Obamacare: One Anecdote

Past and Present. Source

In the past few years I have been dealing with a few health issues not uncommon in someone my age: cancer, a chronic illness, and something else I'd rather not disclose. It's a vanilla issue for anyone with money. It used to be a vanilla issue for me before Obamacare, when I could be seen by good private doctors for a reduced fee.

Once Obamacare came in, and this really literally happened to me -- the doctors I used to see said, "You have Obamacare now. You don't need us. Go away."

I began a round of phone calls, visits, begging for care -- years -- years -- of Kafkaesque stuff you really don't want to read about.

Every day is a struggle. I am in constant physical pain. I feel humiliated and crushed. And I can't do anything about it because ... because I am taken care of by Obamacare. Phones no one answers. Doctor visits with incompetents who damage my body. Medieval techniques.

That is my real experience. If you are having good experiences with Obamacare, good for you. that is not my experience.

I don't even post about it much any more because Obama supporters jump down the throats of anyone who talks about this and call us liars, racists, etc.

Why I'm posting about it now.

I had a problem with a private, capitalist, profit-driven, corporate, American company. They sent me a bizarre bill yesterday. They had already taken money from my account to pay for this bizarre bill.

I dreaded phoning them today ... because on some level, because my Obamacare-agony has become such an all pervasive background dirge in my life, I concluded that dealing with this company would be like dealing with the scum I deal with for Obamacare.

That I'd call the number and no one would answer ... or I'd get an endless labyrinth phone tree that ended in a dead-end ... or some offshore Amir who didn't speak English very well ... or they'd take even more money from me. ... that I'd be on the phone for hours.

I phoned this big, corporate, capitalist, profit driven company. And -- it was a *pleasure.*

I was immediately directed to a very pleasant voiced woman who was probably in the US and spoke English perfectly and she was very courteous and deferential and she immediately apologized for the bill and immediately removed it from my account and said she'd be sending me a refund within five days and she gave me a confirmation number if for some reason the refund did not arrive.

I was like ... That was Rational. I was just treated with respect. The solution arrived immediately. What planet am I on ... oh ... this is capitalism.

Grief. An Anniversary.

Confirmation

Joe, Antoinette, Mike, Diane. Penistone Crag.

Diane, I think, Antoinette, Gregory. I remember the fun we had with that picnic table.
If it had been an actual magic carpet we would not have had more fun. 

One year.

Yes I have been counting the days.

Yes, I have been saying, "It's been a week. At some point it will have been a year. It's been a month. At some point it will have been a year. It's been a season. At some point it will have been a year."

I have been saying, "This is the first summer. This is the first fall. This is the first winter. This is the first birthday. My birthday. Your birthday. The first Thanksgiving. The first Christmas."

365 days of thinking of you last thing before going to sleep at night. 365 days of wanting to throw something, to make it not happen, to not have happened. 365 days of grim resignation and anger at God.

And yes I did remember, on every day, each of the 365 days, that you would not count the days if it had been me.

And you told me as much.

And that you and I never spent holidays together. And the few times you sent me a birthday card, it was always late.

No, we almost never spent holidays together. And yet I always knew you were out there. When the first warm winds melted snow, and the days lengthened and Easter approached, I tasted mak, I knew that you were out there, and you were tasting mak too. When the year fell down the hole, and if you blinked you'd miss the sun in the day, I remembered the Salvation Army Santa Claus coming to the house, and the Slovak Christmas Eve ritual at Aunt Phyllis' house, I knew that you were out there, and you remembered those things, too. The Chatty Cathy doll. Greg getting a stuffed Bugs Bunny that was almost as big as he was. Midnight Mass and the line from Isaiah about the "pole on their shoulder." We'd giggle. You were out there, and you remembered.

Not any more.

I don't remember what date daddy died. I know it was in fall, but that's all I've got. I don't remember mommy, though I was holding her in my arms as it happened. That was summer. Mike. I think Mike died near Thanksgiving. I remember Phil because he died on my birthday. And you I remember.

I have cried every day.

It has felt like an amputation. Something vital and huge was taken out of me and I'll be lacking that for the rest of my life. Limping around, lighter. Hollowed. Lacking. Missing. Incomplete.

And you wouldn't feel that way. I know it.

I miss you so much. I miss you throughout the day.

You were a bitch. You didn't like me, and you didn't care about me. But life threw us in the same bathtub, the same bed, the same kitchen, streets, woods, school, church, library, car driving down the shore, stocked with bologna sandwiches on rye bread, for the first decade of my life, at least. You were funny, smart, and curious. I will never again have anyone I can talk to as I could talk to you.

Footnotes were not necessary. When talking to you, I never had to stop in the middle of what I was saying and explain what I was saying. You think, for deity's sake. You think.

Why do so few people think.

"People are stupid, Diane. Never forget that." How many times did you tell me that? One of your pearls of wisdom. Along with "Buy when there's blood on the streets" and "Ten o'clock and two o'clock" and "Egg whites should be room temperature; cream should be cold." You were older. You arrived at life before I did and sent back reports.

You knew movies. You knew politics. You knew sports. You knew nature. You knew human psychology. You knew current events.

Snapping turtles, schistosomes, British Invasion rock 'n roll, stockinette stitches, soil alkalinity, back roads shortcuts, women of the Revolutionary War, quantum theory, Beat Poetry. You knew. No need to stop in the middle of a sentence and say, "Brian Greene is … " You knew Brian Greene and Sappho and Pierre Trudeau.

We loved Sam Goldwyn's 1939 Wuthering Heights. In that film, Heathcliff (Laurence Olivier) asks his wife Isabella Linton (Geraldine Fitzgerald), "Why does your hair not smell of heather?"

