It Ain’t Fiction!

Fictional Jeffrey Epstein (Jordan Hayes) Being Led Off By Fictional Feds

Law & Order SVU 2011 Episode, "Flight"

Fiction is the best way to tell the truth. Many writers agree with me and over the years they have tried to tell us many times about things that are going on all around us that we are too busy or too good to see. Good people, I find, can imagine evil, but they usually don’t. They usually assume most people are like them, busy minding their own business, not busy trying to hurt others.

To name a few fictional truth tellings - Conspiracy Theory starring Mel Gibson, along with revealing certain CIA mind-bending antics, Conspiracy Theory was the first to call John Lennon’s death an assassination. Michael Clayton, “I am Shiva, God of Death!” aimed at a fictional Monsanto-like super company busy poisoning the world. Prime Suspect for its 1993 Season 3, "The Keeper of Souls," about the organized abuse and, sometimes, murder of street kids and orphans by rich and powerful men. Even comedian Seth MacFarlane tried to tell us with his 2005 Family Guy cartoon of Stewie running naked through the mall screaming, “Help! I just escaped from Kevin Spacey’s basement!”

For years, I have been reading in The Daily Beast about this fellow named Jeffrey Epstein who was a pretty intense partier. Thank you Daily Beast for your courage in speaking out. You’ve been telling us about Epstein’s Fantasy Island, about his ranch in New Mexico, about his buddy Ghislaine Maxwell who procured very young girls for him, about Prince Andrew, Trump, Bill Clinton, about the parties and the after-parties, and the wee small hour romps with under-aged girls in the manses of rich and powerful men. You have told us oh, Daily Beast, about the Catholic Church, about the Vatican, about the culling of child sex slaves from private schools, from orphanages, from the homeless children on the streets. We still haven’t paid attention to these last, “suffer the little children to come unto me” said Jesus to his disciples.

I find it remarkable that people still need to see it on TV before they will get it. No, that’s not so because it WAS on TV and they still didn’t get it.

Thank you Law & Order, Special Victims Unit, cast & crew, and especially creator, Dick Wolf, who along with writers Dawn DeNoon and Christina M. Torres, tried to tell us in their 2011 episode, “Flight,” about the exploits of super-rich financier Jeffrey Epstein. Specifically “Flight” echoes the time Epstein, fictionally called Jordan Hayes (cloyingly played by Colm Feore) received a French girl as a birthday present. (In real life, Epstein has been accused of having received three twelve-year-old French girls as a birthday present.) In the episode, the French girl is tricked into giving Jordan Hayes a massage, during which he requires her to be naked. (What is it about this guy and massages? Epstein seems to have gotten several nude virginal massages daily. Ugh!) She’s trapped in the room. Later, before she is allowed to leave, an attendant makes her offer up a friend to be Jordan’s next victim. In fact, SVU went on to describe several underaged girls paid to give weird, creepy massages to Jordan Hayes, Jordy to his friends, namely an older French girl who used to be is lover and was now his procurer of very young girls. This dark-haired young woman eerily reflects the real life older beauty, Ghislaine Maxwell, a beautiful socialite who allegedly procured Epstein’s victims, one wonders why she didn’t have better things to do with her life. Perhaps like many real life female sex slavery procurers, she’s angry about her own victimization and just doesn’t care about anyone else. Or maybe she’s just plain evil. According to the SVU episode and also the real life victims, the procured girls were kept hostage till they performed whatever bizarre sexual act Jordy (Epstein) wanted or the tender, underaged girls would be sent out to perform for Hayes’ (Epstein’s) rich old cohorts.

The Real Life Ghislaine Maxwell

Spoiler alert:

Unlike the real life Epstein who supposedly committed suicide (I think he was murdered, hung, dispatched by his old cronies who wanted to silence him. They always kill their friends.), in the SVU story, Jordan Hayes isn’t punished for his crimes. The Feds swoop down to save Jordan in a deus ex machina move because he is too valuable as a witness to allow him to rot away in prison with other Level 3 sex offenders. As Jordan is swept away by this accommodating nebulous Federal agency, his ex-girl friend turned pimp now facing 80 years in prison, is handcuffed and left screaming, “I love you, Jordy!” 

Fictional Ghislaine Maxwell (remarkable resemblance!) handcuffed, facing 80 years

In real life, Epstein’s facilitator, Maxwell, who was photographed aprés Epstein’s arrest having a carefree lunch at an In & Out Burger, seems to have gotten off Scott-free. I would think she knows too much. Remember, they always kill their friends. Her brain must be what we used to call “a little black book” full of names and dates and addresses. 

