Rescuing Debbie: An Immigrant Story Close to Home

On August 9, 2025August 9, 2025 By Lorraine Devon WilkeIn Latest Thoughts

1919: Nineteen-year-old Deborah Derebey stood in a long line of immigrants waiting to be processed at Ellis Island, her younger half-sister, Sappho (known as Fofo), by her side. Nervous, hopeful, and exhausted from the long voyage from Turkey, they waited to be met by their aunt, Aphrodite Derebey, who’d sponsored their passage. Two Greek sisters, both orphans, making their way to a better life in the bountiful and welcoming arms of the United States of America…

I write this paragraph just minutes after watching yet another horrifying video of ICE agents lurking in the hallway of an immigration court, dog-piling on a young immigrant as he exited the courtroom. These masked thugs of the current White House occupant proceeded to violently arrest this man (with no criminal record) who was there, in that courtroom, to comply with the laws said Occupant claims everyone is violating.

Welcome to “Immigration, the MAGA Era.”

The reality that every single person in this country, bar the Native/First People, has descended from immigrants does not appear to diminish the raging sense of white entitlement so baked into the American Right. The compassionate intent of “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” has little or no impact on minds hellbent on “making America great again” by regressing to some delusional version of “the golden days,” when whiteness reigned, immigrants were subservient, and everyone of color knew to keep “their place.”

Right now, as Trump dismisses the border of predominantly white Canada, the feverish “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!” crowd has laser-focused on the southern border. One might guess that jarring disconnect has something to do with the fact that between 2010 and 2022, the share of the population that is Hispanic/Latino grew the most, increasing 2.7 percentage points to 19.1%. The white (non-Hispanic) population had the largest decrease dropping 4.9 percentage points to 58.9%.

That statistic has gotta chill the cold, dark hearts of bigots and white supremacists.

As the granddaughter of immigrants from a country and culture often dismissed as politically and culturally problematic, I have often reflected on what my grandparents endured coming to this country. My sister, Mary Amandes, our family archivist, and I perused old pictures and discussed that journey, juxtaposing their experiences against the corrosive and toxic state of immigration as it’s currently being implemented. It struck us both that, if our family members had immigrated today, they could very well have been one of those tackled in a hallway, pulled from a job site, or dragged to the floor in handcuffs.

But Mary also made the salient point that, as toxic and repugnant as our current laws and policies are, history tells us this process, in a country literally built by and for immigrants, has long been fraught with discriminatory, contradictory, and biased policies and practices. The welcoming arms of America have been fickle, opening and closing based on changing leadership, as each administration imposed their own bigotries into laws that govern the activity. From Mary:

“The Homestead Act of 1862, offering 160 acres to men and women who met certain requirements, was critical to settling the west. Land was given to the railroads who then parceled it out to various groups of ‘select’ immigrants (no ‘shithole’ countries!) to settle 685 million acres of public land (all stolen from the native population). Total acreage of distributed land from the government was over 1 billion acres. Advertising was targeted to Northern European groups, especially Germans and Scandinavians, because existing farmers were having trouble finding farm laborers. Apparently the earlier waves of immigrants in the south were already too vested in their farms and too reliant on slave and tenant labor to move further west.

“Beyond the numbers, the concepts for this competitive advertising are the most interesting, especially contrasting with the present day attitudes. Immigrants were needed to form congressional districts, develop natural resources, raise land values, become consumers, merchants and tradespeople. These people had great value and were especially needed to share tax burdens.

“The most disheartening fact is that so many of these very prized, ‘select’ immigrants who came over and brought their ideas, talents, and work ethics, etc., ultimately turned into immigrant-hating, violent, racist thugs themselves, passing that toxic ideology down through family trees to our present-day divided America. Combine that with bigoted attitudes towards people of color and it’s amazing we function as well as we do.

“And yet people still want to come here.”

They do, don’t they? Though I have to wonder if now, in this toxic Trump era, that urge has been stunted.