There's a reason those Golden Age Hollywood movies were so powerful. I tried to read Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte's novel. What a bungle. Three hundred pages of train wreck. Make up your mind, lady. What are you writing? Give me the movie.

"Why does your hair not smell of heather?"

That's it. Right there. Emily could have skipped the three hundred pages. That line is not in the book. Hollywood distilled the classic novel into one line.

Heathcliff is yearning for the love of his life, Cathy Earnshaw (Merle Oberon). Cathy was a bitch. She had slapped Heathcliff, telling him not to touch her with his dirty hands. So he left, never looked back, made lots of money, returned, and, out of spite, married Cathy's sister-in-law.

Given all that meanness and cruelty and life-destroying bitchiness, why does Heathcliff yearn for Cathy? Why does he think of Cathy every time he is close to his loving, psychologically normal wife Isabella?

Heathcliff and Cathy had grown up together. They were poor. Their childhood was unhappy. The drunken and depressed man of the house beat and humiliated Heathcliff. Cathy watched helplessly. Heathcliff and Cathy, whenever they could, would escape to wild nature. They used to play on a rocky outcropping, Penistone Crag. They played in the heather, a plant associated with rural poverty. Their imaginations transformed the rocks and the weeds into a castle and roses and, in their imaginations, they became a king and a queen. They would sometimes visit the homes of wealthy people and watch from a distance, their noses pressed to the glass, outside looking in. They yearned to live the lives of comfortable, happy people.

Later, Heathcliff and Cathy became rich. They both lived the lives of wealth. They became the kind of people they used to gaze at when they were young and poor. But neither is happy. Both yearn for their childhoods spent in poverty, spent playing in heather. Even though they made each other miserable, they yearn for each other.

"Why does your hair not smell of heather?"

Heathcliff has everything a poor boy might want. He is rich. He married an upper class girl who loves him. But her hair does not smell of heather. Heather, the ratty, country weed, the sign of rural poverty. Cathy smelled of heather, and Cathy was a bitch to him. But every time he is close to his prized and loving wife, all he can think is, "Why does your hair not smell of heather?"

You know, I recently watched a couple of movies, Sweet Home Alabama and My Sweet Charlie. There are not-great movies. And I wanted to talk about them.

Talk.

Talk doesn't mean, "I liked that movie!" "Yeah, I liked it, too!" and then moving on.

How many hours did you and I talk about Lawrence of Arabia or Gone with the Wind?

Not hours. Years. And we'd talk like that about not-great movies, too. Elmer Gantry, The Hasty Heart and The Art of Love.

"What was his motivation? Why did she love him? What if they had been the same people but ten years older? What if she had had the same heart and soul but she had been ugly? Is what she did cruel or kind? What if the entire plot had taken place on Mars, and they all had to be wearing oxygen masks? If you could re-do the ending, how would you and why?"

I'll never have those conversations again.

A couple of things:

I have no idea what this is. This – your death and my mourning.

I look at photos of you, I think of you, and I think of losing you, and I just feel that I'm in the middle of some large blackness, without landmarks or vocabulary. I don't really get it. That sounds so … amorphous. Heck, it sounds so stupid.

Second thing. As I mourned you, I kept reminding myself, "She would not mourn you. You were nothing to her." At first, that made no difference in my sadness. Around autumn, time for your birthday and mine, it finally began to sink in. And I am no longer as sad as I once was.

But this is also true. Your death savaged me as nothing else has. And I've been through a lot. I don't think I'll ever see another sunny day. I will always see the shadow, even at high noon. I think I'll never experience another summer. I think it will always, from here on out, be dusk in my life. I think I'll always be approaching the closing of the coffin, the falling of night. I don't know if yellow or orange are still in my box of colors. I don't know that I'll ever hear laughter without hearing keening in the background.

And here's another thing. I miss you ravenously. I want to sink my teeth into your essence. That's an attempt at a metaphor. I miss your physicality with my physicality. We were so on top of each other in that tiny little house we grew up in, that small town, that you are stamped on my brain, on all my senses. Without trying, I can hear you, touch you, see you, smell you – you always smelled burnt umber to me – you taught me the word "synesthesia" – before that I didn't know that my brain worked differently in that way. As adults, because of your bitchery, we spent years not talking to each other. And I could summon you – heck I could not avoid summoning you. Dreams, nightmares, aphorisms, reading books you read first, driving and cooking and grooming as you taught me.

But I really wish I could pull you back into life.

And one more thing.

Antoinette, you blew it. You know you did. No need to rehash the details.

I loved you so much. You shouldn't have done the things you did.

When we were experiencing whatever this is – this life – we should have had more time together, and more good time.

That we did not is all on you.

Forgive you? Dunno.

Miss you insanely?

Every day.

"There Is So Much Sadness in the World": Grief, An Anniversary

This photo is all over the web, but I couldn't find out
who snapped it, or where the original is.

My sister Antoinette died a year ago. I'm taking care of myself on this anniversary.

Kids growing up today may never experience what I once felt … what millions of people have felt: "I am the only one who feels this way."

Google has eradicated the "I am the only one" virus. With Google, we all know that we are not the only one.

I Googled the phrase "mourning the difficult death." I found a brief essay entitled "Grieving the Difficult Relationship" at a website called "Hello Grief." The essay struck me as boilerplate platitudes. It was followed, though, by 130 posts from people grieving difficult relationships.

Below please find edited excerpts from these posts. The excerpts,below, are nuggets of human experience. These people are feeling very intense things, and social norms prevent them from sharing or processing these intense feelings with friends or family. There is no ritual for what these people describe. And so we make our own ritual: telling these stories on the internet.