All perfectly useless now. Unless real life coppers step up to do what fictional ones have done.

Fictional Special Victims Unit

Next time you hear yourself talking about Jeffrey Epstein and others like him, don't just talk, do something - stop for a minute to give to the orgs that are out there fighting for the victims of sexual abuse. Anything you can afford, even $10, can help someone escape their captors. Here are two of my favorite orgs - The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and Polaris.

©Patricia Goodwin, 2019

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.

Within this blog, Patricia writes often about non-fiction subjects that inspire or disturb her, hopefully informing and inspiring people to be happy, healthy and free.

The Pretty Door, The Beauty in the Tragedy

Cover of TIME magazine, October 11, 2018

the beauty in the tragedy

In 2006, I published my poetry book, Atlantis, poems about the United States possibly being another Atlantis. One of those poems was The Pretty Door (posted below). I couldn't help thinking of that poem when I saw the latest cover of TIME magazine. The cover is meant, I'm sure, as a tribute to the courage and the veracity of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. I saw all that, and I agreed, yes, she is brave and true, but I also saw something else, something dangerous that perpetrates male entitlement - the beauty in the tragedy. Beauty being beautiful women. Beautiful women as victims. It's an age-old theme of literature and art. How many stories and poems and paintings of beautiful women tossed about by love or war or myth, one breast revealed in the turmoil, whilst standing over her are any manner of monsters and gods. This idea goes way beyond the GOP. They wish they could bottle it and sell it like they have the waters of Michigan. My answer to those who think only old, white Republicans do this - Chappaquiddick. The only difference between the privileged white preppies of the Democratic party is that when they are working, and not partying, they are trying to help, not hurt poor people.

Justice Sexualized

The popular feminist answer right now to all of this injustice is to get women in, to vote for women and somehow that's going to stop male entitlement in the courts. It hasn't so far, as long as women keep wanting to please the powers that be - men. Let me quote Gloria Steinem on this idea, I'm paraphrasing - "Let's get a feminist in the White House; it doesn't necessarily have to be a woman." Let's face it, I just watched three girl suits standing by while one of them blabbed about why she was voting to confirm a criminal. There's a special ring in hell for her, along with Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin and all the women who voted for the Cheeto, another accused rapist.

Three Girl Suits

"Let's get a feminist in the White House; it doesn't necessarily have to be a woman."

- Gloria Steinem

The Pretty Door

This only opens the pretty door

hair eyes nose mouth

this time

God didn’t play a joke

or did He?

Pretty opens 

not the talent door

bend over, clean the bathroom, make the coffee, 

here, take out the trash

not the smart door

bend over, clean the bathroom, make the coffee, here, take out the trash

Pretty opens the rich door

“You are the equal of Kings!”

when she passes

for white bread

in a white world

she’s self-educated

that’s the key

when learning to speak

She mimicked her favorite actresses:

Myrna Loy as Nora Charles

Maureen O’Sullivan as Jane

Meryl Streep as anyone

She practiced grammar and

took an etiquette book from the library

in order to pass

for a short while

angels sing

“She shall have Springtime

wherever she goes.”

“...and, as she passed, 

she took the Spring.”

“Wear a veil to hide your looks - and 

keep it down!”

“Women’s faces have too much power!”

Beautiful women are the last minority

no one will care

if they suffer

except that they look so good doing it

and, when they are murdered,

they make sexy victims on the evening news

every one of them

fears being stopped

by a cop 

on a lonely highway

as much as a black man

they are about as safe as a black man

“He told me to step out of the car… 

he threw me against the car

and frisked me.”

“I rested my hand on the seat next to me.

He took it as an invitation.”

“He was waiting for me…”

“you could sometimes see

her twelfth year in her cheeks or her ninth

sparkling from her eyes;

and even her fifth would flit 

over the curves of her mouth

now and then”

Her face only opens the pretty door

since she was twelve, she couldn’t 

walk down the street 

in peace

lying in a pool of blood

she had a restraining order

don’t sit next to a man unless you want it

“They put us in a trailer, it was so hot in there,

I couldn’t breathe.

I pushed my nose into a crack in the side. 

I thought, this is it.”

“She was sleeping soundly

and upon her eyelashes there lingered tears.”

this still happens in Atlantis

©Patricia Goodwin, 2018

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.