Turning my thoughts to my grandmother, to whom my siblings and I were very close, I asked Mary to dig into her research to offer some perspective on what “Debbie Derebey” experienced in her own fraught journey as a teenager coming to this country in the early 20th century. Following is her report (mixed with some editing input of my own):

“The Derebey clan lived in an area of Turkey that had once been part of Greece. They were Protestants, which alienated them from the Orthodox Greeks, isolating them from the intense politics of the time. Both groups, however, were allowed to live peaceably and worship as desired until WWI. At the outbreak of that war, the Turks (the Ottoman Empire) chose to align themselves with the Germans. Imagine how this decision contributed to the festering of nationalism and tribalism driven by longstanding feuds!”

From the German-Ottoman Alliance: Some members of Ottoman leadership were eager to form an alliance at the start of WWI. They worried what might happen to their already weakened empire in the face of global war. The small, but powerful, war party saw Germany as a useful friend with money and a large military presence. They signed a secret alliance agreement with Germany on August 2, 1914.

My grandmother, Debbie, seated at her grandfather’s knee; Bursa, Turkey.

“Prior to that war, and when Debbie was still a young girl in the early 1900s, her Aunt Athena Derebey had escorted some of Debbie’s cousins out of Turkey to resettle them in Chicago. Another Aunt, Erasmia Derebey, was growing increasingly concerned about the roiling political climate, and wanted to get the whole family moved; three other Derebey siblings already in Chicago were perhaps keeping them apprised of the geopolitics at hand.

“Meanwhile, as Debbie grew older, she did housework to earn money, her family living with her maternal grandparents as the political atmosphere grew more fraught. Luckily, she was going to the American school and learning English, ultimately, if unknowingly, preparing herself for eventual migration. When the war finally broke out, the violence and chaos Greeks experienced was horrific. Just within the Derebey clan, twenty-seven members were killed in the political unrest.”

From the Hellenic Research Center: During and after World War I (approximately 1914-1922/23), historical sources show a significant number of Greeks in the Ottoman Empire, which later became Turkey, died due to systematic persecution and violence. This period is often called the Greek Genocide.

Estimates of the number of Ottoman Greeks who died during this period vary widely. Some estimates suggest that roughly 700,000 to 750,000 Greeks were killed. Others put the number closer to 1 million.

“This genocide, of course, heightened the family’s urgency to get the girls to safety. And just as the war was winding down, that urgency was heightened when the 1918 Pandemic, the ‘Spanish flu,’ hit. Having already lost her mother, Debbie was left completely orphaned when both her grandparents and her father became victims of the pandemic.

Her half-sister, Little Fofo, whose mother had also died years earlier, was by then working as a child laborer in a silkworm factory belonging to her father. When he, too, succumbed to the pandemic, leaving her an orphan as well, the Chicago family of siblings determined the time had come to rescue both girls.

“Interesting note: Somewhere in the family’s pre-emigration discussions, Debbie had developed an understanding that she would be getting a college education once she got to Chicago, clearly a ‘carrot’ of sorts. Being a young girl with a persistent nature and the desire to advance in her life, perhaps she was told that to keep her feeling positive about the journey.

“She did not go to school.”

Which makes me sad, frankly. My grandmother was very bright, an adventurous woman who traveled to all corners of the world on her own, even until the year of her death. She was inquisitive and fearless, and I can imagine, had she gotten that promised education, she would have been unstoppable.

But back to Mary and the immigration parallels between then and now:

“The 1917 Immigration Act (extended to 1924), particularly with its literacy rules detailed below, clearly applied to our grandmother—making her ability to read and speak English a boon. The Chicago family, working to get the girls over, was most likely aware of that and the many other provisions of THE IMMIGRATION ACT OF 1924 (THE JOHNSON-REED ACT):”

“In 1917, the U.S. Congress enacted the first widely restrictive immigration law. The uncertainty generated over national security during World War I made it possible for Congress to pass this legislation, and it included several important provisions that paved the way for the 1924 Act.

