Montebello resident Rosa Maria Juarez, 96, doesn’t like what’s going on in the country, and in these turbulent times she has a strategy to get through every day.
“I’ve always been catching up to this news, but I don’t want to see it right now,” Juarez said. “I don’t want to feel depressed… not happy, like when I wake up.”
Avoiding daily news about President Trump’s attacks on the judiciary, constitutional, media, political enemies and foreign countries is just part of Juarez’s game plan for survival. She also drives to the Pico Rivera Senior Center several times a week for early morning exercise classes and outdoor walks up to two miles.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a columnist for the Los Angeles Times since 2001. He has won over 12 National Journalism Awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
However, she is not a superwoman, so it is impossible to completely protect herself from the daily barrage of breaking news from the country’s capital. There, Trump said this week that he wanted to detain and deport American citizens and be trapped in foreign prisons.
“We’re a country that’s falling, like the Titanic,” Juarez said. “I hope not, but what can we do?”
When I reached out to a dozen or more people of a certain age and asked if this was a drama they would expect to witness in the Golden Age, I heard the same sense of despair along with anger and fear.
said Bernard Parks Sr., former LAPD chief and financially conservative city councilman. “In my lifetime I never saw 34 felony people being elected president,” Parks said. “The world is upside down.”
Meanwhile, with some Trump supporters, the world has turned it upside down until it turned it over.
Rosa Maria Juarez stands with fellow senior center city walkers at Pico Rivera before her hike.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
“Even chaos and hiccups are so pleased that the country is heading in the right direction,” said Norman Eagle, a Paros Verdes resident, who recently dropped a note to me to claim in a recent column that he exaggerates the risk of potential threats to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Eagle said he believes Trump’s tariffs have shook global markets, sparked fears of a recession, and even some of his own supporters have caused panic. And he hopes that the President’s efforts to remove waste, fraud and corruption will serve as a model for future administrations.
“Another important hope I have is that insane awakening ideology and extreme progressive thinking are likely to have disappeared completely from the American scene and returned to Mars and born there,” Eagle added.
Lacanada resident Trent Sanders frequently steams California’s liberal politicians by emailing me and my colleagues, but while Trump is generally on the right track after three months of his term, he believes there are some warnings.
“I think most of what he’s doing is right, but it’s too fast, too much,” Sanders said. And “I don’t have enough thoughts before I take action.”
Some Trump detractors have no tolerance and no end to the list of complaints. This includes everything from declining retirement funds to embrace Russia, to claims that cover his head that Ukraine has begun a war that killed thousands.
“I didn’t think I was living through a constitutional crisis, but that’s what it is,” Jane Demian said.
(Steve Lopez/Los Angeles Times)
“I am embarrassed by my country on so many levels,” said Estella Lopez, director of Downtown, LA Business Improvement District. She lamented, among other things, the “gobsmack” cruelty of wholesale employment cuts in the federal government, and “the dismantling critical medical research, the disruption of critical public health information, and the dismantling of protections that protect food, air and water.”
“The runway in front of me may be shorter than the runway behind me,” Lopez said.
“I didn’t think I’d get through a constitutional crisis, but that’s what this is,” said Jane Demian of Eagle Rock. She said that the principles of democracy we are the norm: “three equivalent divisions of government” are “now challenged by the maga gangs, and Republicans are hiding.”
Jeffrey Marquine of Seal Beach has all these names.
“The world has experienced fascism in the past, and we are on the American path,” said the retired school principal. “Given the pattern of the Trump administration, they fear they will be terrified, terrified with misinformation and expanding their kingdom by conquering Canada and Greenland.
Ernest Salomon of Santa Barbara, almost 90 years old, said he and some of his close relatives had escaped the German death camp while other relatives were dead.
“There are many similarities between the Trump administration and what happened before Hitler came to power: fear, confusion, racism, lies, retaliation, etc,” Salomon said.
“Democracy,” he added.
“I’ve never felt so hopeless and terrifying,” says family therapist Alice Lynn.
(Melmercon/Los Angeles Times)
“I’m wary and scary, especially for my grandchildren,” said Jairo Anglo of West LA.
“My selfishness, indifference, greed have pushed us to this point,” said Nick Passaurus of Tarzana. “We witnessed something Plato said over two thousand years ago.
While suffering from the limitations and losses associated with aging, she now is a witness to the ideal trampling at the heart of her existence.
“I’ve never felt so hopeless and terrifying,” Lynn said. “It’s more than I can grasp… All the issues I’ve fought over the years have been marched and organized over the years to bring about a positive change in our society – it’s now unraveled.”
Meg Fairless in Simi Valley fears the coming generation. “Our first grandchild was born in March,” Fairless said. [and] Be a safe and happy country for him to grow. ”
Rosa Maria Juarez doesn’t know if the change will improve in her lifetime as she approaches 100, but she hopes that her children and grandchildren will.
“I can do my part, even if it’s just a smidgeon,” she said. She said she emphasizes connecting with them in her senior center and elsewhere when she sees someone who appears isolated or marginalized.
Denny Freidenrich of Laguna Beach has two grandchildren and a third.
“That’s why my 20 friends and I are in the process of forming a Grandpa Brigade,” said Friedenrich, who is particularly concerned about attacks on judges, lawyers and courts. “By standing up for the rule of law now, our collective hope is to leave our grandchildren to all the greatest gifts: freedom.”
Denny Friedenrich says he is particularly concerned about attacks on judges, lawyers and courts.
(Personal courtesy of Denny Freidenrich)
Praise to Friedenrich and Juarez for their good deeds. Meanwhile, the crowds are growing at demonstrations across the country. Tens of thousands attended a Los Angeles protest last weekend, discovered by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y).
Praise for them also reinvigorates voters, with so many lonely Democratic leaders messing with their thumbs and nursing a defeated hangover. But can the left wing of the fractured party build enough support to make a difference in two or four years?
A friend of mine who attended La Larry said that it was a backlash against current leadership, but he had not heard of a consistent victory plan to defeat the ruling party.
That’s my next question and I ask about not only people of my age but people who come behind us:
What is the best way to go in the future?
steve.lopez@latimes.com
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