16

It has been such a weird, mostly silent year...  And a busy month.

So I almost forgot to note the anniversary of this, my own little space on the interweb.

16 years.

Really?  Wow.

Another Month, Another 30 Days of Desperation

I had a bit of a revelation, today, about why it has been so god-awful hard for me to write lately. 

I mean, June, July and half of August were nutsy busy, and I really didn’t have the time to spare.  But Festival was almost a month ago, now.  Yet...when I make up my mind it’s time to write something, I just stare at the screen for a couple of ticks…and call up a game of solitaire.

The thing is, there doesn’t seem to be any point.  The situation in the country is so obscene, so unfathomable, so dire…and nothing  makes any difference.  I could write my fingers to the bone, fire off a million well-reasoned essays detailing the unbelievable transgressions of the Mango Mussolini and the inexplicably complicit GOP; conjure up exhortations to “the resistance” to try harder, make more noise, do more justice, until my brain smoked out…and it wouldn’t make one. bit. of. difference.

The madness that is manifested in Trump has grabbed this country by the throat, and is not going to loosen its grip until SOMETHING dies. 

All we can hope is that it won’t be the United States of America that exsanguinates through that mortal wound.

I don’t think I’m the only person in the country who wakes up in the morning and first thing, fires up the tablet to check the internet…to see if by some miracle Trump has died or been arrested overnight. 

And I hate that this fiasco has made me into that person.      

   

NOT Winning. It’s Not a Game

El Paso; Third Mass Shooting in a Week

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.