The 1917 Act implemented a literacy test that required immigrants over 16 years old to demonstrate basic reading comprehension in any language. It also increased the tax paid by new immigrants upon arrival and allowed immigration officials to exercise more discretion in making decisions over whom to exclude.

Finally, the Act excluded from entry anyone born in a geographically defined ‘Asiatic Barred Zone’ except for Japanese and Filipinos.

“The Asiatic Barred Zone? While this did not specifically apply to immigrants from Greece or Turkey, restrictions of the ethnic kind sound very familiar, don’t they?

“And how about some quotas as well?”

The literacy test alone was not enough to prevent most potential immigrants from entering, so members of Congress sought a new way to restrict immigration in the 1920s. Immigration expert and Republican Senator from Vermont, William P. Dillingham, introduced a measure to create immigration quotas, which he set at three percent of the total population of the foreign-born of each nationality in the United States as recorded in the 1910 census. This put the total number of visas available each year to new immigrants at 350,000. It did not, however, establish quotas of any kind for residents of the Western Hemisphere. President Wilson opposed the restrictive act, preferring a more liberal immigration policy, so he used the pocket veto to prevent its passage. In early 1921, the newly inaugurated President Warren Harding called Congress back to a special session to pass the law. In 1922, the act was renewed for another two years.

Once again, the opening and closing arms of America …

“There were many other elements of the law that restricted immigration, inclusive of national origin quotas, preserving racial and ethnic composition, nativist sentiment, and—and this says it all: ‘IN ALL OF ITS PARTS, THE MOST BASIC PURPOSE OF THE 1924 IMMIGRATION ACT WAS TO PRESERVE THE IDEAL OF U.S. HOMOGENEITY.’ How MAGA can you get?”

“So, Debbie comes to Chicago, a metropolis teeming with immigrants from everywhere on the planet, and a government looking to preserve U.S. ‘homogeneity.’ The dictionary defines homogeneity as ‘the quality or state of being all the same or all of the same kind.’ I would imagine there were all kinds of MAGA-style goons and pre-Nazis out there ready to enact this.

“I would actually like to know how the newspaper article about Debbie and Fofo being refugees came about [image at top]. I would have been concerned that this public exposure would have made them targets.

“Meanwhile, Debbie was given work housecleaning and being a governess. She was not happy about any of that and didn’t hide her feelings, which likely prompted the Derebey family to find her a husband to solve those myriad problems. That would have been our grandfather, Gus, a much older man. To me, both Gus and Debbie look resigned in their wedding photo.”

Gus and Debbie Amandes, wedding portrait

“Perhaps he’d already gotten the news that she didn’t have a large dowry after all. Perhaps the threat of deportation had been presented to her in no uncertain terms. Gus had become a citizen in 1915; she needed to be his wife in order to be naturalized and become a citizen herself. It was a marriage of need, of demand, and though they weren’t particularly suited to each other or happy together, they lived a good life, had two boys, our Uncle Henry and the man who became our father, Philip Amandes (or, as his Greek name would read: Theophilos Amanitides), and flourished in America.

“Fofo didn’t marry until 1940, but she was protected because she’d been claimed as the daughter of Aphrodite (the aunt who met them at Ellis Island) and her husband Peter in the 1930 census. She, like her older half-sister, was a strong, determined young woman. She became a citizen on her own prior to marriage. In between, she went to school, qualified for her beautician’s license, and launched her own business, tremendous accomplishments for any woman of the day, certainly a young Greek immigrant.

“Our grandparents, Debbie and Gus, set up a rental business with an apartment building and cottage, and she was named on the deed … another astonishing accomplishment for the time! She participated fully in the management of that enterprise, and took it on as a sole proprietor after Gus’ death, living there until her own death in 1979.” [Interestingly, that building was the first home of my two older sisters, a younger brother, and me.] She traveled the world, was beloved by family and friends globally, and tirelessly gave to those in need.