Prey

Here I am posting a chapter from my novel Holy Days because yesterday's testimony of Christine Blasey Ford brought it back to me in full force. What is described in this chapter was not the only experience I had of sexual assault; it is the one very like Dr. Ford's. Mine was not an assailant of privilege. He was a rough sort of person, an older boy, elite in his own way in the neighborhood.  Also, Holy Days acknowledges the Stockholm Syndrome of childhood, not the popular reaction of rage and revenge so prevalent now. The passage about the lion may not appeal to most victims. However, it was very real to me. I was 8 in this photo; the assault happened 4 years later. I looked about the same.


PREY

Before I tell you what happened, I want you to know, Marie and Jakey had done what I did hundreds of times before. The only unusual thing was: it was me who walked across the street to the Likus’ house to look for Ma. 

      What was equally unusual: Rick answered the door instead of one of the girls.

      I was only slightly taken aback. After all, he lived there and, if Ma wasn’t at home, she was probably at Annie’s.

      “Is my mother here?” I asked him, warily.

      “Yeah,” and he stepped back to let me in.

      I stepped into the dim hallway.

      The second I was in the darkened hue of the Likus house, the second I smelled the musky odor of Likuses, the heavy, bodily odor of their chaos and mystery, the second I saw the amused face of Rick’s pal, Frankie Campbell peering at me from the end of the hall, I knew in a flash of absolute terror - Ma wasn’t there!

      I turned to run out, but landed right in Rick’s arms.

      Down the dark tunnel, he carried me and every step was a jolt I emphasized, almost comically, with a cry of “Rick! Rick! Rick!”

      He threw me down on the couch and jumped on top of me.

      I scrambled underneath him.

      “Don’t! Rick! Don’t!”

      Frankie stood in the corner. He was blonde and narrow, smirking nervously.

      “You’re fuckin’ nuts, man,” Frankie told him.

      “Come on!” he said, struggling with me. “You can do it too!”

      He unsnapped my dungarees. The zipper slid open though I grabbed at frantically.

      He unclenched my fingers, threw my hands down and held them over my head.

      He laughed. Neither of us could move.

      “Gloria!” he smiled down at me, his blue eyes sparkling against his dark skin, against the raw, white flesh of his scar like a twisted, agonized bolt of lightning from his damaged mind.

      At that moment, I was terrified of him and I hated him, but I recognized him. He was the Nazi. A small part, a very strong small part of me wanted to throw my arms around him and pull him down on me. I’ve often wondered, though I hardly need to wonder, what I would have done if Frankie hadn’t been there, standing, watching idiotically, altering the chemistry of the room. In my memory, I think of it sometimes as the death embrace of animals, the lioness teething upon the throat of her victim. I know she must love her prey: how much of her hunger and her agony she’s put into pursuing it’s delicious flesh and blood that will feed her and her babies and keep them alive and I know her mate has teased her throat with his teeth in much the same way when he took her and the love embrace and the death embrace are almost identical. So it was with me and Rick as we looked into each other’s eyes in stalemate that dark afternoon. And I was the prey who entered into a special, familiar, and just relationship with its killer. I loved him and hated him as surely as I loved and hated myself.

      But, I had too much to live for and I had to go on living. I couldn’t let him! When he let go of me to unbuckle his belt, I pulled at his hands hysterically, not letting him. He laughed and laughed. He never once hit me. I didn’t even know till years later that women were hit, or worse, during a rape. Then, he grabbed my pants legs around my thighs and yanked hard; traitors, they slid down to my knees.

      “Wow! Look at this!” Rick said about my underwear, tiny bikini panties with little pink rosebuds.

      “Hey, Likus, isn’t that your grandmother coming?” Frankie drawled stupidly from the window.

      “Shit!” Rick spat.

      Rick picked me up by the shoulders and threw me off the couch toward the direction of the kitchen. I landed awkwardly in my bunched up pants, but before I could fall over, he had picked me up again and pushed me further toward the kitchen and again, I was being flung out the back door where I landed on my shoulder in a heap by the garbage pail, fish and banana peels cooking in the hot sun, buzzing with flies at the foot of his back steps. I could hear him answer his grandmother while his face was still toward me. He latched the backdoor shut.

      I struggled to come to my senses. I couldn’t be seen like this and in Rick’s backyard! I didn’t know whether to run first or pull up my pants. I pulled up my pants and zipped the fly.

      I knew I couldn’t simply walk out the driveway to the front.

