We knew it was blowing up a storm. We knew we were headed into the maelstrom. Some of our country-folk, those who voted for him, welcomed the coming chaos, cheered it on, gloated like old Cap’n Dan in the face of the hurricane. After all, it would be the storm that scrubbed the country free of all the undesirables. The necessary cleansing that would Make America Gr . . . oh, you get the metaphor.
The rest of us decent folk properly dreaded the coming maelstrom and expressed as much in this hallowed forum, however, in retrospect I think we can safely say that most of us did not have a realistic appreciation of how all of this would actually feel. How deep the wound would be. How shattered, frightened, chagrined, embarrassed and exhausted we would become, so quickly. We all seem to be in a constant state of WTF? these days.
Even my most revered Librul Media commentators, upon whom I have long relied to articulate my most apoplectic rages, can mostly just sit and stutter these days, laboring to string enough linear information into their sentences to properly explain the depth of each insult to our Constitution. Lately it seems most of us just give up, speaking about only the most egregious of the latest overt lies, outrages, injustices and despoilment of our most dearly-held values. There is hardly enough time in the day, after all, and all of us suffer from attention fatigue.
This new state of “normal” affairs, which we all warned one another to guard against, has created a zombie army of punch-drunk, incredulous, and legitimately suffering, people. And we’re only a year in. I don’t think we can wait another year for the newly-elected Democratic Congress to be seated. I am stunned we made it to 2018, frankly.
Today, however, was a day notable in its outrageous insult, a spike in the toxic white noise that now fogs the collective intellect. Today was the day the mask slipped. The day he admitted out loud that he thinks of the “unwhite” parts of the world as “shitholes.” I found myself fighting tears. I found myself acknowledging that what we are witnessing here is the systematic dehumanization of those who have been institutionally marginalized in this country, in this world. I felt keenly reminded that we are a small-minded and brutal species, driven by a scarcity mentality hard-wired into our characters, and the ones who are on top are rigging the game to stay there.
And then I remembered the things we all vowed to remember, and to remind ourselves about when we, inevitably, would be feeling demoralized this way. I remembered that we are indeed a brutish species, but paradoxically also a spiritual one, with the capacity for reason, for transcendence, and for community. I remembered that we are prone to stampede in groups but damned hard to herd if we remember to think for ourselves.
Most importantly, I remembered that this chaos, this onslaught of incredulous-making idiocy and ignorance, is deliberate.
Every time the truth gets close to public consciousness the next outrage is hurled, like a smoke bomb, into the middle of public discourse. And the more dangerous the truth is for the power elite, the bigger the bomb.
So I began to look around. What has happened, recently, that they really, truly don’t want us all talking about?
Why, of course, this:
threadreaderapp.com/…
Mueller is closing in. Dianne Feinstein is a hero (and I am a Californian who has long been disenchanted with DiFi — way to rock it, Senior Senator — I am proud to be a constituent today!). We have had our Pentagon Papers moment and the jig is up. Many of the traitor Republicans who protect this excrescence of a human being rather than protect and defend the Constitution are going down with him, too, having been clearly implicated in the cover-up. Those conservatives in my family who laughed at me, when after the election I announced that our country is now being run by the Russian Mafia, owe me an apology. The tipping point is here.
It is going to get worse before it gets better, my friends. I will be in the streets on the 20th with all my sisters and ally brothers. Get your own ass out there — this is not over. Re-make that pussy hat, add some steel and create a pussy helmet. You’re going to need it. I refuse to preside quietly over the dehumanization of my beloved fellow humans. Creatures who choose community, spirit and transcendence can also fight.
Meet me in the teeth of this storm. I’m gonna go lash myself to the mast.