“The immigration laws that impacted all of them have been revised multiple times since 1924, with arcane details and restrictions that can be both daunting and, at times, prohibitive, yet people still want to come here! As for our Auntie Fofo and Grandma Debbie, I count them as two very successful immigrant stories to remember!”

I do too.

But I have to wonder: given my grandmother’s “illegal” status for a healthy chunk of time before her mandated marriage, if she, too, would have been rounded up by ICE, thrown to the floor, handcuffed, and spirited away to some hideous holding cell if her story happened in 2025. My grandfather came to America in 1907 but was unable to attain his citizenship until 1915 … after he served in the American army. Would ICE have assaulted him had they found him before those papers were in hand, despite his four years of loyal service in the military? I’d guess, in this MAGA era, they would have.

My grandfather, Gus Amandes, in the U.S army.

As I watch countless mothers, fathers, children, grandmothers, and grandfathers of other immigrant families experience exactly that fate, some quite brutally, my heart not only breaks, but my view of humanity falters. Cruelty seems to be the point, and the feint that it’s about “who’s here legally and who isn’t; who’s a criminal, who isn’t” appears to be just that: an attempt to distract from rampant racism and xenophobia.

Immigration throughout the ages has never been a neat, tidy progression of steps and sequences that meet every time marker and adhere to every deadline. For many (most?), it can be cumbersome, inefficient, and slow, leaving many in states of limbo, vulnerable to the Gestapo tactics of our current system. Each day, each egregious act, makes clearer that those of us who view people as people, regardless of country of origin, ethnicity, color, race, religion, orientation or immigration status, must continue to march, speak out, defend, protect, videotape, and VOTE … in defense of immigrants, and for good, sane, compassionate immigration policies.

Every single person being throw to the floor of some hallway, school yard, farm field, or immigration office by masked thugs is someone just like my grandmother. My aunt. My grandfather. A person, a human being, a beloved family member. Someone escaping danger, fleeing to protect family, or hoping, intending, determined to build a better life in this occasionally welcoming country.

We must keep it that way … for every Debbie, Fofo, and Gus.

Thank you, Mary Amandes, for your invaluable contribution to this story.

What the Grace of a Well-Passed Baton Teaches Us

On July 26, 2024 By Lorraine Devon WilkeIn Latest Thoughts

… knowing when to hold ‘em, when to fold ‘em

Those of us on the side of democracy and all things sane and human had been in an unprecedented malaise in the weeks leading up to last Sunday (and you know it was bad when I start co-opting Kenny Rogers lyrics to make a point). Watching the seething beast of the Trump machine ooze its smug certainty all over the place while Democrats scratched their heads, wrote cranky op-eds, and pondered which country to abscond to next year, one wondered if there was any reasonable answer to our seemingly endless conundrum.

Then Joe made his move.

Unexpected by most, in the quiet of his own counsel, with no grand headlines or “breaking news” hysteria, he gracefully announced he was leaving the race and changed the course of history. If ever a baton-pass had more impact on modern America, I’d like to know what it was.

My son texted with the news (I was busy housecleaning in a desperate break from media). Mind blown, I responded with something unprintable here, put down my Windex, and raced to cable news (which I hadn’t watched in so long I can’t remember how long), transfixed as breathless pundits parsed what this meant, how it had transpired, what steps would follow, etc. Then Biden trumped himself (sorry… it was a word before it was a man): he endorsed his VP, Kamala Harris, as the Democratic nominee for president.

Heads exploded around the universe, and as graceful as Joe’s words and actions were, the excitement and commotion that followed were wildly hyperbolic… but in a good way this time. It was as if the doom and gloom of previous weeks (months?) lifted, and we felt true, unassailable hope for the first time in a very long time and, damn, we were so ready to run.

That, my friends, is a mic-drop baton pass.

