2019 Showed Me Quotes

Years earlier, in a video about world history, I’d speculated about what might happen “if some superbug shows up tomorrow and it travels all these global trade routes.” In 2019, I’d said on a podcast, “We all must prepare ourselves for the global pandemic we all know is coming.” And yet, I did nothing to prepare. The future, even in its inevitabilities, always feels vague and nebulous to me—until it doesn’t.

Support for Miller’s concerns came from an unlikely source in the person of Matt Taibbi, a veteran journalist who had written two best-selling anti-Trump books. In an article published five days after Miller’s interview and titled “We’re in a Permanent Coup,” he warned of the threat to America’s democratic order posed by the deep-state conspiracy: “The Trump presidency is the first to reveal a full-blown schism between the intelligence community and the White House. Senior figures in the CIA, NSA, FBI and other agencies made an open break from their would-be boss before Trump’s inauguration, commencing a public war of leaks that has not stopped. “My discomfort in the last few years, first with Russiagate and now with Ukrainegate and impeachment, stems from the belief that the people pushing hardest for Trump’s early removal are more dangerous than Trump. Many Americans don’t see this because they’re not used to waking up in a country where you’re not sure who the president will be by nightfall. They don’t understand that this predicament is worse than having a bad president.”213 This warning from Taibbi was echoed by another liberal critic of Trump—Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. In a talk show appearance on New York’s AM 970 radio on Sunday, November 10, 2019, Dershowitz said, “Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, whether you’re from New York or the middle of the country, you should be frightened by efforts to try to create crimes out of nothing. . . . It reminds me of what Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the KGB, said to Stalin. He said, ‘Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime,’ by which he really meant, ‘I’ll make up the crime.’ And so the Democrats are now making up crimes.

February 12 Must I Listen? And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die. Exodus 20:19 We do not consciously disobey God, we simply do not heed Him. God has given us His commands; there they are, but we do not pay any attention to them, not because of wilful disobedience but because we do not love and respect Him. “If ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments” (rv). When once we realise that we have been “disrespecting” God all the time, we are covered with shame and humiliation because we have not heeded Him. “Speak thou with us . . . : but let not God speak with us.” We show how little we love God by preferring to listen to His servants only. We like to listen to personal testimonies, but we do not desire that God Himself should speak to us. Why are we so terrified lest God should speak to us? Because we know that if God does speak, either the thing must be done or we must tell God we will not obey Him. If it is only the servant’s voice we hear, we feel it is not imperative, we can say, “Well, that is simply your own idea, though I don’t deny it is probably God’s truth.” Am I putting God in the humiliating position of having treated me as a child of His while all the time I have been ignoring Him? When I do hear Him, the humiliation I have put on Him comes back on me—“Lord, why was I so dull and so obstinate?” This is always the result when once we do hear God. The real delight of hearing Him is tempered with shame in having been so long in hearing Him.

ARE YOU LISTENING TO GOD? “They said to Moses, ‘You speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.’” Exodus 20:19     We don’t consciously and deliberately disobey God—we simply don’t listen to Him. God has given His commands to us, but we pay no attention to them—not because of willful disobedience, but because we do not truly love and respect Him. “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15). Once we realize we have constantly been showing disrespect to God, we will be filled with shame and humiliation for ignoring Him.     “You speak with us, . . . but let not God speak with us . . . .” We show how little love we have for God by preferring to listen to His servants rather than to Him. We like to listen to personal testimonies, but we don’t want God Himself to speak to us. Why are we so terrified for God to speak to us? It is because we know that when God speaks we must either do what He asks or tell Him we will not obey. But if it is simply one of God’s servants speaking to us, we feel obedience is optional, not imperative. We respond by saying, “Well, that’s only your own idea, even though I don’t deny that what you said is probably God’s truth.”     Am I constantly humiliating God by ignoring Him, while He lovingly continues to treat me as His child? Once I finally do hear Him, the humiliation I have heaped on Him returns to me. My response then becomes, “Lord, why was I so insensitive and obstinate?” This is always the result once we hear God. But our real delight in finally hearing Him is tempered with the shame we feel for having taken so long to do so.

Oyster (2019)   Polari was a secret language used by gay men and queer people in Britain before the 1960s to avoid persecution. And I shut my sheesh screech.
He said cut that cackle fag.
My tongue was deaners    he did a nob. With her moey sewn closed
I brought him a hungry chavvy.
He said show me how loving me reefs. He said order and I ordered.
He said vagary and I vagaried.
Charpering to be needed I dhobied in ice for weeks
buvare. When it breaks
his fever met with my cody. It’s ben
To say it’s bona. In your lettie
the omee   at the same time wants to tip your brandy and battyfang you.
I savvy how it goes when an omee
with vera after every lamor dhobies out his moey.
I’d vada   him   to the sink after
straight tight oyster who charpered to not palaver me.
Been palavaed by flatties.
I’ve been an omee’s screech’s secret too. • I too have been the secret on a man’s lips.
Spoken by someone who wished
they didn’t need to speak me. Clenched jaw. Straight
to the sink after. I’d watch him
wash his mouth out with gin after each kiss.
I know how it is to feel desired
and despised at the same time by the same person   in the same bed
to tell yourself this is normal
this is fine to answer his fever with your body
something drinkable when it breaks.
I have bathed in ice for weeks waiting to be necessary.
He said go and I went.
He said come and I came. He said show me how it feels to love me.
I brought him a hungry child
who’d sewn her own mouth shut. He rattled his tin   my tongue became coins.
He said shut your mouth faggot
and I shut my faggot mouth.

And I understood that not only was I fated to see them again, searching for each other with the same looks which clearly showed that love’s fiery sphere had started to grow between them, but there was also something else, meant only for me.  Without wanting to, I had entered the realm of shadows, where you cannot be seen.  They were the only ones that could be seen, while I, until then at the centre of the story, was now drifting through the treacherous fog of strange desires, like a poor fly blown about in the wind.” (Homeric)

Kushner considered one of Trump’s greatest skills “figuring out how to trigger the other side by picking fights with them where he makes them take stupid positions.” He recalled Trump’s July 27, 2019, tweets about the district represented by the late Black Democratic congressman Elijah Cummings, which included Baltimore. “Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” Trump had tweeted. “No human being would want to live there.” Kushner saw this as baiting the Democrats. “When he did the tweet on Elijah Cummings, the president was saying, this is great, let them defend Baltimore,” Kushner told an associate. “The Democrats are getting so crazy, they’re basically defending Baltimore. When you get to the next election, he’s tied them to all these stupid positions because they’d rather attack him than actually be rational.” Cummings’s former district is in the top half of congressional districts in median household income, home prices and education levels. It has the second-highest income of any majority-Black congressional district in the country. Chris Wallace had Mick Mulvaney, then the acting White House chief of staff, on his Sunday show the next day. “This seems, Mick,” Wallace said, “to be the worst kind of racial stereotype—” Mulvaney tried to interrupt. “Let me finish,” Wallace said, “Racial stereotyping. Black congressman, majority-Black district—I mean, ‘No human being would want to live there’? Is he saying people that live in Baltimore are not human beings?” “I think you’re spending way too much time reading between the lines,” Mulvaney said. “I’m not reading between the lines,” Wallace replied. “I’m reading the lines.

Lord, show me how to focus my thoughts on Your blessings. Amen. —Rebecca Ondov