“It was a grey day under the Saskatoon tree.”
Is it just me, or are things getting worse? I don’t know how to describe what’s happening in Palestine. It’s not a war. It reminds me of 9/11 in the worst possible way. A terrorist attack is going to be used as a pretext for the extermination of people who have nothing to do with it.
The President of the U.S. ain’t helping. It was predictable that there would be a rush to show overwhelming support for Israel because, if there’s one thing that will get bipartisan support and votes a-plenty, it’s that. I was generally OK with our support of Ukraine on account of the fact that they were invaded by a more powerful neighbor and our allies in Western Europe were very much imperiled by this. I say this knowing damned well that altruism has/had nothing to do with it. There are profits to be made, after all.
I get that all foreign policy is amoral¹. It always has been. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you a bill of goods. But, at least in Ukraine, we could say being on the right side coincided with whatever interests we’re pursuing. In Palestine, we’re on the side of the invaders so there’s no patina of righteousness to be had.
And this guy Biden is somehow the lesser of two evils.
No, really. The other guy is a gangster who has tried to overturn the previous election results, suggested we need to suspend the Constitution², and has promised to replace the career bureaucracy with people who are loyal to him alone. Oh, and he’s a rapist, a racist, a tax cheat, and a con man.
At the risk of sounding alarmist, electing a President who tried to overthrow the government and has promised to ensure that the entire apparatus is loyal to him alone is probably it for this country as a democracy. Yeah, it’s always been a lot less of one than we were taught in school, but this would be crossing a line, or a “Rubicon” if you prefer.
“Ridley,” you say, “that fellow is surely bound for prison! There are numerous ironclad cases proceeding against him and many of his inner circle have turned on him!” That would probably be true of anyone else, but underestimate DJT at your peril. I wouldn’t be shocked to see him push the trials against him past election day, and if he’s re-elected? That all goes away. He’s stated that he is bound by no laws. That will be significantly more true when he’s President.
Of course, there’s a risk in underestimating Biden as well. My chronically online and deeply political friends may not see it in their circles, but Biden’s normalcy has enormous appeal to a lot of people. And make no mistake: He’s an extremely “normal” President when graded against others of his ilk. Hell, he even said during his campaign that nothing much would change. He sure kept that promise. Which, for a lot of us, is not a thing to be proud of. But, for folks who just want to get through the day without having the think about politics (a privileged position, sure), he has a lot of appeal.
All of which is to say, I’m pretty mortified at the whole situation. Adding to my sense of hopelessness is the fact that the online leftists have remade themselves into “anti-Biden no matter what.” I get it. He’s awful. But, when that turns into apologia for Russia invading Ukraine, pretending like it’s a “civil war,” that the referendums should be taken seriously³, and falling in line behind a dingus like RFK, Jr.? Count me the fuck out. Y’all don’t give two shits about peace. You just want to oppose the U.S. and the Democratic Party, which, again, totally get it, but own it.
So in a year, we’ll have a choice between two terrible candidates and the opposition will be pushing one who ain’t any better. Oh, and I live in Texas so that just adds another layer to the awfulness. It’s a shite state of affairs to be in, Tommy, and all the fresh air in the world won’t make any fucking difference.
I feel drained. I’m struggling to do anything creative, consume anything beyond the basic distractions, care much about work, and my body feels…unwilling. It’ll pass, but man, this is a bad place. Nicole is doing everything humanly possible to prop my sorry ass up and I shudder to think what things would be like without her.
So, I’m writing about how cruddy things are as if that’ll help. Real slick there, Ridley.
I’m quite the chonk these days, so we’re working on that (my doctor kind of insisted). I have an ankle that is giving me real problems until I warm up, and I don’t know what to make of that so that’ll probably be an X-ray. Oh, and one of my really important specialists no longer takes our insurance, so the last visit was out-of-pocket and now I have to find a new doctor. Not looking forward to that.
And, of course, there’s the fact that everything has just become crazy expensive. The inflation rate over the last three years has seriously eroded what was a pretty decent living I was making. We don’t eat out, we don’t go anywhere, but between the heat (which made for bonkers electric bills), the property tax escrow issue last year, and the fact that everything costs twice what it did three years ago? We’re losing ground.
We’re not in any immediate danger, but it’s the sort of thing you can see looming on the horizon. That best answer, frankly, would be to leave. I’ve worked at companies that have failed and there’s a stink they get when they’re circling the drain. It’s the smell that comes from the investors milking out their last bit of value before they take the company behind the house and go Ol’ Yeller on ya. The owners are winding up the game. I’d bet on it.
But, we have family here, we have cats, and frankly, with my poor hearing, anywhere but an English-speaking country would be a big problem. We’re probably here for the long haul, but if we had any sense at all, we wouldn’t be.
I have good things to discuss as well. It feels wrong to shoehorn them in here, so we’ll just save them for tomorrow.
¹ This is something both of my parents agreed on. I’m not going to say I’ve never seen an exception, but they’re beyond rare. Also, international law is a fiction. It’s a pleasant fiction, but it’s a fiction.
²https://apnews.com/article/social-media-donald-trump-8e6e2f0a092135428c82c0cfa6598444
³ I don’t know why, but this one drives me nuts. I cannot imagine these same people saying that a referendum held by the U.S. in a country we invaded should be taken seriously. But, just to drive the point home, in 2014, polls in Donbas and Donetsk, ~28% of the population said they wanted to be Russian (Crimea was ~90% prior to the Russian invasion). Those numbers don’t legitimately turn to 99% in 8 years. It’s an asinine assertion.