I received a pair of slippers from my parents for Christmas, after I had specifically requested that I wanted no gifts in response to their inquiry about it. They were from (you guessed it) L. L. Bean. They probably didn’t think I was aware of Trump’s endorsement. I immediately took them to my local Good Will.
It was one individual, Linda Bean, one of the 50 members of the Bean family that hold a share in the company, who has contributed money to Trump.
Truth.
I’m currently wearing a Bean “Wallace Beery” shirt with a Bean flannel shirt over it.
If I have to give up L.L. Bean (inexpensive & wears like iron) I will need to go about the streets of Brooklyn naked, frightening the horses.
Well, I feel better then, that some poor Trump supporter thrown out of work by his new “policies” will be kept warm by the good fortune of having obtained my slippers.
Yes, it’s more complicated than my first post suggests. The company has contributed to conservation causes in the past and says that it does not take sides on political issues. But I read somewhere that Linda Bean’s PAC contribution was above the legal limit, and Trump’s endorsement of L.L. Bean looks way too much like a quid pro quo to me.
And yet he’s president, the fact that the person who gets the most votes doesn’t win elections is one of many shameful facts about America.
I work for the federal government and a shitload of big cheeses just resigned, including my soon-to-be boss. Which really bums me out as I was really looking forward to working for him. No idea who the new boss will be yet.
I don’t have a huge amount of faith in our institutions. The Constitution has not changed much since many states were racist dictatorships. There’s one amendment aimed at one of the tactics the racist dictators used to rig their show elections (poll taxes), but it was only one of the tactics they used. Our institutions, pretty much the same ones we have today, allowed millions of people to live under the boot of a racist dictatorship for nearly a century after state racism was formally banned and state governments were formally required to obey the Bill of Rights.
I hope it doesn’t get so bad that it’s comparable to this era, but there’s definitely a bunch of sunny optimism that US history doesn’t really back up. Sometimes it really does get worse, and our people and institutions let it happen. We don’t need to look overseas to see what it looks like for freedoms to erode and dictatorship to take hold. We’ve done it here already.
I had been planning to move back to the US in the next year or so (I left in 2000). Trump’s election is one of the main (though not the only) reason I’ve put that idea on hold. I just really don’t want to live there while he’s in charge.
Apparently a lot of people are doing things differently. The ACLU is reporting 290,000 online donations since Saturday…more than they received in all of 2016.
I don’t blame you one bit.
I left the US 2 years ago - but rented my house to keep a foot in the door as I thought it likely I’d be back. I don’t think that is likely for at least 4-8 years now so I just gave notice to the renters as I plan to liquidate my US assets. I seriously believe there is a high chance of economic turmoil in the US’s near future - if nothing else due to incompetent leadership making poorly thought out executive orders with little or no consultation - as we just witnessed with the immigration shit storm.
My wife is a citizen but was born in Peru. Her father was a naturalized citizen so she was born a citizen but doesn’t have a US birth certificate. She took the steps to be sure that she had all her paperwork from the State Department before Trump took office because she doesn’t trust them now not to cause trouble.
Mrs Piper and I would think hard before we took a trip again to the US, at least until things seem to stabilize. The new travel ban doesn’t affect us directly, but if by one stroke of a pen the lives of thousands of travellers can be upset, what next?
I’ve been thinking about Bruce Cockburn’s song, The Trouble with Normal:
In addition about thinking long and hard before travelling to the US, we think that if we travel to some other country, we’d have an awful lot of maple leaf stickers on our luggage.
The later screams “American trying to hide as Canadian” IMO.
Don’t go to Iran or Syria and you should be fine.
Our institutions depend entirely on the voluntary adherence to norms by those who hold power. It takes a very small number of people to decide to reject those norms and things will crumble. They’re crumbling now. And the only people who have the power to stop it are giving every sign that they’re going to just go along with it.
Right now there are people I know who are afraid that they will be locked out of the country or that they would be stopped from returning if they leave.
Right now the immigration restrictions apply to only a few cases, but it takes only a flick of the pen to broaden that group more and more.
I’m happy for you that you find all of this funny. I’m sure there were people like you every time a country’s political atmosphere crumbled.
I have a friend who is a green card holder. His mom back home is selling her house to move into a smaller place and is getting overwhelmed by the process and kind of freaking out. My friend would like to go home and help his mom through this process, but his immigration lawyer advised him not to leave the country right now because he might not be able to get back in. That is just one person who’s life is disrupted by this pointless and mean spirited order and that is just one order from a man who is hell bent on disrupting our political norms.
I’m feeling very anxious and sad. I’m afraid the history books will show that world war three started with a tweet.
Things are heating up in Ukraine and that scares me.
The fact that you can show a Trump supporter video of both Trump and Spicer calling the “ban” a ban and then have them defend Spicer calling out the media for lying about it being a ban, just makes my head hurt.
I haven’t yet made any real changes in my life, but I’m actively looking for some way to help because I’m feeling very very helpless at the moment.