***

My marriage of 25 years was coming to an end because of addictions when my husband passed away one week before the divorce. A large hole in my life that I filled with good memories but I keep forgetting about the pain and anger and that is keeping me from moving on.

***

The affair my husband had shortly before he died…we were trying to make a go of things when he learned about the cancer and over and over again I think of all the hurtful things he said to be about my appearance etc. ..when he was having the secret affair and I didn't know what was wrong. I think of these things more than his death…strange

***

My ex-husband died by suicide 9 month ago. Relief was one of the first emotions I felt. He had been the love of my life

***

I had separated from my husband and had moved to my own place the day he died from alcohol and pill abuse. The guilt that I felt (and still feel) was overwhelming.

***

In December of 2009 my husband of 24 years and I divorced. In January he took his life. I would love to go to a support group I just don't know what for.

***

In August of 09 my husband of 20 years and I divorced. He suffered alcohol addiction. In May 2010 I found him dead of alcohol poisoning. In July 2010 my mother passed away after a long illness. I am just swallowed up in grief. Grieving for two different people, two different ways.

***

I also had very real and scary nightmares for about 7 years after his suicide in which he was very much alive and demanding his money back that I ended up inheriting from his estate. I had to learn lucid dreaming in order to guide the dreams to less scary endings.

***

My husband of 29 years died of cancer on August 22, 2011. He wasn't all bad, but I can't think of anything good to say. I "talk" to him and let him know how angry I feel. Four days after his death I found pictures (that had been locked in a briefcase) of him in an embrace with a mutual friend and another woman and he was so happy and they were so nude. I'm not one to hold on to lots of things, but after that discovery the few sentimental items laid aside went to the curb. I miss him. The myriad of emotions are tiresome and the memory banks are working overtime

***

Will this ever end for me? Will there ever be a normal day for my son and I again? Does the pain stop hitting me like a 90 mile an hour baseball?

***

My emotionally abusive husband of 18 years committed suicide 2 months after I separated from him. He was a porn addict, he was gay, he was an alcoholic, and his suicide plans included ending our lives. I knew that he was gay for many years, I told him that if he wanted to live that lifestyle, that I would support him and release him from our marriage. He told me he was committed and would never break our marriage vows. Well that was just another lie. I ended up having to get tested for STD's and AIDS. Those that both knew me and the "charming" side of my husband want to remember him and tell me how good a man he was. I want to shout from the rooftops that this man was a lie! I have felt so alone during this grieving process.

***

He had been emotionally and physically abusive…not only to me but to my children…and had molested one of them when she was a teen…so I should have felt glad, right? I didn't. Think I have grieved most over the loss of what might have been but wasn't.

***

I tried to help her write her autobiography. We had two sessions where she spoke about her beginnings. I was excited about the prospect of getting to know who she really was. Not to be, as she discontinued after the second session and it had become clear we had come to a painful memory or cluster therein.

As she lay there, refusing all forms of treatment, I still wanted her to be able to say whatever she might wish to communicate….with ALS, this faculty falls away and unless one chooses technological assistance, communication is lost.

Truthfully, even while she could speak, when I came over their house she mostly read, and eventually, watched the television. As was in life, it was in dying and of course death. So much unspoken; unsaid things.

I am sad, angry and mostly just stuck in an emotional crock-pot of pain I recall in my undergraduate studies while discussing grief, it was said that it gets complicated (complicated grief) when there is ambivalence. This makes me laugh now, as I'm trying to imagine a relationship which doesn't contain ambivalence.

***

She was a very sharp looking lady: always dressed impeccably, and very clean, even in old age. You could eat off the floors of her assisted living apartment. She had a terrific sense of humor, and was very funny. She greeted everyone with a smile.

But the other side of her, that the outside world never saw, was a very critical, negative, constantly talking, complaining individual. Anything I would tell her, she would turn into something bad. If a friend of mine was overweight, no matter what I might be saying about that friend, my mother brought up how fat she was.

I don't miss her. The gut wrenching hole that so many people speak about doesn't exist for me. I know she wanted me to spend more time with her, but it would've been detrimental to both of us, because neither of us made each other feel very good with our words.

I spent years in therapy trying to deal with her personality, trying to change my own in order to be around her. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I miss not missing her. I miss not feeling intense grief over her

***

Once my mother asked for me to come to her bedside. The gentle mother that I had always yearned to come back finally came. Two weeks later she was gone. Within that time I did ask her why didn't she like me and even then she answered that 'like' was never in her vocabulary but that she loved me.

I am buried in hurt for the answer. Why couldn't this part of my mom show up earlier before she became sick?

I loved and yearned for my mom's affection but how every time I came in close she would do something hurtful. The pain of having such a brief reconciliation is tremendous. There is no one in my life to offer that love and understanding to me was with my mom when she took her last breath. In fact, it was only her and I in the room together as I held her and told her how much I loved her The only words my heart can come up with is HELP ME!!

***

I battled his addiction for so many years but towards the end I was exhausted due to my own health issues and could no longer help him can't help but feel guilty as to why I felt exhausted and why my health issues had to happen around the time when he needed me the most

***

After she died I read all her diaries. What a mistake that was.

***

My Father passed away just before Christmas. He was a very difficult Man who drank and smoked. I had a difficult time dealing with him mainly due to my hard childhood. I feel that me and my sisters should of done a lot more to help. Very torn up with guilt, very sad how it all ended. Keep going over all the different ways I could have made things better

***

My only brother never left them and they enabled his life-long alcohol and drug abuse. He is now 50. After my father died, my brother attempted suicide on the 30th of December. He is still hospitalized as I type this. A part of me knows he will never get better and probably die by his own hand…another parts hopes and prays for a miracle. A part of me feels like I am being sucked in now by my brother. I won't allow it, but this is all so emotionally draining. I feel like I am drowning

***

My parents were abusive in every way imaginable to both my brother and I…but they still were the only parents we had. My brother was a horrible person throughout his life once the alcohol and drugs got a grip on him. I didn't speak to any of them for decades because I couldn't without getting screamed at or told I should give them money (whatever!) because "You're rich and you got it." Yeah right. They threw each other under the bus constantly – but then expected me to gladly join them in their sick and twisted codependent game.

