We don’t always get what we deserve but we do deserve to enjoy life

Almost 40 years ago, my friend T asked me to tell her when she shouldn’t be wearing a bikini anymore.

A few years after she made that request, I moved away. This was before the internet and cellphones, so we lost track of each other for a while.

Last week, I saw T for the first time in almost 30 years.

She is as beautiful to me as she was on the day I met her.

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I saw another long-time friend last weekend. I hugged her and said, “You are gorgeous! You have not aged!”

She laughed and said that oh yes she has indeed aged.

And I realized that I had internalized the whole “Beauty=youth” narrative.

My friend was beautiful 40 years ago and she’s beautiful now. Age is not incompatible with beauty.

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I used to look critically at older women who let their flabby upper arms show by wearing sleeveless shirts. That was when I had the gift of youth and thought that an imperfect, no longer firm body was a sign of – what? Of not caring enough? Of not exercising enough? Of some kind of moral failure?

Yeah I was dumb but aren’t we all kind of dumb when we’re 20 and everything is still tight and smooth?

Cover those arms! I thought.

Oh Lord I was an idiot.

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I am seeing people get the faces they deserve now. My friends are beautiful beautiful beautiful.

My enemies – people who have done mean things to me and to others – not so much. At a reunion, I saw a man – former boyfriend? former gaslighter? – not sure what the right word is for the man who treated you so badly that you ended up going to therapy. (Which to be fair I did need anyway, so I guess thank you horrible man.)

Gaslighting Guy looks awful. Like he looks so bad that other people who didn’t even know how awful he was to me were asking what the heck. He’s super skinny, which could be because of illness, so that’s not the issue. I am not commenting on his body.

I am commenting on his choices – his hair goes halfway down his back, but it’s long and straggly and unwashed. His pants were a few sizes too big and were cinched around his waist. (He does have steady very good employment so I’m not sure what’s going on with the clothes.)

I do feel a little bit mean talking about him like this but not enough that I won’t mention him, not just because I am petty but also because I want to share the poem my super-talented friend Karen, a retired professor of engineering who has started writing poetry and writing it very very well, wrote about him.

Reunion

How appropriate

You aged like you treated me

Rather terribly

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At the same reunion where I saw Gaslighting Guy, I saw a guy – Good Guy – I had not treated well in college. I have since apologized to him – I was very unfair to him and it weighed on me for decades. (I was nowhere as mean to him as Gaslighting Guy was to me! I promise!)

I was very grateful that when I saw him 15 years ago, he not only talked to me but he accepted my apology.

Good Guy looks great! He has gotten better looking over the years. And he deserves it. He seems to be genuinely kind and is definitely a warm, gracious person.

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Wear the bikini, T. I am never ever ever going to tell you not to wear the bikini. Wear the bikini.

Women worry men will kill them (thank you, Margaret Atwood for summarizing it so well)

There’s a story in the NY Times about how “people” (women) are checking out other people (men) before they meet them in person.

In the comments, many men are complaining that women are Doing It Wrong and women will end up all alone with nothing but cats if they persist in wanting to know all about a man before they agree to put themselves at risk.

Why are women so damn picky, they want to know.

I get somewhat annoyed by requests from women I meet online for an audition via a telephone call. The reason I suppose is that my interpersonal skills are much better in person, having honed them over the years in my profession as a trial attorney. So, I get annoyed because I know I won’t be seen at my best (or seen at all) during the telephone interview. As for what to do on a first meeting, nothing is better than a lengthy lunch with great food and wine filled with fun conversation at an upscale ocean view restaurant.

(Random male commenter)

Why would women feel danger, they want to know. This guy has “never felt the need” to escape from a date.

I’m well known in my city, and I’m not interested in people knowing that i’m on a dating site and all the gossip about me that will follow. So, i have only one photo posted, and I’m not too clearly shown in it. As for a first date, I have never felt the need to escape from one. By the time I meet someone in person, I generally know enough about them from their online profile and a little vetting to enjoy their company despite their faults, and most people have some faults. That is a given, which I accept.

(Same random male commenter)

What is wrong with women that we don’t want to meet these men immediately in person for a long, expensive meal?

WHAT IS WRONG WITH WOMEN?

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My sister met her husband online.

My friend Kim met her husband online.

I met my wonderful boyfriend John online.

