Category Archives: Politics

“But”: A Poem for Independence

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Happy birthday, America. You’re 241 years old. Congratulations.

You’re still an infant on the world stage. An infant with a very big gun, but an infant still.

Maybe that’s why we’ve allowed you to get to this state. Mass deportations, guns in every pocket, a tyrannical toddler in charge, squabbling lawmakers unwilling to compromise, and worst of all, your beautiful land pockmarked and disfigured, air polluted and waters spoiled by avarice.

But.

But you’re a lovely idea, a perfect ideal to work toward. We’ve only taken a moment to tend to our worst selves. We’ll get back to the job eventually. We’ll return to the original intent of our forefathers. I believe that.

And I love you.

“I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” — James Baldwin

But

By Michelle Garren Flye

 

Lady Liberty holds a tablet and a torch—

The law of freedom, the light of hope.

 

But what does it mean when guns fill the street?

When drugs are offered but food is not?

Fear is the only law. There is no defense.

 

What happened to our freedom?

 

Some fight still for their most basic rights,

But the Bible of an intolerant God quashes them.

Your love is wrong. Your life is less.

 

Where is the light of hope?

 

It shines still, cutting a swath through darkness.

Land of plenty, home of brave, promises made—

 

But will they be honored?

How steep is the high road?

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Was it really just a week ago?
 
I took a picture of my daughter on election night. Her face is lit with hope and belief that our country could unite under a woman president. That we could cross that threshold into a new era. She’s holding two American flags. I can’t look at that picture without tears in my eyes, because I remember the look on her face the next morning when I told her who our president-elect was. Resigned disappointment.
 
I know why that resigned disappointment bothers me so much. It’s because that’s an adult expression, and I saw it on my nine-year-old daughter’s face. Acceptance when you really want to scream and shout, but you know you have to move on with life in the face of disillusionment.
 
For the past week, I’ve been torn. I half want to go burn Trump in effigy, but the other, cursedly practical half of me knows that’s the wrong thing to do. I want to protest and scream and shout, but I know it’ll do about as much good—and probably look like—a toddler in the middle of a toy section who’s been denied a bauble she particularly wants.
 
I wanted Hillary Clinton to be our president. I wanted it with all my heart. I wanted our country to vote for tolerance and inclusion and love.
 
I didn’t get that.
 
I got President-elect Trump, and the idea fills me with dread. But I’m still not going to say he’s not my president. I’m not going to move to Canada. I’m not going to burn the flag. What I’m going to do is stay informed, read the news, know what he’s doing and what it means for our country. If he institutes policies I don’t agree with, I will protest those policies. And in two years, I will vote again. And two years after that, I will vote again.
 
Persistence in the face of disappointment is what’s called for here. My nine-year-old knows that. I hope the rest of the country gets it too.
 
#GoHigh #StrongerTogether #LoveTrumpsHate

What’s the use of being an optimist if you can’t just decide it’s gonna be OK?

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I’m a glass half-full kinda gal. I had hoped to wake my daughter up this morning to the news that we have the first ever woman president. I couldn’t do that, and part of my heart is broken because of it.

Still, there’s what’s left of the water in the glass. How do I call it? I’m choosing half full.

This is an opportunity for us as a nation. There are a whole lot of things we can do with these election results and the coming four years. We now know we are a nation divided. Let’s start filling in that chasm. And here’s what we can fill it with: Hope.

Don’t lose hope. Whether you’re gay, straight, white, black, Hispanic, female or male, educated or not, we’re all Americans and more than half of us voted against Donald Trump. Not enough and not in the right places, but those people are out there. Those voters are out there, and that means there’s hope, and that’s a good base to build anything on.

Grab a shovel, Americans. That great divide the media has been talking about is bigger than we thought, and it’s our job to fill it in. Whether you’re on the winning side or not, we’ve got work to do, and it’ll go a lot faster if we all dig in together.

And once we’re done, let’s meet in the middle and go from there.

