"What Donald Trump Taught Me About My Own Mother"

[ehrnst]

By Amber MacDonald

Even in our soup-kitchen days, I watched her generosity. Whether it was a meal for our family and friends, or a donation we could barely afford, she gave freely. The heaviness of our financial insecurity weighed on all of us, but she and my stepfather always made it work. “God will provide,” she would say. And through her determination, he always did.

She raised me to work hard; to love unconditionally; to see Christ’s love in everyone. She taught me kindness, compassion, and service.

And yet those values took us down wholly different paths.

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And while she will welcome anyone to eat at her table, she cheers for a wall. While she fights discrimination against her black friends with righteous anger, she calls for the rights of her own gay family members to be rolled back. While she will give you her last cent, she sees injustice in programs that help other families buy food or pay their hospital bills.

President Obama has become the embodiment of her tormentors. She sees nefarious motives behind every action. She feels in her bones that he hates her and people like her. She hears evil in his smooth speeches, his soaring rhetoric.
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Again and again, I watched my humiliations thrown at Hillary Clinton, Carly Fiorina, Megyn Kelly, Alicia Machado, actresses on Twitter, activists on Twitter, my friends and family.

But I saw something amazing over the last few months as well.

I saw a woman stand up to a septic ocean of misogyny, with unbelievable poise and grace. I saw her work harder than every man around her. She was all of us, bearing our injustices with measured dignity, graciously smiling at insults, calmly explaining why we belong. Demanding a seat. Speaking softly and carrying an arsenal of unbreakable courage.

And I saw the women in my life draw from her strength. Slowly and quietly at first. In secret. We began to lean on each other. We began to name the violence we experienced that we hadn’t before. We cheered her on. We saw how brave and strong we could be. We saw hope. We hoped. For maternity leave and affordable daycare and reproductive justice and better health care and less college debt and equality for all and a Listener in Chief. We saw hope for ourselves and our daughters.

But my mother never saw hope. She saw corruption. She saw rigged systems and lies. She saw dismissal and derision. She didn’t see a sexual predator or a violent bully; she saw a man who would break the system that oppressed her. She didn’t see a con man working his grift; she saw revenge on the people she thought took her dignity, her safety. She made her own connections, found her own support groups. They unearthed secret plots against her. They affirmed her fears. She shouted into a swirling cloud of pain and anger and fed off the reverberations that came back.

I don’t believe the world she saw was real, but in the end it was all perspective. We were standing on opposite sides of a canyon, trying to communicate through fog. I couldn’t convince her that her own eyes weren’t telling her the truth. I couldn’t convince her that my work was for her, that my America — in progress and unpolished — was for her.

more:

http://www.refinery29.com/2016/11/130338/trump-womens-health-care-social-security

[Skinner]

1. Well worth reading the whole thing.

Thank you for posting.

[lostnfound]

2. What beautiful writing

And how hard it must be. My mother is long gone, but I never would have had such a gulf between us.

[mopinko]

3. the paranoia was such a force here.

my trumpkin loves alex jones, and thinks obama is too good to be true, and is really a cia plant/tool. he calls him "silky".
seems like too many years of too many lies, to the point where the idea of truth just seems too damn elusive.

[BSdetect]

4. Truly frightening how deluded they can be.

Cognitive dissonance at new levels?

I despair that my 4 year old granddaughter will have to endure that vile rats madness and I may not be around to protect her. My goal is to get rid of him and his thugs and make it it to see the next election.