Because it can’t have been easy. Odds are good — based on his prior statements, his feisty turnarounds after the kill-shot of the debate; his edgy dismissals of the growing demands to move along — he did not want to step down. Not a bit. He wanted to “finish the job.”

But somewhere along the way the needle tipped. I don’t know who said what to tip it; if there was a process he internalized to get there, but he came to the moment when he got up out of mid-recovery from Covid, wrote his statement, and passed it on to the world. We can presume, after the post-debate hellscape of frenzied insults and denigrations from media, the always-slathering GOP; even certain friends and neighbors in the party, that the decision, the resolve, the action, had to have kicked his gut a little. A lot. But even so… he put aside his own needs, his hurt and disappointment, and did it, transforming Election 2024 from a mosh pit of despair into a hope-infused, ever-growing march of millions toward victory (for the Democrats; Republicans are pulling out their “How To Racist 101” manuals and trying to remember which sexist tropes they liked best from “Kamala 2019”).

But here’s the thing about baton passing: it can be tricky knowing when you should, when you must, and when you damn well get to hang onto yours. Or, as Kenny Rogers said, “know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em” (I know… I’m sorry). At a time when ageism is rampant (was it ever not?), we’re aware that cultural disdain for all things old can be conveniently disguised as a benign “for your own good shove out the door leave your keys on the table go have fun, grandpa, the younger crew is on fire and they’ve got it covered” sort of thing.

Those who find value in categorizing people along arbitrary dividing lines are easily prodded into that sort of thing, pointing fingers in reductive “generation wars” for example: Boomers ruined everything, Gen Xers are whiny slackers, Millennials and Gen Z are both lazy and entitled… no one’s sure which more than the other. But as viral as those mud-fights can get, pigeonholing based on what “generation” someone falls into is both ageist and absurd, whether applied to the old or young. Where it gets sticky, and what older people face almost exclusively, is the choreography poetically defined as “passing the baton,” or “torch, or “mantle” … whatever metaphor gets an old person out the door, whether it’s warranted, the right time, or the right action.

In Biden’s case, it clearly, ultimately, was, and kudos to that wise man for figuring it out. But sometimes it’s not. Sometimes the shove is just cold, ugly ageism at work. Sometimes the shovee not only wants to continue managing the baton but is perfectly capable of doing so. Sometimes an older baton holder can peacefully co-exist with a younger one, and nobody has to pass anything.

I had to laugh at a particular moment in the Beckham documentary series on Netflix (which I loved, by the way). In the last episode, Victoria and David are in their kitchen summarizing their journeys both individually and as a couple, musing about the priority of cherishing their family, the life they’ve built together, each other, when Victoria, standing behind David, says, “There’s an element of you passing the baton on a little; you want that for your kids, wouldn’t you say?” David takes a beat, then glances over his shoulder in her direction and very seriously responds, “I’m not ready to pass the baton on yet.”

I laughed out loud because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said those exact words to someone suggesting some version of the same to me. As an actress trying to crack that code while racing against a clock that doesn’t like older women. As a singer/songwriter fending off purportedly well-meaning suggestions of, “You must be so ready to leave it to the young ones, right?” As a writer told to hide my age lest editors decide I’m too old to have the requisite contemporary sensibilities. At each juncture, when encouraged to accept the inevitability of obsolescence, I, too, answered, “I’m not ready to pass the baton on yet.”

That’s me, bending it like Beckham.

There was a time when older generations were automatically expected to step aside, but that was back when life expectancy was shorter, anyone past mid-40s dressed like mom and dad, and health and fitness standards were considered the realm of youth. Much has changed in recent decades and in today’s world many older Americans are not only engaged and contributing via jobs and professions, they’re still exploring, still excited about new ideas and evolving opportunities. People behave younger, look younger, and remain vital longer. They’re not planning to “wind down” once they’re past the decade that begins with five. They’re less interested in tapping into their pension than continuing to contribute to one. And they see no reason to pass the baton to some younger version of themself while still happily running with the thing.

