You may have noticed I had no blog post last week.  That’s because we were preparing for my wife to have surgery.  She’s doing well and resting at home now.  Well sort of, she’s currently yelling at people being bad in Overwatch.  I’d originally planned to continue from my last post about women in media and discuss other types of characters, and next week I’ll do that.  But I feel there’s something else I have to do this time around.

As some of you may have surmised, this is a pseudonym.  I’d originally planned to keep it strictly about my writing and leave extraneous topics to my private Facebook page.  This includes politics.  However, as the first month of 2017 has unfolded, I feel that’s not entirely appropriate.  President Trump has, thus far, acted with reckless abandon.  His orders and plans primarily benefit him as well as Stephen Bannon – a man who should be relegated to mockery and derision rather than uplifted to chief strategist for a presidential administration.  Though you may not believe it, there is nothing these men do that aims to help the average citizen.  Bannon is on record as admitting he literally wants to topple the US government to replace it with something else.

I want to make it clear that I’m willing to discuss differences in ideology.  I may swing liberal, but I have friends and family who are all over the political landscape.  I have no problems with an honest, open debate about policy.  I’m not willing to engage in debates about things like racism, misogyny, or xenophobia.  These are attitudes for cowards; they are beliefs for people who belong in a by-gone era.  I’m also only going to deal in facts.  If you call CNN, NPR, or the BBC “fake news” while linking me 9/11 truther videos or claiming the National Review and The Blaze are reliable reporting outlets, we’re done.

This is America.  We are a country built on the core conceit that all men are created equal – that we hold some truths to be self-evident.  We are made stronger by our differences as we unite as Americans.  We are weaker when willingly point the finger at those less-fortunate and blame them for the problems we currently struggle with.  We are better and stronger together, but we are broken when we deny entry to Muslims or strip health care from our fellow citizens.

We stopped Mike Pence’s terrible actions when we tried them in Indiana.  Together, we can do the same to stop President Trump as he spirals this country into the divisive hatred he campaigned on.  As Americans, we are better than that.  As Americans, we have to be.