Letter: A Letter To America
EIGHT of Swords tarot card representing feeling entrapped, powerlessness, victimization, lack of creativity, and the need to change.
Damn. Oh DAMN!!! I’m stupified with shock, horror, and rage. I expected so much better from you! What is wrong with you? Have you had a nervous breakdown? You let me down – again! I thought you loved me, but you don’t even see me! You, with your promises of a fabulous tilt-a-whirl carnival of choices, your Kodacolor visions, you, the shady car salesman of junkets, progress, and dreams – now we see your broken agreements of freedom – Free-Dumb! – your word is nothing, you abandoned our talks like a bad lover, once again – making women sorry that they have to be women in this country, ashamed of YOU.
We are ASHAMED of YOU! Who else will you go after, you self-absorbed cowboy thug? We’ve had enough of your entitled white male Christian supremacy, your cultist mobocracy – enough! And I thought we were moving in a good direction, welcoming a new, sane POTUS, more women standing in their power, but you’re still blocking the way, fetishing the fetus and the gun, holding fast to the old decayed views of the world, that men own everything, even our very bodies, and none of us, women, little ones, college kids, people of color, foreigners, the impaired and the impoverished, none of the rest of us are in the picture. We hear you singing the Red, White, and Brutal.
For a while, you seemed thoughtful, respectful. I thought we were done finally with back alley obscenities against women, and needing to ask permission to move forward, Simon Says, as though we were little children. Fifty years of fighting with you! When will your people relinquish your hold on how we live? Drunk, you are hurting us, and you don’t even notice, you sociopathic bastard – you believe what you believe, but we don’t, and your ideology is shackling us.
We want to live! We want the promises you made, the promises broken with forked tongue, made but broken to the First Nations, to the Japanese Americans, to the grandchildren of the slaves you captured from other lands. I’ve wanted to believe in you, you with your egalitarian moon in Aquarius, but I’m so disappointed in you, and we are hurting and angry.
You like to promote that we’re the best, we’re number one – but that sales pitch of yours is so old and beside the point! Where’s the phone number for a social worker who can take on your issues? Is it possible to heal your illness? Your fans, the ones who still believe in you, your followers are sleeping, they don’t see you shoplifting our food stamps, giving handouts to your autocratic associates, scaring folks with the dark projections of your own violence, waving Old Gory, twirling your six-shooters, scapegoating the most powerless, and bullying the rest into silence and submission. Lysistrata, where are you? We will not be your handmaids!
Meantime I’m keeping my distance, staying in the upturned blue thumb of New England, the thumbs-up blue America, the progressive hood where I feel comfortable and safe and at home in civil, sober society. and steering clear of the rest of you, Cancer-ruled tyrant who allows the bully part to consume the whole. You lie about freedom and prosperity when all of Europe has real health plans, paid leave, decent housing, contraception, and child care, and doesn’t worry their girls about growing up as they wish to be – free. When I feel stronger, I’ll grab my posse and come after you; we’ll make you stand aside, and let the real America be in charge for a change. Hope springs eternal. Because, America, even if you are so unattractive right now, I confess that I’m still in love with the Idea of you.
Dinah Kudatsky
Dinah Kudatsky is a resident of Amherst
BRAVA, Dinah Kudatsky.
TELL IT, Dinah Kudatsky!
I was thinking of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata yesterday (starting about 10:30AM EDT), but now I’m thinking about joining Dinah Kudatsky’s posse!
Where do we sign up?
And I appreciated this comment on the Linda Greenhouse piece in yesterday’s NYTimes, not so much for the kudos to the hypothetical mathematicians, but more for pointing out the peril with the current USSC majority:
James Ricciardi
Panama, Panama
June 24
I have a different take on what [Alito and the USSC majority is]
really saying. If 7 of the 9 best experts on law in the US can get
a really important issue egregiously wrong then there is no such thing
as expertise on the Supreme Court. Never would 7 of the 9 best
mathematicians in the US get such an important issue wrong. In fact
the mathematicians would be unanimous when faced with almost any
problem within their competence. Alito has unwittingly exposed the
justices not as experts but politicians. The sooner we understand
that the more quickly we can arrive at a readjustment of the Supreme
Court’s role. Perhaps their jurisdiction should be drastically
reduced.
I studied constitutional law with Professor Tribe. I don’t consider
myself to be an expert, but I consider myself competent to submit
this comment.
954 Recommended
Thank you, Amy Sophia Marashinsky, Shel Horowitz, and Rob Kusner, for the support. We and our allies ARE the posse! Of course, writing an angry letter has limited satisfaction; the sense of self-importance fades quickly. It’s like hitting a wall, hoping the wall will be deeply hurt. But if we are a democracy, we are all deputized by this crisis. We’ll do small things, but we’ll do them together. I’ll see you on the front lines.
Apologies for a typo, 2nd paragraph: I meant to write “FETISHIZING” the fetus and the gun (not fetishing).