The Case Against Donald J. Trump for President, as seen by a housewife, mother, writer and believer in human rights

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NOTE: I’ve decided this will probably be the last political post I write during this election season. (Did I hear cheering?) Seriously, this is sucking the life out of me, endangering my relationships with people I care about, and eating up time I need to be devoting to my more enjoyable writing. So here goes. Please read.
The Case Against Donald J. Trump for President, as seen by a housewife, mother, writer and believer in human rights
This might very well be the last time I personally post against Donald J. Trump until after the election. I say might because I don’t have a looking glass that allows me to see the future. If, between now and November 8, Donald Trump does something else to enrage me, all bets are off. But lacking that, I’m going to leave it at this.
Here’s my case:
1. Donald Trump is not a successful businessman. In 1995 he lost $916 million and since then he has acknowledged he has paid no taxes. He’s declared bankruptcy four times, and he’s destroyed many small businesses by not paying or by paying less than agreed upon.
2. Donald Trump is dangerously unstable. He’s proven this time and again, inciting crowds to violence, dismantling teleprompters at his speeches, giving in to anger randomly. This weekend he was so angry about his portrayal on Saturday Night Live, he called for it to be canceled. This is not the behavior of an adult, let alone a man who wants to be our president.
3. Donald Trump is a climate denier. In the face of indisputable scientific proof, he says climate change does not exist. This flies in the face of science and the beliefs and desires of the rest of the world, and shows a total disregard for the well-being of other life.
4. Donald Trump is an amoral man. Yeah, I know. Most Trump supporters don’t believe there are any Christians on the Left side of politics, but I’m here to tell you, believing in gay marriage, a woman’s right to choose abortion, and that it’s our duty to welcome desperate refugees from another country into ours hasn’t come between me and my God. He tells me daily to be brave and stick to my convictions. My convictions are that Donald Trump has said and done things that other people would not be able to get away with. He doesn’t think the rules of society apply to him, and that is a dangerous trait in a president.
5. Donald Trump is a coward. His entire foreign policy is based on building walls around our country, pushing the “others” out and locking us in. This is not only impossible in today’s world, it is inadvisable. Tomorrow’s president needs to be a leader who can help us develop beneficial bonds between countries, not push our allies away.
6. Donald Trump has no notion of what our Constitution says or how to support it. He’s already threatened freedom of religion and freedom of the press. His support for human rights violations are well-documented. As such, he is totally unqualified to be president.
I plan to vote for Hillary Clinton. She’s not my first choice for Democratic nominee, but between Trump and Clinton, Clinton wins, hands down. I am hopeful that this election will result in stronger third parties for the next round. With so many varied opinions and feelings in the U.S. today, it is ridiculous that we end up with only two to choose from. However, I am unwilling to chance a Trump presidency on a gamble on a third party nominee this time around. So here’s my case for HRC:
1. Hillary Clinton is the single most prepared candidate for the office of president in the history of the United States. She’s worked her way through the ranks, advocating for children, women, and the less fortunate during her years as an attorney, First Lady of Arkansas, First Lady of the United States, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State.
2. Hillary Clinton has definite policies and plans to capitalize on the nation’s current upward trend in jobs and economy.
3. Hillary Clinton will continue President Obama’s work to save our planet from the threat of global warming.
4. Hillary Clinton supports gun control. She doesn’t want to take anyone’s guns away, but she does want to make it more difficult to get one for people who shouldn’t have one. If you’re a convicted felon, an abusive spouse, mentally ill or a terrorist, you’re probably out of luck under her plan, but other than that, just relax already. Nobody’s gonna be prying anyone’s beloved firearms out of their cold dead hands. Promise.
5. Hillary Clinton has shown herself to have an even temperament in the face of strong opposition. This is a necessary trait in a president.
6. Finally, Hillary Clinton will strengthen our ties with our allies, do her best to improve relations with nations that don’t trust us, and act with strength and bravery when it is required of her. She is well respected by other countries who remember her from her years as Secretary of State, putting her in a good position to step directly into the Oval Office, ready to do the job from Day 1.
So there it is. Can you make as good a case for Trump and against Clinton using actual facts? Feel free to do so. But remember, I will challenge any half-truths, hearsay, or unsubstantiated claims. Do not use Benghazi (lacking additional evidence, that has been laid to rest), emails (even the new ones Russia obtained for Trump haven’t done more than embarrass HRC), and please don’t send me articles from sources that contain the words shoebat or endoftimes.
#StopTrump #StrongerTogether #ImWithHer

