We have held off on our postings because we could not believe what we were seeing from those sending their comments to be published in Bettina Network’s Blog. It is time for us to put all of that together and lay out for you what many in our community are thinking.
This is an opportunity presented in these United States to citizens, immigrants, illegals, temporary residents, permanent residents, students and others to put your professional lives on the line. We haven’t done much, but have paid a high price for some of the things we have written about in this blog. We knew that was a possibility when we started this blog, but took an oath that we would write without letting the possibility of negative consequences mitigate our voice. It is the collective voice of those who use Bettina Network, inc. And yes, sometimes we can publish diametrically opposed ideas in the same week. That is who we are – not “better than” because we are “politically correct”, but “every person” expressing themselves for all to see and hear.
Member #1: Until this Trump conflagration came along I struggled to understand why my life was so oppressed; why many around me felt so free to step all over me without holding back; denying what they were doing; and blaming me for their sins so blatantly committed against me and those like me. I also could not understand why even many of those like me felt the need to commit the same sins against me. None of it made sense.
Along comes Donald Trump and his followers and promoters and his attempt at a movement. In the process, we have not joined his “movement” but he and his totally and completely answered the questions that have haunted my life. The downside of it all is that it comes at the end of my life. Hopefully, there are others on whom these messages and this morality play, being acted out in front of us daily, will have meaning and who will recoil from everything it lays bare. Take its message to heart – it is the difference between life and death for all of you. For some of us to deny, turn away, claim otherwise really does separate the sheep from the goats – the good from the bad – those wallowing in sin and those pulling themselves out of the muck and cleaning themselves of all that has gone before.
Member 2: When I take in the entire spread of history in these United States it doesn’t bode well for human beings. It casts us as evil;, as harboring a gene we pass on from one generation to the next to destroy others because we hold ourselves to be “better than” all life on earth even at times including our own families. Where does that come from? How did we get here? Why are we constantly moving in and out of times which can make Hitler’s Germany look like a relief from what we are living? Or is this that final wake-up cal!, which if not answered correctly moves into another period of human degradation of us killing each other and declaring those we kill as less than. Or is this the time during which we can repent all of the evil we and our ancestors have done and/or caused to have done!
Member #3: How could people who came to these shores looking for a better life – a freer life – a life full of goodness and not the “better than” we were struggling under and being oppressed by in another country – experiences which made us take the risk of crossing an unknown ocean seeking Nirvana. How have wound up with the history we read about even in the redacted history books we use to teach our children of our past?
We came and survived with the help of those who were already here and had been for generations. We were immediately grateful until that gratitude was blown away by the storm clouds gathering from the “better than” universe. As our beginnings in this country moved from struggling to just survive; learning from those already here how to plant what grew in these climates; build houses; have a life which began to grow to see us enjoy freedoms denied from whence we came – we moved to being “at home”. Just as that began to happen we didn’t thank those who were there for us when we were in need. We turned to fight them because we began to consider ourselves, once again, as better than. We let our “better than” genes come out and they won the day culminating in Andrew Jackson’s Trail of Tears.
Member #4: Andrew Jackson, who we claim to have been the founder of the Democratic Party, has seen his political group move from racist developers of the Ku Klux Klan to people doing their best to free us from the likes of Donald Trump and move us into a more equal place. As years later Abraham Lincoln, who we claim was the founder of the Republican Party has seen his political group move from defenders of liberty; as the group Africans looked to as we voted in a country which hung you if you tried such; which worked to defeat segregation has now moved to become the group which works to make sure segregation is maintained and never changes. The GOP today shows itself in its current administration of 99% white, northern European ancestry people with a president who is showing his potential to make even Adolph Hitler, who he studied during his young adult years, look good.
How could we come to these shores running away from persecution and set in place a government with leaders who clearly persecute others and claim our right to do such because we and our governmental structures and business structures are so much better than those others.
How could we not acknowledge our greed and laziness which moved us to traffic in human beings who we called slaves and set in place to do the work of making us great in this country and certainly “better than” the slaves who actually did the work of such while we strutted around like peacocks taking the credit.
How could we set our women up to look like peacocks and buy into a lifestyle which oppressed them from birth to death, to get the women in this society to be the pattern we used to enslave Africans and maintain ignorance as to their real position in this society? One of oppression and maintained in slavery of a different kind only with a different mythology keeping them in place? How did we convince women to continue in that space when we used the marriage laws, which enslaved women to be the basis upon which we passed laws to enslave Africans.
How could we massacre and slaughter in this country those who tried to move into a more equal place? And deny what we were doing even unto today?
How can we see the economic inequalities which cause some to be homeless, on the street with scraps to eat from the throw aways of those in control; with clothes thrown away by others as what they wear; as make shift tents or simply beds on the cement benches around the parks and other places or even worse on the sidewalk and in the doorways until our police force comes along to force them to move along.
How can we see the storms gathering as those with enormous greed develop businesses which take away from others to put largess into their own pockets and consider themselves “better than” because they have figured out how to move ahead at the cost of tens of thousands of peoples lives?
Member #5: As we look at what is happening with the Trump Administration; within the Trump family; with their friends and others we can see ourselves over the centuries. Different clothes, a different political system, different words to describe the same thing, and using denial, greed, murder, oppression, theft and more to maintain themselves to satisfy their need to be “better than” – in and among those people we see ourselves. Not clearly, because we have our own denial, greed, murder, oppression, theft and more having constructed a curtain we cannot see through which reflects us and our lives in the mirror behind that curtain we designed to be able to have complete denial of who we are and what we are about.
Today, we have the advantage of seeing this morality play over television and our other technology that we use to “keep up” with what is happening. Amazingly, in spite of watching this reality play in front of our eyes we can see “them”, but we can’t see how “they” are a reflection of “us” and are a part of “us”. We cannot see what we have done and are doing to others just as egregious as what they are doing that we are watching daily.
Instead, that morality play is making some of us even much “better than” they are and shoring up our next chapter in this life so that it continues and we do not have to deal with who we are in this life and the part we have and are playing.
Trump and his group are making it possible for us to continue as “better than” and to usher in another chapter with the next generation of those who are much, much better than in a society which has all white business owners, all white in polite society, all white and male in government, with those who are not taking secondary places and feeling blessed to be able to do so because that means they are “better than” those in their own group who didn’t make the cut. The fact that they are the ones in their group parroting and allowing “better than” to continue and those cut out have called out truth just can’t get through into the discussion to attempt to make total, real change.