Betsy Robinson

This is a sincere question and I have no answers.

I am not going to be able to "get over it" and "move on" when every day something happens that sickens and scares me. But I also am not a progressive fundamentalist. I sicken and scare according to each event on its own merits.

I have not found everything sickening and scary.

• For instance, after hearing a lot of different opinions, I decided that General James Mattis was not a bad pick for secretary of defense. He opposed Trump in his hearings. He seems to understand more about Putin and Russia than his boss.


• Likewise, from reading Bernie Sanders' Our Revolution and learning more than I've ever known about trade, I see renegotiating agreements as a positive thing.


• Infrastructure projects, if done in a way that they benefit real people rather than the top 1%, will be a good thing. But I'm skeptical about the "how."


• After hearing this riveting On the Media interview with Tim Weiner, Times reporter and expert on the CIA and FBI, I believe that James Comey might end up being a national hero.


• My fiction has been known to tick off the political correctness police, and I abhor any constriction of First Amendment rights—including the rights of people who say things that sicken and scare me.

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[Updated 2/5/17]
From the New York Times

Earlier in the day, at the White House, Mr. Trump shrugged off the sense of anxiety and disarray, suggesting that there had been an orderly rollout. "It's not a Muslim ban, but we were totally prepared," he said. "It's working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over."

Imagine:

• You have risked your life to work for the USA, gone through years of scrutiny, obtained a legal visa, a green card.


• Bombs exploding around you, you have run for your life, crossed treacherous waters crammed in a precarious boat. You have endured the death of your children, your spouse. You have lived in mud, waiting. For 2 and 3 years, you have answered questions. You have obtained a legal visa.

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The Point of the Women's March? This seems to be a question, so I'd like to answer it personally:

I marched in the first women's NYC movement in 1970 and vividly remember red-faced men on the sidelines screaming, "Get back in the kitchen where you belong." It was scary. I was 19 and was there because two "older" women at the company where I was an intern ordered me to come with them. Many of us were angry, but only in correlation to how scared we were.

When I marched on 1/21/17, it was an epiphany, an ecstatic event. I learned that everything had indeed changed for the better. I was not scared; I was elated. Police wore pink hats, smiled, and were helpful. The crowds were humongous and peaceful. The world joined this march. It was not merely a march to protest Trump's misogyny. It was not merely to fight for women's equal pay, right to determine what our bodies will and will not do, or any other single issue.  Read More 

Thousands of us gathered at today's massive #WritersResist #LouderTogether demonstration at the 42nd Street NY Public Library. The purpose: to send a message as only a mob of angry writers can to Donald Trump that we will not stand for any incursion or threats to our First Amendment right to free expression and a free press. The afternoon was stunning with stories. Highlights:

(1) When founder of the movement Erin Belieu recounted the night she was making dinner for her excited teenage son who wants to be a historian and Trump came on the TV imitating the disabled reporter—whose disability is similar to her son's . . . and his reaction to seeing this.

(2) PEN America president Andrew Solomon's story of hearing from another writer whose country had become fascist. "You're shocked now," the man said, "but you'll be surprised at how little you react six months from now." And Solomon's vow to "Remain shocked!"

And (3) Rosanne Cash's reading of Leonard Cohen's lyrics to "Democracy" (1992):
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