***

My husband and I had been married for 5 years. We had a child during this time and he had anger problems towards him. I eventually removed myself and my son from the home. I had asked him numerous times to seek help for anger. The end result was he took his own life instead. He tried to phone me the night he did it but I never heard the phone ring. My life is consumed by guilt, anger, sadness

***

After internet searches on grieving, all I could find was stages of grief with the underlying assumption that one was grieving the love of one's life.

***

He was verbally abusive towards me my whole life, and yet I loved him unconditionally. When he got oral cancer, I took care of him, even though he pushed me away. My whole life I felt as if it was my responsibility to take care of him. He did leave me some money. I feel so guilty having it.

***

There are no words for this grief. Friends & family members can't understand why I'm taking this so hard, & how can I explain to anyone what I can't understand myself?

***

I feel sometimes like an animal, forgetting my mate so quickly. I don't even feel guilty, because I no longer have that ever-present gnawing on the inside that had settled there during our marriage. I should have left him long ago, but I wound up staying for 31 years.

He made sure we were forever in debt, living paycheck to paycheck. I guess there were periods when he wasn't angry, complaining, blaming or acting disinterested and bored like a child, still now, I am just relieved it is over. He had no excuse for being like he was except that his father was a rotten man too. I've reached, and am over the limit, of crap I'll ever be willing to put up with in a lifetime.

***

Mother's Day is coming up soon, and when I see all those happy commercials about all those lovely mother-daughter relationships, I want to throw something at the TV.

***

My son died from an overdose of drugs on 5/25/12. I had not spoken to him in 7 years. I have so much guilt over this I'd give anything to be able to tell him I loved him.

***

My only brother drowned when he was fourteen and a year later, when I was twelve, my father told me he wished it had been me who died. By the time I was fourteen I was a blackout drunk. My dad died when I was twenty-four and in the throes of alcoholism. I did not grieve his death. My mother, an alcoholic herself, died two years later after wringing me out with her neediness. I did not shed a tear after she died.

***

Throughout most of our relationship she was physically and emotionally abusive. I found out two weeks before she died that she was doing the same thing with our daughter. I was ashamed that I'd stayed so long and ashamed that I didn't remove my daughter from her "care".

Yet still, I stepped up and did as much caregiving as I could because anything I didn't do would have fallen on our daughter who is 19 and in school full time.

There was no one else as she alienated every friend she had and every member of her so dysfunctional family. I realize now that my own feelings of guilt were driven by my primary emotion – relief. Relief that I don't have to take care of her. Relief that I don't have to deal with her craziness any more. Relief that I don't have to financially support her. Relief that I don't have to pretend to be upset by her suffering.

***

He has taken up with a woman in town who my mother disliked. He brings her in the house to shop through my mother's clothes while the box that contains my mother's ashes sits in the middle of the dining room table. Nothing could be more hypocritical and disrespectful of her memory than what my father is doing. I will be very, very, relieved when he finally goes. It is impossible to love a person like my father, even though he's my father. I can't think of too many human beings more disgusting than he is.

***

My brother passed away from a drug overdose the day after threatening suicide. He was obviously high, waving around a gun, breaking glass and trying to set the house on fire. We all wanted to see him succeed at life and just be happy.

***

I believe he is trying to tell me something. I feel like I am losing my mind. Strange things are happening in my home. I know he is here and wants to tell me something. I can't work. Someone keeps taking the sliding glass door off my apartment, things disappear, there are cold spots in the house, and I can't think of anything else other than what is he trying to tell me. I cry constantly. All I want to do is sleep. My family thinks I am losing my mind. How do I find out what it is he wants me to know?

***

The anger I felt was beyond words and it often spilled into my life with other people. The hardest part is I did and do love her, I just do not like her for the things she did. I know in my heart if I had loved her unconditionally mourning her passing would have been easier. I have become aware that to progress in my healing I need to find a way to mourn her

***

The layers and layers of emotion make grieving very, very complicated and the sadness comes out in little 'blurts' sometimes. The rest of the time I'm sort of numb. My advice to children of a bipolar mom – LEAVE.

***

It's easy for them to be dead, but I still have to cope with the legacy of their unspeakable damage!

***

She died with nothing and no one around her who cared about her. We don't know if it was an overdose or if she aspirated her own vomit. Even more tragic than that was the way she lived and the torment she put my family and I through. I am not sure if I am more sad about how she died than about how she lived. Constantly I find myself wishing everyone would not remember her as an addict. Now all I have area few fond childhood memories from before things got bad. My only solace comes from my hope that I can tell her I loved her all along.

***

Suddenly I feel almost numb. Could this be grief? I have been in fight mode for 3 years to protect myself and my children financially. This happened as soon as it is finally coming to an end i.e. all of the papers signed.

***

His last words to me were, "I don't have a daughter named Lindsey." The last words that my dad ever said to me haunt me daily. I struggle so bad because I feel like maybe I have no right to mourn. One minute I'm crying hysterically because I miss my dad so bad that it physically hurts. The next minute I'm mad at him for leaving me in this world the way he did.

