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Alison R. Lockwood
Bookkeeper by day, novelist by night, tired by mid-afternoon
Thursday, January 23, 2025
A Man of the People
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
What I Learned in Springfield
Three years ago, a family member and I stopped talking over politics. Someone posted an article on Facebook saying that liberals were liars, evil, at war with America. This was a week after January 6th, when Donald Trump incited his followers to attack the Capitol. Nerves were worn a little thin. You might say it was the last straw.
Since then, people have asked, “How could you let something as trivial as politics end a relationship?” The question makes me crazy. We didn’t argue over tax reform. We argued over white supremacists and neo-Nazis marching in the crowd. I was terrified—the sitting president had encouraged an armed uprising, and we weren’t sure the country would survive. Here was a member of my own family, calling me the enemy.
Did I take it too personally? You bet. Do I regret it? Not an ounce. In fact, I stayed quiet too long. I regret not speaking up sooner. All my life, I’ve been afraid to offend people who said vaguely racist things. I made excuses for them. It was the way they grew up. At least they used to lower their voices when making “jokes,” but since 2016, it’s become okay to say the quiet part out loud.
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Graeme Lockwood, 1980 Witt graduate |
Except that Americans are the ones making death threats, holding the rest of us hostage.
Over the last 8 years, judges, jurors, government workers and poll volunteers have had to go into hiding, thanks to threats of shooting, bombing or lynching. This is how Donald Trump deals with his enemies—by telling his followers to “take their country back.”
You know what? This is my country too. It has a multitude of problems, but none of them can be solved by demonizing minorities, calling them “hordes” that have descended upon us, stealing our resources, spreading disease. These are people who sailed across oceans and walked across deserts in search of a better life. They’re some of the hardest workers I know. I live in Florida, whose immigrant population is 22%. That’s twice the national average. Immigrants are our doctors, teachers, roofers, waiters, produce pickers. They’re critical to our economy. Trump is threatening to deport 20 million of them, “the largest deportation in history.” He talks about building detention camps.
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1903 cartoon entitled “The Unrestricted Dumping Ground,” showing Italian immigrants as vermin, Socialists, “the Mafia” (by Louis Dalrymple, Judge magazine) |
Does this sound even vaguely familiar? We have laws in place to arrest and deport criminals. Statistically, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes. Think of it—to give up your home, your way of life, to come here with nothing and risk being sent back? It makes no sense. But then, who cares about making sense? The goal is to make us hate someone, so we won’t pay attention to the fact that the people spreading the lies have no real plans to help us.
Personally, the crimes I’ve experienced in my life—robbery, assault, malpractice, fraud—were carried out by white American males. The man who raped my friend was white. The pedophiles who abused kids in my family were white. Most serial killers are that same demographic. If I were a racist, I’d assume that all white men are prone to crime. But I’m not. I judge people by their actions, not by the color of their skin.
So if you tell me you’re voting for Donald Trump because of his border or economic policies, I’ll assume you’re okay with all the hateful things he’s said over the years—about veterans, women, immigrants, the disabled, people of color—and that somewhere, deep down, you agree. Is that harsh? I always wondered how millions of Germans let a hate-filled man rise to power, why they didn’t speak up and stop him. I think it means they were kind of on board with what he was saying. J.D. Vance once feared that his running mate might be “America’s Hitler.” According to his chief of staff, retired Marine general John Kelly, Trump suggested that “Hitler did some good things.”
You’ll probably think I’m exaggerating here, but when people show you who they are, believe them.
Thursday, May 26, 2022
Thom Alan White 1990-2022
Tuesday, March 1, 2022
Florida’s Shame: The “Don’t Say Gay” Bill
Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Facing the facts
I was a journalism major. My first real job, after waitressing, was at the Rittman Press, a weekly newspaper in rural Ohio. I was the only full-time reporter, a lot of pressure. As we’d been taught in school, I followed the rules: find two sources, verify everything, double and triple-check my information. Some sources were more reliable than others. A photo was better than a statement. No one could argue with the facts.
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Shay Horse/NurPhoto via Getty Images |
Here’s what I want to know. Officials in every state have certified the election. Representatives from both parties, and monitors from every walk of life, studied the ballots and signatures and deemed them valid. Courts reviewed 59 charges of fraud and dismissed them out of hand.
One judge, a Trump appointee said, “Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”
But you think a bus pulled up at a polling place, stuffed with fake ballots, and every single person in the chain of command went along with it? Where is this flawless operation in every other phase of our government? We can’t even dole out vaccine shots. My dad used to be a poll volunteer. He would have decked anyone who tried to cheat. It meant that much to him.
If this election was rigged, why are members of Congress fine with their results? Shouldn’t we throw out their votes too? Could it be they’re using this fiction to raise money? It’s estimated that the Trump campaign and allied GOP groups have raised at least $497 million since he lost.
