Actually, what's happening right now is really interesting. And sneaky.

So the GOP has been ripping itself to pieces since Iowa to try and stop Trump's rise and they failed. He won. So the question is, how does the Republican Party hold together through this transition and survive the aftermath?

At least, that's what Republican politicians are thinking. I don't think they have a chance in hell of pulling through this.

But some of them, such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have already begun falling in line behind Trump. They're doing this because they think it will end up being better for the Republican Party. And maybe they're thinking along the lines of....if I, as a Republican politician, support Trump and he loses and Clinton is President, I will still have a job. My constituents won't resent me for abandoning the GOP nominee and Clinton will understand that it was just politics. But, if I, as a Republican politician, publicly oppose Trump and HE becomes President, then he will punish me horribly for my disobedience.

It's a flawed line of thinking, but its easy to see how people like McConnell would think like that. I mean, they've spent their entire careers priming the American people for the Trump take over, so I sincerely doubt they recognize the depths of political depravity they are sinking to.

It's still sad to watch....even if I am fairly sure that a lot of these Republicans are only endorsing Trump because they're panicking right now......

Like, here's a quote from a New York Times article


"Representative Peter T. King of New York, whose Long Island district Mr. Trump won overwhelmingly in the April 19 primary, echoed other Republicans in pledging to vote for Mr. Trump even though he had reservations, calling Mr. Trump “a guy with no knowledge of what’s going on.”


IF YOU THINK THAT ABOUT HIM THEN DO NOT VOTE FOR HIM, MORON!!!!!!!! HOW THE HELL IS YOUR PARTY LOYALTY MORE IMPORTANT TO YOU THAN THIS?!?!?!?! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!?!?!?!?!!

The other day, I watched Obama's speech in Flint live. I was hugely impressed. First of all, it was a beautiful speech. Obama at his best. There was one moment that brought me to tears, when he was offering comfort to the parents of Flint and telling them never to give into despair and to, no matter what happens, never allow their children who may be suffering from the effects of lead poisoning grow up thinking that they don't have hope. He was real about it, and straight forward, and compassionate and at one point the crowd spontaneously rose to their feet while his voice echoed through the auditorium, calling out again and again, "Don't lose hope! Don't lose hope!"

And that was just one of many incredible moments.

But what I really saw was a politician who, when given the chance to actually reach a community and interact with ordinary people, has a better connection with ordinary people than any candidate currently running for office. I think it will be amazing to watch once the Democratic candidate is official and Obama starts campaigning on their behalf. Say what you will about him, he's an amazing campaigner, and he has a gift for inspiring optimism that is sorely needed across the country right now.

Obama is an amazing speaker.

I don't really know if he is a good president or a bad president. I think, except in extreme circumstances, its hard to say one way or the other because people are complicated. Even Nixon opened relations with China and signed the Environmental Protection Act, but he was also racist, drunk and abusive in the Oval Office on a regular basis, not to mention the obvious Watergate scandal.

I think Obama gets a bad rap on some things, like the fact that the vast majority of Americans believe we have a bigger deficit when in actual fact Obama reduced the deficit by over a third or something. There are other things Obama has done, like the expansion of executive power and the dogged prosecution of whistle blowers, that concern me.
And for me personally, the fact that Guantanamo is still open is a huge disappointment. That prison is unnecessary and cruel (which is why I object) and the most powerful symbol for anti-American recruitment in history (which is why people on the other side of the ideological divide should AGREE WITH ME except they don't because they're worried if we let people out who we have wrongly imprisoned they'll be "mad at us." Like, that is literally their argument, that if we release the people we wrongly imprisoned for being falsely accused of terrorism they will become terrorists because they are mad at us for falsely imprisoning them. Which, okay, is not completely outside the realm of possibility, but on the other hand it is way more insane to base geo-political policy on a logical fallacy. Assholes)

At the same time, at least in regards to the expansion of executive power, I understand why he did that. Republicans control Congress and they have made it very clear since 2008 they will not work with Obama on anything. Congressional Republicans literally had a meeting when Obama was elected where they all swore that no matter what he proposed in the coming years they would oppose it. So what is a President supposed to do? Just let Congress walk all over them and definitely never get anything done? Or expand their executive power and maybe get some stuff done? Obviously Obama chose the latter.

Of course....it might have helped if he'd tried to get more Democrats elected to Congress, and then Republicans wouldn't have control and they wouldn't be able to obstruct every proposal. And sure, maybe Obama still wouldn't have gotten what he wanted, but at least we wouldn't be in a position where there is a reasonable chance Donald Trump is going to inherit that expanded executive power.

(Shudder)

But I thought the Flint in speech was especially important because one aspect of the crisis there today is that people are too frightened to even trust the filters the government is giving out to filter the lead out of Flint tap water. The people of Flint have been lied to so often by so many different so-called "authority" figures that they don't know who to trust anymore. So Obama went there to try and reestablish trust, and while he alone could not do that all by himself I think he made a lot of progress, and that is a HUGE deal.

