Don't Be My Grandma

I was looking for a picture of my mom to post for mother’s day and found a facebook post I wrote last mother’s day. It was about standing up for victims. So, I’ll honor her memory this mother’s day by doing just that.

I’ve written a lot on this blog about my childhood abuse. And it says a lot about who we are as a society that that’s not the norm, but instead is seen as “oversharing” or “being vulnerable”. I hate those fucking words. I tell the truth, because it helps me heal to tell my real story and hopefully it gives other people some comfort. I want readers to know they’re not alone. And it’s okay to be honest about the shit that happened to you that wasn’t okay.

And the idea that that line of thought is the exception rather than the rule is crazy to me. We are an Instagram world…fake as fuck needing filters to try to make people jealous of a life that we don’t actually lead. No one is as perfect as their Insta would have you believe.

And what’s the net of that? We look at other people’s seemingly perfect lives and feel even more shitty about ourselves than we already did. And I don’t know about you, but this pandemic has fucking undone me. I don’t need more things added to my list of why I should feel like shit.

So, instead of doomscrolling Insta today, I’ll write this shit out and feel a little better. Maybe. That’s one of the things that I’ve hated about Covid. It’s taken away writing as my primary way to get myself to better mental states during tough times.

There is no way to write through what has happened over the last year and end on a positive note. It was an unparalleled trauma where every day was worse than the last. And that’s still true. The “it’s just one day/it’ll get better” strategy doesn’t work when every single fucking day is a nightmare worse than the day before. But, I’ll get more into that later.

First, I want to tell my mom’s story.

Margie passed away more than 10 years ago. On her deathbed we had a heart to heart. She apologized. We both cried. It was about the only time we ever dropped the super Christian “I’m fine” bullshit that I was forced to live through growing up and were able to be real.

Thing is, at the time, I didn’t actually understand what she was apologizing for. She said that she should have divorced my dad. And said that her biggest regret was not standing up to him and seeing how that affected her kids.

It wasn’t until later that year that I was made aware of the childhood abuse I’d gone through. I’d blocked everything out. And only in looking back did I realize that’s what my mom was apologizing for. She knew the abuse was going on and did not speak out or try to save her kids.

My grandma’s abuse of my dad when he was a kid was known. Every type of abuse imaginable. And yet my parents let her babysit for me while they were off saving the souls of other people’s kids at Young Life.

So, we have evil in my abusive grandma and evil in my dad letting that family abuse continue. But, then we have my mom being complicit in the abuse, which is evil as well.

When we see evil. When we see injustice. When we see people being harmed. We have to call that shit out or it just continues and more people suffer. As soon as I was made aware of my childhood abuse, I cut my dad out of my life. I left zero chance of him hurting my kids the way his mom hurt me.

There’s a Conor Oberst line that haunts me, “Scream if you want, no one can hear you.” There is no way in hell I was going to let that be how my kids grew up as well. As a kid, I’m sure I did scream out. But, quickly learned that there was no point. I shut down emotion completely just to survive and it wasn’t until I started going to therapy 10ish years ago that I was able to emote.

I was emotionless and voiceless as a kid, but now I have the ability to speak up and have realized that applying words to my emotions and speaking truth into them is a powerful tool. And I will keep fucking screaming every damn day of my life when I see injustice and bullshit, because I know how hard things have been for me mentally my whole life. I will speak truth to power and call out evil every fucking time. I owe that to my fellow victims. I would not wish the hell that it is to live with my broken soul and mind on anyone. Every fucking day is a battle.

But, I will always keep fighting. In fact, today I’d had it. I was fucking done. The number of different issues facing our country that all hit me right in the trauma was too much. I shouldn’t be tired, but I was emotionally done for. I went back to bed. And started listing all the stuff I have to be pissed about. And just wanted to go full fetal position and nap for hours.

But, I squashed those thoughts of powerlessness and decided to hit the blog to fight back.

And it took just a few sentences to take the power back. To remind myself that I am so fucking strong and have been through so god damned much. This is make or break time for our country and I’m not about to fucking roll over and watch idly by as my kids’ future gets fucked by liars and con men.

Let me rewind one more time. Yesterday was VE Day. Victory in Europe day…when the allied forces accepted the surrender of the evil Nazi regime.

