Teacherken’s blog post this morning has also sparked me into writing something.
I have also withdrawn from regularly posting. I just don’t have the energy. Twitter and Reddit does provide a lazy and simple outlet, but Twitter and Reddit is for the lazy and simple.
Personal and professional changes have realigned my life. I have relocated 400 miles south from New England to the Nation’s Capital. I have accepted that I am now fully middle aged. My grown daughter now is on her own — and does not communicate, but that’s another story.
These are dark times.
The events of 2016 made me reevaluate how I feel about this country, specifically how I view the South and Mid-West that voted for a real estate con man that hosted a game show. In reaction, my joie de vivre evaporated. I fell into a shallow, but constant, sense of hopelessness, depression and anxiety.
Brexit was the foreshadowing of how working class populism can be harnessed and used to manipulate a robust liberal democracy for right-wing goals. That should have been of no surprise, after-all the fascists movements of the 20th Century came to the forefront the same way in Europe.
What is next?
The megalomaniac in the White House will stifle the Mueller Report and his tax returns. He will ignore Congress and be rewarded by his base for it. He has destroyed social norms, families and lives. He may actually commit crimes against humanity in the process, if he has not done so already. He has weakened all the legal institutions that society is built on because he does not believe in the rule of law and where law ends, tyranny begins.