There is nothing wrong with meeting someone online.

There is also nothing wrong with trying to make sure a man is not an ax murderer before you meet him in person.

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When I was dating, I would always do some basic google search on a potential date. In most cases, after a day or two of chatting (e.g. where one went to school, what do they do) I would be able to find out their last name and current job through LinkedIn. This would give me a sense of security and at the same time an idea of how successful they are, which was important to me. In a few cases advance screening of a facebook profile would let me know in advance that the guy was married, so I wouldn’t waste my time going on a date with them. But two+ weeks of texting prior to meeting in person would look like a potential red flag (unless there’s a good reason e.g. they are traveling). This feels like too much effort for an uncertain outcome.

(a woman)

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My friend Amy dated a man for a year before she discovered he was married. That he did not have cancer after all. That he had a criminal record.

He had been lying to her about everything.

I don’t remember how she put it all together, but she showed me his criminal record on CCAP.

She now looks at CCAP before she goes out with someone.

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When I was dating online 25 years ago as a single mom, I swore I would have a background check done if any relationship became serious, but I didn’t follow my own policy with a guy I was dating from my work place because we both had security clearances. My logic was that if he had done anything wrong, he wouldn’t have a security clearance. Wow, was I wrong. A simple check of my state’s judiciary case search database would have given me the information I needed to know–that he had been arrested twice for assault and battery just a year or so before I started dating him. I learned that tidbit years into our marriage, When I confronted him and told him I wouldn’t have married him if I had known about his arrests, he first denied, then denied again, before blurting out “that’s why I didn’t tell you!” We’re now divorced.

(a woman)

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Her church friends tried to set up my friend Jaime with a man they knew.

He seemed too good to be true, so Jaime kept asking questions.

The church friends finally admitted that the man had been charged as a child molester.

But that he was praying very hard about it.

Jaime declined.

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When I met John online, 25 years ago, it didn’t occur to me to run a background check.

But I did set up a Matchmaker.com-only email. I was not going to share the email that showed my real name.

I didn’t use my real name on Matchmaker.

I didn’t use a photo.

I didn’t share my address.

I didn’t agree to meet in person until we had emailed for a week or so, during which time I discovered that John was a brilliantly funny writer.

I finally agree to meet him in person at a cafe in the airport, which was where he worked.

I still didn’t tell him my real name.

And he was fine with all of that.

Because John had an imagination and empathy and he had read a newspaper before.

(We dated for a few years. He was wonderful.)

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If I were dating these days, I would absolutely screen for if someone had voted for trump. If he voted regularly. Where he stood on abortion rights. On gay marriage. On the shitshow that is our current government. These issues are not about being a fun date but about being a decent human being.

Asking “big questions” before meeting in person. Background checks before a dinner or coffee. 50 first dates. All seem to be red flags and indicative of people who perhaps should extricate themselves from the dating pool until they feel more comfortable with being a little uncomfortable. Dating is supposed to be fun, and a little uncomfortable. It’s not supposed to be an exercise in paranoia. If you can’t meet another adult in a crowded public place in NYC without a background check, you really shouldn’t be meeting people for dates. As for first dates coffee feels like a business meeting. Dinner feels like a commitment. Try meeting at the bar at a nice restaurant for a drink. If things are going well get a table or order some appetizers. If things are not, enjoy your drink thank them for their time and move on. But for gods sakes have fun dating.

-(Another man, I presume)

(Not that I plan to date again if Mr T goes before I do. I will, as my friend Joyce, who was widowed at 95, enjoy my solitude, cooking only for myself, cleaning only for myself, watching TV only when I want, reading when I want.)

They don’t have to put up with shit from men

This.

This is why women should not marry.

Or, at the least, why women should have a very detailed and specific conversation about money before you agree to marry. (The Money Talk is harder than the Sex Talk, I think, but is way more important.)

Because marriage should benefit us, not disadvantage us.

How is this woman better off married to this man? How is she better off with her husband than she would be with a roommate or someone where borrowing the money actually makes sense?

What kind of man makes his wife borrow money to buy food?

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I heard of a woman whose husband didn’t think he should pay for her to get maternity clothes. When she was pregnant. With his baby.

