Nothing makes sense at the moment.
It hasn’t for some time.
Some history.
Like many of you, I have been here at DKos for a quite a while. Over 12 years. My user Id# is 35,190. I’m not new to the progressive movement, journalism (I partnered with Susan Gardner to create ePluribus Media and co-founded The Albany Project), politics (I ran for the NYS Senate in 2006) or campaigns and activism. I’ve been a communications director for the NYS Senate, VP of an internet marketing firm specializing in Democratic campaigns, a policy consultant for candidates and office holders and even the chief of staff for a NYS Senator.
The previous points are not made in order to humble brag, but to give you an idea that in the past 12+ years I’ve seen quite a bit... both from the outside and inside of campaigns, public policy, culture and government.
My first step in deciding on a way forward regarding a policy, issue or event is to look at it from all sides in order to put it into perspective from everyone’s point of view...then I ask, “where do we want to go” and walk our way back along the path to where we are, navigating the challenges of the time.
It’s been a process that has served me, my clients, my employers and my staffs well.
Then comes today.
The events, the movements, the media, the stupid, the irrationality, the victories...all of it have conspired to leave me without a clue. Seriously, without a single frickin’ clue.
How do you put Orlando into perspective and then move on? How do you look at it and figure out where you want to go only to see that there seems to be no path from here to there?
And the reason there seems to be no path is that political and cultural and educational cycles have gone off the track to the point where we here in this country are not speaking the same language, embracing the same humanity, honoring the same history, understanding the same science, sharing the same moral concern and certainly not acting to right what should be seen as the same wrongs.
I don’t need to go into detail about how we got here. It began with Reagan’s 9 words, followed by the crimes of GW Bush, stupidified by the rise of the Tea Party, and personalized in the hatred and egoism of Donald Trump. I feel that we are now dwelling in a state of diaspora where I am alienated from the nation and democracy that I have spent a ton of time and effort trying to improve.
Today, that diaspora has left me feeling alone; a stranger in my own country that has transformed itself before my eyes in a way that makes no sense on any level.
I will work today. Go to bed tonight. Wake up tomorrow. Wash. Rinse. Repeat...but I no longer feel that we are just one bill, just one candidate, just one headline, just one victory, just one mother’s cry of pain away from taking our first step toward “where we want to go.”
I am paralyzed. I am numb.
I am having difficulty.
