O STRANGER, STRANGER, I'M NEAR OUT OF TIME

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

FOREVERS ARE ENDING ALL AROUND YOU

November 10th

Forever ends. Again and again forever ends and you live past the end. Not only are forevers ending all around you even as you read this, but you yourself are constantly, if imperceptibly, moving towards the end of what had once seemed like lifetime commitments, your interest waning, your body aging in such a way as to make difficult the trick that you had for so long loved to do ...

— Shane McRae, Pulling the Chariot of the Sun

Right after the French Revolution, they came up with new names for the months. I rather feel we should institute this now, here, among those of us who take the direst view. (Not so damned complicated, though.) I wistfully smile when folks suggest that in four years, we will be done with him and MAGA. I don't think so. Perhaps I am still reeling from what seems to be such a rout, and thus in a heightened state of alarm and pessimism, however, I think this situation is more like Hitler and Stalin and Putin, than a re-run of 2020, election-wise. 

MAGA has been revving up and planning to take over for more than four years now. Their goals have been clearly stated. They have the judiciary, Congress, and the executive branch locked. Any hope that reality or sanity will soak in to the MAGAs is unlikely, even given that many of them are going to be terribly terribly hurt, clearly they are neither educated, nor informed, nor truly engaged enough to analyze the reality of what is happening. Clearly, they could not understand that raised prices were the result of unbelievable price gouging and the aftermath of the pandemic, which they can thank Trump for ignoring and denying so that it was as bad as it was.

Perhaps in a few months, I will find some optimism (Sonia, and the rest of youse, stop laughing.) 

I remain devoted to (most of the ideals) of the USA (although I hate the name and the flag even more ... bad colors). Yes, we have a lot to criticize in "the founding fathers" ... but they did, collectively, have some noble ideals (even if they were largely self-serving). However, knowledge and understanding of the Constitution and the government are what MAKE THE USA. If we don't have agreement about the US Constitution was/IS don't really have loyal citizens of the US. 

Misogyny. I guess we will never ever get away from that.

 

A CRATE OF TARANTULAS

🔸Clay hedgehog-shaped vessel, attributed to the Neolithic Xiaoheyan culture, Nambaoligatu type, dated between 3000-2000 BC. Unearthed at the Nambaoligatu site in Zhalute Banner, Tongliao, Inner Mongolia.

 8 November

Breathing full breaths is a little harder today. Breathing in and feeling all the corners of your body makes you feel even more vulnerable, more places to feel the pain. As the shock and numbness wear off a bit, consciousness and the ache of reality set in.

This November day in California is beautiful, brightly, softly sunny and just barely cool. Just the kind of day to go out and get some things done that prefer clement weather: gardening, patio cleaning, garage cleaning, ... even a walk. Covers over the head and/or eating a box of Cheezits so that I can feel even worse is more appealing. 

I woke up early, at a very reasonable time, but succumbed, to no one's surprise, to staying curled up with Vera and the down pillows. As it is getting on toward 10:30, the moment for waking Janet draws nearer. I thought her senility was increasing along with dementia. It turns out that senility is an outdated/moded term. So, her dementia is increasing. Her memory shortens. She barely turned an ear when I reminded her yesterday that Trump was back in full power. Sigh. 

We know where this is going.

It might or might not be a Republican conspiracy, but my glasses need to be cleaned about every hour. Anyone else notice a change? My friend Carol had a morning habit that always charmed me. Her first action was to grab a soft dishtowel and clean her glasses before she started her day. This seemed like a gesture of hope and focus, determined to see things as clearly as possible.

My old friend Terry Lee responded to my post thusly:

My dear old friend, good to see you writing again. I did not vote for The Orange Jesus, but all of my living lower working class relatives did. The ones still alive and not dead of the diseases of poverty and overdose (as Clyde died). I spent a lot of time thinking about what was to come, as I knew The Orange Jesus would win. The Democratic party should take a good long look at itself and not blame the 52% of the American people who they are silo-ed from. This is a class divide, not an issue of race or gender or the idiocy of the American people or abortion or even immigration. It's a finger pointed at the American ruling class, it's coalition and it's institutions who openly express contempt for my "deplorable" relatives and the erosion of their jobs, families and communities. Flag, faith and family. These elements never expire no matter how many trans flags fly from the houses of the affluent here in Seattle. We can talk about the issues on a policy level I am sure from left and right vantages. I am worried about Ukraine, where I lived and worked and The Orange Jesus abandoning the struggle for freedom there. Not so much about Iran, as they, the sponsors of death and instability will get what the woman hating theocrats deserve at the hands of OUR proxies finally - and I hope a minimal amount of civilian death. Hopefully. “When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed...” (Mark 13:7) 

I think he is making some good points here (former Marxist). Not so sure I agree with all of it, but it is good to read even a light analysis that brings up class. That's another topic this country does not like to address and rarely makes it into political discourse that I run across. Sadly and painfully ironic that they chose a demagogue who could not care one atom less about them. Indeed his plans are to hurt and damage their ways of life, however tenuous and marginal. 