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I heard of this guy who has been married for 30 years but still has not put his wife’s name on the house (he owned the house before they married) and who is not leaving her anything in his will. No, she is not independently wealthy. She can live in the house after he dies, but she is retired from a modest career – where does the money to pay the taxes and insurance and maintenance come from? Where does the money for her to buy food and pay medical bills come from?

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When Mr T and I got married, we put everything in both of our names. Indeed, buying our house was a pain in the neck because we weren’t married yet so we needed a special provision in the deed to make sure that I would get the house if he died and vice versa.

Two weeks before closing, I proofread the documents. They had not incorporated the provision. I pointed out the error and went on my merry way.

Mr T and I went to the Friday afternoon closing. I re-read the documents as one does before signing a contract and discovered they still had not included the provision. Not only that, the only owner they had listed was Mr T. My name did not appear anywhere in the documents.

My friends – the entire 50% down payment for the house came from the sale of my house in Memphis. That was all my money.

I told the closing people that they needed to fix that section before we signed.

The woman told me Oh just sign it now and we’ll fix it on Monday!

I shook my head. Nope, I said. We’ll. Wait.

They were crabby but girl this was your fault I told you and you didn’t fix it.

It took about 30 minutes for them to update the documents but I did not care. We were going to have joint ownership and joint finances.

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I understand that this isn’t always the best approach. When my college roommate was getting ready to marry another college classmate (whom she had met at our 35 year reunion), they consulted a lawyer about their finances and their wills: They each have children from their first marriages.

If you’re a parent, you want to make sure you are setting things up so your kids get what you want them to get.

But for those of us without children? And without ancestral estates that come with prenups?

You combine the money. You put both names on deeds and titles and bank accounts. You don’t act like roommates and charge your spouse for buying food.

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I was 12 and I wanted my mom to give me money for something.

She refused.

I opened my smart mouth and asked why she even cared – it was dad’s money anyhow.

My mom, who had borne three children and cared for them alone while my dad was in Vietnam and who had packed the house and moved across oceans far from her family and community and raised us three almost single-handed when you consider how often my dad had to travel for work, slapped me.

I deserved it.

It’s all stolen land

Someone posted this story on facebook – the TLDR is that cooperation is better than competition if you want to survive in dangerous circumstances.

But of course then the incels had to chime in that no way dude would they ever want or need or ask for help from another person and that it’s so much better just to be on your own, like the cowboys and the ranchers and that the dadgum government had never given them anything and they were and are indeed Rugged Self-Sufficient Individuals.

One commenter – let’s call him Bob – claimed that’s the life many live today in Wyoming. None of those darn government subsidies.

how about you actually go somewhere that was built on ranching and has been part of the culture for generations. If you come to wyoming you will find that not only was the west built by cowboys and frontiersmen, but cowboying is still a way of life today. I’ve known several who make their living without relying on government subsidies and the like. It ain’t easy, but it’s possible.

To which I replied, “How did they get the land, Bob? How did they get the land?”

You all know what I mean. Who did that land belong to before?

Bob, however, did not understand or chose to ignore what I was really asking, and got mad at me.

depends on the ranch. Many ranches started during the farm crisis of the 1980’s, and they simply bought the fucking land. In the late 1800’s they had homesteading laws, so they loaded their shit up in wagons, moved out and homesteaded the land you unfrosted fucking poptart.

How dare I challenge his myth!

(Also is being an unfrosted pop tart bad? I like unfrosted pop tarts so I am very confused.)

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We know who the land belonged to before.

It’s not what we were taught in school. We were taught that this land was empty when the Europeans arrived.

But it was not empty.

It was full of people who had been there since before the Common Era, but then the Europeans wiped out, via disease and murder, according to some estimates, more than 90% of the population.

And most of us know that now.

If you don’t know it, well, welcome to the knowledge.

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I thought I was so smart asking Bob where the land came from.

And then I thought about the farm where my mom grew up. It had belonged to her great-grandparents, then her grandparents, then her parents.

The great-grandparents had cleared the trees and turned the forest into farmland.

I never once questioned the story.

I had never once thought, But who owned the land before them?

Where did the land come from, Texan? Where did the land come from?

Yeah.

It’s a sobering realization.

(Also do men use their real names and share their home addresses on dating apps? Because women sure don’t.)

Mr T was agonizing over how to respond to a potential buyer for some car stuff on facebook marketplace. The buyer – let’s call him Big B – had asked Mr T for our address.