***

He had a stroke. I thought if he needed me, he might love me. I was wrong. The emotional abuse continued, even after he was wheelchair bound. I cared for him two years, during which he physically abused me if I got too close. A week before he died, he confessed to me that he had a fantasy life of being a major in charge of psychological torture experiments on recruits. And that he was sorry. My world has been like a tomb ever since. I am so angry at him for trying to destroy me. I had no idea the whole thing was orchestrated for perverse pleasure. I tried abuse therapy, but it didn't address the grief. I tried grief therapy, but it didn't help with the anger from the abuse.

***

Watching my mom dying in a hospital I worry I won't be able to properly mourn for her because of all past hurt feelings. My sister and her are exactly alike, controlling people who can never say sorry or accept any mistakes they made. I always regretted that I never sat with mom and told her how I felt. They tried to blame my husband for my distance that I started to create but if they only realized it was I had no more room to bear the deceptions, lies, secrets they held right to this exact day. My sister once said in a weak moment she is worried she will lose me once mom is dead…She lost me a long time ago. How do you mourn when you carry so much hurt and anger? One you actually feel like you already lost long ago.

***

He had many demons from a tough childhood and he felt like the world was against him. Because he had a complex about himself he would often lash out verbally or physically and it was always worse if my sister and I fought back. He often made the wrong decisions about things and growing up I shamefully would compare him to other dads who had more money and dealt with things in a better way.

***

I too have searched the web for material that might help, but haven't been able to find solace. I can't stretch friendships by talking about this with friends as I do feel the pressure to be over it by now, but in some ways I feel like I'm just starting to touch the surface. I can't even write about why our relationship was so strained for fear of dishonoring him and my family. I guess it is still hard to believe that we don't have the chance to 'fix' things, but I'm ashamed to think that I don't know if we could even if he was still here.

***

There is no one path through grief. We are all on our own paths but we have to walk that path.

***

When I became an adult, she couldn't beat me physically so she used manipulation, unending criticism, correcting nearly everything I said, being completely Unsupportive of pretty much anything I did and telling boyfriends, her friends, my friends, etc., what a total POS I was…in front of me.

Shortly before she died, her eyes kind of brightened up and she looked at me, called me by name and the last words she ever spoke were to tell me she was sorry she hurt me and that she loved me. I cry throughout the day. I don't mean just tears, I mean wracking sob bawling that drains me when I talk to the couple of long distance friends I have, they tend to think I should be getting over it all by now.

***

I am/was in possession of a lifetime of his journals, poetry, letters and after reading them, I can see that his entire life he struggled with depression, addictions, substance abuse, etc.…I just had NO idea had I known, I probably would have run in the opposite direction!

***

He would beat her very badly most weekends. My mother would scream for me to help her even as a toddler. When they weren't trying to kill each other they were trying to kill themselves. I often had to deal with cleaning up bloodbaths, or finding my mother beaten unconscious, was held between arguments involving knives and almost died in a house-fire after a horrific fight between them.

Despite all this I still loved my Dad. I thought I had come to terms with my childhood and I thought I had forgiven my Dad but since he has died I have felt so many weird emotions. It's only when I'm alone I realize these feelings are there. I keep saying sorry to him, like I've done something wrong.

***

I saw him bloody up my siblings and now they are pretending that he was a good father. I'll never understand why they lie about what he was and now they are upset because I refused to be beat and molested. Good riddance biofamily.

***

My mother died 3 months ago but I just found out by reading her obituary on line. When you come from such dysfunction you feel so terribly alone. I get no memorial, no ashes, no keepsakes, no final goodbye, no chance to say I love you or I am sorry. The child in my still wants her mother. I can't give my children grandparents even when they were alive. There is so much sadness in the world.

Donald Trump and Counter-Jihad

Donald Trump and Counter-Jihad

Counter-jihadis are frustrated people. We see truths that others ignore. Jihad's death toll increases daily. We hope for a turning point, perhaps a charismatic public champion or a social media icon to propagate our movement.

The perfect public relations gimmick can change the landscape overnight. Relatively few people were thinking about, or donating money to, research to cure amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in spring of 2014. By summer of 2014, a social media fund-raising gimmick called "the ice bucket challenge" inspired millions to participate in raising $115 million for ALS – five times more than had been raised the year before. Counter-jihad needs that moment: when the landscape changes, and millions join the cause.

One might think that high-profile jihad attacks, such as 9-11, or ISIS' sexual enslavement of girls, might create a public relations tsunami, bringing leaders into the counter-jihad camp. Alas, the opposite has occurred. "Islam is peace," President George W. Bush said six days after 9-11, speaking in a mosque, accompanied by CAIR. "ISIL is not Islamic," said Barack Obama on September 10, 2014.

In 2010, a New Jersey Muslim man who had raped and tortured his arranged, teenage wife was exonerated by a New Jersey judge, on the grounds that the husband's behavior was consistent with Islamic belief and practice. Also in 2010, Derek Fenton was fired from New Jersey Transit for burning three pages from a Koran. In both cases, Americans applied sharia's standards. In spite of these events in his own state, Governor Chris Christie insisted that any question of sharia in the US is nonsense. "This sharia law business is crap. It's just crazy. And I'm tired of dealing with the crazies."

Americans, beneficiaries of the freedom of speech as granted in the first amendment, inheritors of Western Civilization and its emphasis on truth as the highest value, now engage in the same process of decoding of news items that slaves of the Soviet system used to resort to. We hear of an explosion, a stabbing, a plot or a decapitation – the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, the 2014 decapitation in Moore, Oklahoma, the July, 2015 shootings in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the November 2015 UC Merced stabbing – and we all wonder when and if we will learn the suspect's name. The name is not released for hours or days. Officials rush to insist that the incident was not terrorism, but, rather, workplace violence.

