God, what a world we are in. Ursula LeGuin once said that hopelessness arises from the inability to live in and to face the present. I thought about this when I woke up this morning, barely awake and already out of hope, out of possibilities, out of everything when I thought about Trump telling his rally to vote twice, when I thought about his calling our fallen military heroes suckers and losers.
I was just recovering from the poison filled Republican National Convention of screams and lies. The convention with no platform. The convention that stands for nothing beyond propping up that brain dead horror for another four year ride of death and denial and greed and hatred and incompetence. We just witnessed the death of the Republican Party. It was suicide. They are now officially a cult.
Meaning yes, I am having a hard time living in this present. And my hope is running thin. Each day more dystopian horrors from Trump, his depraved aide Barr riding shotgun, and the Congressional Republicans in Congress who feign life in a daily march of lies and corruption – what I think of as the left overs of what used to be the Republican Party, identifiable mostly by the moral rot twisting their souls. Most of them once had principles. They once loved their country more than party. Or I thought they did.
Maybe it was nothing more than an almost twenty year slide into believing we're better off when we each wallow in our own unregulated and uncontrolled self-interest. Maybe it was when McConnell decided to follow the Tea Party playbook of government nullification by bringing the functions of government to a halt when Obama arrived. Maybe it was too much Ayn Rand in their formative years and now all they have for the booby prize is this ignorant madman for their leader and God forbid they lose this election because a lot of them don't want to end up in jail.
I keep thinking they can't all be crazy old white men fighting for the white supremacists dream, can they. They can't all be neo-Nazis. They can't all be so Louis Gomert stupid they think that a country where no one has a living wage, a decent place to live, health care that works, education for their kids is the dream of a lifetime. This Covid disaster has shown us the fault lines of a country falling apart because the rich just can't get rich enough, and if you are poor you don't count as fully human. What kind of a country does that?
I think of Jonestown. I think of Rev. Jim Jones handing out the kool aide to his followers that November afternoon in 1978. What possessed those people to drink that poison. To give that poison to their children. Who decided it was okay to lie down in the dirt and die for a mad man who told them to do it. Who are those God fearing souls who are so eager to drink that poison now. Who here among us now are actively in the process of poisoning ourselves.
When I think of Franklin Graham's comment that God was not at the Democratic National Convention, I can literally taste the grape kool aid on my tongue. Where was God? I guess instead of attending the DNC, God was holed up with Trump sharing KFC and wallowing in the newest of Sean Hannity's daily messages, which surely included commentary on the God hating Dems from the true Deity on high.
But you know even that gets old, doesn't it. Maybe even for Trump. It's exhausting to have no purpose beyond lies that create division and chaos. It's tiresome to be nothing more than a passive hunk of meat staring into an obsessive technological pool of filth and hate whether it is to fill your body with junk food or your soul with Fox's junk news, wearing your thumbs out on twitter or chatting with your pal Putin about the way forward.
But that is not our way forward. Hard times are coming but we are still the majority. Instead of drowning in this chaotic Republican garbage, we need to hear from each other to get real clear about what has been happening and what we can do to find our way out. Starting with winning this election, treating Covid as a disease not a political weapon, providing immediate assistance to those without work, housing and food, beginning the work of social justice for our citizens, creating good jobs, health insurance, educational opportunities, child care that works and begin to heal our wounded planet.
A big order but we sure as heck can do that once we roll all those the moribund bodies out of the way. An antidote for four years of a government that has tried its damndest to tell us that those ideas of ours are all terrible, maybe even 'socialist' ideas (we don't want people to start getting lazy, do we?). A government that in this process, turned us into a confused suffering and fear-stricken society. Well, no. Now it's our turn.
PS. Just as I was posting this, I saw a Letter to the Editor of The Daily Chronicle in Lewis County WA by Marty Ansley of Cinebar, WA, which I quote in part:
When people come to believe the truth is unknowable or nothing is true, they can be led to believe anything. Joseph Goebbels and Adolph Hitler understood that. The Rev. Jim Jones of Jonestown, Guyana, understood that. Former Soviet KGB Col. Vladimir Putin understand that. Donald Trump understands that.
It is the way all cult leaders and political despot operate. To make their subjects malleable, they employ disinformation and conspiracy theories to destroy objective truth and realty. Then, with their follower in a weakened state of reason, they substitute their own alternative realty, always placing themselves in the central position of great power.
“Q,” supposedly an anonymous, very highly placed source within the “Deep State,” tells followers that Donald Trump is secretly leading a war against Democrats who are allegedly operating a child sex-slave pedophilia ring out of pizza parlors. When asked about that at a recent press briefing, Trump, as one would expect, breathed life into the conspiracy theory by answering, “Would that be a bad thing?” and “They are very good Americans.” I could almost hear “Q,” probably Putin himself, roaring with laughter.
Thank you, Mr. Ansley.
