The Bug that Refreshes

**So, here it is two days before our hapless nation receives a golden shower from the Electoral College. Twitler will be in his glory, still heedless of the harm he can cause, and the danger he is in.

But it occurred to me that this travesty might have a redeeming effect. We have never been this close to a dictatorship since maybe the days of Joe McCarthy. I'm starting to believe that Twitler's election may be just what the country needs. I’ve attended two local Democratic party meetings lately and the crowds are gobsmackingly large. I see so much fire and determination, particularly in younger people. We are being brought so close to the horrors of Nazism that their fear fires up their militancy. This contrasts with the complacency borne of comfort that has characterized society in recent years. Comfort and confidence breed laissez-faire: things are fine with me, trouble must be somebody else’s business.

I know this, having lived in Minnesota, Boston and California over the course of 45+ years. These are (or were when I lived there) deep blue states. But living in California most recently brought home to me this comfort-complacency trap. From 2005 to 20014 we lived in northern CA, in the San Francesco Bay Area. I would pity people in Georgia and other Old South states who had right wing jerks for leaders, and a lot of right-wing jerks in the population. If there was a problem, it was easy to say: well, Nancy (Pelosi) will handle it; or, glad we don’t have that problem here. Diane or Barbara or Governor Moonbeam could also always be counted on to stand for and voice the right (Left) thing.

But when I moved to frickin’ Georgia, that all dissolved. Now I had jerks for leaders and some neighbors! Though my area is considered light blue, it is still within an ocean of red in a largely rural state. Shocked into action, I joined a local Democratic Party group and started attending meetings and contributing to their causes. But I wasn’t prepared for the eruption of protest following the 2016 election.

There were so many active people at last Saturday’s Dem meeting in a local library that the group will probably not be meeting there again. Such noise, in a library! That’s OK since larger venues are available and they will also be stocked with people of all ages who are incensed enough at the second electoral robbery in 16 years that they will continue to flock to events that give them incentives to organize and make noise locally.

So maybe we need this irritant, the attack of the poorly educated, to stimulate our autoimmune responses. Here’s to rebellion, and activism and all hell at the 2018 elections!

Resist der Führer

**

Crappy New Year, from an optimist

**I posted my response to an old CS friend's HNY message. His reply:

Yep. I'm optimistic!  For me at least we have a chance to make America great again. Otherwise just same-old same-old. The majority of American voters surprised all and agreed. I'm thinking it's a great year to LIVE. Here's a sincere hope the darkness can dissipate; gonna be a long year otherwise. Good luck and best -

This is not a poor, downtrodden coal miner or unemployed manufacturing worker. This deplorable is rich enough to own two homes, several luxury cars and a refrigerator-sized safe containing a number of guns and other weapons. This optimist practices the Prosperity Gospel of CS, meaning that one can be rich and healthy by thinking correctly based on a 19th century book of mind magic. From what I can determine this family's riches didn't come from much actual hard work. It was inherited and supplemented by taking money for prayer and the teaching of its special method. It's a system I practiced and taught for over 35 years . I didn't get rich from it. I barely made any taxable income. I got paid an enormous salary only when I went to work for the church to generate and spread its propaganda.

So, though nominally "Christian," being rich tends to frame the world in the opposite direction. Hence the disparagement of the "same-old same-old" and the assumption that greatness comes about from the entitlements of the rich. interestingly, Putin, the kleptocrat, is reported to be the richest man on the planet. Of course rich people would like to snuggle up to him. Putin's Poodle may owe him a huge portion of his business empire.

I'm not rich but I'm not at all poor. I'm average enough to be able to live in a dirt-cheap Red State, on the funds I'm entitled to by law. Social Security and Medicare are essential lifelines, the very same-old same-olds that are under specific attack in the coming four years.

But of course, rich or poor, we all tend to fry in a nuclear explosion.
 

After

**In either a matter of months or a little longer than that, a scant few years maybe, I will be dead. This hasn’t stopped me from committing to 100 or so strength training sessions with a personal trainer, from voting, or working on another long and complex “artistic” project like the Moosical. I’m reading deep tomes about physics and life and aging and I get up every morning thinking about coffee. I also float into my evenings on a couple of glasses of wine.

I’ve been thinking about what I would like to leave as my ”legacy.” I have rejected the “good example of a caring, loving human being” scenario because I doubt I’ll ever get there. Good husband, father, grandfather – probably the same. I’m mostly lucky that my people like and accept me, but I’ll be no hero for great displays of philanthropy or munificence or great social change of any other sort. And I never did write that great hit song.

I do not exactly know how I would like to “live” on for a few more years in this world after death, via a “legacy.” This appeals, though I’m sure it WON’T happen: I’d like somebody who probably has not much of a life and/or a lot of time on their hands, to try to figure out what it was I was trying to do all those years, to dig through everything I’ve written or done and see if there are any redeeming qualities expressed there. And if there is, to tout them to the rest of the family at least, and wider if it seems appropriate. And if not, to just shut up.

Be honest, be articulate, but see if there’s a way to make this life of mine, which is still, at 75, such a great mystery to me, sensible.

And then go on to get a life and address the very scary problems I foresee for the coming generations. Become heroes of your own, make a difference where I never did. Don’t just slide into the mundane. Take risks that I never did, make changes that I never did – and think of me now and then as you do.

Crappy New Year

**An old CS friend left me a voicemail as I napped with the phone on Do Not Disturb mode. My reply, by email: Hey, thanks for the phone message. My New Year will be more or less "happy" until January 20. Then it will be a full of struggle as Putin's Poodle takes the reins of government. Will nuclear war come this year? Or next? Will I get another year of Social Security? Or not? Will I have to go fishing for health care coverage with a meager voucher, or will that not come until 2018? This may be a good year to die.

Yes, I'm certainly pessimistic about the coming year(s). I've read quite a bit about how Hitler came to power, and it was through democratic means. Shame on us for abandoning our ideals. May we not sink into the comfort of normalization as the Hunger Games begin.

I'm pretty sure you disagree with me but that's OK. We'll all have to brave the shitstorm that’s coming. Some more than others.