By Nellie Curtiss …
Sometimes our eyes in conjunction with our brains deceive us. Our vision is misty, foggy, and unclear.
A few years back, I joined a slew of retirees navigating cataract surgery. Advances in eye surgery made the laser eye surgery a real possibility—depending on insurances. I had noticed that my eyes were no longer picking up bright colors. My vision seemed muted, lackluster, missing all the colors of the rainbow. I felt like I was living a monochromatic life and sifting through some invisible fog that windshield wipers couldn’t clear up. When I was referred to Dr. Matthew Chang out of Colorado Springs, my vision improved the minute I was able to remove the patch after operation. Within a few days, I had sharp, colorful, full rainbow spectrum eyesight.
With that new way of seeing the different shades of green of an Aspen tree, which in the autumn includes golds, reds, and colors in between, comes a way of discerning other avenues of our modern life.
A new thriller out this week by James Patterson promises a prescient look at our world when an American president runs amuck: Blow Back—a thriller—An American President Goes Insane.
The New York Attorney General Leticia James has filed lawsuits that roll back that metaphoric roll-top desk that hides the real estate and banking practices of one rich and infamous criminal. This criminal’s action is explained in a recent article with Bloomberg.com (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-21/these-are-the-trump-assets-at-the-center-of-n-y-fraud-lawsuit):
“Trump allegedly inflated the value of his apartment in Trump Tower from 2011 to 2015 by claiming the triplex was approximately 30,000 square feet in size instead of its actual size of 10,996 square feet, and then multiplying that size by an “unreasonable” price per square foot, the lawsuit said. That helped bring the value of the property to $327 million from about $80 million, James alleged.”
Having vision and special recognition is important with our eyesight as evidenced here that a leader of the American people could so shockingly mistake 10,996 square feet for 30,000 square feet—which then bumped up the property value from a mere $80 mil to $327 mil. Other assets were similarly inflated, the Attorney General states in the lawsuit. What else has been so bloated by failed eyesight? Did that vision on steroids pump up his inflated bank statements and ego? Did that kind of rank and rigor fake out American voters?
We must use our eyesight and vision to discern what we are seeing and hearing from agents who would bury voters in quagmire details that are neither vivid nor factual. Authoritarianism, for instance, is being pushed from the far right as a solid, no-nonsense answer to perceived imbalances.
Heather Cox Richardson, a professor of History at Boston College and blogger, reports: “… Jared Kushner received the Hungarian Order of Merit at the Hungarian consulate in New York.” On the face, this award is not alarming except as we look closer and see that it is from the Hungarian government, a government exploiting authoritarianism by dismantling freedoms such as freedom of the press, and human rights. When we normalize authoritarian ideas, we make the Vulcan mind-melt from Democracy to Authoritarianism more fluid.
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW.org) Hungary is following a playbook for dictators by spying on journalists thus removing freedom of the press. An opinion written by Mauricio Albarracín-Caballero, who is director of LGBT Rights Program says, “. . . [R]ising populist authoritarianism poses a significant threat to this progress because abolishing sexual freedom is often at the heart of repressive political projects.” His home country of Columbia, like Hungary, has embraced authoritarianism which across continents “. . . manipulates democratic institutions to undermine the rights of women and LGBT people.”
Looking closer, we can note the raised-eyebrow words that make human rights, like women and LGBTQ rights, seem like the other side is coming for our religious beliefs; but, on a deeper look, we can see that people are working to keep freedoms alive, to keep democracies alive, which actually strengthens religious freedoms. If we allow one faction of our populations to be stripped of their rights, like Ken Burns reports in his PBS films, we can see that an unchecked leader such as Putin, Orban, or Hitler will weaken everybody’s freedom. The vision is like an eye with an obscuring cataract.
The question I wonder about, do we as a nation have the insight to choose clear vision of freedoms for everyone over clouded, cataract-like and obstructed freedoms?
— Nelda Curtiss is a retired college educator and long-time local columnist. Reach her at http://www.columnsbynellie.com or email her at columnsbynellie@gmail.com
Columns by nellie 