the adult N will be.  I am happy to celebrate with my child the newly discovered person N is.  Remind me when I stumble.

Abandoning Our Allies

The Kurds are a large ethnic group whose origins are in northwest Iran and whose historical region includes northern Iraq and Syria along with Iran.  Since the bronze age the Kurdish people have developed a distinct culture.  For centuries they have been living under the rule of others.  After World War I, when Winston Churchill and the British government carved up the old Ottoman Empire there was an attempt to develop a Kurdistan for the Kurds.  However the treaty would not be signed by some so the Kurds were left out of getting autonomy.  This had led to oppression and genocide in the course of their history in the countries that they were living.  I first learned about the Kurds in the 1990s when I ran into a Kurdish protest at the Turkish embassy in Amsterdam.  Until that time they were just another ethnic group in the tapestry of the southwest Asia.  Over the next decades the Kurds played an important role in the global war on terror and the changing face of the Middle East.  Most recently the Kurds have been US allies in Syria in the fight against ISIS.  More than 10,000 Kurds have lost their lives in efforts to contain ISIS terrorists in Syria and were on the vanguard in various battles that President Trump has over and over again taken credit for in the stories he tells the American people.  The Kurds were beginning to get a similar autonomous region in Syria much to the concern of Turkey.  The US forces in Syria have held back Turkey who wants to move into Syria and set up a security zone in northern Syria and move out the Kurds.  That was until this week.  President Trump, after what appears to be consultation with President Erdogan of Turkey has decided to move out US forces.  This morning we are seeing the results.  Turkey is bombing Kurdish areas in Syria and have amassed tanks at the border.  Russia is also on the move to help clear out the area.  This also plays into the hand of Putin in Russia. 

It appears the lack of intelligence and his fragile ego has led the President to make foreign policy decisions around the world.  We saw it in North Korea where he got played because Kim Jong Un flattered him.  We see it with Russia who appears to simply make fun of Trump there while pretending to be his friend.  We are seeing it with Turkey, who apparently has seduced Trump to allow a dictator to engage in genocide.  As Turkey begins to its attempt to eliminate the Kurds from the border every one of those deaths is on the head of President Trump.  A President who is abandoning our allies in favor of autocrats who play him like a fiddle.  It is disgusting at best and frightening at worst.  In the next few months we will see the result of Trump's lack of knowledge and concern for the United States standing in the world.  This while he is calling on foreign governments to gin up claims against his political opponent here.  He appears to want to be in the club of dictators around the world.  Is it possible that this is his hazing?  You may not think the Kurds are important.  You may not know anything about them.  But this morning they are under fire and our President is responsible, if we do nothing, so are we.  

You Added a Word. Narrator voice: No He Didn't.

In August a whistle blower in the American intelligence community sent a report to the Inspector General of his division about a phone call between the President of the United States and a foreign leader.  The IG followed procedure and along the way the White House blocked the information about the problematic issues from being sent to Congress, which is in violation of the law.  Good reporting made it known and after some attempts to keep it quiet the White House released not only the whistle blower's report to the IG but a summary of the phone call.  We now know what the troubling aspects of the call were and why looking at a bigger picture in US policy in relation to Ukraine might be troubling.  However, it appears that the Trump supporting pundit class and members of Congress must think that gaslighting will really help the petroleum industry because they are on television for the last few days constantly lying like they are getting paid to do it.  It is remarkable, this isn't the kind of lying we are used to from pundits and elected officials.  This isn't just a distortion of the truth or looking from a different perspective.  These were straight up lying.  Many said this was simply hearsay which should have no value.  It does since it has been corroborated.  They said that the hearsay law was changed recently, it wasn't.  Kevin McCarthy, the highest Republican in Congress, when read the words of the summary of the call were read to him said the Scott Pelly added a word.  Others have said that following the whistle blower law is treason and a dangerous precedent.  These lies are simply made up nonsense so I have questions. 

1.  If what the President was doing is so normal and legal why all the lies?
2.  Why is there so much effort to keep the information from Congress? 
3.  Why is a personal lawyer of the President doing foreign policy? 

One answer appears to be an attempt by the President and his team to get dirt on Joe Biden in connection with his son's role in a Ukrainian energy company.  But the focus seems to also be to confirm a widely debunked conspiracy theory that it was Ukrainian and not Russian operatives who hacked the DNC server during the 2016 election and did so to benefit the election of Hillary Clinton. 

I continue to be amazed by the Republican party who continues to carry water for a clearly corrupt President, even now as we see possible impeachable offenses in relation to foreign policy and American intelligence.  Where are the leaders in the party?  Senator Chuck Grassley did come out to stand with the whistle blower law and demanded protection of whoever he or she is, because the White House and others are calling for the name to be released and calling him or her a spy, a deep-state actor, or worse. 

If you are a Trump supporter, I have to ask, what can the President do that violates our values and laws that would make you speak out?  When has he crossed the line if at all?  Should he be held responsible for any of that?  It seems like people are willing to go on TV and in print simply trying to create a different reality..  Is that the world you want to live in?  j