      Shaking with terror that I might be seen in Rick’s yard, possibly I already had and with my pants down, I hid myself in the thick tangle of brush that grew against the tall wooden fence that separated the Likus’s yard from the Strummer’s. I considered the track side, but the fence there was even taller and since, I had to throw myself over, I didn’t know what kind of shopping cart or soaked mattress or broken bottle I’d land on down by the tracks. The Strummer’s yard beckoned me with the soft, green memories of its apple tree.

      Thorns of scrub rose sliced at my arms and ankles as I tried to gain a foothold on the smooth fence. By sheer will and emergency, I smashed myself into the boards and catapulted my aching body over. I tumbled on to the grass.

      I let myself stop for a minute. I panted heavily, hoping for that moment when my breath would come easily. I wanted to cry. I think the tears started to come and I wiped them away and they continued and I wiped them away again, streaking my face with dirt and blood from my hands.

      Johnny came out of his house and rushed toward me. I was so glad to see him! He was married and didn’t live there any more, but he was home on leave from the Army before going to Vietnam, I remembered all this at once, in my daze. But, there was something wrong about him! His hair was gone! His beautiful, sun-filled hair! And his expression was wrong! He wasn’t happy to see me! He looked furious!

      “Get the hell out of my yard!” he yelled at me.

      His handsome face was twisted. His sunny hair had been shaved along the bumpy round of his skull like a prisoner of war.

      “I couldn’t help it,” I mumbled, stunned and unsure what was happening.

      “Get up!”

      He also pulled me by the neck, like a small animal, and threw me in the direction he wanted me to go, toward the front walk. I thought, “If Rick’s watching, he’ll laugh.”

      “What are you doing, Johnny?” A soft voice called him sweetly from the front door. “Who is that?”

      I looked up through my tears to see the vague shape of a woman wavering there behind the blackened screen door. It was Johnny’s mother.

      “Why it’s Gloria! Gloria Wisher! Hello, dear! How is your mother? I never see her anymore!”

      “Fine,” I sniffed.

      I figured she must be drunk. She didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on. She had never called my mother or spoken much to her unless she happened to be out on the porch when Ma walked by. But, Celia Strummer never came out of the house these days. I didn’t even think she was a nurse anymore. I was surprised, somewhere on top of my misery, that she even knew my name.

      The metal gate made a high-pitched squeal like a caught pig as I opened it and Johnny Strummer, my beloved sun-kissed sweetheart, kicked me real hard in the behind and sent me flying forward out the gate so fast I fell hard on the cement scraping my palms, tearing my pants open and raking my knees in long, bloody scratches.

      His mother was shocked.

      “Johnny!”

      “And stay out!” he screamed, crazily. “Get back in the house!” He turned and strode up the porch steps toward his mother.

      I could hear her voice, retreating, protesting sweetly, that she “didn’t see why -”

      I went home, to my room, to mourn and lick my wounds and gather my strength. Maybe Johnny was mad at me because I hadn’t gone for a ride with him. Maybe he was mad because he’d had to get married or because he had to go to war. But, really, it didn’t matter why. It was an odd circumstance of my life that so many people had behaved so strangely for so long that when, suddenly, someone I’d trusted and believed in, like Johnny or my pediatrician or Daddy, for no reason viciously struck out at me, when it had happened for the thousandth time, I simply went home, washed and salved my wounds, and prepared myself for the next onslaught. Rick had caught me off guard, but I never thought for a moment he’d acted out of character. Somehow, in Revere, that was a virtue. It created a warped kind of trust.

©Patricia Goodwin, 2015

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.

This is US – This is Obama, This is Hillary, This is Trump - Standing Rock Meets Edward Snowden

This may be a photo of Afghanistan, it may be Iraq, it may be Syria, but it is Standing Rock, North Dakota in the United States. This photo reminds me of the Hollywood filmmaker who shot his movie about war-torn Beirut in the Bronx.

What you are looking at in the above photo, according to Unicorn Riot on Facebook, are “military style walls to protect the oil pipeline from protestors: a barrier of six foot walls and three rows of razor wire followed by a second barrier that is twelve feet tall with a row of razor wire across top. Excavators and bulldozers continue construction as pipe is laid out and crews await the drills so they can begin boring the holes to connect the pipeline under the Missouri River. Military, sheriffs, and mercenaries patrol the perimeter night and day, 24 hour surveillance on the camps.”