Tremendous resentment, confusion and frustration are building up. People are angry. People are afraid. People don't know whom to trust.

Wait! There's good news. Very good news. The rhetorical landscape has slowly changed since 9/11.

Fifteen years ago, there were far more people who were eager to play the cultural relativism card and excuse away jihad and gender apartheid. As time has gone on, more and more people, in spite of the PC indoctrination that permeates schools, churches, politics and media, have concluded that there is something about Islam that poses a challenge. People are eager to learn more. When I give talks about Islam, audiences grant me a uniquely intense level of focus and concern. Audiences are much more likely now than in the past to have self-educated, and to know the differences between Islam and other world faiths, and to be able to refute standard-issue apologias for jihad.

The gap still exists, though, between average people's openness and awareness and the elite. Political correctness demonizes and punishes people who speak the truth about Islam. Heroes like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders must wear Kevlar and be surrounded by armed guards. Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller are targeted and slandered by the incorrectly named Southern Poverty Law Center.

Speech could be used to work out solutions the problem jihad and gender apartheid present. Speech could be used to release resentments, frustrations, fear, and rage. But political correctness suppresses speech. Politically correct suppression of the truth about Islam combined with public frustration and fear are tinder, kerosene, and a match, all waiting for the spark. This volatile situation could be exploited by a demagogue.

The freedoms Americans cherish depend on a stable civil society. When people feel afraid, and conclude that there is no one at the steering wheel – that leaders are shirking their duties – people become willing to surrender their freedom and dignity to an authoritarian who will promise them safety and order. Such an authoritarian might target not only low-hanging fruit like innocent Muslims, but non-Muslims, as well. Authoritarians don't like free speech – or freedom of assembly or association. Authoritarians begin by targeting one population as their scapegoats, but they eventually bring the hammer down on everyone. We'd all suffer. The revolution eats its young.

On December 7, 2015, at a rally in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, a Republican presidential candidate stated of himself, "Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on."

At a November 12, 2015 rally, Trump said that his opponents were saying, "Trump doesn't have a plan for ISIS! …I'm gonna win … I said to my wife, I have to tell 'em about my plan, because otherwise I'm not gonna win. They'll think I have no plan … I would bomb the shit out of them." The audience laughed and cheered.

In a March, 2016 debate, Trump said he would torture "these animals over in the Middle East" and "take out" their families. When informed that his plan would require military members to commit war crimes, Trump insisted "They're not going to refuse me. If I say do it, they're going to do it. I'm a leader. I'm a leader. I've always been a leader. I've never had any problem leading people. If I say do it, they're going to do it. That's what leadership is all about."

In a March 9 interview with Anderson Cooper, Trump said, "I think Islam hates us. There is something – there is something there that is a tremendous hatred there. There's a tremendous hatred. We have to get to the bottom of it. There's an unbelievable hatred of us…You're going to have to figure that out. OK. You'll get another Pulitzer, right? But you'll have to figure that out. But there's a tremendous hatred. And we have to be very vigilant. We have to be very careful. And we can't allow people coming into this country who have this hatred of the United States."

Some counter-jihadis see Trump as our champion and his statements as the "ice bucket challenge" moment when counter-jihad finally goes viral. They are mistaken.

Trump receives a gargantuan proportion of media attention. When Trump opens his mouth about Islam, he becomes the de facto face and voice of counter-jihad to millions of media consumers. Donald Trump's statements about Islam and Muslims have tarred counter-jihad with the mark of buffoonery, intellectual flaccidity, and uninformed xenophobia. That is exactly how Islam-apologists want to depict counter-jihad: as uneducated yahoos eager to hate, without any reason other than their own uninformed bile, the next "other."

Look again at Trump's statement on immigration. Look at the timing. Ask yourself if Donald Trump had made any significant contribution to counter-jihad before that moment.

Robert Spencer is the one indispensable hero of counter-jihad. In a July 30, 2015 essay, Spencer identified Trump as "a blowhard and boor," and "the poster child of American decline." Spencer described Trump's rhetoric as savage, stupid and clumsy. He called Trump "a foe of the freedom of speech." Trump's campaign, Spencer wrote, is "an Oprah show of celebrity worship, lurid grandstanding, logorrheic superficiality, and tabloid scandalmongering." Spencer pointed out that Trump had insulted counter-jihad heroine Pamela Geller.

"I watched Pam earlier," Trump said, "and it really looks like she's just taunting everybody. What is she doing drawing Muhammad? I mean it's disgusting. Isn't there something else they could be doing? Drawing Muhammad? … They can't do something else? They have to be in the middle of Texas doing something on Muhammad and insulting everybody? What is she doing? Why is she doing it? It's probably very risky for her – I don't know, maybe she likes risk? But what the hell is she doing?"

Pamela Geller has shown that Trump has extensive business dealings in the Muslim world. There's nothing wrong with doing business with Muslims; we all do, as participants in the petroleum economy. The problem is this. Trump had not been part of the counter-jihad movement. Suddenly he made his December 7 announcement about Muslim immigration. Why? Because on December 2, 2015, in San Bernardino, California, jihadis Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik murdered fourteen innocent Americans and wounded twenty-four others. Trump made his immigration announcement five short days later. He exploited a tragedy to boost his presidential campaign.

It doesn't matter if he is exploiting a tragedy to advance himself, as long as he is advancing the cause of counter-jihad, you may be thinking.

