Donnalea

Loving NeeNee, mom, wife, and gardener. Avid reader and follower of politics, worried about our future in this upside down world.

[Headquarters @HQNewsNow]

Trump: We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country, we have 50 states, all these people, we're fighting wars. It's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these things

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Robert Mueller died last night.

He was 81 years old. He had a wife who loved him for sixty years. He had two daughters, one of whom he met for the first time in Hawaii, in 1969, on a few hours of military leave, before he got back on the plane and returned to Vietnam. He had grandchildren. He had a faith he practiced quietly, without performance. He had, in the way of men who have seen real things and survived them, a quality that is increasingly rare and increasingly mocked in the country he spent his life serving.

He had integrity.

And tonight the President of the United States said good!

I have been sitting with that word for hours now. Good. One syllable. The thing you say when the coffee is hot or the traffic is moving. The thing a man who has never had to bury anyone, never had to sit in the specific silence of a room where someone is newly absent, reaches for when he wants the world to know he is satisfied. Good. The daughters are crying and the wife is alone in the house and good.

I want to speak directly to the Americans reading this. Not the political Americans. Just the human ones. The ones who have lost a father. The ones who know what it is to be in that first hour, when you keep forgetting and then remembering again, when ordinary objects become unbearable, when the world outside the window seems obscene in its indifference. I want to ask you, simply, to hold that feeling for a moment, and then to understand that the man you elected looked at it and typed a single word.

Good.

This is not a country having a bad day. I need you to understand that. Countries have bad days. Elections go wrong. Leaders disappoint. Institutions bend. But there is a different thing, a rarer and more terrible thing, that happens when the moral center of a place simply gives way. Not dramatically. Not with a single catastrophic event. But quietly, in increments, until one evening a president celebrates the death of an old man whose family is still warm with grief, and enough people find it acceptable that it becomes the weather. Just the weather.

That is what is happening. That is what has happened.

The world knows. From Tokyo to Oslo, from London to Buenos Aires, people are not angry at America tonight. Anger would mean there was still something to fight for, some remaining faith to be betrayed. What I see, in the reactions from everywhere that is not here, is something older and sadder than anger. It is the look people get when they have waited a long time for someone they love to find their way back, and have finally understood that they are not coming.

America is being grieved. Past tense, almost. The idea of it. The thing it represented to people who had nothing else to believe in, who came here with everything they owned in a single bag because they had heard, somehow, across an ocean, that this was the place where decency was written into the walls. That idea is not resting. It is not suspended. It is being buried, in real time, with 7,450 likes before dinner.

And the church said nothing.

Seventy million people have decided that this man, this specific man who has cheated everyone he has ever made a promise to, who has mocked the disabled and the dead and the grieving, who celebrated tonight while a family wept, is an instrument of God. The pastors who made that bargain did not just trade away their credibility. They traded away the thing that made them worth listening to in the first place. The cross they carry now is a costume. The faith they preach is a loyalty oath with scripture attached. When the history of American Christianity is written, this will be the chapter they skip at seminary.

Now I want to talk about the men who stand next to him.

Because this is the part that actually breaks my heart.

JD Vance is not a bad man. I have to say that, because it is true, and because the truth matters even now, especially now. Marco Rubio is not a bad man. Lindsey Graham is not a bad man. They are idiots, but not bad, as in BAD! These are men with mothers who raised them and children who love them and friends who remember who they were before all of this. They are not monsters. Monsters are simple. Monsters do not cost you anything emotionally because there is nothing in them to mourn.

These men are something more painful than monsters.

They are men who knew better, and know better still, and will get up tomorrow and do it again.

Every small compromise they made had a reason. Every moment they looked the other way had a justification that sounded, at the time, almost reasonable. And now they have arrived here, at a place where a president celebrates the death of an old man and they will find a way, on television, to say nothing that means anything, and they will go home to houses where children who carry their name are waiting, and they will say goodnight, and they will say nothing.