Our great-grandmothers are rolling in their graves

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I would like to preface this post by saying, I’m having a really hard time not cussing while writing it. I am so angry, it’s literally hard for me NOT to type obscenities.

Yesterday a poll came out that revealed two things. First of all, if only women were voting, Hillary Clinton would win by a landslide.

The second thing it revealed was the nature of many of Trump’s supporters, both men and (gag) women. Their response? #repealthe19th

If you don’t get that, the 19th amendment is the one passed in 1920, after a 70-year-plus battle in which literal blood was shed by our mostly female ancestors. It’s the one that gave women the right to vote. It’s a right I now take for granted, but it’s a right that was granted extremely reluctantly by male politicians who’d had free reign of our country for its entire history.

Do you think politicians today would take it away if they could? Do you think they’d “#repealthe19th” if we didn’t outnumber them? Some of them would. Look at what the Republican Party has become. They want to defund Planned Parenthood, which is the only reliable source of healthcare for some women. They’re repeatedly ignoring the sexist things their presidential nominee says and does, making excuses for his graphic description of sexual assault. And now, when it’s obvious they won’t win because smart women everywhere refuse to vote for their candidate, they begin calling for women to lose the right to vote. And somehow, there are women going along with this?

I don’t personally care if “#repealthe19th” was said in jest. Some things should never be said. The right to vote was won by our foremothers through marches and tireless meetings and lobbying. During an event that has become known as The Night of Terror, 33 members of the National Woman’s Party who were picketing the White House were arrested for “obstructing sidewalk traffic” and thrown in a workhouse where they were beaten and tortured. They were left tied up overnight, fed food with worms in it and force fed with a tube down their throats when they refused to eat it.

You want to say #repealthe19th to my face?

If you vote for Donald Trump in November, you are spitting in the face of the women who suffered to give us the right to vote.

You know what? Trump supporters are always saying we shouldn’t be politically correct, so here’s how I really feel. If you are one of those people who said #repealthe19th, you should have your right to vote taken away. If you don’t believe Trump described sexual assault or that it doesn’t matter, you should not be allowed to vote. If you are a woman who still supports Donald Trump, you obviously have no concern for the world our daughters will live in. And maybe YOU shouldn’t be allowed to vote either.

Here’s an idea. Let’s administer IQ tests at the polls. If it falls in the idiot range, you don’t get a vote.

Why this election frightens me

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Please read this.

I’m a freaking romance writer, why the hell am I getting involved in politics?

Because the prospect of President Donald Trump terrifies me on a personal level, and I’m going to try to explain that.

And it’s not the so-called “salty language”/”locker room talk”, although for the record that locker room talk described actions that NO ONE should be okay with. I fear a Donald Trump presidency because I don’t think he has the emotional maturity to be president, and he will end up being an authoritarian at best. A dictator, more likely.

Think about it. He’s displayed all the signs. He is vindictive. He has shown himself to possess bullying tendencies. He calls people names and threatens them if they don’t do what he wants. He’s publicly threatened Hillary Clinton at least three times that we know of. He bans media outlets that don’t say what he wants them to say, calling them “unfair”. He threatens lawsuits for almost anything. He’s shown a total disregard for and lack of knowledge of the Constitution and international laws on several occasions.

If Donald Trump is elected president, I won’t agree with him. He doesn’t believe in the equality of races and sexes. He doesn’t believe in climate change, and I am very sure that if we have a president who denies climate change in the face of all scientific proof for four years, we’ll do uncontrollable damage to the environment.

