By Eric Segall
Thanksgiving 2016 is not Thanksgiving as usual for my family or my country. On a personal note, my mother’s birthday was November 22, and my parents’ wedding anniversary November 25. Since my mother passed away last December, this will be the first Thanksgiving celebration in over twenty-five years with one Segall missing from the holiday table.
Thanksgiving 2016 is not Thanksgiving as usual for my family or my country. On a personal note, my mother’s birthday was November 22, and my parents’ wedding anniversary November 25. Since my mother passed away last December, this will be the first Thanksgiving celebration in over twenty-five years with one Segall missing from the holiday table.
Instead of feeling thankful this week, I wake up every
morning thinking about my mom, the space she left behind, and also how President-Elect Trump came to be and what our future holds. I am more anxious this week than any Thanksgiving I can remember.
I suspect that I am not alone in my fear for the
next few Thanksgivings. I fear the President-Elect will try to implement his
hateful ideas about Muslim registries, a southern border wall, and support for police
aggression and misconduct. I fear that his Administration will ignore climate change and release American businesses from most environmental
regulation which may yield short-term profits in exchange for long term
disaster.
I worry about the Supreme Court which, with just two new
Justices, could turn strongly to the right until I am in my grave (I am 58). If
that occurs, the Court will once again be the best friend of the far right, insensitive to the civil rights of minorities and the accused and overly sympathetic
to massive corporations and majority religions (Justice Alito’s speech at the
Federalist Society last week was frightening in this regard). It has happened before (1900-1936), and it is likely to happen again. I hope Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kennedy (and yes the rest of the younger Justices too) have at least four happy Thanksgivings to come.
Mostly though, I fear for this country’s young women
(I have three daughters). Our President-elect’s sexually aggressive attitude towards
women could negatively impact our son’s attitudes in so many different and
terrible ways and for longer than his Administration lasts. The owner of beauty pageants (how do they even still exist?) who
blamed Megan Kelly’s hard questions on her cycle, called Rosie a fat pig, and stated
proudly his own ability to grab women’s private parts, is now our Role-Model in
Chief. Given these attitudes, will his Civil Rights Department continue the important
work under Title IX which has helped so many women and girls develop more
positive identities and will his Administration open its highest positions to
women? I wouldn’t think so.
So with both personal loss over the passing of my mom,
and deep fear over the future of our country, I think hard about what I have to
be thankful for, and mercifully the answer is a lot (and I hope this is true for
you too). I love my wife and I am loved by her. My three children and my
brother’s three children are all amazing in their own unique ways full of
spirit, love of life, and resilience. I am grateful for my job, which allows me to
see new generations of lawyers and leaders come and go and gives me varied
platforms to pontificate about law, loss and joy. And, I see a country
that is still free, where people have the right to publicly complain if their
free elections result in leaders they strongly oppose and policies they fear.
But, for the first time in my life, on this
Thanksgiving Day, 2016, I feel the need to say a prayer. I pray that our President-Elect
will realize his views on women need to change and that even symbolic sexist
gestures by the President of the United States can cause real damage. I pray that
he will see that Muslims aren’t the problem but that it is the fringe elements
of Islam, just like it is the fringe elements of white Christianity, that pose
the greatest danger. I pray that he gives some of his top Cabinet positions to
moderates who will speak the truth to him even when he doesn’t want to
hear it. I pray he listens seriously to scientists warning that our changing climate
presents our biggest risk. Mostly, I pray that the largeness of the office, the
awesome responsibilities it entails, and the enormity of his job convince him
that humility and open-mindedness are essential elements of leadership, and
that knowing what you don’t know is as or more important than acting on what
you do know. Hard-nosed quick decision-making based on intuition rather than data may
garner excellent ratings but it does not make for good government.
Am I optimistic? Not really. But for the sake of my children,
and their children, on this day of Thanksgiving, I am going to be thankful, and
I will dedicate myself to doing whatever I can to make my family safe, secure, and happy and this country a place that can live up to its ideals of liberty, equality and justice... for all. I hope that is a
prayer everyone can join, not just for today but for the rest of our
Thanksgivings as well.
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5 comments:
The traditional Thanksgiving often was one proclaimed in times of trouble, as much repenting and praying for relief as thankful. So, perhaps this is appropriate.
Assuming a God, does s/he respond to prayers? If so, I pray that Trump continue to read the NYTimes, which he claims he does, commenting that if he didn't he'd live 20 years longer. I would posit that if he also read the WaPo, he might not finish his term, a "pencive" thought.
With his finger on the nuclear trigger, I just hope they're is another Thanksgiving.
Brad, hope that The Donald understands that retaliations to an itchy trigger finger may trigger exclusions to property insurance policy coverages.
No Mr. Segall we are not joining you in prayer, we are not praying for what you are praying for, that is, the transformation of Donald Trump. We are not praying for that anymore than we are praying for earthquakes to totally disappear, or for peace and prosperity to break out in the Middle East, or for cancer to spontaneously end.
Our goal is simple, that in early November of 2020 the American people will not only send a message to Donald Trump that “You’re Fired” but that everyone associated with his administration will be so disgraced that neither they nor the Republican Party which spawned him will ever govern again. No we cannot get there, but we can get close.
To do this we will have to break through the shallow and easily manipulated media to get the true story out to the American people. We will have to show them how they are being governed by men and women whose only goal is power and exploitation of the trillions being spent by the federal government, that their purpose in serving is solely to enrich themselves, that they care nothing about any American other than themselves. Anyone with doubts in this area should read the NYT article on Trump’s Scotland golf course.
When a Muslim registry is created, we will all register as Muslims because in an America that requires registration by religion we are all of that religion. When undocumented residents are rounded up we will all have to wear a badge of undocumented residents, because if deportation force can be created against them, it can be created against us. When African Americans are denied full access to the polls we will have to fight in the courts, because when any of us is denied the right to vote all of us are denied the right to vote.
Millions of Americans and hundreds of millions of people outside American will be harmed by a Trump presidency. Our job is not to pray but to reject, to inform, to engage in a non-violent revolution against the greed and incompetence that will be the hallmark of a federal government for the next four years. In fact to pray or even acknowledge that Trump can evolve into a human being is counter productive to the battle to remove him and his kind. Stating that it is possible for Trump to be acceptable allows those who hold onto that belief to sit back and wait, to provide Trump and his minions the opportunity they need to gain permanent acceptance.
We cannot prevent the damage, but we can ameliorate it and try to make sure that it never happens again. To pray for miracles, to pray that Trump and his cohorts gain some measure of humanity is futile and serves no purpose but to hinder the effort.
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