Especially given the virtual workplace of the Internet, there’s room for every generation to not only simultaneously participate, but be valued and sought after for their particular “brand,” their level of experience and worldview. Rather than shove older generations off on the ice floe of irrelevance, we should maximize their available voices to lead, guide, educate, and inspire. We can still look to our young for freshness, innovation and culturally Zeitgeisty perspective, but there’s no good reason we can’t also tap into the well of experience, talent, and wisdom of our elders.

Before Sunday’s announcement, I was all-in on Joe continuing his campaign. I didn’t need him to step down, even after the debate. I had faith it was one bad night, and enthusiastically applauded the speeches and interviews that followed, making note of his improved vigor and delivery. I continued to respect his positive contribution, understanding that he’s an almost 82-year-old man, not expecting him to be anything else, embracing him as an elder mentoring and modeling brilliant, compassionate leadership for younger politicians following in his path. But…

When he made the decision he did, I do believe — however influenced he might have been by others — it was his decision. HIS. And that made it the right one. That made it one I could get behind. Despite my sadness for whatever pain or loss he must clearly have felt, I trusted him to know it was, in that moment, the right time for him to pass the baton and he did… graciously, wisely; respectfully, to Kamala, and BOOM! The entire landscape of the election changed, making clear it was the right time and decision.

It takes great political skill to calculate and understand that kind of timing, and it takes a great leader to not only figure it out, but act on it with strategic precision. Joe Biden gave a master class on the move: the timing (post RNC… legend!), the tone, the humble respect for the needs of a nation, the sheer selflessness at a time when politics too often operates as ego-fodder for vainglorious attention-seekers. His candid, heartfelt Oval Office speech of Wednesday asked us all the right questions, was candid in expressing his initial hopes for continuing (yes, Joe, your record did merit a second term), but was clear in his understanding of the demands of this unique, urgent juncture.

He set the standard, Joe Biden, and he will be remembered by history as a great man who knew exactly when it was time to guide himself out the door.

Baton passing with grace and dignity.

I won’t ruin the gravitas of that by quoting Kenny again.

Photo courtesy of The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Visit linktr.ee/lorrainedevonwilke for links to LDW’s books, music, photography, and articles.

The Trump Show: A Lie Has No Legs. Let’s Keep It That Way

On June 13, 2023June 13, 2023 By Lorraine Devon WilkeIn Latest Thoughts

As the Trump Show continues to endlessly unfold before our weary eyes (didn’t he say he’d disappear if he lost in ’20??), and I watch his followers in Congress, media, walking past me in restaurants, sputter and hiss and threaten in their various levels of outrage, I’m left pondering how so many became so convinced that this person is worthy of this degree of their histrionic fidelity.

But, really, how often do people think, really think, about their allegiances, their picks; the people, parties, and causes they get behind, identify with, march in the street and hoist placards for? I think it’s more likely that allegiance is unexamined, knee-jerk and irrational; once given, never taken away. In other words: Trumpism may be on auto-pilot.

But that’s how cultism works. I mean, you have to sign a billion-year contract in some.

I tend to think it’s wise to check in from time to time to make sure who and what I stand with still stands for ideas, concepts, and commitments I support and subscribe to. Because it occasionally happens that someone’s politics change, something new is discovered (uncovered) about them, or they jump on an unsupportable bandwagon. Examination of such shifts allows opportunity to adjust your membership accordingly.

Like, say, if a person saw that the guy they’ve sworn allegiance to was just adjudicated as a sexual abuser, or had to pay restitution to people he swindled, or got indicted for hush money paid to a porn actress, or got indicted again for 37 felony counts related to classified documents, that sort of thing. Might that signal it’s time to readjust one’s thinking?

