swan song

Here's what I took away from my trip to Portugal...I could live there. I could easily live in that beautiful clean place with it's tropical environment and it's warm welcoming people. It wouldn't take much to get me to cash out and move especially the way things are going over here. And Portugal likes ex-pats and have a system that makes it easy for those of us who would want to live there, according to our guide the day we went to Sintra. If you run your retirement funds through one of Portugal's banking institutions and stay in country for 9 months out of every year, giving you three months to travel, then you can live in the country tax free for 10 years, and so said our guide, air fare is cheaper from Portugal than from the US. It would take several more visits to determine where in Portugal I would want to live of course, but can't you just imagine it? Remaking your whole life, moving to Europe, jetting around to other countries like we jet around to just another state. I'm in.

Of course, as my friend Denise says, vacations are like the honeymoon. And as Ms Moon's Mr. Moon says, it's hard to move a whole tribe. Because I would have to move the family too. And they would not be retired and would have to have jobs and all. But it's a nice dream.

Meanwhile, over here, Trump is continuing to make this country a place that no one wants to emulate, a country no one wants to befriend. We forcibly pry crying children from the arms of their crying mothers and then keep them in cages sleeping on mats on the floor as punishment to their parents for having the audacity to want to come here to raise their families in a safe place. Instead of fighting for human rights, we now suppress them and are on the UN's human rights watch list. He has made us a country that allows non-citizens to join the military and then deports them after they fulfill their enlistment and need services. He suppresses the free press. Under his leadership we have become a country with zero compassion, where white people feel emboldened to insult and curse and scream at and in some cases physically assault total strangers telling them to go back where they came from because of the color of their skin or the language they are speaking; a place where the KKK, Nazis, and white nationalists, responsible for thousands of deaths of people of color in the past, boldly parade in public without governmental censure 73 years after we sacrificed over 40,000 citizens to defeat these same people; a country where the highest court in the land has OKed purging names from registered voter lists dismantling one of our constitutional rights. His policies have further eroded the middle class with his tax reform making the rich richer and plunging us into the deepest debt we have ever been in to the tune of trillions while he enriches himself by raiding the national treasury and his family via access to world leaders and governmental policy with his daughter and son-in-law reaping over 82 million dollars so far. He has alienated our allies, particularly our neighbors to the south and north, with his childish complaints, name calling, and behavior and his untruthful rhetoric about trade practices and is losing markets for our crops. He has withdrawn us from negotiated and signed agreements with other countries making us a nation that will not keep it's word and insults our allies, trashing the Western Alliance, instead preferring the company of dictators and human rights abusers because they stroke his ego where our allies, the other Western democracies, won't put up with his ignorance and arrogance. 


photo credit Jesco Denzel  Trump tells Angela Merkel he can do whatever he wants.

It would not surprise me in the least for him to withdraw from the Western Alliance completely and to form a new alliance with Russia, North Korea, and China sounding the death knell to the America I knew.

Empires always come to an end, some last longer than others. I never thought I would live to see America fall but I fear Trump is our Nero and if we don't get enough opposition in Congress this fall, it will be our swan song. So regarding the Supreme Court's decision to let states purge voter registrations, make sure you are still registered to vote come November. Check every month from now until then because the Republican state governments will remove as many young people, old people, and people of color as they can and they will not tell you if you have been removed.

And then turn out and vote.