Why on earth would Joe Biden want to be president, given the abysmal situation he’s inheriting? A $27 trillion debt. A raging pandemic. Record unemployment. A country at war with itself.I’ll be honest. Four years ago, I couldn’t stomach the thought of “President Trump.” His attitudes toward women, immigrants, minorities, the press, disabled and LGBTQ people were disturbing. Not what I wanted for the leader of our country. But as someone told me, “Sometimes you have to hire an assh*le to get the job done.” My dad said, “Don’t worry. He’ll surround himself with good people.” You know why I suspended my judgment? Because so many of my friends and family—people I respected—thought he was a good guy.
A good guy who cheated his contractors, cheated his tenants, cheated charities, cheated veterans at his fake university, and cheated on his wives, but okay.
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
This president has a habit of lying. This is well-known. His supporters enjoy it, I think. He’s playing a game, and they’re winning. Unfortunately, he lost this last election. This is also well-known. But because he couldn’t admit to losing, he lied for two months. The election was only fair if he won. What second-grader wouldn’t recognize this tactic?
He couldn’t win through voter suppression, slowing down the post office, and disqualifying mail-in ballots during the most deadly pandemic since 1918. He couldn’t believe he lost, because all of his tricks didn’t work.
Is it divisive of me to spell out the facts? “Agreeing to disagree” doesn’t fly anymore. I can’t give equal weight to complete fabrications. We were taught to be polite to people with different views, and that worked for most of my life, until Facebook came along. I miss the old days, when I didn’t know my Christian neighbors were kinda racist.
A Trump supporter recently told me she’s afraid of losing our freedoms. I agree. The Capitol is locked down so tightly right now, it looks like the Green Zone in Baghdad. She says she’s fighting to protect our rights. As Americans, our rights are protected by the Constitution. Which this president has done everything in his power to undermine.Tomorrow, we inaugurate a new president. This has happened every four years since 1789. Sadly, it won’t happen with the same pomp and circumstance, due to the death threats from the ex-president’s fans. How do we move on as a nation, rebuild our economy, fight this virus, put people back to work, when half of the country thinks the other half is trying to destroy it? How can this be? We all want the same things: safety, security, peace. Freedom to live our own lives. If your first reaction just now was to think of all the ways the “other side” is doing the opposite, well, that’s part of the problem. We’ve gotten so used to this tit-for-tat, knee-jerk argument, we’ve lost the point. Do we want to win the fight or fix our problems? We’ve been trolling each other for four years, thanks to the troller-in-chief, and that has to stop.
Here’s part of the oath that President Biden will swear tomorrow: “I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
We are not the enemy, you and I. We’re Americans.
Thursday, October 22, 2020
A Plea for Peace
I don’t check Facebook much anymore, except to see pictures of my husband’s cousin’s dog, Joey, who is adorable. Otherwise, it’s too depressing. The other night, I accidentally caught a post from a friend, and it was like a knife to the chest. I hoped that four years of grift, graft and incompetence would change some minds. I was wrong.
My friend list is shorter than it used to be. In 2016, the mute and unfollow buttons became protection. I didn’t want to be that person, ending relationships over politics. This was different, though. Our choices reflect our values, and our character. A red hat is an in-your-face statement. Maybe it means more than you intended, but we can’t look past it. That bell can’t be un-rung.
I’ve been trying to figure out when we took up opposite sides of the fence, but who has time to re-examine four hundred years of American history? In my lifetime, Rush Limbaugh was the one who built the wall. His radio show went national in the late eighties, but he didn’t reach critical mass until the Clinton presidency. In fact, Rush was honored for his part in the landslide mid-term election of 1994, when Republicans reclaimed the House after forty years. It was a dark time to be a liberal. It was the first time I knew I was a liberal. Here was this man on the radio, braying the ugliest, meanest, most hateful thoughts out loud, and people ate it up. People I knew and loved. It felt like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” One day, I’d be talking to a kind, caring individual. The next, he was calling me a feminazi. As a joke, he said. Ha. Ha.
Rush certainly didn’t mean it as a joke. He’d say anything for ratings, but he tapped into a deep, dark vein of hatred toward women, people of color, and immigrants. By the way, he just received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Up is down, down is up. I don’t understand the country we’re living in. But then, I’ve always been naïve. I grew up on a farm, believing in truth, justice, the American Way. My parents sent me to church, where I learned to Do unto others as you would have done unto you and Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. According to Rush, this made me the enemy. My dad loved his show.
As a corrupt liberal, what was my agenda? I believed in investing in education, childcare, drug treatment, and affordable housing, rather than paying $40,000 a year to house a person in prison. I believed in investing in healthcare—check-ups, cancer screenings, birth control, blood-pressure medicine—to keep our workforce healthy, and to avoid paying Medicaid to transport a patient to dialysis three times a week. I believed in paying my fair share of taxes, since I reaped the benefits of living in this great country.
Honestly, it pains me to write this. America isn’t great at the moment—the slogan says so. I believe in the best of this nation—basic rights and care for all citizens—and apparently, that makes me a radical left-wing socialist. Here are some other socialist programs I endorse: public libraries and schools, roads, streetlights, fire departments, subways, city buses, Social Security, Medicare, state universities, and hospitals. Lock me up.