My friend Louise thinks that this constituency will turn against this scorched Earth politician when it really begins to hurt them (and I don't doubt that this will be long in arriving), but given that I don't anticipate the Right from ceding control of the government for the rest of my natural life, that is of little encouragement or comfort. 

I would really like to know the thoughts and feelings of more left-leaning Germans in the days of Hitler's rise to power. From our vantage points of years, we can imagine the horror, day by day, hour by hour, but up until now that is nothing more than imagining and here we all are, lobsters or frogs in our own heating water. Now we are going to really feel it.

(And this is where I miss Kathleen, as she would have studied this and have some insights and reading recommendations. No replacing her. If any one out there has reading suggestions, give me a shout out.)

A BIT MOODY

I wanna chuck a picture window

    off a skyscraper and hear it hit a car roof

I wanna fell a tree on a house

I wanna swing two bottles of wine

around a nail salon

   until the merlot melts the mirror shards

I wanna break the SuperBowl

I wanna drive my truck into a concrete

abutment

   and see who wins

I wanna open a crate of tarantulas in the pit

   of the Metropolitan Opera House

I wanna ride a toboggan down the NJ

Palisades

I wanna stab purple studs in Putin's bald

head.

A girl's gotta dream.

—Kathleen Hulser (1953 - 2024)

LOVE MERCY, NOW. WALK HUMBLY, NOW.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery

None but ourselves can free our minds

Have no fear for atomic energy

'Cause none of them can stop the time.

Won't you help to sing

Those songs of freedom?

'Cause all I ever have

Redemption songs

Redemption songs

Just Take Them and Leave Me Alone

Raoof Haghighi, Iran-Britain

November 7th

The brain fuzz is lifting a bit. I tried to look at the New York Times but their conservative colors are shining brightly. All pro-Trump and lukewarm and scolding about Democrats.

Many people have discussed with me the fact that Democrats, by and large, do not get judged or evaluated by the same ethics as Republicans. I cannot come up with any kind of good explanation for this. I'd welcome any thoughts.

My friend Matt sent me this text:

A friend told me on election night: well Biden can just jail trump because he has presidential immunity, and jailing Trump is for the good of the country duh.

 I had to remind him that presidential immunity granted by the Supreme Court only refers to republican presidents.

I've been trying to write this for a couple of hours now. As soon as Janet gets up, I lose my concentration, fall out of the "zone." I would recommend that if at all possible, avoid being a full-time, no-breaks caregiver. Whereas I would prefer to be enjoying Janet and loving her in her last-however-long, I am frustrated and angry with her almost all of the time. She asks me to rub her back, and although I know I will miss her body when she is gone, I am hard-pressed to touch her. I resent the passive-agressive way she requests things, so I am almost always negative with her. Whenever I am not immediately acquiescent, she threatens to call 911 to help her. It could be a cup of tea that she wants now when I am in the midst of doing something else. 

I have tried to get help to deal with my profound anger and resentment toward her. My psychopharmacologist even prescribed a drug that is supposed to help, but I am not feeling any change in that direction. I tried to get ketamine therapy to see if I could discover the basis for my rage and frustration. But no go so far. And with my health care about to disappear, it is unlikely that I will get to do it.

I bought Janet the smallest walker I could find, but alas! it is still too large to fit well through the doorways of this 70+-years-old house. I think of the music in the Jaws shark attack when she moves down the hallway toward me.

My friend Manuel Z wrote this in response to last night's post:

As always well written and expressing much of my dismay better than I could.

And Ifill’s words also were, not a balm as much as a wakeup call.  But having identified clearly one of the big problems that led to this awful outcome she seems a bit at a loss of how we reset our moral compass as she and Rachel characterize it. I really feel that shift of the moral compass, that  easy acceptance and even glorification of vulgarism, that loss of former virtue of decency and extolling the virtue of the hard work to be informed citizens and humans and work the brain and feed the soul and embrace our better angels.  The laziness of staying unwoke.  Maybe in time I will feel some impetus to pick ourselves up and get back in the ring or some such  Hallmark card cliche naive bullshit aphorism but right now that seems very far off, not on point, and frankly pathetic.  Our country has stage 4 inoperable cancer.  We took “the test” and failed it.    The MAGA love of hate is as horrible as all that phrase implies and may yet bury this country under its hubris of how exceptional they think America is.  That those of us that fight the good fight, that believe in democracy, that love  love and humanity, I could go on with pithy cliches.  But our tribe that at this moment  lies stunned and near immobile, that we too will be swallowed by the tsunami of horrors that I feel awaits us, well I guess I can’t see how we too would somehow escape that.  