This is happening now. Hundreds of protestors, calling themselves Water Protectors have assembled near Cannon Ball, North Dakota in a camp called Standing Rock where they are attempting to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, planned to stretch from Stanley, ND to Patoka, IL. The Army Corp of Engineers has overridden the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie to approve the pipeline. It’s not the first time the United States has broken a treaty with Native Americans. However, the way land grabs are going right now, it may be one of the last. There’s not much left, and our National Parks are currently in danger of being confiscated by Republicans who think we should be drilling on all available land, whether it’s available or not.

The camp at Standing Rock is a militarized zone. Veterans for Peace have said that law enforcement, sheriffs and mercenaries there are armed more than they, veterans, were for war. Dogs have been used to attack peaceful demonstrators; journalists and filmmakers have been arrested; demonstrators have been arrested, tear-gassed and shot. In a cry to the public for help, protestors stated, “DAPL is now flooding the camp with huge lights and flying drones, helicopters, planes, and even fighter jets over us. This is a war zone!! And where is our president? No one is protecting us…they protect the pipeline…so sad to see that they only care about short term profits…where will their children live once the earth is poisoned and they can't drink water..”

Many Americans don't want more fossil fuels. We stand with the the protestors at Standing Rock. Solar Power! Wind! Water! God has given us all we need. We could live in Paradise.

What has President Obama done about this confrontation? President Obama is great at double speak. His smile is worth a dozen promises. Obama said he’d look into asking the Army Corp of Engineers to consider re-routing the pipeline away from Native lands, sacred lands, and Native water supplies, namely the Missouri River, which water protectors are guarding, which was basically saying nothing at all, meanwhile making everyone happy and hopeful. (UPDATE: On November 15, the White House announced President Obama is calling for a halt in the pipeline construction so that representatives from pipeline builder, Energy Transfers Partners and the Native American tribes can sit down and negotiate terms on which they can agree. This is huge. However, it is also a brilliant ploy on Obama’s part. He knows that no matter what both sides agree upon, President Trump will certainly over-turn any plan that does away with the pipeline or costs too much money and time. Obama gets the credit for being reasonable and kind while the investors only have to wait patiently.)

What was candidate Hillary Clinton’s response? More double-speak. Only she doesn’t have that killer grin. “…all of the parties involved—including the federal government, the pipeline company and contractors, the state of North Dakota, and the tribes—need to find a path forward that serves the broadest public interest. As that happens, it's important that on the ground in North Dakota, everyone respects demonstrators' rights to protest peacefully, and workers' rights to do their jobs safely.”

You can’t have it both ways, Hillary. And, we know about your oil connections, your bank ties and your fracking friends. Many people have been starry-eyed over the possibility of the first woman President. But, just like the first African-American President, we can't let sentiment blind us to the truth. Hillary, like Obama, would have allowed this pipeline to go forward.

And Trump? He has indicated that he will support the building of the pipeline. According to Time.com, “…Trump owns stock in the company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, as well as another company that will own a share of the pipeline once it is completed. He also received more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from the company’s CEO…Making matters worse for environmental activists, they now also face the possibility of the Trump White House reversing Obama’s decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. Trump has listed reviving that project, which would have carried crude oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast, as a priority for his first 100 days. TransCanada, the company behind Keystone, said it planned to work with a Trump administration shortly following the election.”

Recently, I saw an interview with Edward Snowden broadcast from the Tuschincki Theatre in the Netherlands. One thing he said resonated and, he outta know, he urge us to not “look at this as a question of single election or a single government…a vote will never be enough…we should be cautious of putting to much hope or fear in one person. President Obama campaigned on a platform of ending mass surveillance, ending torture and we all put a lot of hope in him because of this. We thought because the right person got into office everything would change…We can not hope for an Obama and we can not fear a Donald Trump rather we should build it ourselves.”

Edward Snowden

I’ve been thinking about Snowden a lot lately. Not because of the election, not because I sympathize with him. I don’t. I’m sorry that the whole thing happened. What whole thing, you ask? I’ve been thinking about Snowden because I saw the Oliver Stone movie and one scene keeps haunting me. The scene in which we gaze over the techie's shoulder to see on his computer screen keywords highlighted in a random Facebook news feed. As the techie explains the purpose of the surveillance to Snowden, who has just arrived, we realize, that could be our Facebook page, and our stupid, meaningless chatter about hating the President, or the policies of the United States has just been misinterpreted by the National Security Agency.

I’ve been trying, subtly, to tell my friends they must see the movie, but, of course, no one listens to me. Now, I’m going to tell you why I’ve been haunted by that scene.

  

According to Snowden, the government has been peeking into our emails and social networking such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, etc. using violent or threatening keywords they consider key to finding terrorists. I’m not going to type these words here. See the movie and you’ll see the words.