Their oldest friends are watching. The ones who knew Rubio when he still believed in something. Who knew Graham when he said, out loud, on the record, that this exact man would destroy the Republican Party and deserve it. Who sat next to Vance and thought here is someone worth knowing. Those friends are not angry tonight. They moved through anger a long time ago. What they feel now is the quiet, irrecoverable sadness of watching someone disappear while still being present. Of watching a person they loved choose, again and again, to become less.

That is what cowardice costs. Not the coward. The people who loved him.

And in the comments tonight, the followers celebrate. People who ten years ago brought casseroles to grieving neighbours. Who stood in the rain at gravesides and meant the words they said. Who told their children that we do not speak ill of the dead because the dead were someone's beloved. Those people are tonight typing gleeful things about a man whose daughters are not yet done crying. And they feel clean doing it. Righteous. Because somewhere along the way the thing they were given in exchange for their decency was the feeling of belonging to something, and that feeling is very hard to give up even when you can no longer remember what you gave for it.

When Trump is gone, they will still be here.

Standing in the silence where the noise used to be. Without the permission the crowd gave them. Without the pastor who told them their cruelty was holy. They will be alone with what they said and what they cheered and what they chose to become, and there will be no one left to tell them it was righteous.

That morning is coming.

Robert Mueller flew across the Pacific on military leave to hold his newborn daughter for a few hours before returning to the war. He came home. He buried his dead with honour. He served presidents of both parties because he understood that the institution was larger than any one man. He told his grandchildren that a lie is the worst thing a person can do, that a reputation once lost cannot be recovered, and he lived that, every day, in the quiet and unglamorous way of people who actually believe what they say.

He was the kind of American the world used to point to when it needed to believe the story was true.

He died last night. His wife is alone in their house in Georgetown. His daughters are learning what the world is without him in it. And somewhere in the particular hush that falls over a family in the first hours of loss, the most powerful man and the biggest loser on earth sent a message to say he was glad.

The world that loved what America was supposed to be is grieving tonight. Not for Robert Mueller only. For the country that produced him and then became this. For the distance between what was promised and what was delivered. For the suspicion, growing quieter and more certain with each passing month, that the America people believed in was always partly a story, and the story is over now, and there is nothing yet to replace it.

That is all it needed to be.

A man died. His family is broken open with grief.

That is all it needed to be.

Instead the President said good.

And the country that once stood for something looked away 🇺🇸

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[MAGA Cult Slayer @MAGACult2]

What you are told versus the fact. Getting around barriers to get this out. This is what is really happening there please watch please spread.

[Marco Foster @MarcoFoster_]

James Talarico: “The reason poverty exists is not because we can’t feed the poor, it’s because we can’t satisfy the rich. That’s exactly what we’re seeing with Elon Musk become the first trillionaire. This is a spiritual sickness. What leads a person to accumulate more money than they could possibly spend in a hundred lifetimes when we have people starving in this one?”

[Donnalea @Donnalea13]

@BowTiedBroke Hello!

[NIKKOLAS SMITH @4NIKKOLAS]

𝘏𝐚𝑝𝕡𝔂 𝐵𝐚𝙣𝚗𝖊𝙙 𝓑𝗼𝗼𝕜𝐬 𝙒𝒆𝘦𝓴! 📚✨
It’s an honor to create books that have been banned by those who are against justice and equality for all people.
Thank you all for keeping the fight alive!

#BannedBooksWeek #LetFreedomRead #NationalBookMonth

[Appalachian Mama @EastTNMama]

TENNESSEE CAUTION:

In regards to all the people wanting to move here from New York and California as well as many other heavily populated cities across the country, as well as those wanting to visit...

Before you come to Tennessee to visit you must be aware of what is happening here. Especially, around the rural and all of MIDDLE TENNESSEE! AND EAST TENNESSEE!!!!!!! There's a housing shortage, rent has tripled, and folks are vacationing here in record numbers...