Look again at Trump's statement on Muslim immigration: "Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on." He actually referred to himself as "Donald J. Trump." That sounds silly and pompous. Trump's verbal faux pas may not matter to Trump's base. Polls have shown that Trump supporters tend to be have less formal education. Trump's "savage, stupid and clumsy" rhetoric, as Robert Spencer called it, does matter to millions of others – other people who could and should be on the counter-jihad team. Trump put his own name first in an important policy announcement. This policy, if enacted, would have an impact on America's character and America's perception around the world. Beginning such a pronouncement with his own name, and never offering any justification or support, sounds like the speech pattern of an egotist, a potentate, a petty dictator, not a serious thinker.

An intelligent case can be made for a moratorium on Muslim immigration. That case can be made with facts. One might simply ask, "How does it benefit America to allow more Tashfeen Maliks, more Mohamed Osman Mohamuds, Tamerlane Tsarnaevs, Faisal Shahzads, and Mohamed Attas to enter the United States? Have a look at the photo of eight-year-old Martin Richard, murdered in the Boston Marathon Bombing. What can you say that justifies his death? We know that most Muslims are not active jihadis, but we have no way of differentiating. Other immigrants from other groups offer all the benefits of immigration that Muslims do without the risks. There is currently a worldwide resurgence of jihad, and there are terrorist groups from Boko Haram in North Africa to ISIS in the Middle East to the Caucasus Emirate in Russia to MILF in the Pacific. During a previous war, Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued presidential proclamation 2525 suspending naturalization based on nationality alone. Let us have a serious discussion on this matter."

Instead of a reasoned argument that might win over those on the fence, Trump issued a fiat, leading with the name of the great man superseding and ignoring all reason. It's a Trump-centric, anti-intellectual, Constitution-is-so-superfluous-we-need-not-mention-it approach. This great-man, fact-free approach does not serve counter-jihad.

Trump's chat with his wife, that ends with his decision to "bomb the shit out of them," is similarly not helpful. Perhaps Trump has not noticed, but we have bombed the shit out of them. A 2013 study estimated that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars would eventually cost the US six trillion dollars. That's a lot of bombs and American blood. Muammar al-Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar are all dead. Jihad still menaces.

Trump said, "I would just bomb those suckers. And that's right, I'd blow up the pipes. I'd blow up the refineries. I'd blow up every single inch. There would be nothing left, and you know what, you'll get Exxon to come in there, and in two months, you ever see these guys how good they are, the great oil companies? They'll rebuild that sucker brand new. It will be beautiful. And I'd ring it, and I'll take the oil. And I said I'll take the oil." Is Trump running for president or the latest Marvel Comics superhero?

Note these three words: "I'd ring it." Trump's magic ring would consist of American troops stationed on the ground in the Middle East, between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Trump says that he will take the oil. In fact, in this scenario, it would require massive American troop presence to take the oil. Trump's answer to the question of American energy independence is blood for oil. How many American soldiers would die to make Trump's id-fueled fantasy of omnipotent revenge real? Which Trump supporter will be first to volunteer to die to sustain the illusion that Trump is a serious person saying serious things?

Any real approach to jihad must involve two features: energy independence that eliminates our funding of jihad through our petroleum purchases, and vast cultural change. Right now discussion of jihad and gender apartheid is controlled by cultural relativism. This cultural relativism is a religious dogma among politicians, journalists, academics, elementary and secondary school teachers, and even Christian clergy.

Cultural relativism is a cultural phenomenon that has a beginning and that can have an end. A bit over a hundred years ago, an Englishman, Charles James Napier, could say of the Indian custom of sati, or burning of widows, "This burning of widows is your custom … But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property … Let us all act according to national customs." Napier insisted that Western culture was superior to the custom of sati. He insisted on enforcing Western custom on Indians.

That kind of boldness died out in the post-World-War-II era. Nazism, followed by the Civil Rights Movement in the US, overwhelmed the West. Suddenly, Westerners felt an overwhelming sense of shame. Cultural relativism, an idea advanced by anthropologist Franz Boas in the early twentieth century, became dogma.

Of course Nazism and Jim Crow were evil and deserved to die – but they were not the alpha and the omega of Western Civilization. We need to be proud of, and to cherish, what we have gotten right. If Franz Boas were alive today, he would be horrified at how far we have taken cultural relativism.

Young people need to be educated in the gifts of Western Civilization. Our guide must not be arrogant, ignorant chauvinism, but objective reality. Just one such reality: high sex ratios. Throughout the Muslim world, there are more men than women. Females die off at a rate disproportionate to the West. These statistics hold true even in wealthy Muslims nations, and in poor Christian nations. Dead women and girls: that's an inescapable reality. Compilations of the worst countries for women, citing UN statistics on literacy, life expectancy, and safety, generally list Muslim countries as among the worst. That's reality.

The Koran contains many verses calling for jihad. Mohammed was a warrior who ordered targeted killings of innocent people. Islam spread through violent conquest. These are objective facts.

Mention any of these facts on a college campus, or in a church meeting, or in an article to be published in a mainstream newspaper, or while running for office, and risk opprobrium. The schoolmarms of PC insist that you attribute unhappy facts about Islam to the evils of colonialism. Or that you say that Christians are worse. Or that you say that, with time, Islam will "reform." Authentic counter-jihadis are not raving about "bombing the shit" out of the "animals" in the Middle East. Counter-jihadis are changing America so that we can speak the truth. We can't defeat what we can't name; we can't defend what we don't value.

"Islam hates us": Islam is a belief system, and as such it cannot hate. The correct sentence would be, "Islam teaches hatred of non-Muslims." Trump is a billionaire, born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Bill and Hillary Clinton attended Trump's wedding to his third trophy bride. Even so, Trump's fourth-grade speaking style convinces fans that Trump is an outsider, a man of the people. Trump's fans also love Trump's egotism. When asked who he consults on foreign policy, Trump replied, "I'm speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I've said a lot of things … my primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff." People who aren't Trump fans won't take a grown man seriously who can't speak a coherent sentence in his native language about an important topic, and who doesn't take the time to learn objective facts that exist outside his own ego. Human lives are at stake, and Trump can't even be bothered to speak English correctly or consult with an adviser. Why give such a self-indulgent slow learner the nuclear codes?