I think one of Obama's weaknesses as a president is he's not a strong schmoozer--by which I mean I think in order to be an effective politician you need to be able to make small talk and rub elbows and basically schmooze with people you absolutely and completely despise. In Obama's case, I mean Congressional Republicans. Obama's famous for having no interest in the balls and photo ops that accompany a lot of political dealings, and while few of us can blame him for that because that sounds awful, it seems to be an important part of getting stuff done in Washington. Obama isn't very good at that.

But he is very, very good at the nitty-gritty, grassroots, community organizing stuff. That's where he shines, and where his gift for inspiring people can really be effective.

I am having a hard day.

So I just finished my semester and decided to spend May doing some serious reading about American history, in my search to understand what is currently happening. I started by reading a book about Freedom Summer--when, in 1964, 700 college students went to Mississippi to register African-Americans to vote and to set up Freedom Schools, which were summer programs where people who may never have even been permitted to attend school (before reading this book, I had no idea that so many children of slaves had survived under Jim Crow long enough to even reach the 60s) could go and learn to read and write, as well as learning about history and civics and art. One of the stories from the book recounted an incident where a teacher at a Freedom School tried to teach a lesson about pre-Colonial civilizations in Africa and a young black boy, around 8 years old, stood up and said "You're lying!" and then both student and teacher burst into tears, the child because he had never thought that he had any history to be proud of and the teacher because she had never realized how deeply ingrained racism was, to the point where a child could be utterly convinced that he had nothing to offer the world just because of his skin color.

It was a difficult read, but extremely illuminating. And when I was done, I talked with my family about what I had read and for the very first time I was told that the KKK had burned a cross on my grandmother's front lawn in the 1930s just because my grandmother was Jewish. I had never before heard this story, or had any idea that this particular breed of hate had come so close to my own life.

An entire lifetime might separate me from that night, but just as my grandmother is still a part of my world, is it so far fetched to think that this hate might also be a part of my world? This is something I feel drawn to reflect on in ways I haven't before, and all because Trump has revealed the simmering disease of intolerance that is still strong enough in this country to get him elected.

I've always been aware of these issues, but for me they have been in the background. Trump is what motivated me to actually learn this history, and now I am realizing that it is personal to me in ways I never knew. I wonder what else I will learn as I continue this journey....

I haven't been following the Flint crisis as closely as I probably should, but I've followed it closely enough to be outraged.

The basic story is that in 2014 the city manager (appointed by the governor) switched the town's water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River. The Flint River had been polluted for generations by all the heavy industry in the area, and the water was so corrosive it began destroying the old lead pipes that carry water to Flint homes, businesses, schools and hospitals. This water was so corrosive that a Ford factory in Flint switched its water supply all on its own because the water was destroying the car parts.

18 months after the switch (over a year, and the people of Flint were going to meetings and writing the representatives and calling experts that whole time because they were alarmed by their brown, bad-smelling, bad-tasting water--as any one would be) a local Flint pediatrician began keeping track of the blood lead levels of the children in Flint, and discovered they were alarmingly elevated.

One expert on lead poisoning has described the level of damage to being the equivalent of the lead poisoning that would have happened if the government had been bombing the city of Flint since 2014. You can get lead poisoning from being bombed by certain types of weapons, and the children of Flint are suffering under that level of exposure.

The worst part is the state government knew this was happening and either did not care or, possibly, decided it would benefit them. And it is true that by keeping the people of Flint poor and isolated the government of Michigan is able to maintain a working population that can support the rich white suburbs that surround Detroit even through Detroit's depression.

Now I don't know if the state government of Michigan really and truly poisoned Flint on purpose, but they knew it was happening and didn't stop it. The people of Flint proved it was happening for the entire world to see, and the government did not stop it. Even now, when we all know and are all paying attention, the government is STILL poisoning the people of Flint.

A task force investigating the issue made this statement in their final report. "Throughout 2015, as the public raised concerns and as independent studies and testing were conducted and brought to the attention of MDEQ, the agency's response was often one of aggressive dismissal, belittlement, and attempts to discredit these efforts and the individuals involved. We find both the tone and substance of many MDEQ public statements to be completely unacceptable."

Basically, what they meant was that when the people of Flint went to their government they were dismissed merely because their state government didn't give a flying fuck about their lives. Literally. Some of the emails that have been leaked reveal that people were saying things like, 'sure, they're getting poisoned, but its not like anyone in Flint is important, so lets focus on other issues.'

Meanwhile, this same problem is happening in towns and cities all over the country, because of our aging infrastructure and--unfortunately--the fact that a lot of the time the people who make the decisions that cause this problem (like the old city manager in Flint) have no scientific training and absolutely no idea what they're doing messing around with drinking water.