Version 2.019

It stormed this afternoon. The clouds moved swiftly like the vapor of a boiling kettle and, for a few minutes, the wind was so strong that, when I got home, a cedar planter was knocked down. I almost forgot that my TX girlfriends and I had scheduled a happy hour on Zoom.

One of the best things that happened during the Trump administration was meeting this group of friends, which was formed at a Women's March. Since then, we have met for dinner and parties at each other's houses, outings to the theater and museums, art crawls, road trips, etc. Even though some of us scattered across three states and we live in four different cities, we still keep in touch and do things together.

Today, I was reading a comment about Trump in someone's Facebook wall and the person was saying that Trump was not that bad, even though the writer was not a supporter. How much worse could he be? This is not a rhetorical question. In our Zoom conversation, someone mentioned that the highest risk we face was if he were to lose the election, since he'd still be in office over two additional months, from election day in November until the third week of January. But if that were the case, his powers as a lame-duck president would be diminished. No, I disagreed, in my opinion, the next six months will be the most critical. In any case, today's WashPost has a story about the Trump administration considering resuming nuclear weapons testing.

But, to the point of that gentleman, who does not think that Trump is that bad, I get what he's saying because I did not meet my girlfriends at a pro-Obama rally--there were none and, had there been, I wouldn't have gone. People confuse the actions of President Trump with the reactions of the people. He is very bad, but because he is bad, many of us know that we must rise to the occasion and be better. If the country fails, much of the blame falls on us because we are the ultimate safekeepers of the Republic: "a government of the people for the people."

In these times, we know we cannot win alone, so we forge friendships and alliances to support each other. I think that is why my group of TX friends is so successful. After I moved to Memphis, I was also invited to join a group of ladies. We usually meet for dinner once a month and that is an undertaking. We are all different and, apart from eating and being women, there is not that much more that unites us. Plus, we never talk about politics; we do not wish to be divided and, yet, we are.