11 November
I am not over my grief, not for Kathleen, and not for the former USA. Not by a long shot.
I thoroughly and completely understand not wanting to live in the gloom and doom of my current heart. Younger people with families and jobs and only a peripheral understanding of misogyny, politics, and history, will just be philosophical and declaim that it is only a matter of "the pendulum swing."
The ones I have been in contact with are relatively a-historical from my perspective. If they were reasonably schooled in civics and current politics, it could well dawn on them that MAGA THROUGHLY OWNS THE GOVERNMENT: THAT WOULD BE THE JUDICIAL, EXECUTIVE, AND CONGRESSIONAL. As far as I know, that is very unusual in this country. Yes, I know that there were times that the "left" wing was in control. However, as far as I know, again, there has not been a stated plan for authoritarianism/dictatorship, and a clear flouting of the will of the people AND THE CONSTITUTION.
The rights of women, tenuous at best, were overthrown by the Supreme Court.
The US president was deemed immune from crimes by the Supreme Court.
Is there any reason to think that the rule of law is going to stop ANYTHING?
I ain't no constitutional scholar by a long shot. My knowledge of names and numbers of Amendments would stand up neither in a Jeopardy nor a Trivial Pursuit game, but I do know the ideals of community and equality were part of the plan. As I said yesterday, yeah the "Founding Fathers" ... an anathema of a concept ... were white, capitalist, slave-owning misogynists, yet the documents they crafted were flexible enough (save for the Second amendment, badly worded and entirely misunderstood) to expand as society progressed.
SHAME ON AND FUCK YOU TO ALL OF YOU MORONIC ANTI-IMMIGRATIONISTS. IF YOU DON'T HAVE NATIVE AMERICAN ANCESTRY, THEN YOU CAN SHUT UP FOR GOOD. AND LEARN SOME FUCKING HISTORY.
I am in no way saying that our current immigration policy is not out of control. BUT PEOPLE DON'T WALK 2,000 miles in unspeakable conditions to come here to be criminals and low-lifes. They could do that just where they were born.
And, of course, the United States takes no responsibility for their hard-sell, internationally and locally, of the fallacy of the AMERICAN DREAM. You wonder why folks think there will be a better life for them here? That's what we are telling them.
Although I haven't seen it in many many years, and it is likely unknown to most of you, Lola by Jacques Demy is an early treasure from the nouvelle vague. I don't mention it to be erudite or elitist. What I took away from this film, made in 1960/61, was the idea, ideal, of the American Dream. It made me see what Americans were to the Europeans (French, at least) in the wake of the war. It was some kind of wake up call for me about perception. And made me start looking at the high America was on after WWII.
You know this about highs, right? Can't sustain them without more drugs, dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. Coming down sucks. The WWII high crash didn't start happening here until Vietnam, Johnson's attempt at The Great Society, and finally the financial crash/gasoline shortages of the 1970s. Introducing Ronald Regan, the spokesperson figurehead that the right had been trying to find since the New Deal was implemented.
(I screeded this out rapidly last night. The above cursory analysis does not take into account the Civil Rights Movement and likely some other stuff, so take it as more of an indicator than fact. Which you were going to check anyway.)
I know most of my dear and gentle readers need not be reminded of this history, but as it turns out, a whole lot (most?) people of the succeeding generations are utterly clueless. When a younger person insisted that "the pendulum will swing back," I don't disagree, but they don't seem to understand what happened in Germany, Italy, Japan, and then the USSR. Germany has yet to recover from Hitler.
Before the pendulum swung back A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE AND MUCH OF THE WORLD GOT SERIOUSLY INJURED IF NOT KILLED.
Being an extremely marginalized person: poor, old, unattractive, female, and otherwise powerless, of course I am out of my freaking mind. I'm in the first levels of "Americans" who are going to be further destroyed and trashed. There is EVERY POSSIBILITY or even probability that if MAGA succeeds in rolling back Social Security and Medi-Care/ACA, that I will be living on the streets or under a bridge.
IT AINT' THEORETICAL TO ME.
HAND OF KINDNESS
Richard Thompson
Well I wove the rope and I picked the spot
Well I struck out my neck and I tightened the knot
O stranger, stranger, I'm near out of time
You stretch out your hand, I stretched out mine
O maybe just the hand of kindness
Maybe just the hand of kindness
Maybe just a hand, stranger
Will you reach me in time in time
Well I scuppered the ship and I bent the rail
Well, I cut the brakes and I ripped the sail
And they called me a Jonah, it's a sin I survived
Well, you stretched out your hand, I stretched out mine
Maybe just the hand of kindness
Well, maybe just the hand of kindness
O maybe just a hand, stranger
Will you reach me in time in time
O shoot that old horse and break in the new
O the hung are many and the living are few
I see your intention, here's my neck on the line
You stretch out your hand I stretched out mine
Well, maybe just the hand of kindness
O maybe just the hand of kindness
Well, maybe just a hand, stranger
Will you reach me in time in time