Please?

 

Not that we had anything even approaching a functional government before the shutdown…

What A Mess!

 

For more than a decade, I’ve been spitting out posts now and again about how lonely it is here in the blogoverse, and how maybe I should just wrap things up here on “Coming to Terms…”  But every one of those posts has ended up with the same answer:

No.

I’m not ready to say goodbye to my lonely little corner of the social media universe.

This year, with my measly 8 posts since January, it seems like I could be letting “Coming to Terms…” die a natural death.  My writing muse has all but dried up, and my connection to social media—even at Instagram, where I can be found if I’m not here—has been tenuous at best.   

I’m going to blame the ghastly dumpster fire that has engulfed the nation since the Wankmaggot stepped foot into the Oval office to begin his second reign of terror.  Only this time, things have been exponentially worse than they ever were the first time.  Which is saying a lot.

Since day 1 of Trump 2.0, there’s been a nonstop barrage of horror emanating from Washington—from masked goons in unmarked vans abducting people off the streets and sending them to prison camps, to Trump’s unfathomable, deeply destructive tariff program,  to ordering the military to attack “crime” in blue states cities (a thinly veiled effort to punish criticism of the Trump regime), to the worst, most fascist, oligarchic, totalitarian actions one could ever possibly imagine taking place in the United states of America (or not.)

While Congress cheers, applauds, aids and abets…or wrings its hands (when it’s not sitting on them) and offers up righteously indignant speechifying, depending on what side of the aisle is in focus at any given time.

Congress has become a millstone around the neck of our drowning democracy, carrying it deeper and deeper and faster and faster to the depths of fascist dictatorship.

One can hardly stand to watch, much less screw up the moxie to DO anything…  The “Resistance” has no leadership.  It’s merely a fractured collection of groups of people, large and small, milling around trying to think of SOMETHING to do to stop the fall.  Our elected officials who theoretically oppose the right wing agenda are MIA. There’s no organized rebellion.  No one gathering We The People and directing us in a concerted, effective effort to meaningfully “resist.”  Everybody parks their asses on social media and cranks out posts about getting out there and…doing WHAT, exactly?  Please…give me a clue and a sizable group of like-minded folks and I’ll be happy to show up and do the work. 

Right now, we are all just…spinning our wheels.

And a corollary to why I can’t write with all this madness going on, is that EVERYBODY and their pup seems to be doing exactly that—constructing long, angst-laden epistles about the shocking state of the nation, and what we all might be/should be doing about it.  It's a de facto demonstration that all these millions and millions of words are having absolutely NO EFFECT.  Words, words, words and more words, and things only continue to get worse.  I feel like anything I could put together would be tantamount to screaming into a hurricane. ..nothing but a fruitless, and possibly risky, waste of breath.  At my age, you really don’t want to be wasting breath. (Actually, I wouldn’t mind taking the risk if there was any hope of my words making an atomic particle’s worth of difference.)

And if I make up my mind to write about something else, I feel like I’m endorsing ignoring what’s going on in our rapidly deteriorating world.  The guilt casts a pall on anything light or “day in the life” that I try to put out there.  I hate the thought of becoming bound to either the doom-scroll contingent, or the "ignore it and it will go away" crowd.  If there is a middle ground I could feel comfortable in, I haven't figured it out yet.  So it’s been easier to just…not. 

But I don’t feel good about THAT, either.

The overriding question for the continuation of “Coming to Terms…” is,

“Where do we go from here?”

I want to write...but I feel like I don't know how any more.  

At 22 years old, it's high time for "Coming to Terms..." to figure out what she wants to be when she grows up.

But what is that, exactly?

 

Maybe some rainbows will nudge me in the right direction.  

 

 

Another Empty Place, Another Goodbye

Eight years ago...I guess...it's hard to remember, sometimes, exactly when our "walk-ons" walked into our lives...a tiny, frightened, starving black mite showed up in our back yard in Scappoose.  She mostly hid/lived under the deck we had put in front of our greenhouse.  We somehow managed to coax her out from her dark, damp safe space with bowls of food and water.  But there was no petting her...no touching her.  Just...trying against stacked odds to nourish and house her.

