I am 54 years old. I have paid attention to the news and events for most of my adult life. I am engaged. I have stared open mouthed at my television when breaking news hit. I have raged at stories online about corruption, graft, abuse of power. Highs, lows, criminality and excess, the inane and the profane, as well as joy and the triumph of the human spirit - I have endeavored to stay on top of it all.
But the really big stories, the ones that sweep up a nation, the globe, always seemed to come in infrequent waves. Something massive would happen - Jonestown, the death of Elvis, Ruby Ridge, Waco, an airliner crashed, Oklahoma City, a tsunami, 9/11 - these things would sweep through and we watched, railed, mourned as a unit. In between, news was what happened in our isolated cities and towns, but nothing big enough to percolate to the top of the nightly national news.
And that was fine. A rhythm of carnage if you will. It gave us all time to process, reflect, take a breath.
But not now. Not in the age of Trump.
Since he slithered down his escalator in 2015, the news, the excess, the horrors, the jawdroppers, the crimes, the abominations have been relentless. Never in my life have I seen such an endless procession of breaking news stories, so fast and furious that we can never fully process one thing before Trump and his minions have crossed yet another line.
It is like the nation, the world is hooked up to an IV bag of adrenaline. We are constantly furious, gobsmacked, overwhelmed, speechless, speechful, screaming at our TVs daily, wearing out our keyboards, losing sleep, and can never find relief from the incessant gnawing in the pit of our stomachs.
We are trapped in a hell of Trump's 50 Shades of Cray. And the stories grow crazier and crazier with each passing day.
We are trapped inside a pandemic that threatens each and every one of our lives. 145,887 of our fellow citizens have been sacrificed on the altar of Trump's ineptitude, gross neglect, and ego.
The latest projections by University of Washington researchers show that if we started now and had a 95% compliance rate on what we should have done months ago - national mask policy, handwashing, distancing - then our dead may only number between 175,160 and 223,377 by year's end. Remove mandatory mask wearing and only adhere to some social distancing and we will have between 233,885 and 398,397 dead by Christmas. And if we just continue on our selfish, backass, freedumb bastardizing way? Between 288,046 and 649,582 people will never see 2021.
Crazy. Currently 441 out of every million Americans is dying. Are you willing to keep playing this game? Because you are in it whether or not you bought a ticket.
Our election is again in jeopardy not only from outside interests, but from the incumbent candidate as well. The push against mail-in ballots? That's because it won't benefit him to make it easier for more people to participate in their democracy - or in this case, democrazy. He, his staff, his children, his enablers - all have proven records of voting by mail, yet they now wish to undermine the process, call it suspect, corrupt. Because with it, he won't win.
Remember a year ago when children in cages at the border had our hearts in a vice and every decent person seeing red? What happened to them? They are still there. Kids in cages, separated from their parents, living in unsafe conditions, exposed to contracting COVID and a myriad of diseases, in danger of being molested and raped by those put in charge of their "care." And today we learn that several Hampton Inns in Arizona and Texas have been used by this racist administration as weigh stations of sorts to traffic these children - some as young as 1 - out of the country, as our asylum system has essentially been canceled. Unaccompanied, at the hands of people hired as “bilingual travel youth care workers” based in Phoenix and McAllen who provide “humble care and service to unaccompanied children and teens,” these children spend upwards of weeks in these hotels.
They are not with childcare experts, doctors, or people with experience in protective services. They are with people hired through help wanted ads by a contractor.
Crazy. And it is happening daily, only we are too swept up by a million other shiny outrages that vie for our attention.
Portland, if one was to believe Trump and FOX, is a warzone. And let's be honest, if all you caught were the pictures of stormtroopers and copious tear gas canisters expelling their contents in the streets, you could believe that. But just like Seattle a few weeks ago - a city they wanted you to believe was an raging hotzone of murder, vandalism, and dangerous rebels - ALL LIES - Portland is not an apocalyptic hellscape either. Well, at least it wasn't until the human festival outhouse and his biggest piece of shit (Barr) decided that sending in unidentified "troops" was a good idea.
Feds are out in force now after a fire on the facade of the building pic.twitter.com/SGLdWlZV88
— Mike Baker (@ByMikeBaker) July 22, 2020
In the past week we have seen protesters disappeared into unmarked rental vans, moms out in force teargassed, and nonviolent citizens grabbed and beaten. And today, Colonel Chickenshit VonBonespurs stood at a podium and declared he was sending the same type troops into Albuquerque, Chicago...
“Today I’m announcing a surge of federal law enforcement into American communities plagued by violent crime. We’ll work every single day to restore public safety.”
That is not what he is doing. Even a cursory student of history understands the slow slide into fascism we are experiencing. This deranged kumquat desperately needs a distraction, a way to hold onto power. He needs a Reichstag Fire. He is sending in troops to provoke confrontation. He wants citizens to rise up so he can beat them back down and declare martial law. The clock is ticking towards an election in which he is set to lose BADLY, and for him losing means more than finding a new place to live. The law, his crimes, prosecution, and prison are on the other side of losing for him.
But we are allowed to protest. We are allowed to assemble. We are allowed to call him a feckless c*nt because that's what he is.
