“you need to stay in balance, she said. “if you read what is happening in this country and in the world, you need to spend the same amount of time doing something peaceful.”
it is impossible. to balance it all out. the detonized bomb that is this new administration is – fast and furiously – destroying this country. all in the wasteful, abusive, fraudulent name of waste, abuse and fraud.
i hardly know what to say.
it is all beyond comprehension.
it is pure evil.
“waste, abuse, fraud. waste, abuse, fraud. waste, abuse, fraud,” the conscience-free administration repeats time and time and time again.
it feels somewhat risky to write this ahead. who knows what will have taken place between when i am writing and the day this blog publishes. it all seems a downward spiral, a tornado of ruin. i shudder to think about next week as i write this today. and the next week. and the next. and the next year. and the next. and the next. and the next.
i feel fortunate – and now, with the perspective of the day, even more fortunate – to have lived – until now – in a country that has functioned as a democracy. my sweet poppo – a POW in WWII – fought against the very peril we are now facing. even with all its failings, with all the grappling for equality, with the what-seems-continual fight for freedoms and rights, we have not been in a place where we are segregating ourselves from the rest of the world, where leaders are distortedly centric, maniacal and extreme, where we had to fear for our future – day by excruciating day – as we watch the dismantling of our very republic.
and now, here we are.
and – once again – i look to all the people who voted for this disaster and ask, “is this what you wanted?”
and, i would add the question, “why?”
it is most difficult for me to comprehend the glee of the moment for those who support all this. it is most difficult for me to grok how people wish so much harm for other people. it is most difficult for me to understand how this storm makes them happy, makes them feel successful, makes them feel even remotely human.
what tornado – what grey cloud of torturous destruction – ever brought any good into the world?
i have no doubt we’ll all fall over it at some point – the precipice.
there will be some moment of grief, some slight, some jarring change, some out-and-out grotesque manifestation of this-thing-that-is-coming that will be the precipice for each of us.
i have already felt it. i fell over it on new year’s day. i realized that this thing that is coming now – in 2025 – this new administration’s cruelty and revenge, the emphasized attitudes disenfranchising people, the new way of being in this country, the gloating extremist, isolationist stance this country will take in this world – is already taking a toll. the precipice is real.
for the life of me i cannot understand wanting such things. i cannot understand turning my back on the rights and needs and experiences of my own family or friends. i cannot understand being a cheerleader for what’s coming. and, on new year’s day, it pushed me over the precipice and i spent the day grieving. for all the light i have tried to seek, for all the light i have tried to be, this thing-that-is-coming faster-than-fast pushed me under and into darkness.
it is real.
there will be fallout. fallout for people who know it’s coming, for people who bandwagoned and didn’t bother researching, for people who have family and friends against whom they voted. and that’s the part that made my heart hurtle over the cliff.
even though i knew it – and have known it for a couple months now – the fallout – part of which, of course, is silence – is painful beyond imagining.
knowing is hard.
i imagine i am not alone…one day at a time it all becomes more and more real…and so one day at a time there are others who are over-the-precipice-ing. it’s not going away and, as we are gleaning, it will only get worse and worse. and people voted for all of it. and i wonder – again and again – if it ever occurred to them to think about their own families or friends or community that might be drastically impacted by this new reality – the one they were choosing.
and so the fallout will gain momentum. not just the stuff that the new administration is going to set in place – the stuff that will marginalize more and more people, that will push people down – those already disenfranchised, those about-to-be disenfranchised. the fallout will lift up others – those with self-aggrandizing agenda, those with monster motives, those who perpetuate hatred, those who are clearly soul-less. and the fallout – well – it will snap the binding of relationships at their core, it will silence conversation, it will destroy friendships, it will undermine families.
because it’s real.
now – each time we are hurtled over the precipice – for it is likely that will be more than once – it will be our job to climb back up, to seek safe shelter and to heal from the pummeling of the precipice-fall. even a little bit. to keep going. to get to – what we hope will be – the other side of all this. to survive.
if i were to write a children’s book about clouds, this cloud would have an arrogant name – something aggressive, threatening. this is the cloud that covers the sun, dark, assailing. this cloud would be the cloud that rides the bumper of the others, that drives on the shoulder, that flips you off as it passes. it would be the screaming banshee of clouds with its hulk of stone cold water droplets. it is the cloud that makes a mockery of the other clouds, dominating their practiced and important jobs of precipitation, reflection, insulation. it is ominous and likely indicative of a storm coming. this cloud is emboldened.
we are in the earliest days of fallout from the election. the emboldened are obvious. they are the arrogant ones, the aggressive, threatening ones. they are dark; they are assailing. they are the ones riding your bumper, driving on the shoulder, flipping you off. they are screaming banshees of propaganda, hulking masses of disturbingly evil what-we-are-going-to-do-to-this-country-what-we-are-going-to-do-to-people. they are mocking and they are stone cold, gleefully ominous, dominating, militant. there is a storm coming.
the animals in the forest watch this cloud intently, intuitively knowing that their forest could be destroyed in its wake.
we watch the emboldened insanity intently, intuitively knowing that that our country could be destroyed in its wake.
it was well-intended. the highland park library had a sign up with these words and i copied them down as we passed by. stay apart, stay safe and we will get through this together. a sentiment about the raging pandemic, it was momentarily reassuring.
but only momentarily.
for, really, we are more apart than together. we are more fractured. we are more divided than we ever thought. we are cleaved.
at this moment, each place i look i see the destruction of entities breaking in two, splitting. there is no reassurance for that. there can be no healing without truth, without compassionate, fair and decisive leadership. disparate sides will ultimately fight to the death, no eye to clarity, no ear to healthy conversation, no wisdom, no heart. just agenda, riddled with prejudice, with self-aggrandizing, with aggression, with inward nationalism-under-every-heading, surrounded by a protective cloak of complicity.
people put asunder. entities put asunder. the country put asunder.
if apart will bring us together, we are on the right track. if apart is just simply getting us through, we are beyond cleaved.