Rush Limbaugh would have you believe that I, as a liberal, am the greatest threat this country has ever faced. Meanwhile, he helped elect a president who is bent on destroying our institutions, from the FBI to the CDC. At this moment, he and his cronies are working hard to strike down healthcare, gay marriage, voter rights, and a woman’s right to choose. Our national debt has exploded to $27 trillion. With a “T.”
But oh, right, I forgot—your taxes. That’s what matters. In a Biden presidency, your taxes will go up if you make more than $400,000 a year. Does that apply to you? If so, you’re buying lunch next time.
Sorry. For a bleeding-heart liberal, I get so mad sometimes. The past four years have been a nightmare. We watch our standing in the world erode. Our allies don’t trust us—they think we’re a joke. Our leader brags about the great job he’s doing. By the end of the year, a quarter-million of us will be dead of COVID-19.
We have a chance to change this narrative, to choose a president who is good, smart, decent, who works with people across the aisle to get things done. Being a politician isn’t a dirty word, unless you think it’s smart to hire a mechanic to take out your gallbladder.
Please, just this once, don’t do something just to own the libs. We’re owned. We’re permanently owned. The joke’s on us. You win.
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
Ain't That a Kick in the Head
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Neuro ICU, Tampa General Hospital |
It happened during his annual camping trip to Sebring Raceway. He wasn’t feeling well. He asked a friend to stop the car, took a few steps and collapsed. Doctors later blamed food poisoning and dehydration. He fell backwards, hitting his head on the concrete. His skull cracked on the left side. Blood ran out of his ear. He turned gray, stopped breathing. His friend Don admitted, “I thought he was gone.”
My brother-in-law was the one who called me. “Graeme’s being airlifted to Tampa” sounded like a stupid joke, even for these guys. “I’m not kidding,” Craig said, and I could hear the panic in his voice. “Alaine’s on her way to pick you up.” Fifteen minutes later, my sister and I were speeding down the highway toward the ER.
When we tell the story in the future, the confusion over hospitals will probably become a minor footnote. At the time, it was terrifying. We drove across the state toward Tampa. Halfway there, one of Graeme’s friends reported that his helicopter was headed for the closer hospital in Lakeland, a level-two trauma center. GPS recalculating. As it turned out, the Lakeland helipad was busy that night with another accident. Graeme was rerouted back to Tampa, a level-one trauma center. As I juggled calls, trying to find out where he was, my phone rang again. It was the president of Sebring Raceway, asking what he could do to help. I’d never been more scared in my life.
Long story short, Graeme spent eight days in two different hospitals. The impact of his fall caused a brain bleed and seizures. He was in critical condition for a while. When he finally woke up, his short-term memory was gone. He remembered everything and everybody pre-fall, just nothing we’d talked about five minutes earlier. It’s funny now—we told him the helicopter story at least twenty times, and he was always impressed—but what did it mean for his career? His phone filled up with anxious messages. Alaine and I scrambled to do his work and ours between hospital shifts.
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Graeme and his sister, Gayle |
Speaking of driving, let’s go back to the president of Sebring Raceway. Wayne Estes called that first night and every day after to check on Graeme. I asked if we could leave our van at the track—it was locked, full of camping gear, and the keys were in Graeme’s pocket—until we figured out how to get it home. Wayne said not to worry. The next morning, his wife appeared at the hospital with a gift bag full of snacks and treats. (It fed us for weeks.) Rita held out her hand and asked for the key. Then, she drove back to Sebring, and she and her husband brought the van north, where Craig and Alaine picked it up. That’s eight hours of driving by people we’d never met. I’m still in awe of their kindness.
So many people to thank. Highland County EMS. The Aeromed pilot and crew who kept Graeme alive on the way to Tampa. The staff at TGH, one of the best trauma centers in the country. The neurology team at ORMC. Thanks also to my cousin-in-law Ellen, a former EMT, who gave us some invaluable advice, along with chocolates, puzzles, and a book on traumatic brain injury. At first, I hid it from Graeme, not wanting to traumatize him with the TBI label, but now, he reads a little every night. It helps, he says, to understand his new normal. Headaches. Dizziness. Fatigue. Insomnia. Bouts of fog and frustration. He wants to be better yesterday. He’s learning patience. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that pain means you’re still breathing.
My cousin Laurie and her husband Wallace have made three trips from Jacksonville to cheer Graeme up. They come, deliver hugs and lunch, and leave. That’s my definition of love. Graeme’s friends have been here from the start, although he doesn’t remember the first time Don, John, or Loredana visited him in the hospital. I took pictures, just to be safe.
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Staff Meeting with Alaine, Graeme and Cato |
Thank you to everyone for the flowers, fruit, cheese, crackers, cookies, candy and Whoopie Pies. Glucose is fuel for brain recovery, so sugar is exactly what Graeme needed. There will be personal thank-you notes when life settles down (did I mention tax season?) but in the meantime, please know that we’ve been blown away by your thoughtfulness and prayers.
One last thing. Thank you to the stranger in the elevator of the parking garage at two in the morning, who leaned over and whispered, “Don’t you worry, honey. Everything’s going to be fine.”