When Anderson Cooper pressed Trump to support his assertion about Islam's hate, Trump could not. When Trump brings massive attention to counter-jihad and then speaks foolishly, conspiracy theorists can be forgiven for wondering if Trump is not a mole for the other team. Every camera in the world is focused on Trump. Every microphone is pointed at him. What a dropped ball, what a missed chance, what a setback.

In 2013, Robert Spencer was interviewed by the BBC. The interviewer asked Spencer to support his critique of Islam. Spencer immediately, and without hesitation, recited several violent and hateful Koran verses and hadiths. He did so calmly and authoritatively. He did not then – nor has he ever – call Muslims "animals" or recommend that we "bomb the shit out of them."

Anyone listening to Spencer's BBC interview would rapidly learn that the problem is not Western racism or imperialism but jihad, jihad as taught in the Koran and hadith. Spencer's intellectual acumen, his lack of hate, and the courtesy he showed his interlocutors put the focus on jihad, not on any alleged Western racism.

Trump has a huge and unshakeable fan base. As Trump himself said, "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters." Outside the fan base, Trump has the highest negative ratings ever recorded. Now is the time for counter-jihadis to reach out to, to convince and to recruit, mainstream Americans. Now is the time to harness facts to overturn the cultural relativism. We cannot squander this historical moment to allow buffoonery to become the face of counter-jihad.

You can read this article at American Thinker here

London Has Fallen 2016: Popcorn Revenge against Terrorists

"London Has Fallen" is anti-Muslim revenge porn. The words "Muslim," "Islam" and "Allah" are, I think, never once mentioned in the film. Given world events, it's entirely understandable that a studio would want to make, and viewers would enjoy seeing, such a film. Many reviewers have questioned the wisdom of releasing this film. Wise? No. Entertaining and timely? Alas, yes.

Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) must protect American President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) at a state funeral in London. Many world leaders are there, including Germany's Chancellor Bruckner, who is played by Nancy Baldwin made to look as much like current German Chancellor Angela Merkel as possible.

A little girl approaches Bruckner with a flower; security pushes the girl back. Bruckner urges the girl forward. We get the message. Bruckner is ignoring necessary security protocols. She is putting herself at risk.

It doesn't take long for the risk to materialize. Bruckner is murdered. The white rose the girl had handed her is stained with red blood.

In short order, almost all of the heads of state visiting London for the funeral have been shot to death, blown up, or crushed in a spectacular series of explosions and mass assassinations. Blood spatters on white shirts. Flames billow. Bridges collapse. Missiles fly from rooftops. Helicopters crash. Sirens sound. Men in funeral dress shoes outrun armed assassins on motorcycles. Knives and shrapnel plunge into flesh.

"London Has Fallen" gives England its own 9-11. London's towers, like the WTC, are blown up on camera.

Back in the US, Vice President Trumbull (Morgan Freeman) watches from a situation room, jam packed with good actors no doubt wishing they were somewhere else, yet eager to cash their paychecks. Jackie Earle Haley is there, looking overwhelmed and sad. Melissa Leo is onscreen for mere seconds. She may have won an Academy Award, but she is still a woman over fifty. There is also a gentleman listed in the credits as Stern-faced advisor (Stacey Shane).

Eventually it comes out that the attack on London is – surprise surprise – a terrorist action carried out by the Pakistani Aamir Barkawi. His daughter was killed in a US drone strike that was intended for him. Barkawi has, with his ample petrodollars, bought off every other person in London. His terrorists have penetrated the Queen's Guard, those guys with the tall, black fur hats and red coats, the police, emergency response personnel, and apparently every motorcycle rider in England.

Barkawi's ultimate goal: assassinate US President Asher on YouTube and stream the assassination live. Obviously this atrocity is inspired by contemporary terrorists.

Banning and Asher run, run, run. Terrorists chase, chase, chase. Banning is superhuman. You get it, after a while, that for all its political and topical trappings, "London Has Fallen" is really just a video game. Banning faces off with endless supplies of armed terrorists. They fire at him directly and somehow he never gets shot, even while he manages to kill every terrorist he wants to, sometimes with only a knife.

In one scene, Banning is talking to one of the chief terrorists on the telephone. Listen to this, he says. He places the phone near the mouth of another terrorist he is stabbing to death. The man groans into the phone as he dies. "Was that necessary?" President Asher asks. "No," Banning says.

There are many such scenes, where the American good guy gets to beat up on the terrorist bad guy.

Showing images of London's landmarks spectacularly succumbing to terrorist bombs strikes me as visual incitement. Why give these monsters ideas?

Even so, I enjoyed the movie because there really was no risk involved. The movie doesn't get you to care about any of its victims. Angela Basset, one of my favorite actresses, is not treated well by the film, and her fate left me utterly uncaring. It was all so cartoonish. I liked the spectacular visuals of London's landmarks and the silly, faux serious tone of the film. I actually laughed out loud more than once.

Fun and popcorn. But the heavy themes are there. "London Is Falling" tells you that Europe has been penetrated by terrorists, their bought-off allies and enablers. It tells you that Europe can't defend itself against this onslaught. It tells you that London is really Londonistan. It tells you that Germany's woman chancellor is especially guilty. It tells you that YouTube can be used to advance terror. It tells you that Americans must save the day. However you feel about these statements, even popcorn entertainment is now communicating them.