Asshole-in-Chief

Weaponized Bullshit

In this post seven years ago, I waxed philosophical on the transition of “spin” into “outright lies.”  Naively, I thought “pants-on-fire lies” of the variety heavily peppered into the 2012 presidential contest was as bad as it was going to get.

Of course, it wasn’t.  Now, we have outright propaganda.  We have a POTUS who manipulates his faithful with daily blasts of idiocy from his Twitter fingers, whose handlers have come to understand that this tactic is so powerful that they have developed a staff of propagandists who blast right-wing talking points out through the President’s Twitter account. 

Yes.  It’s propaganda.  That is where we have taken ourselves.  Free press?  Truth in reporting?  Investigative journalism? Speaking truth to power?  Nah.  Why deal in all THAT high-brow bullshit when you can have Propaganda Wars?

Propaganda.  Weaponized bullshit. 

The Right Wing have been cultivating that for decades.  Certainly since the rise of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk.

And then, along came a presidential candidate that was the absolute personification of weaponized bullshit.

How can we be shocked that Republicans have embraced and lined up behind the vapid, egocentric, drug-addled charlatan who will give voice to ANY outer-limits slur, conspiracy theory or playground-bully taunt that will increase his ratings?

It was certainly not a great leap beyond the political “reality” they’ve been crafting for decades. 

And we were blind, naïve and really, really stupid not to see it coming.

The question now is, what are we going to do about it?

1 Down , 8 To Go?

Independence Day, 2019

Let Freedom Ring?

Let freedom ring?

Oh, we LOVE our freedom in the USA.

Freedom to hate.

Freedom to bully.

Freedom to amass and hoard more riches than anyone could ever need, and to keep those resources firmly out of the hands of people who are desperate for them.

Freedom to spread lies painted as “news.”  Freedom to label actual news as lies.  Freedom to prey on the uneducated, the ignorant, the gullible,  and the just plain stupid.

Freedom to spit  “I got mine.  Go get your own!” into the faces of our neighbors in need.

We want all the freedom we can gather for ourselves, and if I get mine by taking some of yours away, that’s just the law of the jungle.

We want freedom, but we don’t want any of the responsibility that comes with it.

We want freedom, but we don’t want to exercise it with compassion.

We want freedom, but we want to ignore the history, the education and the sacrifices of those who wrote those freedoms into our system of government.  At a very different time, in a very different world.

THIS….this brand of freedom that we stockpile and glorify in 21^st-century America….

This freedom will be the end of us.

If it hasn't been already.

 

Doesn't Get Better Than This

It's 10:00 AM on Saturday, and I’m standing in the bathroom, in my pajamas, brushing my teeth.  I hear a commotion in the living room.  Two of my sisters are coming through the front door (they have their own keys.)  They want me to go shopping with them.

Husband and I are in the backyard enjoying our work-in-progress outdoor space.  I hear noises filtering through the screen from the kitchen.  Sounds like the cats have learned how to speak English.  My sister and her husband have dropped by to see how “the patient” is doing (one of our cats had surgery last week.)  Husband takes BIL inside to watch the basketball finals.  Sister and I pour a glass of wine and light a fire in the outdoor fire pit.  Sister #2 stops by to join us for a glass of wine before bed.

This.  THIS is “home.”  This is what I have been yearning for, for 20 years.  Since Dad passed away and our family...dispersed.

It doesn’t get better than this.

It just doesn’t.

Slide Show

 I’m streaming Pandora through my 54-inch tv connected to my laptop…and my slide show screensaver is flickering past on the big screen.  I'm vacuuming.  I catch a picture or two out of the corner of my eye.  Soon, I'm rooted in front of the screen, alternating between wide smiles, pursed-lipped chagrin, and...mists of tears.  Tears of nostalgia...of longing.  Emotions that I never would have associated with my lonely life in the wilds of the PDX exurbs...

It’s funny how, now that I’m not there anymore, Scappoose has taken on a whole different character. 

While I was there, especially in the last few years, it felt like a heavy weight that I couldn’t scrape off…like a place I couldn’t wait to put behind me.  It felt like I was trudging, one foot in front of the other, straining toward the day I could be free of it.

Now, I look at those pictures…pictures of my home, my yard, my birds, my walks, my drives, the Island, my holiday decorations, almost two decades worth…

And Scappoose has become a happy-sad place.  A place where I had things I loved because I HAD TO.  The loneliness and isolation drove me, to create pockets of beauty and peace and comfortable solitude.  And to go out into the natural world and let it soothe and comfort me.   

I loved those little bits of life in Scappoose.  And that was part of the problem…nobody else did.  They were mine alone.  But they WERE beautiful.  And I will miss them.  

D Day

If You Should Comment...

I'll be doing my internet thing here at "Coming to Terms" from now on.  

I had some friends tell me last week that they had tried to leave comments, but the comments had "disappeared."

Just to clear that up...I have "comment moderation" activated on the blog.  This means that any comments left more than five days after a piece is posted are emailed to me first, so that I can approve them and allow them to post.  This is not because I want to censor my friends...  It's because there is (or was, anyway) a phenomenon here on blogger where stupid spam "comments," advertising porn sites and the like, would descend on older posts, and I would then have to go through and delete them.  

So, rest assured that if you DO comment, I will see it...and so will everyone else once I "approve" it.

Home

Four months ago, our realtor told us this was the room that was going to sell our house.  

  

I'll admit, I loved that room.  It was the heart of our house...an ever-changing gallery.  A place to display so many pretty things that I loved.  It was warm, it was comfortable, it was beautiful.  It was...home.  

 

But we had to leave that home behind.  For so many good reasons.  For all that it was home, it was far away from...everything.  And lonely. And big and dusty and...just too much.  Too much for two old farts to hold together any more.  

So we said hello to this:

And goodbye to this:

We had to lose literally half our stuff, since the new house is half the size of the old.  There was SO much stuff that "no longer served," so it was relatively easy to send away.  But also, a lot of stuff I did love, but knew there would be no place for in the tiny home; that was not so easy. 

I had in mind to make a completely fresh start.  To create new spaces for the new home, with new and different arrangements of the stuff I had left.  I unpacked, and I arranged, and I re-arranged...  And in the end, the arrangements that I settled upon looked SO much like smaller versions of my old rooms.  Which was okay.  Because with each addition of some familiar piece I had been able to keep, or been unable to lose... 

The house felt more...

...like mine.  

MY house.

Filled with MY stuff.

MY magic. MY comfort.  MY sanctuary.

I am home.