If he is elected president and follows through on the promise to force his Attorney General to appoint ANOTHER special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton and spend billions more of our tax dollars on ANOTHER investigation of our tax dollars, I will have to protest that, because it will put our entire system in jeopardy.

I will write every word I can to protest what he does that I feel is wrong. I will watch every move he makes as president, and I will fight every way I know how to try to make our nation a decent place for my children to live.

And there’s the rub. I will fight using the only real weapon I have. The written word. And we well know that Donald Trump does not believe in Freedom of the Press. In other authoritarian regimes, writers who fight the government end up in jail or dead. Their families are threatened or just disappear. Sometimes they flee their country.

If Donald Trump is elected president, writers are going to have to be as brave as soldiers. Journalists are going to have to make a commitment to fighting, right here on our own home turf. We’ll have to fight for what we believe is right, no matter the consequences. Because our nation will be at stake.

Which is why I beg you, if you believe in truth and freedom and justice, don’t vote for Donald Trump. I’d rather you vote for Gary Johnson. Write in Mike Pence or Paul Ryan. Jeb Bush was my pick for Republican nominee, honestly. Vote for him. I don’t fear any of those politicians. I don’t respect or agree with many of them, either, but I don’t fear them. Because I believe I could disagree with them and still go home at night and feel safe.

#NeverTrump #ImWithHer

Why I am writing about politics

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It’s not a decision I made lightly. Friends and colleagues both warned me not to jump into the political arena this year. “You’ll alienate your reader base,” they said. “You’re a romance author. You’ll sound like you’re trying to be an expert at something you’re not trained in.”

What did I do? I ignored them. And there’s a very simple reason why. This year isn’t about politics at all. Politics are about policies, and there must always be some give and take about policies. This year is different. This year is about defending our country’s values, principles and freedoms. They are in danger, and Donald Trump is the threat.

I started my crusade on Facebook at the beginning of the year, trying to encourage friends and family to truly look at what Donald Trump had said and done since launching his presidential campaign. His off-the-cuff remarks about Mexicans being rapists and drug dealers, his horrible comments about women, his passion for waterboarding and other forms of torture, and the worst of all, to me at least, his advocating for killing the families of terrorists. And let’s not forget his promises to limit both freedom of the press and freedom of religion. Any of the other Republican candidates would have been better for our nation. But they didn’t become the presidential nominee. Trump did. And so I vowed to keep posting until Donald Trump was no longer a threat to my country.

Well, he’s still out there. And I’m still writing my articles for whatever they’re worth. And that’s part of why this blog has been so neglected. I’ve only let my politics sneak on here once or twice before. But with the election less than a month away, I’ve made a decision. I hope it’s not a dumb one.

I hope it doesn’t make you hate me or decide not to read my books. If it does, that’s my loss.

In an attempt to reach more voters, I’ll be posting on here now. You’ll see what I believe in right up front. There’s nothing romantic about politics, but there is passion. Passion for preserving our country’s founding principles. There is love. Love for our country and our fellow man. There is desire. Desire to make our country a better place for everyone.

And that’s why, for the next month, I’m dedicating this blog to anyone who believes that we must defeat Donald J. Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election. I’ll post my #StopTrump articles here and then to Facebook. If any of my other talented, like-minded fellow writers wishes to join me, I will welcome them.

Since when is it not PC to be politically correct?

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It’s Super Tuesday and a lot of people are heading to the polls to vote in the presidential primary. I wish them all luck and hope they will vote with their hearts.

That’s the politically correct thing to say. It demonstrates a faith in my fellow human beings, a respect for their wishes and a desire for them to be able to express those wishes, even if they don’t correspond with my own. (#NeverTrump)

More and more often I’m hearing people say “Don’t be so politically correct”. To which I have to respond, why the hell not? To me, being politically correct is not calling people offensive names because they have a different race, color or creed from me. It’s respecting other people with different viewpoints. It’s embracing the boiling pot of America with pride and patriotism and saying, “America is great because of our differences.”

If you are headed to the polls today or in the coming days, remember that America was founded on the fundamental idea that every person (“person” is more PC than “man”) has a voice and should be heard. And that’s about as politically correct as it gets.

“Amendment One”: Why I agree with Jeff

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This year, North Carolina’s voters get an opportunity they don’t often have. They have the opportunity to stand with our Founding Fathers on the basic principle of what the United States is all about: Equality. Amendment One, or the North Carolina Same-Sex Marriage Amendment, is on the ballot. The amendment defines “domestic legal union” as “marriage between one man and one woman”. In other words, a loving same-sex couple cannot be legally married in North Carolina if this amendment passes. I have every intention of voting against this amendment for the simple fact that it doesn’t make sense to sully our state constitution with an amendment based on limiting other people’s rights.

I didn’t know any of them personally, but I do not believe the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were homophobes. I believe when they said “all men are created equal”, they truly meant all human beings. I like to believe they were idealists who craved a utopia. I don’t think they wanted a nation where any law-abiding citizen’s rights were limited by our laws.

I struggled for a while about what to say about Amendment One, not because I didn’t know what I believe but because I didn’t know how to present it. Yesterday, a friend of mine posted a very passionate, well-written article about Amendment One on his Facebook page. His name is Jeff. With his permission, I am copying that plea to my blog in the hopes that it will reach more people.

I’ve hesitated to post this, but I must – it’s cathartic. I may be hidden from your newsfeed or I may be ‘unfriended’. I’m OK with that.

For two days I’ve watched a controversy on Facebook in my own neighborhood. An offer from a young man to provide ‘Vote Against Amendment One’ signs to anyone who wanted one went the route I suspected it would. That using our neighborhood’s Facebook page to promote a political agenda was not appropriate.

Aside from offering signs myself, I refrained from the debate. It’s too personal. Which is why the those who believe it’s a political or religious issue are wrong. And you have never been more wrong about anything. While Amendment One poses to limit rights in a number of areas I’ll speak to the one that I am an expert on – my own.

I was angry and frustrated to see the dispute in my own immediate environment, but the feeling that I felt the most was hurt. That discussion amongst neighbors was not about signs, political beliefs, or religious beliefs; it was about me. Part of Amendment One is about me. It suggests that I am inferior. It suggests that my feelings towards another human being are inferior. I’m reminded of this every single day. Every. Single. Day. It terrifies me that one person’s beliefs about themselves and how they live their lives has the ability to cast a vote against how I live my life. I have never had that ability, that power, in any vote that I’ve participated and I would never want to.

But it terrifies me even more to think that the unquestionable right you have to be by your spouse’s bedside in a time of need is a right that could be taken away from me or my partner. Many of you go to sleep at night with the comfort that this is something you will never have to face. I go to sleep every night terrified that the government actually has the ability to take that away from me. And they’ve asked you to cast your vote on this. Think about that power.

This isn’t about Democrats vs. Republicans, Right vs. Left, or Conservatives vs. Liberals. This is about people being respected for the human beings that they are. For living your beliefs the way you want to and allowing others to live their lives the way they are entitled.

Educate yourself. Consider others. And remember me when you cast your vote. My name is Jeff. I’m your friend, I’m your neighbor, I’m your colleague. And I have a face. There are so many faces behind Amendment One. The faces of those affected by it. If you are for Amendment One, please ask yourself how it affects you. Ask yourself how it affects your beliefs – no one is taking away your views, your beliefs; but Amendment One takes away the very thing that makes us compassionate beings.

Because Amendment One affects me negatively – I’ve been forced to cast a vote AGAINST it. Please don’t make that effort be in vain. I’m happy to be part of this world, and I’d like nothing more than to be accepted in it. Please stop and think, and take the power you’ve been given seriously. No one is asking you to cast a vote against Amendment One, but I beg you to simply not vote at all if you are for it.