We fed her, we sheltered her, to the best of our abilities (she was petrified of going inside any place and having the doors shut behind her, so we couldn't even keep her safe in the greenhouse at night.) She would huddle in our eight-foot-diameter open gazebo, through heat and cold and rain and snow.  We wrapped it in plastic as best we could, trying to give her some shelter from the wind and cold.  And we put soft beds and food dishes in that inadequate living space. 

 

And she stayed. But never warmed to us past the relationship of a very frightened feral cat dependent upon the food and best shelter we could give her.  

 

Then in 2019, we made the move.  Back to Eugene.  Away from the yard she called her own.  

I wrote a letter to the people who bought the house, begging them to care for the little black cat who was attached to the property.

 

They declined.

 

And so, days before we packed up and left the house for good, I managed to grab her and drop her into a cat carrier.

 

She was coming to Eugene with us, by god.

 

And she was going to be an indoor cat.

 

No more of this bare subsistence crap that had served as a life for her up til then.

 

And she who had had no name beyond "little black kitty" would be henceforth known as "Princess."   

  

Princess' last "Fort Princess." A cozy chair in the corner of the family room.

Her metamorphosis to "indoor cat" was a challenge, and it was slow, and it was not without its bumps and boogers.  But she did it.  

 

She never became a lap cat.  Never tolerated being picked up and held.  Her sharp claws would stick to any surface upon which she stood, and picking her up invariably brought along a pillow or a quilt or some part of her perch.

 

But she did eventually learn to enjoy pets.  In fact, she demanded them.  From the back of the chair when I came out to the family room to feed the livestock in the morning.  From behind my head as I sat and watched tv.

She had a tendency to choose a place and make it her "favorite" for a few weeks or months.  We got to calling each of these places her "Fort Princess-es"--the nooks and crannies she chose as her safe places as time went on.  

 

Eventually, all of her safe places ended up being in the family room.  She hardly ever left that room.  She became the quiet, soft, warm black presence.  Always there.  Always content to be there and nowhere else.

 

For the past five years, she has been our Family Room Princess.

 

 

Unfortunately, we have at times chosen to introduce other cats into her space...some of whom she didn't particularly like.  One miscreant--Apollo, the light orange cat from across the street--she really didn't like.  As Apollo spent more time in the house, Princess got smaller and smaller.  The stress made her start pulling her hair out. By the time I figured out what was going on, and what was stressing her, she was almost bald from the neck down.

 

I quickly decided to keep Apollo out of the house...and in a couple of weeks, Princess' fur grew back.

 

But we also realized there was something more sinister going on with her.

 

She lost a ton of weight.  She had trouble eating, couldn't swallow dry food, then choked on wet food, and just kept getting worse.  

 

We took her to the vet.  Spent $500 on the requisite diagnostic blood tests.  And they found nothing.  

 

The vet said she had been over-grooming because she had fleas.

 

The day after our useless vet visit, I picked up the Princess and discovered a tumor on one of her nipples.  Mammary cancer.  And she was dying of it.  In fact, was very close to death.

 

And so, we called the mobile vet to help her to her final rest.  Quietly.  Peacefully.  In her favorite chair.

 

The next morning, a hummingbird landed on a wire just outside the sliding door to the patio.  He looked inside, cocking his head.  Looking for...something.  I had never seen one of these little guys do that before.

 

And I just felt in my heart that this little messenger had come to call Princess' spirit.  To show her the way back to the stars. 

     

The Pretty Pretty Princess has left the house.  We will miss her.  So much.

 

Play among the stars, pretty girl!

Should We Be Proud?

 

Right Advice for the Wrong Reason

 

So, immediately after I give out my sage advice to "resist" by buying less stuff, the Trump organization comes up with this theory about Americans being "too materialistic," and that Susie doesn't need thirty dolls, so maybe Americans should just suck it up and GET the idea that they are not going not be able to buy so much stuff due to Trump's bonkers tariffs.  Because, 'Murrica.