We were about to go out of town for ten days and Mr T couldn’t find much information in Big B’s profile. What if Big B was just casing the joint?

(Not that we have anything worth stealing. Yes, we have a big-screen TV, but it’s 16 years old and heavy and I don’t think there’s a big market for old TVs. And we have old computers that Mr T buys refurbished. And I have some pearls and a pair of diamond earrings, but does jewelry even have any street value these days?)

(What if the thief would want our coffee? Coffee prices have gone up with the trump tariffs.)

(Who knows what a thief wants? I have some nice Spanish boots. Maybe those?)

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Anyhow.

Mr T had sold some stereo equipment (don’t get excited – he got a bunch of my mom’s old stereo equipment and says he is in the process of consolidating but even with the sale, we still had a net increase of stereo equipment in our house) to a guy on marketplace.

But this guy had a detailed FB profile and it turned out he lives just up the street.

In that case, Mr T was willing to tell the stereo buyer where we live.

But Mr T was concerned about giving our address to Big B and I shared that concern.

What I did not share was Mr T’s approach.

Me: Just tell him you will meet him at the city hall parking lot.

Mr T: But he asked for our address!

I shrugged: You are answering the real question.

Mr T: That sounds like a politician’s approach.

Me: OK whatever.

Mr T: He asked me a direct question!

Me: Just because someone asks you a question, you do not have to answer it.

Mr T: But – but – but – not answering a question when someone asks you a question is RUDE!

Me: No it isn’t.

Mr T: Yes. It is!

Me: I don’t owe answers to anyone. They can ask, but I do not have to answer.

Mr T: If I ask a question, I want to be treated the way I would treat them. I want an answer or an explanation of why I am not getting an answer.

Me: And I don’t care why someone is or is not answering my questions. Just because I ask does not mean anyone ever has to answer me. Nobody owes me answers or explanations. Nobody owes me anything.

There’s a reason I was not taught the whole story about witches and suffragists and Harriet Tubman and other difficult women in school

Here’s how I remember learning about the Salem witch trials and the executions when I was a kid: They were bad because the women were not actually witches.

My memory might be wrong, but I am pretty sure the moral of the story was “Don’t be a witch” instead of “It’s bad to burn anyone to death and it’s also bad for the legal system to put anyone to death and it’s also bad for the legal system to take accusations without any supporting evidence seriously.”

Like – what if I had been taught at an early age that the death penalty is something horrible and that the state should not have the power of life and death over people?

What if I had been taught that for someone to be convicted of a crime and sentenced even to prison, much less to death, the state should require solid evidence, not just gossip?

What if I had been taught that the main reason so many of these women were accused of witchcraft was because they were independent women who somehow challenged the system at a time when women had few, if any, legal rights?

What if I had been taught that these women should be an inspiration, not a cautionary tale?

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What if I had been taught something more about the suffragists than “They protested and then they got the right to vote,” like, “They went on hunger strikes. They set bombs. They marched in the streets?”

What if I had been taught that one of the main reasons women in England wanted the vote in the 19th century was because they wanted laws that made it illegal for men to have sex with children?

What if I had been taught that the Temperance Movement wasn’t about a bunch of cranky women who didn’t want their husbands to enjoy a well-deserved beer after work but about how the taverns had first dibs on employee pay – where if a man wanted his pay, his employer would deduct his bar tab and give that money directly to the tavern? What if I had learned that women wanted their husbands’ checks so they could feed their children and themselves?

What if I had learned where the phrase “Rule of thumb” comes from?

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What if I had learned when I was in sixth grade that the law did not require a bank to give my mom a credit card without a male signer?

What if I had learned in fifth grade that my teacher might be fired for being pregnant?

What if I had learned about Marie Curie and Eleanor Roosevelt and Francis Perkins and Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth Blackwell and Ada Lovelace and Rosa Parks and Katherine Johnson?

What if my college art history textbook had included one. single. female. artist?

What could I – could any of us – had accomplished if we had known it was possible for women to do great things?

So are sidewalks, fire departments, roads, highways, public schools, and parks

At a talk at the Milwaukee Public Library, Dr Eric Klinenberg (who told us to call him Eric) suggested a thought experiment.

Suppose, he said, you pitched this idea to the governor.

