#TrumpWorld & #USWomensOpen: This Is Not Normal
Members of SOMA stage a peaceful, silent protest at the LPGA Women's Open at Trump National Golf Club, Bedminster, NJ, July 16, 2017
First, congratulations to all the women who participated in the LPGA Women's Open July 14-16. Golf is their job, their passion, their life. This post is not about them.
However, this post is about women--and men--standing up for women everywhere. It's about exercising our Constitutional right to stand up to the Misogynist in Chief, the liar, the cheater, the narcissist who pretends to want to 'Make America Great Again', but only if it starts and ends with his bottom line; who sees the presidency merely as a career move; who is an embarrassment to all this great nation stands for.
SNAFU
Every weekend that Trump stays at his golf course in Bedminster, protest motorcades, led by this guy, drive past the entrance, and culminate with a rally at the corner of Rt. 206 and Lamington Rd.
Somerset and Hunterdon Counties (Trump National Golf Club is in Somerset but borders Hunterdon) are smack dab in the middle of what I like to call the 'healthy, wealthy and white' NJ suburbs. Once mostly horse and agriculture farms (Jackie O rode here), they survived the McMansion invasion of the 80s-00s, and are now, thanks to a great deal of farmland preservation, still mostly green. However, their political bent is far more red. Lamington Rd. is a combination of one long driveway after another snaking toward houses that can't be seen (and the owners like it that way, thank you very much), bucolic horse farms, and quaint, old farmsteads that managed to survive the suburban explosion. Once a year we have a hot air balloon festival, and that's about as much crazy traffic as we want in this part of the most densely populated state in the country. But since January 20th, it's been Situation Normal: All F'd Up.
I participated in the July 4th weekend motorcade. Lamington Rd. is a popular cycling route, and on that day, some cyclists gave us a thumbs up, most had no reaction, but one in particular flipped us the bird and shouted, "F--k you! Freedom!" Whose freedom? His? Ours? Our country's? Funny thing about some Trump supporters: they think they have the market cornered on patriotism. They so quickly forget that this country was founded on patriotic protests and civil disobedience. And in one of the reddest parts of a traditionally blue state, the Marie Corfield: #TrumpWorld & #USWomensOpen: This Is Not Normal: