The Washington Post, this week ran an article that began: “President
Trump and key global leaders are on a collision course ahead of the Group of 20
summit in Germany this week, with Trump's unapologetic ‘America First’ mantra
on trade and climate change running into emboldened, and increasingly united,
opposition overseas.” The article goes to make a case for and concludes that, “Trump
is attempting to leverage the United States' economic power to negotiate new
deals in the country's favor, while foreign leaders appear increasingly ready
to bypass the United States in favor of stronger ties elsewhere.” Trump’s self-centered
attitude may have worked while he was building his gold-leafed empire where he spent
his entire life sorting people into winner/loser columns. But others in the
global community are seeking ways to make everyone into winners, where ‘compromise’
has not become a dirty word. The bottom line is we are no longer the leader of
the free world---a direct bi-product of his nationalism---and that’s not just
my opinion.
The leader of North Korea and Trump have their nationalism
in common. Sweet. Two bullies at the O.K. Corral each thinking the more phallic
symbols they flash in public the more likely they can get the other to run and hide
like a scared little girl peeking out from behind her mother’s skirt. I saw a nuclear
physicist this week on TV and he said North Korea is two years away from being
able to put an intercontinental missile over the U.S.A. that could take out all
our electrical grids and even less time until they can reach Alaska and Seattle
with a nuclear war head. I swear to God my first thought was, I need to get some survival gear! As
if I could survive without electricity---especially in the winter---with just a
camp stove to heat up a can of soup and a toilet composting bucket kit to pee in. Without the sewer
pumping stations operating, our bathrooms would be a yucky mess with all that raw
sewage backing up. Can you tell I took a tour of our sewage processing plant and know their emergency backup system can only run so long?
Worse yet, if North Korea hit certain places in Alaska with
a nuclear war head, the heat from that could melt ice masses starting a chain
reaction that would flood many of the coastal countries in the northern hemisphere.
And having all that salt-free water from the melting ice dumped into the salt-water
seas all at once would intensify our gulf streams where our weather patterns
are born bringing on another ice age at a highly accelerated rate measured in months, not years. Hey, Mexico, can you take in some refugees
from your neighbors to the north? During the TV discussion someone on the panel of
intellects was asked why North Korea hates us so much and the answer was
because they’ve seen us involved in our endless wars in the Middle East, toppling leaders, and
they believe we want to do the same with them and that’s why Trump’s tough rhetoric
is escalating tensions. Just today in Warsaw he said, “I don’t want to talk
about what I have planned for North Korea but I have some pretty severe things we’re
thinking about.” That makes me feel so much better, Mr. President of the Pissing
Contest Society.
In a surreal twisting of my inner thoughts and my outward activities,
I went to a lovely garden party this week where my Red Hat Society chapter
partied on sangria and more desserts than salads. We sat around in our red hats like the old woman in the poem who ate “only bread and pickles
for a week and hoards pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.” That
poem inspired the birth of the Red Hat Society, a global organization with over
20,000 chapters so don’t let anyone tell
you our creative and earnest voices don’t have power. (If we care about
something, we need to speak up! Thus the political rant up above.) When Jenny Joseph wrote,
“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple with a red hat which doesn’t go,
and doesn’t suit me” she had no idea she was inspiring a segment of society to
free themselves from the roles and constrains assigned to us by the era in which we came of
age.
As much as I like the concept of the Red Hat society I don’t see it as
having sustainability beyond my generation. Younger women who didn’t spend
their entire lives as homemakers, who have opportunities for self-fulfillment that
were denied to their grandmothers, don’t have the same incentives to cut loose
from rules and party on wearing colors that don’t go together and don’t suit them. Though I dearly
wish we had some younger women wanting to join, preferably younger women who
love to drive and have SUVs for carpooling. I was going to add a self-deprecating remark here about my self-centered wish putting me in the same kiddie pool as
our president but I changed my mind because only one of us could have a senior
moment and launch the nuclear codes, thinking it’s just a super-sized tweet. ©