My grandpa told me the story of what it was like to live in Norway during WWII. The Germans occupied Norway. German soldiers took over and lived at the family farm in Meberg, Norway.

Can you fucking imagine how scary that would be? And then flip that and imagine how liberating VE day was for my family. The German soldiers left. My family got their property back. Their country, on the brink of being taken over for good by the Nazis, was saved.

Yesterday, I thought about that as I saw a picture of Americans in 1945 celebrating VE Day in mass. The second thought I had was the thought bubble that would be above the heads of all of the people in the picture if they could see us now.

It would be, “We fought and sacrificed and died to defeat fascism, only to have Americans fight for the fascists 75 years later??!!!???!!!”

I scream the truth on facebook all the time, because the US is in imminent danger.

My family had to live with actual Nazis in WWII and now our country is overrun with American citizens who have been radicalized so severely by alt-right propaganda that they are fighting for the fascist GOP instead of opposing them.

As Frank Turner sings, “If I was of the Greatest Generation, I’d be pissed. I’d be screaming at my Grandkids, ‘We already did this!!!’”

Every fucking day it’s “this cannot be happening” in the minds of the sane.

And that’s what fascists depend on. Sanity to not win out.

How do fascists come to power? They lie. They cheat. They propagandize. And they find false enemies to blame everything on while they backdoor the shit out of democracy, the rule of law and basic human decency.

Whose fault is it right now for all the absolute hell that we’re living through? The GOP's.

But, who have they blamed? China. Dems. Libtards. Obama. Hillary. Antifa. Black Lives. The free press.

That is Fascism 101. Create a boogeyman. Convince your base that it’s their fault. Rise to absolute, unquestioned power in part by calling the free press “the enemy of the people” like Trump did. Hitler blamed the Jews. Trump blames black lives, immigrants, scientists, those wanting to help and anybody who calls him on his bullshit and tells the truth.

So, here’s the truth…

Who were Trump’s allies? Not our actual allies. He tried to fuck over the Germans by saying he’d be pulling our troops out (they’re there to stabilize the region and help keep Russia in check) and did fuck over the Kurds, hanging them out to dry after they came through for us in helping us take down Hussein and take on Isis. Instead he was closest with Putin, who kills journalists, poisons his rivals and keeps changing the rules to stay in power longer. Trump also was friendly with other dictator types like Duterte, Bolsonaro, Jong-Un, Mohammed bin Salman and Erdogan.

I cannot fathom how that alone doesn’t scare the ever living shit out of everyone who claims to love America and value our democracy. Every world dictator was on Trump’s speed dial. And all indications were, based on Trump’s consistent pro-Russia actions that he was either Putin’s bitch and was compromised or just as bad, he was Putin’s apprentice, trying to force himself into a position of absolute power the same way Putin did.

American grandparents watching their grandkids root for Trump and the GOP: For. Fuck’s. Sake. Read a god damn history book.

Fascism doesn’t let up until it’s put down with extreme prejudice. Hitler tried a coup 10 years before he took power. He did go to prison, but it was effectively just a slap on the wrist. If he had faced severe consequences that fit the crime of treason, the Holocaust would have never happened.

And that’s our choice now. Are we seriously going to let the people who tried to overthrow our democracy just keep showing up to work? Maybe charges are coming. Maybe there’s more to the story, but we all saw it with our own eyes.

A violent, deadly attack on our nation’s Capitol in an attempt to overthrow our democracy.

Full stop.

Who the fuck are you people who still support that seditious and treasonous party?

That happened 4 fucking months ago. In America. And none of the GOP leaders who incited the insurrection have faced any consequences. That is un-be-fucking-lievable. Hitler at least got a slap on the wrist. These enemies of the state are still showing up to work at the company they tried a hostile takeover of.

And worse, what was their basis for calling for the insurrection? Nazi style Big Lie fiction.

There was no election fraud. Period. The election was not stolen. Trump took his “fraud” to court 65 fucking times. He lost 64 of those cases (and the win was procedural not evidentiary). No credible lawyer would come anywhere near his baseless crusade against democracy. That’s why he was stuck with Giuliani booking press conferences at “total landscaping” companies, bleeding hair dye and farting Covid on Jenna Ellis.

Trump is a fucking joke.

But, every single GOP politician stood by him. They backed his Big Lie. Despite no evidence. There is zero truth to the “fraud” drum they mindlessly keep beating.