Let’s build palaces in the middle of Milwaukee and Madison. In the adjoining neighborhoods and in every town, we will build ordinary structures.

We will fill those palaces and structures with books, magazines, newspapers, movies, music.

We will offer classes and makerspaces and clubs and talks.

Anyone will be welcome – anyone. It will be free to enter. Anyone can come in and sit and use the bathroom and relax.

And anyone can take anything home, for free, on the honor system.

Do you think such a concept would be funded today?

“Which governor?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Eric said.

I whispered to the woman next to me, “There’s no way Scott Walker would have approved it. Evers would want it but would say we couldn’t afford it.”

Still, a few of us raised our hands halfway.

He laughed. “I was just in Florida and nobody raised their hands. So I guess this is better.”

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What happened to the rich people who were scared of the poors and the state of their souls so they tried to rehabilitate their reputations by donating a lot of money to public causes?

That is, what happened to the Carnegies? What happened to the men and yes I mean men who spent most of their lives accumulating wealth by any means possible and then having a degree of shame or at least of eternal damnation that made them give some of that wealth away?

Now the rich just want to get richer and screw everyone else looking at you Jeff Bezos and that guy who started facebook.

Where are the Bezos Cancer Research Centers?

Where are the Zuckerberg playgrounds?

Where are the Thiel scholarships for first-generation college students?

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(I do know where the MacKenzie Scott scholarships and endowments are.)

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But also, what happened to the public thinking, “You know what would be a good thing for all of us?”

“Fire departments.”

Like – do those anti-tax people think that fires and medical emergencies happen only to other people? It’s not even like there’s a rich-people only fire department. There’s only *a* fire department.

And they don’t want to pay for it.

Wait. It’s not even rich people sometimes. It’s ordinary people who move outside of the town boundaries because they don’t want to pay the property taxes and then they get all pissed off when their house burns down because it was outside of the fire department’s range.

“Couldn’t they just put out the fire and charge the homeowners later?” I have seen people ask.

I do wonder how the people who lost their house because they didn’t want to pay taxes voted.

And no, this isn’t about who you might think it’s about (although that also applies)

Seventeen years ago today, I married Mr T.

Our wedding was not fun.

Why?

Because his parents were there.

Heck, because his parents existed.

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A month before we got married, Mr T’s parents – let’s call them Sly and Doris – called him and asked him if he was alone.

He was not. We were in the car together.

They insisted that they speak to him when I was not there.

I thought, “Perhaps they want to give me a present? Perhaps this is a discussion of a nice wedding present?”

Reader, it was not. Indeed, there was never to be anything anyone could describe as a “nice present” ever. Their gifts to us – gifts we did not want and tried to get them to stop by asking for a present detente where no presents were exchanged because we neither needed nor wanted stuff – included gems like the cheap Chinese pressed-board nesting tables painted with hummingbirds and hibiscus, about which, when Mr T asked how we could return them, Doris sniffed and claimed that my sisters-in-law loved. (They did not. I asked.)

Nope, the conversation was about how Mr T should not marry me and how I was marrying him only for his money and how his parents intended to boycott our wedding, to which I said, “GOOD I DIDN’T WANT THEM THERE ANYHOW.”

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Mr T did not have any money.

I mean, he had a normal amount of money that a man who has put two people through college and supported a family with two children over the years would have.

I had more assets than he did, as I had only to put one person – myself – through college.

And Mr T was not set up to inherit great riches from his parents. Even if they had been really rich, he was not included in their will. All the money went to their grandkids.

Not to mention women who marry for money earn that money.

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Anyhow they came to the wedding after all because it turns out I was, much to our surprise, pregnant and Mr T told them that if they wanted to see their grandchild ever, they would come to the wedding, even though I had no intention of honoring Mr T’s deal with his parents because I would not have let my child be around such mean, bitter people.

And then I had a miscarriage the week Sly and Doris were at our house.

But I didn’t tell them because I did not want them in my business.

And I had to have a D&C which who knows if I would be able to get that today, given all the shit that the regime is trying.

And I floated through the week on vicodin and anger, watching Sly and Doris, who stayed in our house, get drunk every night on our (expensive that we keep for guests but guests we like who don’t drink it by the tumbler) booze and eat all of our Good Cheese (Carr Valley, which can cost $24 a pound), and complain I wasn’t doing laundry right, that I didn’t make apple pie right, and that there was nothing to do because we don’t have a TV upstairs and don’t have cable.