The part about Americans being too materialistic, and addicted to buying stuff, is not wrong.  We can and should try to start reining in our buying habits.  

But the problem with Trump's argument is twofold.

First, we are currently a consumer economy.  And it took decades to send our ability to make our own stuff overseas to cheaper labor markets.  All very well to say we should stop buying imported stuff, but factories aren't going to magically re-appear on these shores overnight.  It will take decades to rebuild our manufacturing infrastructure, and people with money willing to invest in it.  And I don't see the likes of the monied class we have now, the ones mostly responsible for selling away our manufacturing capability to begin with, queuing up to rescue the American middle class.  We are here to serve them.  They don't waste dollars or energy thinking about the way we live.

Secondly, Trump isn't suggesting that the rich do anything, or pay their fair share, or that, god forbid, he lead by example and cut out some of the ostentatious demonstrations of wealth that are his stock in trade. No. While he's admonishing ordinary Americans to tighten their belts, he's redecorating the Oval Office with enough gold bling to rival the priciest Las Vegas bordello, and planning multi-million dollar military parades to celebrate his birthday.  

You can't make this stuff up. 

When, oh when, will his willfully stupid, blind sheep wise up to the sheer blatant Trump-serving hypocrisy? 

Government of the people, by Trump and for Trump, leaving "the people" completely out of the rest of the quote.  

Yeah.  We're a nation of consumers.  And unfortunately, this appears to have made a significant portion of the American electorate predisposed to buy into Trump's crap.    

On Student Loan Forgiveness

 

The Power of the We People Part Deux (Better Late Than Never...)

 

Okay…so I start what promises to be an inspired multi-part post, and then disappear for two months.  My bad.

And I have no excuses…it’s not like anything earth-shattering has been going on in my world to keep me from sitting down at the laptop and pouring out my thoughts.  Nope.  It’s more like my thoughts are so multi-faceted (and generally depressing, given the state of the nation) that I sit down, stare at the keyboard, shake my head, stand up and go do something else.  ANYTHING else.

Be that as it may, I’m determined to commit SOMETHING to virtual paper today. 

My plan of action has been swirling around in my head for lo these two months.  And it’s really very simple.  Three little words:

STOP BUYING STUFF.

Specifically, stop buying stuff you don’t need with money you don’t have.

It’s no secret that political/economic theories in their pure forms are logical, believable, even laudable.

Communism promises all workers equal share in the spoils of their labor.

Democracy promises all citizens a voice in their government.

Capitalism promises a fair profit for those who produce, and fair prices for those who purchase.

One of the fundamental tenets of capitalism is that prices are allowed to rise as high as the market will bear.  Which means that a producer raises the price until people can no longer afford to purchase their product.  Sales diminish.  Price is adjusted.  Producer resumes selling, at a slightly lower profit, and consumers resume purchasing. 

It’s all very logical and equitable sounding.  Except, in this day and age, it’s bullshit.

Because the pure tenets of capitalism were formulated before the days of easy credit.  And before the incredible success of multimedia marketing bombarding the consuming public every minute of every hour of every day.

Media pound us with how much we need/want/have to have…whatever someone has paid them a shitload of money to slam at us.

Easy credit allows us to make purchases with almost no physical effort, and virtually no second thoughts.  Or even first thoughts, as far as that goes.

Under such circumstances, capitalism becomes solely a vehicle for the “haves” to exploit the “have nots,” so they can stash billions of dollars in offshore accounts, and purchase their own “necessities,” like golden toilets, $20k handbags, and half million dollar show cars that no one will ever drive.

If we have to juggle two or three jobs just to keep a roof over our heads, or allow our  retirement savings to be invested in a volatile stock market in order to have any hope of seeing that money grow, or sweat out the right-wing’s rhetoric about Social Security being an “entitlement’…why are we buying those $500 theater tickets, or paying $300 to watch a football game, or planning a “destination wedding” in some exotic location, or paying a half-million dollars for a crappy 1000 sq foot three-bedroom ranch house?

They keep raising the prices on everything, and we keep ponying up.  Because the availability of easy credit allow us to.  And the jillions of dollars poured into advertising make us pathologically need to buy…everything. 

