One of my dear friends posted this this morning. It’s a poem by Maya Angelou. It resonated with me because of the passing of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Justice Ginsburg was a Titan in petite form. Always inspirational and you never doubted her moral compass or breadth and depth of knowledge. She will live on through all of her accomplishments and the memories of friends, family, colleagues, and strangers.
When I heard the news that she had died I wasn’t surprised but I found myself so sad. I was sad as a woman and as an American.
2020 is just a year where the negative hits keep on coming. It started with COVID19, then racism and ugliness. All overshadowed by the US Presidential campaign and the abject horror and ugliness of American politics today.
That ugliness of politics has already polluted Justice Ginsburg’s death thanks to that old ass Mitch McConnell whom I have never liked, even when I was a Republican. His comments so shortly after everyone learned Justice Ginsburg had died are deplorable and I also think they were utterly disrespectful to her memory, her friends, her family. His comments make me embarrassed I was ever a Republican in the first place, but I have to step back and remind myself that a lot of those who call themselves Republican today don’t represent the values originally set by this political party in the least.
I also think there should be some law in this country that would put a freeze on a rush to judicial appointment on Federal benches and the US Supreme Court after a certain point in a presidential campaign cycle. The reason is we need balance in justice. Justice is not supposed to be political, yet it is a political weapon.
This is why yet again we see how crucial it is that we change the tone and conversation in this great nation by changing the face of who governs us in the White House. It doesn’t matter if you are a Republican or a Democrat, you should not find this circus acceptable. And you can’t just be a camp follower and vote blindly.
Get out and vote in November to preserve your rights. Do it for the memory of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
I also highly suggest that you contact every federally elected official you know or have heard of and tell them it is grossly inappropriate to rush in another US Supreme Court Justice just so something else can be polluted by the Trump “brand”. And remember nothing Trump does is for us as Americans, he is a malignant narcissist. And Mitch McConnell is an old fool. And since they haven’t repealed the First Amendment yet I am allowed this opinion.
When Great Trees Fall
by Maya Angelou…
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