So if you plan on moving here, or just plan on vacationing in our river bottoms, hill country, mountains or lakes this summer, I think you should know that wolf spiders, fire ants and bedbugs have infested hotels and motels across the area due to dryer than usual weather. The woods will eat you alive with ticks and chiggers.

Our lakes are full of gators, fresh water sharks, and creepy old guys wearing speedos.

Our rivers are full of drunks in tubes peeing themselves while the banjo players lay waiting in the bushes.

Tennessee panthers have eaten many domesticated animals and possibly some small children.

The local bear and coyote population are all 'in heat' and think your wife/girlfriend is hot.

Snakes... don’t even get me started on the water headed copper moccasins here, and the Diamond Back Rattler Cobras.

The poison ivy has overtaken all other vegetation.

We have had bear sightings at every park and town and they are after your picnic baskets….and some cougars have been spotted in motel rooms and bars.

Watch out for the jackalopes, they have been extremely aggressive this season.

We have the Skunk Ape invading our parks and it’s their mating season. Porcupines are "stabbing" small children should they dare to utilize the local playground equipment.

Skunks have made their way over and multiplied at unprecedented rates and wander the local campgrounds in packs looking for beer.

Murder hornets!?! We’ve got great black clouds of murder hornets, and swarms of giant crickets and even some Oklahoma grasshoppers.

Scorpions have now migrated here and have been congregating in massive quantities under rocks, logs, wooden steps, automobiles, and tarantulas are now stealing peoples food and biting like crazy.

I’m pretty sure all private tiger owners (we had a jump in them after Tiger King) have released their cats into the streets of our cities and towns.

Head lice now fly and we have vampire bats.

Oh, and no one is vaccinated.

I hear Idaho and Louisiana are really nice though. 👍🏼

*wish I could take credit for this one 😂

[Jon Lion Fine Art 🌈🦋 @jonlionfineart2]

Let’s knock this price down to $350…

“Lily, Abstraction” - 32in X 20in
(Painted on 2 16x20 stretched canvases)

(Copper metallic paint background gives a nice sheen in different lighting!)

Message me if interested
Please help me share?

[Janice Gindel @jgindel]

So truly heartbreaking!!! I did not hear Trump once speak about her death; shameful!!!

[Shannon Watts @shannonrwatts]

America trying to find new and creative ways to kill children besides gun violence.

[JΛKΣ @USMCLiberal]

Biden beat the Russians without using US troops and by spending a small fraction of our defense budget. #RussianBankCollapse

He also beat OPEC and reduced our gas prices by selling our own oil at a reduced price, forcing OPEC to drop their prices.

THANKS BIDEN!!!

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

when your "friends" don't include you in the group chat

[Maggie Reed @mermaidmamamags]

Lauren Boebert addresses the conspiracies

[Kristen Panthagani, MD, PhD @kmpanthagani]

I would love to tell you about the times vaccines prevented me from getting sick, but every time it happens, I don’t notice. I just keep feeling well.

Neither do you.

Public health, when it’s working, is invisible.

[Ana Navarro-Cárdenas @ananavarro]

Dear @JoeBiden, pardon Hunter before these clowns go after him to take revenge on you.

And while you’re at it, give pre-emptive pardons to Liz Cheney, Kamala Harris, Adam Kinzinger, Jack Smith…and anybody else who may be on the enemies list of the promised retribution.

[Dr. Annie Andrews @AnnieAndrewsMD]

@atrupar @morgfair We are so fucked.

[Rev. Benjamin Cremer @Brcremer]

When you put someone in power because they don’t care about the same people you don’t care about, the only certainty is that you will soon find out that they don’t care about you either.

[. @GregTSargent]

this is really something if true -->

[Aaron Parnas @AaronParnas]

Watch this and play it on repeat.

@SymoneDSanders is right.

[Alex גדעון בן װעלװל @JewishWonk]

If your media consumption is a Fox morning show, Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, Jordan Peterson, Prager, Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, right wing memes on reddit, Twitter, and Instagram, and your nightly consumption is Fox, you will have no way of knowing anything good Dems do.