“Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear.”
Donald J. Trump, 2016, in an interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.
Thus begins
Woodward’s book, Fear—Trump in the White
House.
Well, I’m afraid.
It’s the doctor’s office’s fault. While waiting, I picked up
the Times Magazine and read this:
“The
reality was that the United States in
2017 was tethered to the words and
actions of an emotionally, overwrought, mercurial and unpredictable leader.
“Some
of the Presidents staff joined to purposefully block some of what they believed
were the president’s most dangerous
impulses.” --Bob Woodward
Doesn’t that scare you?
Stay away from doctor’s
offices.
I’m joking, you know that,
and I know little about politics and usually
shy away from talking about it. But that Trump is so sure that he will win the
2020 election scares me.
People will believe him.
Even Michael Moore predicts
that the President will win (?) a second term. (The President didn’t win the
first by popular vote.)
When someone states a
belief emphatically, loudly and often, people usually believe them—it is human
nature. And Trump doesn’t lose. There will be so much Trumping that we won’t
even know that other candidates are in the running.
Woodward says that people
don’t trust the popular media.
But people trust Social
Media.
Social Media is a
popularity contest.
People want high numbers of
followers, comments, etc. so they go for what gets high ratings. I heard that
some bloggers search for subjects to rant about, because ranting gets reader’s
blood boiling, and that gets followers and responses.
But
wait a minute.
Twitter, in my circles, is
positive. The blogs I read, and the Youtube talks inspire and teach.
I read bloggers who travel,
they visit fabulous places and write of
it, they talk about raising kids, they talk about keeping a Coyote for a pet, they talk about living in a place that
stirs their soul.
Is this to tame?
But, people are kind. They
are nice. I went into town yesterday, and
the clerks were raving about the wonderful weather we have been having, and the
fall colors, and telling me to enjoy my day.
If we look
out there, we often see gruesomeness life, we feel that the world has one foot
in the grave and the other on a banana peel. (The world has feet.)
What if we
look closer?
We see
that people are kind. They do help
their fellow man. They want what’s best for the earth. They try to warn people that catastrophes are coming. They help
them find higher ground. As we look around, what do we see? Kind, loving
people.
If we took away some of the
fear, what would happen?
Does it
take battling, and screaming and pushing and shoving for change to occur, or can
it happen another way?
Here is one of the most astounding stories I ever
heard on the radio.
I was driving home to
Oregon from San Jose where my daughter used to live and found a radio station out of San Francisco that told happy news. I couldn’t believe it.
Here was the story: A teacher
saw a kid do a kind deed in the schoolyard,
and she wrote on a piece of paper, “Good
for you,” and gave it to the kid. Somehow the word got around, and soon kids were doing positive acts to get that note. She said a piece of paper couldn’t blow
across the schoolyard without someone
running after it to pick it up. The pieces of paper morphed into Tee-shirts
where all the kids wanted one.
Imagine something like that
spreading!
P.S. I AM SO TICKLED! I got the proofs for my book The Frog's Song today! I love the cover. I will show it to you when I can. Now I'm supposed to read over the copy to see if there are any spaces where they ought not to be, or words jammed together. I trust that they have proof read the manuscript, so it's clean.
