Yeah. I do this a lot…the which came first game. I keep coming up with neither. Or both. What I haven’t been able to do is point to a person, or a place, or a time that signifies our point of no return.
The nonemotional view is hard for me to find, because I AM emotional about what happens next.
But anyway, here goes--
- Was Trump the first sign of that malaise?
Definitely not the first.
Or was the fact that our choices for President in 2016 were a (a) neoconservative Democrat under FBI investigation, (b) an aging ex-Communist who wasn’t a Democrat running as one, and (c ) a marginally sane selfpromoting prevaricating businessman who used to be a Democrat and become a Republican, also a sign?
The ballot was definitely a turning point. And this is where I tell you I didn’t actually vote in the 2012 election. I felt there would be no point in me taking time from work to go stand in lines of people whose votes wouldn’t even have been counted yet when the winner was announced. In fact, when that announcement was made, our polls hadn’t even closed yet.
Talk about a SIGN that things are not happening the way they were intended…we don’t even count here.
Literally.
It’s hard not to feel apathetic about the whole thing. - It is possible, after a financial meltdown and an anemic “recovery” averaging 2% a year, where the jobs “recovery” was primarily in McJobs and wage growth was stagnant, and where the only winner in the last eight years were the major corporations and the investors in their equities………that the only way America can find their way back to a dynamic economy is by hiring an asshole who doesn’t give a shit about anybody but himself in order to fix it?
I think you’re being really generous here. America couldn’t find its way back there then, and it isn’t going to happen now. Now, look: Everything I understand about the almighty dollar could fit on the front of a dime. You can explain this stuff to me all day long and I will probably never wrap my head around it, but here’s what I do understand…
This country doesn’t give a shit about its poor and its disenfranchised, and it never will. There are some relatively simple ways to lift those folks into a less extreme poverty, but don’t even worry about them. They will never happen, because they would require human beings to be less selfish, kinder, more generous…it would require those hoarding more than they could ever hope to touch in several lifetimes to tone that shit down and stop acting like every dollar is a priceless stamp or an irreplaceable family heirloom. It’s just fucking money.
Well, if you have it.
If you don’t, it is both doom and salvation, and either way, it drives men mad and makes them do terrible things to each other.
And as long as money is our lord and savior (no, not religious…but we do bow to those numbers, don’t we? ), sorry, but WE ARE FUCKED.
And there is no way out. This is just going to keep rolling downhill and gathering moss and people on the way and I can’t see any way to make it better, without making US better, and we don’t seem to want to be better.
So, I give up.
And I don’t know if emotional is the right word to describe myself; I have lived the last 43 years as a recovering reactionary. Stuff happens out there and I freak the fuck out in here. For the first few months that is how I was affected. The last few, though, it’s more like I’m just resigned. Every time I see something like this:
I just think, “yep.” Because this is who we are. Apparently, it’s who we HAVE been. And I don’t care how great the budget looks on paper under Trump, if this is the leadership example my children have to aspire to, I’m out.
(BTW, I meant to explain my position re: 2016 election, because of #1…just a quick summary…Like many Alaskans, when I turned 18, I registered to vote as an Independent, and I like it that way. But my Independent candidate decided to run as a Democrat, and the only way I could vote in the Democratic Primary was to change my affiliation on paper. When Sanders lost the primary, for me it was a no-brainer to shift my vote to Clinton in the general election. And by that I mean I felt completely forced to vote against my better judgment, because no one meeting the better judgment threshold was available. I have some issues with who Clinton became after her First Lady gig, though I approved of her early politics. And I’m the daughter of a malignant narcissist father, so it was all I could do not to go after the television with a hammer every time Trump opened his mouth. Everything he says or does just sets me right on edge. PTSD?? :) Who knows. But, I’m supposed to stay objective…yikes).
Yeah. You had to ask. sorry for all the words.
