Never Ruth-less

"Dissents speak to a future age. It's not simply to say, 'My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.' But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow." Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  

    A quiet and unassuming Jewish girl from Brooklyn, a Cornell graduate. The similarities between me and the notorious, brilliant, and indomitable RBG end there. It's a bit presumptuous of me to feel as if a piece of me has died, but, hey, without notorious, brilliant, and indomitable, that's all I got. 

    We had just clinked our wine glasses together to toast this already strange Jewish new year when the text came through on my watch. (I had tucked my phone away in my purse, but my watch bucked my efforts at decorum). We had just bidden good riddance to the old year, each of us expressing some sentiment of desperate hope for better things to come. RBG had chosen this moment to leave us. I gasped. 

    On these Days of Awe*, our celebration was, by design, small and quiet, without hugs. But we were together, at least some of us, and we had matzoh balls and brisket and kugel and challah, the comforting and familiar trappings of holiday dinners past. And wine. If nothing else, our gastronomic traditions would remind us that all is not lost. 

    But Ruth is gone. The woman upon whose shoulders so many of us have stood, often without a thought for the tremendous burden she has carried. We have enjoyed the fruits of her years of labor, felt entitled to the hard-fought gifts she bestowed upon us as we coasted. We ascended through her dissent, and we begged her to stay through our descent, and she did, as long as she could, without protest. 

    She is gone, and she has left us to do what we will with her legacy. Talk about an inflection point. At the very beginning of the Days of Awe, she has let us know it is time for us to take up the mantle, to step off her fragile shoulders and fight our own battles without her, to dissent and dissent and dissent. Sure, we owe it to ourselves, but more than anything, we owe it to her. To feel awe for this small but mighty daughter of Brooklyn is natural; to do something about it is, well, divine. I am not a very religious person, but I am convinced her death, at this moment, is the work of some higher power. A celestial kick in the behind. 

    Rest in peace, notorious RGB, daughter of Brooklyn, warrior queen for so many of us, and know that we will fight to make your memory a blessing. We will buck the evil, the power-grabbers, the mockers of democracy, and we will not let them take from us the gifts you worked so hard to bestow. "So often in life, things that you regard as an impediment turn out to be great, good fortune," said Ruth. May her passing spur us on. 

*The Days of Awe: A delicate blend of joy and solemnity, feasting and fasting, prayer and inspiration make up the spiritually charged head of the Jewish year.  www.chabad.org. 

Take a Trumper to Lunch

For some of us, a bridge too far appeared the day he rode down the escalator. It was unfathomable, this loathsome, good-for-nothing crook, seeking the reins of this country. 

I've already given a pass to anyone with a brain who thought it might be okay, even though I'll never get it. Maybe it was greed, maybe it was true conservatism, maybe just years of brainwashing and a touch of subliminal misogyny. 

Over the course of almost 2000 miserable days, I've become increasingly horrified by his vile behavior, but even more horrified by those who enable him. As he has set the Bar(r) lower and lower, the goal posts have moved, been jettisoned really, to the point where nothing he does surprises us. Well me, anyway. 

What surprises me though, each time, is what it takes for the bridge to be too far; it seems to happen only when it lands in folks' backyards. I marvel that, only now, is he in trouble in military polls. I marvel that, only a few months ago, did many of us march alongside our black neighbors and raise our voices. I marvel that only now are many corporations and even drug companies standing up, or at least appearing to, after almost 200,000 people have died. I marvel that the media still allows him to speak without real time fact checks, that they still address him as Mr. President, that they show up and let Kayleigh spew. I stopped watching CNN early on, back in the days when I thought it was absurd to even think somebody not on the payroll would actually buy into this crap. 

Yet here we are, and I lie awake nights, thinking that for whatever reason, despite all those who have finally seen the light, despite the daily barrage of corruption, he may somehow steal another four years. And then what? His impeachment had no consequence, other than to make democrats seem like whiny witch hunters; it empowered him even more. 

A friend told me about a friend who is still undecided. A reasonable and wonderful salt-of-the-earth person, undecided. A friend's mother refuses to believe that what she hears on Fox is untrue. A salt-of-the-earth mother. 

Is it not our duty, as individuals, to talk to these people, one on one? Do some Trump-splaining? It might be our only hope. 

So...in the next few weeks, might I suggest, take a Trumper to lunch?