Prices never correct, because they never rise “higher than the market will bear.”   

I personally have never been a fan of the US becoming a “consumer economy.”  To me, that smacks of weakness, laziness and over-indulgence.  Somehow, the powers that be have conspired to downplay the obvious negative connotations of the fact that our entire economic welfare depends upon armchair consumers buying anything and everything that tickles their fancy.  When we have a recession or the economic outlook is bleak, the government borrows a bunch of money from China and sends checks out to American consumers, so they can buy stuff they stopped buying (because they were spooked into realizing they really couldn’t afford to anymore—a rare occurrence, to be sure, but it does happen now and then.)

My own little family acquired a raging Amazon addiction during the COVID lockdown.  Being able to go online and call forth any little thing our hearts desired—needed or not—was a great mood lightener during an otherwise bleak time.  We became so addicted that by the time Trump won his second election, we were ordering from Amazon five or six times a week.

And after realizing that our cherished votes had been completely neutralized by the right wing, and that they were never again going to hold the power we were convinced they had, if indeed they EVER had…     

I realized that I had to do SOMETHING.  Something that would be a meaningful representation of my personal resistance to Trump and the oligarchy and all that our sad nation had devolved into over the past forty years.

And going to marches and holding up placards wasn’t it.  And certainly trying to scream my frustrations into the ether over social media was not it either (which is partially the reason why this post has been so long in coming.)

The thing I could do, the thing I am doing, the thing I encourage anybody who reads this to do is:

Stop buying things you don’t need with money you don’t have.

For that matter, stop buying things you don’t need with money you DO have.

Just…stop buying stuff.

I quit Amazon cold turkey two months ago.  For someone who had developed the dependency that I had, that was a big ask.  And yet, it has been surprisingly easy.  If I think I need something, I have to be willing to get off my butt and go out and look for it locally.  And if it’s not available at stores, there are other online entities available that are not owned by Jeff Bezos—the guy who invests his extra billions into shooting his girlfriend and a couple of her besties into space.

Everywhere one turns on social media, at least in the places the algorithms have shoved in MY face, there are dire warnings about being complacent in the face of fascism…that if we don’t get out there and join the demonstrating crowds, we are complicit in the transformation of our cherished democracy into a fascist oligarchy (don’t know if it’s correct to link those two terms, but it seems to fit what’s going on here these days.)

When I kicked that idea around a bit, I realized that going to rallies and demonstrations was not for me.  It seemed just like a physical manifestation of the useless spitting into the wind that we do every day on social media.  And the potential for putting myself in physical danger for an activity that was going to have extremely limited effectiveness…well, nope.

But when I thought further about where our country has landed today, I realized we all are ALREADY complicit in the American march toward…wherever it’s headed.

Because we have allowed ourselves to be goaded into thinking that we need to buy Buy BUY.  To the point where, certainly during the Bush II administration, we were told that keeping the economy grinding along by being obedient, healthy consumers was somehow patriotic.  If you love America, go out and buy that TV.  Boat. Car.

I saw a meme on Instagram that said “The COVID lockdown demonstrated that our economy collapses as soon as it stops selling useless stuff to over-indebted people.”

That is it in a nutshell.  That is why a “consumer economy” is neither desirable nor sustainable.  When everything becomes about money—having it and spending it—everything goes to hell. 

That is why we need to get up off our butts and start providing real commodities to the rest of the world, rather than consuming everything that the rest of the world waves under our noses.  We used to be a hard-working, innovative people.  We have devolved into a bunch of lazy slackards with way too much time on our hands, who turn to drink, drugs and media to keep us entertained and surround ourselves with all the crap that ceaseless advertising forces us to crave.  And to keep our leaders entertained (and rich) we indulge in vicious culture wars that nobody wins.

Enough.

You want to take back the country?  Stop enabling this crap.  DON’T buy into it.  Don’t buy ANYTHING you can live without. 

I’m convinced that if enough of us embraced this avenue of protest, it would make an immediate difference.

At least, this is going to be MY form of “resistance.”

Join me?