You can skip straight to the comments if you’d like. I won’t know and I won’t mind. I haven’t had my rant yet and I’m going to do it here.
It’s hard to write a diary these days. Some of you may know that I’ve written a few diaries chronicling my journey through Egypt of the last three weeks, but I lost momentum as the election day arrived and passed. I have been off Daily Kos entirely for some of those days, which is highly unusual. I will still finish my Egypt trip diaries — I still have a partially written one for temples and then I need to cover tombs and birds at the very least, but I’m just not in a big hurry.
As for Veterans and Colorado, I have thought a great deal about the sacrifices that our veterans, as well as those who supported them but are not so honored, have made to ensure this country is as great as it is. Of course the country isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t deserve a man like Trump, his minions, puppet masters and his blindly following sycophants as the man to lead us. Millions died to defeat fascism, to defeat dictators, to end policies like slavery and colonialism (going back to our country’s earliest days) and yet now a majority of voting citizens have voted to hand over the White House and the keys to our country to just about the worst example of American that I can envision. I cannot see a single redeeming value to that filth, but apparently the America I thought I lived in is not the same as the America that others live in. Hell, I still wish I was on the timeline where Al Gore won and the past 24 years were just some nightmare.
I do not have any veterans in my family who were killed in battle (that I know of). My father and his four brothers served, but all came back. My mother’s two brothers served and one, who contracted some disease in the South Pacific, IIRC, eventually died from what it did to his health, didn’t die in actual combat. I am grateful to the veterans in my family and I am grateful to those from all walks of life who put their personal lives on hold for whatever reason and chose to serve in the US Armed Forces. I am grateful as well to those whose families at home continued the work to support those in the Armed Forces by working in factories, farms and the other occupations necessary to keep this country going in wartime and in peace.
I am disgusted that a man like Trump, whose father likely bought a “bone spurs” medical deferment for his son, who denigrates those who made the ultimate sacrifice, who ridicules injured veterans like John McCain and who used Arlington National Cemetery’s most hallowed section to film campaign footage should have been chosen by a large swath of military veterans and those who “back the blue” for civilian servicemen and women of the police, fire and first responders. I doubt we’ll ever know just where his votes came from, but his policies will hurt every last person in America and with deportation, tariffs and ending of alliances, will hurt people around the globe. And don’t even start with his selfish mission to deny global warming so that the world becomes an unlivable environment for all…
I take some solace that Colorado is a blue state, but Representative Caraveo conceded her race yesterday and so Colorado is now more purple than it was until last week. The policies headed our way will be designed so that blue states cannot provide refuge from Project 2025. Their goals to end the Department of Education and several agencies that have major offices in this state like NOAA, NCAR, the Space Force (which I’m sure will now be headed back to Alabama) won’t care that we’re a blue state. Their goals to have a national ban on abortion and to restrict people to the gender on their birth certificates will not care that Colorado just amended the Constitution to ensure abortion care and that marriage is one between consenting persons instead of a male and a female.
We still have another two months of the Biden administration. I don’t know how much time it will take for the Republicans to implement Project 2025 after January 20th since they don’t care about the chaos caused in replacing the civil service people with their loyalists who don’t have years of experience doing the jobs we need them to do. Elon Musk was almost gleeful when he said there would be economic chaos and a downturn while things get going with the Republican plans (maybe I should call it the “Heritage Foundation” plans?). He’s never going to go hungry, or have his benefits cut off. Jeff Bezos is going to keep having his massive government contracts since his Washington Post decided being friends with a tyrant was better than providing actual, factual news.
If I were religious I would say a prayer for the people of Ukraine and Eastern Europe, as well as the Middle East and Taiwan. Nobody will be safe in this world — not those in established war zones, and not those of us in Colorado.
Well, enough of my morbid ranting. I hope you’re going to be pleasantly surprised by the next administration, however long it lasts. Hopefully there’s an end to it but my personal belief is that Trump will be replaced sooner or later by Vance and throughout the administration the shadow people will be running the place, setting in stone their cruel agenda for longer than my life is likely to last, which means I, like my father, may not survive longer than the Trump damage takes to fix — decades at the minimum. I can only take some solace in the sonnet “Ozymandius”.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart.[d] Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
— Percy Shelley, "Ozymandias", 1819 edition
[17]
There comes an end to all things in this world, whether it’s minutes, weeks, years or aeons. I saw the stone statues that inspired this work, so I know, Trump, too, shall pass.
The floor is yours...
