To Earnest, with Love

This is a confession and an explanation and a passive aggressive indictment of my friends. Read it or not, like it or not, this is my truth and however you choose to take it, I will manage.  I’m angry.  And I’m angry about being angry.  Being angry about what I’ve experienced means that it matters to me, and I’ve spent my life determined for it not to matter.  If it matters, then it means they got to me; that they have power over me; that I’m weak; that I’m pathetic.  I am surprised at the depth and breadth of my anger, and I am still desperate to stuff it down; to ignore it; to deny it; to detach myself from it.  When I’m detached, I can rationalize why it shouldn’t matter; why they are the pathetic ones; why they are the ones to be vilified and despised. When I’m angry, I'm trapped between rage and shame. I was devastated when Trump was elected.  And I’m not one to be “devastated.”  I’m not sure I even understood what it meant until Trump.  It deconstructed me in a w

The author People - mostly people who call themselves republicans - keep asking, "what's wrong with a 'temporary' ban to make sure people coming here aren't terrorists?" Here's my two biggest complaints: 1) There is no evidence that this "temporary" ban (indefinite for Syrian refugees) is based on any imminent threat from those people who have already been subjected to extensive vetting (over two years) and are now cleared to come here but for Trump's ban; and 2) even if the current vet ting process could be better, and keep people here in the US "safer" (from foreign-born terrorists), we are already infinitely safer than so many of the people coming here, and certainly all of the refugees who are fleeing, literally, unimaginable horror, at least if you've lived here you entire life. Is there a risk that a "bad" person will slip past all of the extensive screening we already have in place? Sure - there is abs