Rage

It is a bright cold day in November, and the clocks are striking thirteen.

I'm in the middle of a marathon study session but took in a minute to look at the news. And, well, fuck.

The orange nightmare in the white house took time off to honor Native American Code Talkers by using an anti-Native American racial slur.  I swear to god, if anyone deserves respect, it's the Native American veterans who fought for the country that was stolen from them by people who decimated their populations and cultures, the same people whose descendants continue, to this day, to spit on Native Americans--to invite them to the white house to make it easier for the "make america great again" leader of this country--their country, really--to spit in their faces.

Any-fucking-body who still supports that white supremacist nightmare can eat a bag of rancid dog shit as far as I'm concerned.

And apparently it's come to light that many people don't know that Trump has been accused of raping a 13-year-old child (and threatening her family to force her to keep her silence), raping his wife (his lawyer said you couldn't "by definition" rape your own wife, which, fuck that guy and his lack of knowledge about the law) and molesting 16 women. And those are just the women willing to come forward.  You know for every one of them, there's ten more who are too scared to speak out or who have been threatened into silence.

Here's more about that 13-year-old victim, from the pages of a recent Newsweek magazine article:

"In 1994, Trump went to a party with Jeffrey Epstein, a billionaire who was a notorious registered sex offender, and raped a 13-year-old girl that night in what was a "savage sexual attack," according to a lawsuit filed in June 2016 by "Jane Doe." The account was corroborated by a witness in the suit, who claimed to have watched as the child performed various sexual acts on Trump and Epstein even after the two were advised she was a minor.

"Immediately following this rape Defendant Trump threatened me that, were I ever to reveal any of the details of Defendant Trump’s sexual and physical abuse of me, my family and I would be physically harmed if not killed," Jane Doe wrote in the lawsuit, filed in New York.

The lawsuit was dropped in November 2016, just four days before the election, with Jane Doe's attorneys citing "numerous threats" against her."

(As someone who survived and who has talked to other women who survived being sexually molested as children, I want to tear the throat out of anyone who disbelieves a woman's story about being raped as child. None of us have anything to gain now by telling our stories. None of us have anything to gain and we all have so much to lose. Me? As far as I'm concerned, I've done my time and in exchange, I now have a special dispensation from God to never have to show any mercy or entertain the thought of forgiveness for anyone who has raped or molested a child. I can say with absolute certainty that God is on my side, that all child rapists should be burned alive. And furthermore, the people who take the side of child rapists (who vote them into office, who disbelieve children) should be flayed and worse.)

Have you wondered why Trump is calling Newsweek "fake news"? It's because he's gas lighting his followers. Who are you going to believe, Trump or seventeen women who say he raped or sexually abused them? Who are you going to believe, Trump or the reporters who put their careers on the line to write the truth about a rapist in the oval office? Who are you going to believe, Trump or your own eyes?

I don't know how stupid you have to be to not know the answer to this question, but it turns out that there are a lot of stupid people out there. I hate stupid people. I have always hated stupid people. Ever since I was a child and had to deal with adults whose IQs couldn't begin match their level of authority (perceived level of authority over me anyway). All those early lessons in the Peter Principle were not lost on me, even when I was a child. And the thing now is that I can see that those people are just everyday stupid people, blind followers who will reliably vote for anyone--child rapists, thieves, liars--who have (R) after their names while they puff themselves up and proclaim themselves loyal to the party. They're just lifelong stupid victims, they're not actively evil like the men and women who recognize that Trump is dangerously narcissistic, likely suffering from dementia, critically unstable--but who won't take action so that they can figure out a way to raise taxes on poor people and destroy our public education system and sell off our public lands for their own private profits. If there is justice in this world, the guillotines await those evil people.

But even if he sidesteps the guillotine, I hope Trump ends his days in disgrace, preferably in a federal prison. I'll also accept that slimy pig taking the first ratline out of the country and being exiled in Moscow--so long as he gets Putin's boot stamping on his face--forever. 

My Life

I've had nothing to do but focus on school work and I'm perhaps feeling more than a little volatile as a result.

I took two exams this week and have another exam and a final next week. After that I'm free for a month, thank fucking god. I have had a miserable time trying to keep my motivation up this term. I'm just...out of reserves.

Yesterday I had an exam and then a group presentation to give. One of the young women in my group (there were three of us, me and two young women in their mid-twenties) is lighting fast on the draw. She finishes her exams so quickly that one of the young men in class once timed her and did the math to figure out that she was spending less than seven seconds on each question. He said, "I can't even read the question in seven seconds." It seems to work for her--though I found out that she has a lower grade in the class than I do, so maybe my way (which is somewhat slower; I average 36 seconds per question) works, too.

I'm always somewhat surprised that I'm doing as well as I am in class. My older brain is sluggish and my motivation nil. That is not a good combination. To add to the mayhem, I'm not sleeping well and my brain is getting foggier as the sleepless nights pile up. For example, today when I left campus, I had trouble recognizing my car in the parking lot and, as I got in and drove away, I thought: Gee, I hope this is really my car.

Even on a chilly afternoon, the walk to my car did nothing to clear my brain fog. I say "the walk" as though it were a long walk or something, but it's not really. When I bought my parking pass, I waited too long and ended up having to buy in one of the remote lots. (It's not that remote, my walk is about six minutes from car to class.) But, when I went to pick up my parking pass, several lots had been opened up, some of them closer to my classroom. (My walk would have been a minute or two instead of six.) The person I talked to offered to move my pass to one of the nearer lots and, after thinking about it, I declined the offer because I wanted to force myself to get at least twelve extra minutes of exercise a day. Later, I started to reconsider and wondered if I could switch to the closer lot after all. I was telling one of my classmates about it and he said, "Aside from the exercise, you go right by the cafe, so you can reward yourself by stopping on the way to class and getting a latte." Which I thought was a brilliant idea. I'm all about the rewards, man.

So now each school day, I reward myself for actually getting to campus (and for taking the long, six-minute hike from the cheap but remote parking lot to class) by stopping in the coffee shop in the library. So regular is this habit that the guys who work there have come to know me, for better or for worse. One of these friendly young men is Native American and he is charmingly named after a great Native American historical figure. (Think Crazy Horse, but not Crazy Horse, but something just as great.) He remembers my coffee order and while he makes it, we chat about various things. This is his country, but you wouldn't know it, would you? Not from the amount of disrespect that he and his people still have to endure.