And yet they’ve used that Big Lie to introduce 360+ different racist voter suppression bills across the country.

One person in the party stood up and called bull shit.

One person.

And for her bravery in saying that there was no election fraud, Liz Cheney got a beatdown from Republican leadership and will likely be stripped of her power within the party. Whether it’s Sasse or Romney or Cheney or some of the others who briefly stepped out of the Heil Trump party line, they all got hammered for doing the right thing.

Again. How does that not scare the hell out of everyone who actually loves America? Only those who have been propagandized into something that is subhuman could look at a reality where telling the truth gets the wrath of the GOP and equate that not to Nazi, Germany, but to “making America great.”

Lastly Covid.

We’re going to lose more people to Covid than we lost in the Civil War, because Republicans have fought every step of the way on the side of the virus.

We have 4% of the world’s population.

But, nearly 20% of the world’s covid deaths.

In America. The country with the world’s most resources.

With science and truth leading the way there is no way in hell we needed to lose even 100,000 lives.

We’re nearing 600,000 because the fascists made the scientists trying to help into the bad guys. Fauci got muted. A data scientist in Florida got fired for refusing to lie for DeSantis. And countless public health officials all over the nation got death threats for trying to save lives.

The fuck kind of upside down, bizzaro world are we living in where maga has been made to think that their right to breathe death on their neighbor is somehow equal to freedom?

That happened, because Trump treated Fauci like Kanye treated Taylor Swift, ripping the microphone from the epidemiologist who could have saved us and telling us covid will go away and it’s just the sniffles and it’s a democrat hoax and, when we were the worldwide covid epicenter and our cases were the highest they’d ever been, trump said we should reopen the schools and play college football. Not, “this is how we’ll do it safely.” Not, “here are the resources I’m allocating so that we don’t lose any lives.” Not “we’re shutting the whole country down for six weeks so that our kids can get back to normal soon thereafter.” Just full steam ahead into the teeth of rising cases.

Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me.

Scientists could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, American dreams, houses, ptsd cases, etc.

But, Donald Trump and the GOP played the role of my grandma, abusing the shit out of us with no remorse.

And every single one of you, who still supports this fascist version of the republican party, is complicit just like my mom was.

Complicit in supporting a mad man who wants to be a dictator.

Complicit in helping your party try to end our democracy.

Complicit in this covid genocide.

And that makes you my enemy. You come after my family. You come after my country. You come after our democracy. And you can rightly get fucked.

It won’t take long to have 20/20 Vision on this god forsaken stretch of American history.

How the fuck are you going to look your kids in the eyes and proudly tell them that you fucked up their future completely by fighting for a dictator, against democracy and for Covid?

See my mom fucked me over by standing idly by while I got abused. And some of y’all are doing just that. You know how wrong this is, but you are a coward, so you say and do nothing.

But, there’s another layer here...in between my mom’s role in assisting evil by staying silent and physically acting out evil like my grandma. What Republicans who are actively spreading GOP lies are doing is like cheering on my grandma as she abused me.

You people personally added to the American Covid death toll by retweeting fiction while rejecting the science that would have saved lies.

You people supported the piece of shit who wants to be Putin.

You people watched Trump go 1 for 65 in court and still scream “FRAUD!” at the top of your lungs.

This year has been hell for sane people. Because we keep watching our fellow Americans add to and extend our collective trauma.

It’s like Fox News has bitten otherwise decent people with an anti-truth virus that effectively makes them a zombie from the walking dead. Truth cannot get through. They are gone for good. You can say, “Here are the facts. Here is the indisputable truth.” And they will reply with guttural noises that start with “well I seen on fox news” followed by their impression of a mumble rapper and end with “Antifa” or “But her emails.”

I make fun of their stupidity, but it’s not fucking funny.

This is the life or death of our democracy we’re talking about. And the maga confederate army wants to take us down and make America white again.

Your kids will ask you one day. “What did you do to oppose fascism?” “What did you do to save lives during covid?” And if you’re still a Republican, your only possible answers are “I watched” or “I helped the fascists take down democracy by helping them spread lies and covid.”

I’m going to tell my kids that every damn day I fought the information wars and told the truth on facebook and twitter. This second civil war is a war on the truth. It’s disinformation versus facts. And I don’t care how many friends I lose or people I piss off, I can proudly stay I stood up for what is right, which was my mom’s dying wish for herself and one I’m not going to die regretting having not done.