It might, with normal people, in a normal time (whatever that is). But given the rhetoric and realities of those who loudly, aggressively, and often to their own detriment support, aggrandize, idealize, and defer to Donald Trump, it seems unlikely they ever step out of the bubble long enough to analyze, dissect, hold to the light, or check for flaws in their reasoning.

Frankly, I hope not. Because if they really did do that, and still felt as positive and passionate about the guy, it would mean our country, our American humanity, is in worse shape than I’ve given it credit for.

No, I’m writing off the insanity of Trumpism as “cult damage,” blind allegiance bereft of facts, truth, rational consideration, or critical thinking. The kind of full-body indoctrination that convinces seemingly “normal” people to reject former decent, sensible behaviors to, instead, disconnect from their families, poison themselves in Guyana jungles, murder innocent people, burn in a Waco settlement, storm the Capitol to kill the VP, mindlessly believe egregious lies, and deny any scintilla of truth if it reflects badly on their cult leader. If this is what Trumpism is, well, one can only pity the gullible… while actively protecting themselves from their wrath and stupidity, voting in every single bloody election to preserve actual democracy, and hoping one day the indoctrinated see the light of rational thought.

It happens. I extricated myself from a youthful bout of Scientology. Former Tea Party pols are now on Twitter pushing against authoritarianism generally and Trump specifically. My brother who once voted for the guy denounced him soundly last time and will again if Republicans continue to hold their bar criminally low (literally). Maybe some MAGA will wake up one day to shake off the fog of cultism to realize they hitched their wagon to the wrong orange pony. I can hope for that.

But until then (it does seem a bit idealistic), it’s essential for good people of conscience to pay close attention to what’s being foisted in the name of Dear Leader Trump:

We’re being systemically, relentlessly, unconscionably gaslit. By Republicans in Congress, right wing media personalities, and Trump analysts/lackeys/lawyers who insist that what’s criminal is no big deal, what’s dishonest is acceptable, what’s corrupt is okay, what’s indecent is dismissible, what’s traitorous is just sloppy, and what’s vile, amoral, and incendiary is just a guy blowing off steam.

None of that is true. All of it’s a lie. And a lie has no legs. Not with good people of conscience.

Donald J. Trump is, and is doing, exactly what those good people perceive. He’s lying, cheating; traitoring. He’s spewing hate, threats, and inane conspiracies far and wide. He’s blaming others for his own crimes. He’s attempting to deflect by screaming “squirrel,” hoping suspicion of others will distract from him. He’s driven by narcissism and arrogance to believe he won what he lost, deserves what he’s unqualified for; is immune to laws, excused from manners, and forgiven for indecency.

He’s not.

I grew up in a world where we were taught to admire, emulate, and support good people, men and women with integrity, smarts, honor, veracity, and compassion. Honesty was non-negotiable. Ethics were expected. Consideration and respect were the norm. I live by those standards and principles, taught my son those standards and principles, and fill my life only with people who share those standards and principles.

They are not, however, the standards and principles of those trying to gaslight this country and its people. That crowd really, really, really wants you to suck it all in, every noxious plume. They’re trying very hard to insist on it, push it, normalize it. Congresspeople tweet it, talking heads talk it; right-wing has-beens blubber about it; young Trumpist lawyers desperate to feel relevant sell their souls hawking it. And Trump, of course, is UPPER-CASING it all to death.

The only response I have: SHUT UP. SIT DOWN. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? FUCK OFF.

Sorry. I get rude with this stuff.

Like every good, decent person who’s ever held strong and pushed back against lies, propaganda, demagoguery, and disinformation throughout time, do that: hold strong, push back. Don’t get bamboozled into buying any of the noise. Whatever anyone else may be doing, whoever else may committing crimes, lying to Congress, taking bribes, stealing national security, having affairs with porn stars, or enriching themselves while in office, don’t be distracted from the truth of the current situation.

Trump is exactly who and what you think he is. And, while the “big house” may be an appropriate next stop for the guy, he can never, ever again get anywhere near our White House.

That, too, is non-negotiable.

Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash