Tag Archives: politics

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.

Colorblinded in troubled times

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My last post was a political one. This post is not. At least it is not intended to be, though race relations have been politicized to the point where it is difficult to separate the two. Over the past few days I have seen so many tragedies in the news, however, useless killing on the streets of my country. These killings deeply wounded the black community and the blue community. My heart goes out to both, along with my fear and worry for the future of our world and our country if we can’t find a way to mend attitudes and live together. When I tried to put my feelings into words, this is what came out. I don’t write poetry very often but this feels like poetry to me.

 

Colorblinded

By Michelle Garren Flye

I am not colorblind.

I see you. I see your differences. When I pass you on the street, I see you aren’t the same as me. Your skin, your attitude, your music, your life. You are different. I see you, and I don’t know you.

You are a mystery.

I am colorblinded.

Do you see me? Do you see the mother, the artist, the poet, the person who is me? Can you see past my skin, or does it blind you? Do you see only a white, privileged, raised-in-the-South woman who doesn’t understand?

I don’t think you see me.

I think you are colorblinded, too.

Tell me what would happen if I reached out to you. Tell me what would happen if white skin touched black…and black touched back. If hand held hand in a long, long line of red and yellow, black and white…

Could we be colorblind together?

Disregarding the Oracles

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I love science fiction. As early as the 1800s, science fiction authors were predicting today’s everyday things like motion-sensing doors and credit cards. Pretty commonplace by today’s standards, but imagine how out-of-this-world it must have seemed when Jules Verne described his “phonotelephote” which allowed “the transmission of images by means of sensitive mirrors connected by wires”. And yet today we take things like Skype and FaceTime for granted.

Other predictions have hit close to the mark as well. H.G. Wells predicted the atomic bomb. Tom Clancy wrote about a terrorist attack that was very similar to September 11. Writers have predicted everything from the World Wide Web to skywriting and lunar modules launching from Florida. So what is my point?

Yesterday I happened on this petition: Writers on Trump. It said many of the same things I have felt for most of this election season, which is, basically, that Donald Trump as president of the United States would be a disaster. I’ve kept my political views off this blog for the largest portion of the election season, but I’m crossing the line now. Here it goes.

This petition, which I did add my name to, is signed by some of today’s leading writers. Bestselling authors. Household names. Stephen King. Amy Tan. Jane Smiley. The authors whose names are bigger than the titles of their works. The ones whose new releases have long reserve list even though the library splurged and bought thirteen copies.

Today’s oracles.

Writers see the world differently. Writers observe, but they also influence. When Aldous Huxley wrote about mood-enhancing drugs in 1932, perhaps it sparked the invention of anti-depressants? But it is very difficult to understand how Jonathan Swift in 1735 could predict that Mars actually had two moons, a fact that was not discovered until 1877.

What are today’s writers predicting? Dystopia seems more prevalent than Utopia these days. Apocalyptic futures abound. Are these prophecies unavoidable, self-fulfilling or just warnings of what might be?

The Writers on Trump petition is pretty damn clear, and here’s the part you may want to pay attention to:

“Because the rise of a political candidate who deliberately appeals to the basest and most violent elements in society, who encourages aggression among his followers, shouts down opponents, intimidates dissenters, and denigrates women and minorities, demands, from each of us, an immediate and forceful response…we, the undersigned, as a matter of conscience, oppose, unequivocally, the candidacy of Donald J. Trump for the Presidency of the United States.”

Warning or self-fulfilling prophecy? History will decide.

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.

The line is drawn, so pick a side: How Amendment One has affected my November vote.

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My beautiful state of North Carolina has passed one of the most prejudicial, hate-inspired, judgmental amendments to our state constitution with the so-called “Amendment One”. By doing so, my beloved state has become the only one in the United States to have both laws and an amendment banning gay marriage. Well, if we’re going to be prejudiced, we’re going to do it thoroughly.

I am one of the thirty-nine percent who voted against this amendment. I did not vote against it because I support gay marriage, although I do. I did not vote against it because I was concerned about the possible legal ramifications for other unmarried couples or because it will make it more difficult to attract businesses. I voted against it because I love this state. I loved it even when Jesse Helms was a senator here. I loved it when it helped vote Barack Obama into office. I have always loved North Carolina and I always will.

But I don’t want it marred by hate. That’s what has happened now, and it makes me sadder than I can say. By approving Amendment One, North Carolina voters are saying that it’s our way or the high way. Get out if you don’t like it. We’re a bunch of hillbillies with guns. We legislate morality here and you damn well better obey the law.

I know what some people will say. They’ll tell me to read my Bible. Okay, but maybe you better have a second look, too. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that you should hate or judge someone for the lifestyle they choose. In fact, I think I remember from some of my Sunday School teachings the words “Thou shalt not judge” and “Love thy neighbor”. Don’t those words mean anything anymore? If they don’t, then defining marriage is not going to save our society.

North Carolina’s passage of Amendment One is a dangerous precedent. Barack Obama has now come out in support of gay marriage while his soon-to-be opponent Mitt Romney is firmly against it. This is what our political system has come to, then. The line has been drawn. No matter how much people talk about the economy and foreign affairs and who has the best curriculum vitae, it’s going to come down to whether or not you support the right of two people to make a lifelong commitment to each other even if they’re of the same sex.

I sigh when I write this because I know which side of that line I’ll come down on. I don’t support hate and prejudice, so in spite of the fact that I think Mitt Romney has some excellent qualities, I cannot afford to offer him my vote. I do not want to see my nation follow the same way my state has gone. I do not want to support anyone who might one day approve an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that will further denigrate a sector of our population that already has more than enough hatred following it around. My conscience won’t let me.

So listen to your conscience and remember your Sunday School teachings from when you were a kid and everything was simpler. (I’m sure my parents will be relieved to know I still remember some of those teachings.) I believe those are the laws we need to remember.

  • Love your neighbor. Even when he does something you don’t agree with. Even when he isn’t a straight Christian. God never said to hate Muslims and gays, did he?
  • Don’t judge others. We all make our mistakes. Both God and the U.S. Constitution give us the freedom to do that, though.
  • And one more I just remembered. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” What else does this mean but to respect each other? Respect other people’s right to live their lives and you should be able to expect the same.