And as for Covid my kids knew where I stood. They know I gave up absolutely everything to keep them safe. And that I was not going to be part of the collective problem. When you have a literal chance to save lives, you fucking do it. I stayed home for 13 months straight. I will gladly lay down my own life or put my life on hold to save my neighbor’s life.

I did no in person dining. No drive thrus. No carryout. I got curbside restaurant food once for my son’s birthday. I got groceries curbside every time except one, going to the store late at night to get a cookie cake for my daughter’s birthday. I went to Costco maybe 4 or 5 times, all but one 20 minutes before close on a weeknight when they were dead. And I saw a friend in person twice, both times because my car was in the shop and he helped me out.

I stayed home all the friggin time. It’s what you do. And in the same way that I don’t get Instagram, I don’t understand people who just went on with their lives during Covid, stepping over hundreds of thousands of American lives to get their “normal”. I pleaded with facebook multiple times a week to take the virus seriously. To listen to the science. To reject the lies republicans would not stop spewing.

And with my actions, I put my money were my mouth is, because I give a shit about whether or not you live or die.

But, then I watched in horror as people I know didn’t return the favor, but instead flooded fb with pro-covid propaganda. Those motherfuckers put my life and my family’s lives and futures at risk. Why are 600,000 dead instead of less than 100,000? Because of 70 million of those people who put their own selfishness above your life.

The ones who hash tagged “let them play” as covid cases were surging. The ones who protested school boards trying to keep our communities safe. The ones who told me “respect my choice” to not wear a mask or not observe safety precautions. Motherfuckers the blood of 600,000 dead Americans are on your hands. I do not “respect your choice” any more than I would respect the choice of Russian soldiers to fire on American civilians.

In person activities are expendable. Human lives are not.

When Covid cases are high…the only thing you do is stay home to save lives and try to flatten the curve. There is no "I'm being careful" when you're dealing with a highly contagious, deadly virus. We ALL knew this. But, as soon as Trump and the GOP started giving the option of forced normal, Republicans signed up in mass to help them kill us.

The children of maga are going to be incredulous one day at the thought that their parents decided that a sports season or two was worth killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. Every ounce of forced normal is why the death toll is so much worse in the US than it is in any other country. There is nothing "normal" about killing our kids science teacher in order to increase our Insta likes by getting back to posting our kids' sports pictures.

"I was just doing what other parents did" is the American Covid war version of Nazi soldiers saying "I was just following orders." Excuses don't cut it.

There used to be an America where, if a would-be dictator kept lying to us about a deadly virus as hundreds of thousands of bodies piled up, we would all be united against him. And make any sacrifice necessary to save lives. Instead, as the GOP lies killed us, maga cheered and begged for more, while their party leaders disciplined any party member who dared tell the truth.

That is some next level, Nazi strength propaganda at work.  

Our kids don’t need a 21^st century version of VE Day. They need us to oppose fascism right now, before this garbage goes any further. The only difference between Trump and Hitler is time. Evil is evil.

And Trump has proven repeatedly to be just that. He showed zero remorse as he muted Fauci and took advice from a pillow salesman and a “doctor” who believes in demon sperm and alien dna. Never any sympathy offered to his victims’ families. Never any apologies for the hundreds of thousands of deaths his lies caused. That is fucking inhuman.

That is my grandma.

God damnit don't be like her. And don't be like my parents. Instead of condoning the abuse silently, stand up to the GOP and their enablers as they abuse America. And stop promoting the abusers' hate-centric platform by retweeting their bullshit. Fuck's sake man. You let them convince you that "owning the libs" was worth 600,000 Americans dying. "Accessory to genocide" has been added to a lot of maga resumes. Fucking stop helping them kill us.

Thing is, if you had told maga this time last year, that we'd be approaching 600,000 covid deaths, they wouldn't have changed a damn thing to save lives. They eat fox news bullshit for breakfast, lunch and dinner and always do what they're told, no matter how much that hurts all of us.

If Instagram was real and could take pictures of some of your souls, it would be pitch black. But instead, y’all apply your maga filter and show your white supremacy for the world to see. Your kids know you as you really are and will call you on your bullshit one day. So, make the change now to avoid a death bed apology for watching silently as the GOP destroyed us.