Summering and Simmering!

What would one of summer’s most pleasant events be for me without a trip to New York and one to Rehoboth Beach? I left all the brouhaha going on so noisily and menacingly in the nation’s capital, as well as around the world, to gaze at the serene-looking vastness of the ocean which never fails to humble me. What am I, what are we all, but a speck on a planet that is threateningly simmering in every sense of the word? Nevertheless, walking around the lovely town of Rehoboth, or on the streets of New York City uplifts and energizes me, and makes me wonder how to reconcile the beautiful diversity of these two locations with the divisiveness and rancor going on in our nation? Which of these two starkly different atmospheres is the real one, and which is the one being rammed down our throats for wicked reasons?

New York was nostalgia as I stayed with my cousin – our mothers were sisters – in the home that my aunt and uncle had built thirty years ago and where we had all gathered on multiple occasions across the years. We remembered them, we recalled funny incidents and somber moments, we recounted parts of the family history that we both shared from our early years in Jerusalem, to our first stop in Cairo after the Palestinian catastrophe, and to how my mother, my aunt, their two other sisters, brother and parents found themselves strewn across the globe, living and raising their families far away from each other, always wondering how and why this injustice had happened, and why it still is?

The train ride from my cousin’s home to New York City’s Grand Central Station was delightful, as was the majestic city itself, always bustling, always energetic. I peer at all the different faces, the white and the colored, the established New Yorkers and the newer immigrants, their different places of origin spanning the globe, their varying religions, sexual orientations, political persuasions, the issues that drive them, the ones that infuriate them and I know that although this is where Donald Trump lived, this city has nothing to do with him and his divisive efforts to fracture the harmony that thrives on these streets. The human beings walking, talking, eating, working, and surviving here are a slap in the face to any conversation addressing white supremacy. White? Superior? Oh, no! Not here!

It is the same on the streets of Rehoboth. Black, white, brown, gay, straight, multi-racial gorgeous children, mingling, interacting, smiling at each other, seemingly unaware that just a few hours away, in the nation’s corridors of corrupt power, there are those working hard every day to pass legislation that is slowly stripping us of any democratic and equalizing laws in order to consolidate power in the hands of the few. However, the people I see here tacitly assure me that such efforts cannot, and will not, succeed. Those days are past and gone. The future is not what a few white men decide, but it is the will of the beautiful diverse crowds mingling and interacting on these streets that defy any efforts to divide and fracture them. They might like some of the things Trump says and does – I do, too – but they realize that overall he does not represent them. A lifelong Republican tells me: My vote in 2020 will be for any Democrat. Never Trump. I think that many people, white and colored, who voted for him in 2016 share the same sentiment.

Four hundred years ago, in August of 1619, the first ships with their cargo of chained black slaves arrived to the shores of Virginia. And, 400 years later, black people in this country are still being discriminated against and hounded by an ingrained colonist system fighting for its miserable life. However, those children of the slaves of yore are today aware of the bigotry that has kept them downtrodden for all those centuries. They have organized themselves; they know their rights; they correctly demand an equal place at the table. No, this is not colonist America. That was the past and it will not be allowed to continue, for again I say, nothing unites us maligned humans more than when we are being discriminated against no matter where we came from, no matter our different religions, or any other differentiating characteristics.

It is also absolutely outrageous that the Trump Administration now calls Jews who vote for the Democratic Party disloyal? How is that not racist? Not criminal even? Throwing American Jews under the bigoted Trump bus and using them in this offensive manner is pure evil, not only to Jews but to me and to so many other non-Jewish people. By the same token, conflicting people of the Jewish faith with Israeli Government policies is plain wrong. The schizophrenic Trump administration in its granting Bibi and the Israeli Government a carte blanche to go rampaging, meddling, interfering, killing and creating more chaos in the Middle East is evil. We have recently learned, from US officials nonetheless, that Israel has been conducting air strikes on its presumed enemies in Iraq, Syria and on Palestinians and Hezbollah in Lebanon because they are so-called Iranian-backed militias. Is this another ploy by Bibi and his reelection plots? However, while it is good for US officials to be owning up to that now, I wonder what had blinded them for all those decades? What blinded the MSM? It’s the same old story: picking and choosing the issues that they decide are worthy has become an obnoxious and racist trademark.

The weather at the beach was hot, but not as hot as it is in the Brazilian rainforest – in Bolivia and in Alaska as well –  the lungs of the world as Macron aptly said. The Brazilian President is a malicious person, a colonist who has no regard for indigenous people, or for the environment, nor for democratic values. Meanwhile, at the G7 meeting they addressed this matter, as well they should, mainly because the ensuing results of these fires threaten the world’s economies amongst other issues. During one of the televised G7 meetings, Boris Johnson summed up pretty well the ulterior motives of the West when he said that Britain had profited royally from free trade for two hundred years. What that means, of course, is that the Western World has reaped immense fortunes from “the colonies” that they have been usurping for centuries. and that every meeting of Western Nations seeks to consolidate and expand on these gains at the expense of millions. Injustice personified!

Yes, it is summer and millions of people took their summer vacations on beaches and elsewhere, most of them oblivious to the simmering, sizzling winds that threaten to engulf us all in their maelstrom. However, the opposing winds of Resistance on all forms of injustice are gathering speed, and they have now arrived to the point of no return, especially during this chaotic Trump Presidency. It is a glimmer of hope in a sea of injustice!