I Need a [Summer] Break from US Politics....

Yes, we are CLOSED for Summer Break until mid August 2025!

Yes, it is very much a kiss of death in the small business industry to close for an entire season, especially when things starting to pick up and I have a renewed sense of creative mojo.

Well, then...where are we going?  Cambodia.

Why?  It’s important to me to take the time now to travel with my 2 teenagers to historically important places--to go back in time through history--this time, to learn about the Khmer Rouge, where Pol Pot, a despot, decided that all culture + traditions of Cambodia before his regime had to be disassembled + purged in order to create a new culture, into that which he deemed “best” for Cambodia (sound familiar?).  Within 4 years of their regime, the Khmer Rouge committed one of the largest genocide of their own citizens (approximately 2 million), and sent those deemed "enemies of the regime" or "intellectuals" to extreme forced labor camp or sentenced them to death.

While genocide is not happening in the USA (although masked ICE agents are aggressively splitting up families + inhumanely detaining + deporting people), my point is, devastating damage can be done to a country in just 4 years.  It's only been 6 months, and we have POTUS attacking our educational institutions and dictating what can + can't be taught in schools (as most of you may know, I am a big believer that universal education is the biggest investment a country can make, and history only makes sense when it's multi-dimentional--the good AND the bad--so that we can learn from our past mistakes as a country;  he wants any history that makes "America look bad" to be erased;  he is scrubbing any historical achievements of African Americans, women, and gender binary people from government websites;  he dismantled the LGBTQ Teen Suicide Helpline just because he doesn't believe they should exist (among teenage suicide, more than half affect LGBTQ youths);  and he is forcing all levels of educational institutions to end DEI Programs through threats of financial defunding (if you don't believe in DEI, that means you stand for the opposite:  a one-race, inequitable, exclusive society); and many more things that I feel are detrimental to our country.

Besides politics, general "meanness" toward each other (how we speak + act) has been normalized, and we see that on a quotidian bases, at the national level, which trickles down quickly to all levels of society:  I have been yelled at and openly discriminated due to my Asian ethnicity, more than I have ever been.  We have the National Secretary of Defense offending approximately 50% of our military (those who identify as BIPOC) when he said,"'Diversity is our strength,' is the dumbest phrase in military history."  My father, a Japanese American, who was forced with his entire family into an American Concentration Camp in the CA desert for 3.5 years, enlisted in the US Army as soon as he turned 18, and joined the US Military Intelligence as a Japanese Language Technician.  He was proud to have served in the US Army, and I was offended by Hegseth's comment.  Without diversity, we would lose almost half of our military, and with that, we would lose a lot of other skills, like language capabilities and cultural understanding.  POTUS is constantly hurling insults and name-calling those who oppose him.

I also find Executive Order 14253 offensive.  It asserts that POTUS is "revitalizing key cultural institutions and reversing the spread of divisive ideology" by:

• removing certain histories and ideologies from national parks, federal websites, etc, that are focused on DEI initiatives
• restoring statues that were "improperly removed or changed in the last five years" (ie Confederate statues that were removed from the South)
• dictating what is appropriate music, art, architecture to "Celebrate American Greatness" 

And let me point out, this Executive Order is entitled, "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History," because this admin believes that diversity, equality, and inclusion of ALL American citizens is "corrosive"and a "factually baseless ideology aimed at diminishing American achievement."  I don't understand how their "erasing/deletion" of the American achievements made by American women, BIPOC Americans, and LGBTQ Americans = "restoring truth." Excuse me...whose truth?

This is all on the official White House website, and that is where I grabbed all these quotes above regarding this particular Executive Order.  What I find even more offensive, is that they posted (in print) this Executive Order at Camp Manzanar, the concentration camp that my dad was in, asking the public to turn in any wording, images, etc at the site that they think makes America look bad.

Concentration camps are bad.  Period. And it happened in the USA.

I could go on + on, and my kids keep telling me to stop doomscrolling.  Every time I hear about crazy things going on in our country and how that also affects us internationally, I double check the information because it sounds so insane, my first instinct is: "That can't be happening." And yet, here we are.

Thank you for letting me vent my frustrations.  If you are as frustrated as I am, know that there are a lot of others like you who are upset and are doing what they can, however they can, in a way that they can, to fight against this tyranny.

This is all tangential information on why I’m taking my kids to Cambodia for their international volunteer service this summer.  I intend to have them study up on Pol Pot and “Year Zero." I’ll take them to other places as well, ie a visit to my mom in Japan, as well as a return trip to Phuket, since my kids loved it there and my husband has never been. We need a mental, emotional, and physical break from the craziness + chaos we feel in our own country.

I usually don't post my politics on my work social, but I feel like it needed to be said because all this hate + meanness in this "new normal" makes me anxious + depressed.  I'll resume focusing on happy thoughts.