I can only agree with Ifill’s words about protecting our core.  I will still live my life by my core values  and trust that is the righteous path we all should take.

For my money, this is as trenchant as what I wrote last night.

It is still too early for me to even begin to analyze the reality. I am nauseated when I tiptoe toward trying to wrap my head around it. I don't know what difference it would have made had I had a better clue about "my fellow Americans" and therefore had never gotten any hopes up. 

I will go on record to say that I think there is something very fishy about this election. I am not about to go on about election fraud quite yet as I don't have any facts, just suspicions.

I have to teach yoga tonight and I am not quite sure how I can will myself above this churning, desperate psyche to help anyone. But I will try.

Another friend sent this in a text:

Seems to me if there is one entity to blame it's the fourth estate. The press essentially ran an anti-Hillary campaign 8 years ago with the email BS. It could have easily run an anti-Trump campaign but they kept sane- splaining for him. Hardly ever, if ever, referred to him as "former President Trump and convicted felon". 

Odd the press favored him after he called them enemy of the people! 

NYT, WAPO, major networks, they delivered him, normalized him. Or normalized his disgusting behavior. 

Just another totally bizarre chapter in the strange journey.

Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC was very frank and angry about how the press covered Trump, even his own network which is sometimes so biased I cannot watch.

My friend BK posted this on FB:

I’ve never been one to sugarcoat anything or look at the bright side of things. In “toxic positivity” the “toxic” part is at the forefront and any kind of “positivity” following that is manufactured. I know when people are faking. I know why people do it, and I get it, but it’s still fake.

In 2016, after the the initial shock and despair, I changed the way I viewed my own life. At first the realization that I had no control over national politics filled me with hopelessness, but then I started coming up with a list of the other things I could do. I became more aware of and involved in politics in a local level. I enjoyed travel more, nature more, made more art, wrote more, found ways to express all the ideas floating around in my head. I volunteered. I met communities of people with whom I shared thoughts and ideas, and the occasional meal. I allowed myself to be blown away by the kindness of some folks, and I tried my best to pass that along.

I lost a few people too, people who did not share my respect for humanity and honor of truthfulness, and that was fine.

I kind of lost my drive to find steady employment during that time too. I’d never really worked well that way anyway, and it suddenly seemed even more pointless than ever. So I leaned into the temporary and unpredictable nature of life, taking just enough temporary work to pay the bills, and enjoying fewer work hours and less stress. Some people asked me if the unpredictability of temporary employment scared me, to which I replied, “Unpredictability is the very essence of life. At least temp work is honest about it.”

I think if you’re going to be afraid of unpredictability, you are likely going to be afraid of life in general.

I think what I’m saying is that my existential threat level was so high at that point that it really caused me to make choices about whom and what I prioritized, in a way I’d never done before. What if the Orange Man presses the Red Button? Was my brief existence well spent? And I like to think that threat, even if it existed only in my sometimes paranoid and almost always overly anxious mind, transformed me into a better, stronger person.

Those years under Administration Orange were terrible and disorienting. This time promises to be even worse. I won’t lie. I told you I do not sugarcoat anything.

But I’m going to try to channel those feelings that got me through this the last time, and see how much worse I am for wear.

These times have the potential to transform us all. We are ever evolving. Try to evolve for the better.

The Talmud says:

Do not be daunted 

by the enormity

of the world's grief.

Do justly, now.

Love mercy, now.

Walk humbly now,

You are not obligated

to complete the work,

but neither are you free

to abandon it.

EVERYBODY SEES YOU'RE BLOWN APART

 N.B. Written under the influence of wine and grief, so arguments may not be fully rational and explicated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSCWiO_yWuo

6 November 2024

And she said losing love
Is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you're blown apart
Everybody sees the wind blow...

— Paul Simon, Graceland

Well, loss of country is very much losing love. And for some, life, too. 

Let me take a step or two back. On October 27th, the birthday of two of my favorite people, I found out that my good friend, the genius, sui generis Kathleen Hulser had suddenly departed this mortal plain. I had not seen her nor communicated with her in over a year, but I kept up with her via her writing and FB posts, as well as through our mutual friends. I found out on FB, whereupon I fell to my knees weeping, thinking that I did not want to/could not be in the world without her. To paraphrase the description of Falstaff from Wikipedia, Kathleen had a charisma and captivating love of life. As an historian and brilliant writer, she was, to me and many of my friends and her acquaintances, a bulwark, a defensive wall, to the world. Well-educated, insightful, sarcastic, angry, trenchant, pithy, and kind are among the many descriptors. She was the kind of person you counted on in your mind and heart, even if there were distance.

