Legwork and Life, week of 1/31/17

I have a buffer again!  I managed to do the read-think-review cycle in less than 7 days for about three weeks straight, and so managed to piggyback them on each other.  I have a buffer of two weeks right now, which I'm going to try to keep up for this week and maybe expand on for next week and the weeks after.

Naturally, I just ran out of books, so I dug through my bookshelves and found a couple more solid options.  After that I'm going to have to try out the other library system or get more creative about my book selections.  I do have advice regarding that latter option from a friend that majored in English, so if I do go that route, it shouldn't be awful. 

Speaking of awfulness, Chris keeps reading me the latest in the Trump-government insanity.  There's probably whole blogs literally dedicated to cataloguing and publicizing that particular brand of insanity, but this won't be one of them.  I actually can't hear too much of anything that man and his cronies do or I can't think straight due to the anxiety and rage. 

This is, I'm sure, in large part because of how absolutely awful all these new policies are, both to people like me and to people unlike me but who are still people.  I am not, in anything but the philosophical sense, an immigrant, for example, but I fear very much for their safeties, because legal or illegal, they are all people, and they all play an important part in making America what it is.  In some cases, our society actually wouldn't work without them.  I fear, too, for my neighbors of Muslim faith, who, like the vast majority of American Muslims, simply want to live and raise their son in freedom and safety.  

I'm sure some people would say that I shouldn't care, since I have enough troubles of my own.  My response is that that mentality is laughably short-sighted.  It takes one short speech from less than a century ago to refute it:

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
 

Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
 

Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Or perhaps, in a quicker, more American fashion: United We Stand (and its counterpoint: Divided We Fall).  I think maybe, as a society, we've forgotten what that particular phrase means.  Most political arguments, these days, aren't based in sharing knowledge or understanding another viewpoint, but in proving who's "right."  I certainly have vivid enough views of what's right to me, but I would hope that those who voted for our current leader don't consider human rights abuses and clear comparisons to authoritarian governments "right."  And if they do, I'd like to know why.  Possibly so I can know enough to make good on my threat to move to Canada...

But I shouldn't.  I, like my friend in the now-Brexited England, have a duty to try and right the madness that's come to roost here.  Should it seem to require costing my life or my sanity, then that would probably be a better excuse to leave than: "I'm not comfortable here and don't want to look at all this madness I voted against."