Crazy. We are watching in real time as the Constitution and Bill of Rights are shown the door.
As if the goon squad is not enough, last night we learned he is still playing FUCK YOU with the executive office, making every attempt to enrich himself. Using his office to force an ambassador to try to sway the British government to move the British Open to his golf resort in Scotland.
AND. NOTHING. WILL. HAPPEN.
Crazy. Any other president would be impeached before sunrise, but not this slippery eel of a conman. He has so eroded our norms, our laws, our protocols, our patience, out outrage, that literally nothing will be done. And he knows it. He counts on it.
Think not? Whatever happened to the story that he knew Russians had placed bounties on our soldier's heads? This has been PROVEN. Yet, not a single journalist is asking about it. It has vanished like a fart in the wind. Lost in the wake of so many other scandals, trespasses, and breaking news.
A new campaign ad for the pleather skinned president shows a disturbing photo of a police officer being attacked by a crowd. The ad talks about "public safety vs chaos and violence" - his new theme - BUT THAT PHOTO IS FROM 2014 FROM A PROTEST IN UKRAINE.
Crazy, but his followers won't ever know that. It's not like FOX is going to call him out for using a visual lie to bolster his chances. And the ad will continue to play because, hell, who actually has time to do a damned thing about it?
He says he wishes a pedophilic procurer "well" yesterday. Ghislaine Maxwell has now had it telegraphed to her that he is on her side, yet that vile vignette was quickly overtaken by the golf tournament extortion news last night.
It's crazy. And it's driving us crazy. How many of us sit stunned in our homes as one outrage after another cascades over us? The feeling of drowning in it is palpable. The gutwrenching knowledge of what is happening to our country is there for all to see, yet no one in charge is stepping in to stop it. We can protest, yes. And millions of us are ready to take to the streets and risk our safety in order to protect our rights, but what about Congress? At the very least, they control the purse strings of this nation, yet what we see so far is impotence. Yes, a few are pulled forward to express their outrage on the nightly news shows, but nothing is happening to defend our Constitution, this land, our place in this world.
What is craziest is how fast this has all happened. Enabled by a pack of craven power whores in the GOP, surrounded by ignorant relatives and venal opportunists in the White House, that orange cauldron of criminality has been allowed to pour his fascist, grifting, jackbooted, cruelty-laden brew over this nation. We are burning under its poison, we are drowning in its sewage.
And we are actively dying from a virus that is unchecked, basically encouraged to flourish by this affront of decency. We are on track to see 25,000 more deaths in the next month alone. That is 30 deaths per hour, 1 every 2 minutes. Will you be one? Take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror. Even if you are taking every possible precaution, are you overweight? Get chest colds easily? Are you Black? Brown? Do you have asthma? One of a billion underlying conditions that make you compromised? Perhaps you're one of the fun ones who think they are healthy, but don't yet know they have a problem under the surface. Do you have co-workers who say fuck masks? Do you go to the grocery store? Do you breathe?
That last one. It is that simple. If you breathe, you are taking part in this viral Russian Roulette, and a week from now you could be vying for hospital space, two weeks from now you could be dead. Or your child could be dead. Or your spouse, parent, sibling, friend. For every death I report to you, think about the lives rocked by the loss. We are all George Bailey - our lives touching so many others, even if we do not realize it. And when we go, we leave a hole, a gap, a painful spot where we should still be. Think of the holes being left in the wake of this virus. Dan Rather said it best today: Each represents a web of human connections that will never be the same. So much sadness. Preventable sadness.
It is crazy how much we are shouldering, bearing, trying to process. I know that. But I beg each and every one of you to stay the course. We cannot afford to disengage, to look away even for a moment. That is what he and they want. They want us to give up, to become overwhelmed, too weary, just throw our hands up and accept what is happening.
The preamble to our Constitution sets out what was intended, the dream, the vision, the hope of the document that followed. It is the light that was supposed to guide us in dark, uncertain, crazy times.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
We the people... that is us. Whether or not you ever thought you would have to fight for the ideals of this nation and the rights we are all guilty of just assuming were safe and sacrosanct - the time is upon us. Our liberties, our laws, our freedoms, our rights, our entire ethos as a beacon for the world is under attack from within.
This Hamilton musical's line is where we find ourselves this evening. "I may not live to see our glory. But I will gladly join the fight. And when our children tell our story, they'll tell the story of tonight."
For you, for me, for our children, and their children still to come - the time is now. No one is coming to do this for us. We are the ones we have been waiting for. Those who came before us fought too hard for this grand experiment of red, white, and blue to come to an end in an era of 50 shades of orange cray.
Perfectly said.
What do we do about it? I mean people in Portland should be wearing respirators and goggles for the tear gas and smoke. But how do you push back these armed goons without murdering or being murdered? Ants in their pants? Spiders, mice, snakes in their shirts? Vaseline smeared on their goggles to blind them?
And HOW, HOW HOW do we make this man go away? Congress tried, once. Now they are just milling around, still shocked and confused. This was the first time in our history that our democracy did not function as it always has.
Any solid ideas? Anyone?
Posted by: Paula Jones | Wednesday, July 22, 2020 at 06:32 PM