I spent several days bursting into tears about her. Mourning her. She was long a part of my New York life, having been one of the first persons I met. Irreplaceable. And essential.

On Thursday, I had a medical appointment, my yearly check up with my doctor, whom I quite liked. At the end of the appointment, we somehow wound up making political chit chat. To my enormous astonishment and even greater dismay, the doc was a Trump cultist. Not merely a conservative, but one who trumpeted (sorry) and repeated his belligerence, dismissiveness, and made light of his clear crimes. One by one, I gently introduced some of his atrocities, and one by one, she piped his words, saying among other things, that his sexual harrassments and rapes were long ago. As if that could exculpate him. 

To say that I was aghast and despondent would only underestimate my emotional response. I had to call a couple of friends to ask if I were calibrating alarm properly. I even posted it on FB to an unanimous agreement that I needed to find a new doctor.

Do any of you remember the film Body Heat? Towards the end, William Hurt sees a clown car and begins to realize that he is the patsy being framed. Well, dear reader, it was after this encounter than the scales began to fall from my eyes. In my liberal, well-meaning bubble Trump cultists, were a marginal, if vocal, group. I very very foolishly and naïvely assumed that a female doctor who had many female clients, a doctor, a scientist, a person who believed in doing good, who seemed sane, could possibly support a person, a party, a movement that was(is) fervently and explicitly against science and medicine, not to mention the well-being of most of this country that cannot get health care without help. (That's me.)

This revelation was a terrible, terrible blow. But I began to see that sanity, kindness, and democracy hadn't a fucking ice cube's chance in hell. That Trumpests are all around us in folks that we like or love or deal with on a daily/hourly basis. That there is a cancer of delusion in these people that Trump can mean anything but chaos and evil. That even among the professional, educated there were many that were ill-informed, unanalytical, and maybe lazy.

I cannot imagine what the majority of this country thinks is democracy. I am pretty sure they haven't an informed clue and likely don't care. I cannot imagine what their vision of America is, or even their experience of America, Americans though they be.

Growing up in the fifties and sixties, a time of great prosperity, even for abjectly poor people like my father, I had no clue that we were gliding on the dopamine high of being righteous in World War II. I (we) believed in our "chosen-ness." Invincible and eternally righteous. True, unquestioning believers in USA propaganda that this was a meritocracy and that Horatio Alger was right about bootstrap ambition. 

As I have looked back on this since Nixon was president, it has become more and more apparent that the high and the power were the important things to be an American. Maybe across the world, but particularly here, escapism and artiface replaced reality, education, and substantiality. 

I have long thought that a particular set of insensitivity and crassness started in the 1970s, with the spread of television accessibility and the beginning of celebrity worship. Yes, people have been fervent about heroes and celebrities since the beginning of time, but, at least in my recollection, it was more admiration than universal and passionate belief that celebrities were better and that this was something to aspire to.

And also, a loss of meaning. Cocaine had a lot to do with how our culture shifted. Mass media was fueled and inspired by cocaine, both by the creators and the funders. How else would we have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? I never found this trend to be anodyne. I found myself dismayed and depressed by the likes of shows like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Insubstantiality and shallowness became quotidian and laudable. Shows like Jackass frightened and appalled me. 

Degradation is incremental, much like erosion. It is erosion. The USA went down that chute enthusiastically and rapidly. One thing led to another with any voice decrying shallow depravity being dismissed, just the way women's opinions and oppressions have been dismissed. And then, because of money, we got The Apprentice. And an idiotic lout, failed businessman, and moral moron was accepted, lauded, and believed.

Here we are. Any reality we thought we knew is mistaken. Any givens or assumptions we had about goodness, social well-being, honesty, support, kindness, intelligence are all gone. 

You may think me alarmist and emotional, but the United States of America, formed on intelligence, and other not-so-good things is gone, done, and over. Mob rule has taken over. I anticipate that voting will end. The Republicans/Trumpists will be in power through the rest of the lives of many of us. Elections will likely be a thing of the past. I read somewhere that "democracy is unpopular world-wide".

Many of us will not survive to our natural end. And even those that do, there will be great suffering. No more Department of Education, no more NIH, no more CDC, no more National Weather Bureau, less FEMA. Leeches like Musk, Besos, and Thiel will be fatter, more powerful, and less connected to the population. "Soylent Green is people." Indeed, we are fodder for war and industry, now more than ever.

We used to play for silver
Now we play for life
One's for sport and one's for blood
At the point of a knife
Now the die is shaken
Now the die must fall
There ain't a winner in this game
Who don't go home with all
Not with all...

Robert Hunter/Robert Weir, Jack Straw

Now the die must fall.

For more coherence on some of my arguments, check out this link.

https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/-we-must-protect-our-core-civil-rights-lawyer-reacts-to-trump-win-223785029637