I was born in 1963. A lot of things happened that year. One of the things that is probably remembered most was President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed. He was trying to bring about change in the world, and people didn't like it! He wanted to make equity and civility the norm. Kennedy was a very popular president, but like so many other great leaders, the few haters took them down. Why do I bring this up now? Because I want to talk about hate. When I was 11 years old, I was in a production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific. I played the little mixed race Tonkinese girl, Ngana. There is a song in the show called You've Got to Be Carefully Taught. It is sung by the character, Lt. Joe Cable. He has fallen in love with a non-white girl, and he is upset that he cannot be with her. The lyrics I remember most and that have played through my mind millions of times over these last 50 years are:
"You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are 6 or 7 or 8,
To hate all the people your relatives hate.
You've got to be carefully taught.
South Pacific opened in 1949. After it opened, "the show faced legislative challenges regarding its decency and supposed Communist agenda." When it toured in the south, a bill was introduced in Georgia outlawing entertainment with "an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow," one legislator said, "that a song justifying interracial marriage was implicitly a threat to the American way of life." Rodgers and Hammerstein countered with the fact that the number represented why they wanted to do this play, and even if it meant not doing the show at all, they would not remove the number. We look back on that happening in 1949 and think, how ridiculous! Is it though? Is it ridiculous? If I had relayed that story and said it was happening with some brand new musical touring in the South right now, not a single person would have questioned it because that is where we are people! We are on the eve of an election that will throw us right back into 1949 and before if the wrong person is elected. This is going to be an all cards on the table post, so, if you're going to be sensitive about things, STOP READING NOW! Back in 2016, we had just had 8 years of a really great president, but he also happened to be black. There were a lot of people who didn't like that. I listened to Michelle Obama's book, Becoming, and I was angry at what they had to endure being said about them and their children simply because of their race. It wasn't about policy they didn't like. It was about HATE. So along comes a candidate to be the Republican ticket who starts to build a campaign on the theme, "Make America Great Again," but what we soon found out was it was a campaign based on hate and getting rid of all the people who had brought America down, the ones who had let all these people in who didn't belong, the ones who believed love is love, you get the picture. No one was shocked more than I was when I woke up on the morning after election day and found out he'd won. Even then I thought, well this is America, we have checks and balances. He'll be kept in check, and then week by week, month by month, year by year, I watched this country fall apart, and each thing that happened was worse than the last, and I thought, "What is happening? How is this ok?" When they finally announced that Joe Biden had won over trump in 2020, I wept. I was so happy and relieved that the nightmare would soon be over, but plenty of damage had been done, not the least of which was the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the judges that trump had put on the Supreme Court that were in his pocket. Millions of people had died from Covid because trump refused to believe it was real and fed the flames that it was a hoax. I could go on and on, but then I saw something happen I never thought I would see in my lifetime. A group of the haters, incited by trump himself, attacked the Capitol and tried to overthrow the American government. Thank God it didn't succeed, but plenty of damage was done, and people died. Then, true to form, when Inauguration day came, instead of taking the loss and transferring power to the rightful winner of the election, the baby threw a tantrum and was a no show, making it the first time in our country's history that we did not have a peaceful transition of power. I thought Good Riddance! We're finally rid of the cancer in our government, and yet, here we are again, 4 years later, and I am scared to death that he might win again. Truthfully he didn't win the first time, but that's whole different blog post. A convicted felon may be the next president of the United States. How is that possible? Why is he allowed to run? He can't even vote for himself because convicted felons are not allowed to vote in this country. The difference now is, he has amped up the hate, so much so that his rallies have become about targeting all the people he deems un American: Translation: Anyone who isn't Christian and White and Male. Oh, the white ladies will be allowed to stay in his America, but only if they go back to being property of men. He means to dismantle democracy if he wins. He's said it. There won't be any more voting after this time. They're going to fix it so you won't have to vote again. Those are not my words, they're his. Last weekend he held a rally in Madison Square Garden that trash talked anyone who was non-white. It was pretty much a Nazi rally. Yes, I used the "n" word. All these people gathered together to worship their king of hate. This man is vile, I just recently saw a clip of him at another rally where he was making the motions of giving a blow job using the microphone on the podium that was having technical issues, and the people at the rally just laughing. THIS MAN CAN'T BE PRESIDENT AGAIN! I know I can't reach anyone who has already drunk his Kool-Aid, the Klan members who don't wear hoods, but if you are still on the fence, I am begging you, please vote for Harris/Walz tomorrow. We need to get away from all of this celebration of hate. If you're a family man, would you leave your daughter or wife alone with him in a room? If you're a woman, would you want to be alone with him? And all of you people who are supporting him because you want to keep your fist tightly clenching all your money, SHAME ON YOU! I want my daughters and granddaughters to have rights to be able to have control over their own medical care. I want them to be able to marry and love who they want to love without fear of being locked up or worse, killed. I want them to be able to live in a world where they can be who they are without fear! Why are we even debating these issues? I know all of you may not agree with Harris on all of her policies, but at least you have a sane person to debate the issue. With trump, you will have no chance. If he wins tomorrow, that is the end of freedom. He will turn this country into a dictatorship just like his pal Putin. This has to be the end of this movement of hate, PLEASE! VOTE BLUE! 1 day! We are not born hating, we have to be taught.