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Years later, I found out that one of the many reasons Sly and Doris did not like me was because of the way I eat bacon and nope, I am not making this up. On one of my first visits to their house, I peeled the loose, flabby, undercooked fat off my bacon and didn’t eat it.

Sly thought that was an insult to the chef (him) and had been stewing about it for years. He finally revealed this to Mr T in one of their regular weekly drunken (Sly and Doris drunk, not Mr T) mandatory phone calls.

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Anyhow, that’s when I decided to stop caring about their opinion of me and live my life, but poor Mr T cared because people almost always care about what their parents think about them and his parents were mean to him and said horrible things like Doris was thinking about suicide because Mr T and I were not visiting them for Christmas (we had just gone there for Thanksgiving and damn isn’t that enough?).

For years, they were mean to him. And then Sly needed surgery and insisted that Mr T go to Florida to take care of him post-surgery.

FRIENDS WE DID NOT KNOW ABOUT REHAB CENTERS AT THE TIME.

But Sly apparently had refused to go to a rehab center and we didn’t know enough to say, NOPE. Instead, we just wondered what happened to people who didn’t have kids who would help them.

Mr T went to Florida to take care of his dad and worked late into the night on his job and got almost no sleep because Sly was immobile and wouldn’t do his PT and Doris was weak and both of them got drunk every day at 4:00 p.m.

And two months later, Sly fell on Doris and broke her knee. She went into the hospital and Sly had to go in for surgery and neither of them ever came out again. Doris died after six weeks in the hospital and Sly died six weeks after she did and Mr T was there almost the entire time, dealing with Doris’ begging him to bring her booze in the hospital and Sly demanding demanding demanding and Mr T calling me in exhaustion at night.

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They both died.

They left a mess for Mr T to clean up – not including him in the will, which is their right, but then making him executor and trustee for the grandkids.

That was ten years ago.

And not once have I missed them.

Not once has Mr T missed them.

Indeed, as time has gone on, Mr T has gotten angrier and angrier at them as he realizes how dysfunctional his home was and how poorly he was treated.

And here I am, a decade later, still writing about how awful they were.

Because that is the legacy they created for themselves.

They did this.

I am so glad they are not here to be mean to Mr T anymore.

We might still have freedom of speech (or no – they’re arresting protestors in England – but at least they have universal health insurance)

Almost every night, I call all the Wisconsin Republican delegation in Washington DC. I tell them to release the Epstein files, to fund the VA, to stop the tariffs – basically, to do their jobs and to honor their oath to the Constitution.

And every day, they disappoint me.

They don’t surprise me because I don’t expect them to have any balls, but they disappoint me.

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Last night, ABC capitulated to threats and cancelled Jimmy Kimmel’s show because the regime didn’t like what Kimmel said.

I have not heard any of my legislators speak out against this horrible violation of the First Amendment.

Not one.

Indeed, one of the Wisconsin Republicans, Derrick Van Orden, an apparently ignorant, kind of dumb, pugnacious drunk who posts horrible things on social media, threatened to withhold funding from his own constituents because he got his poor feelings hurt when someone in the district pointed out that Charlie Kirk said some very hateful things.

Yes, you read that correctly. He wants to withhold funding *from his own constituents.*

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He has company.

This is what the president of the United States just said:

“When you have a network, and you have evening shows, and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do—if you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative one in years, or something.… When you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that,” Trump said Thursday aboard Air Force One.

Yahoo news

Is it just me or should we not expect the president of the United States and our elected representatives to understand the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?

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If the current Republicans in Congress had been around during the American Revolution, that revolution would never have happened.

It wouldn’t.

Those men risked their lives for our independence.

The current Republicans won’t even risk hurt feelings. They don’t want the president to tweet something about them.

Dissidents in the Soviet Union went to the gulag.

Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest for years.

Nelson Mandela was in prison for decades.

The men who signed the Declaration of Independence knew they were risking their lives.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The Declaration of Independence

And yet they signed.

Because not having to kiss a king’s ass was more important to them than their lives.

The Republicans now are not terrified of losing their lives.

They are terrified of a little blow to their ego.

They are terrified that the president will say something mean about them.

They. Are. Pathetic.