Now, this has been happening since the technology was available in the early 1990s - and please don't forget that the internet itself comes from the U.S. Department of Defense - and since the Patriot Act and since 9/11. Obama had nothing to do with starting it, but he continued it. Hillary, as Secretary of State knew about it. And Trump, Trump is gonna love it.

Not only the government looks at our keywords. So do sites that sell stuff to us. I’m not going to mention any by name. You know what they are. You probably have noticed by now that if you’re in the market for shoes and you click on a shoe, that shoe follows you around the internet all day.

Now, for the scary part. And again, you can’t blame either of the candidates or the current President – these sites are not only looking at your keywords, they are listening to them. Yes, if you say, in the privacy of your own home, “I need shoes,” and you say that in the presence of any device into which you may speak, that device is listening to you whether it is turned off or not. It does help if your computer, for instance, is on and the cover is up. But, it doesn’t need to be on. If the cover is up, someone may be watching and listening through the camera and microphone abilities of your lap-top. Or phone or TV or iPad.

I know this because after a conversation with my daughter about blenders versus food processors, a certain shopping site sent me an email offering blenders and food processors though I hadn’t clicked on anything yet. A conversation a friend and I had over lunch about Rosemary’s Baby author Ira Levin yielded an email for books by a scientist named Kendra Levin. A conversation on the phone about how the hotel did not have robes available – this on the OTHER END of the phone – led to an email for hotel spa robes.

Again, you may see Snowden for the details. In the movie, we see a Muslim woman removing her burka in what she thinks is her private bedroom. The techie says, “I always wondered what was under those.” Snowden is shocked. We also see a woman and her daughter Facetiming and discussing Botox treatments.

Snowden has said about mass surveillance that it does not stop terrorism because of the huge amount of useless information that must be sorted. He recommends more targeted surveillance, stating that our mass surveillance of American citizens did not stop the Boston Marathon bombing, for instance. “When you collect everything you understand nothing - you get drowned in so much information you can’t find what’s relevant...Targeted surveillance does not destroy the rights of everyone else in society.”

Snowden went on to say he felt optimistic about the future, “Despite the challenges and statements by President elect this is a nation that will strive to get better…this is a dark moment in our history but it’s not the end.”

Again, if Snowden can say that, I think we can listen.

One more thing: a lot of us have been pretty freaked out and disillusioned by the rash of

sexual harassment and human rights violations being committed since the election in the name of Trump. A 10-year-old girl was grabbed by a classmate who said, “If the President can do it, I can too.” An Asian woman was beaten in the street when she tried to ignore a man telling her “This is America, you should go home.” He held on to her and told her she had to listen to him. When she punched him in the throat to get away, he called the police and claimed she attacked him. She was arrested. Swastikas and white supremacists graffiti are appearing over-night. the KKK has promised a Trump victory parade. But, think about it, when have we not had racial, ethnic incidents? The KKK and white supremacists have been waiting in the wings for decades. These are being done in the name of Trump, but Trump is not the cause, he is the excuse. He has certainly fanned the flames that already burned. 

Now, consider all the race riots and killings we've had during the administration of our first African-American President.

Think about this: Journalist Kelly Oxford requested women to tweet her their first incidents of sexual harassment  - THEIR FIRST INCIDENT – and she received 30 million tweets from women. 

Trump's attitudes toward women and accusations of his sexual assaults on women have been inflammatory to the behavior of the kinds of men who want to assault women, but he is only one of the men responsible for a centuries-old climate of disrespect that caused at least 30 million assaults and counting.

My point is this – This is US – this is Obama, this is Hillary, this is Trump. Only we have the power to be better people. To withstand oppression as best we can right now. To protect others. To be healthy. To fight. 

Remember - the only reason Obama stepped in to try to stop the pipeline in the convenient eleventh hour of his term as President is because of the Water Protectors' long, enduring protest.

In Snowden’s words - and a lot of us are already doing this, but it’s good to hear someone who’s been in the trenches say it  - if you can’t organize, then support the people who do organize. Sign petitions, send money to the organizations who can carry out the work you believe in, who can take those petitions to court, who can organize marches and protests, who can research and appeal to the proper channels to get bills passed and laws changed, who can safeguard our freedoms and our future. 

Let me quote SNL’s Hillary Clinton, “I’m not giving up. And neither should you.”

Ironically, that means going against Hillary and oil/banking business as usual for me, but Hallelujah!

©PatriciaGoodwin, 2016

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation.