He looks wearily from his pillow across the room at his desk, where two monitors and a Mac sit framed by a window that overlooks the side yard of his 3 bedroom, one-and-a-half bath cape.
He lays in bed with his dog for another 15 minutes, scratching her behind the ear. Finally, he lets out a heavy sigh before rolling over, sitting up, and lowering his feet to the floor.
His 11-year-old Pitbull watches sleepily, yawning and stretching across the center of the bed. He turns to give her one more pat on the head, and her tail thumps the mattress in warm appreciation. Then she lowers her head and closes her eyes. She’ll sleep another hour before heading downstairs to begin her day.
He heads down the staircase from the upstairs bedroom, emptying into the sun-splashed kitchen. It’s one of the things he likes most about the house, but he’s not sure why. He gives this some thought and concludes it’s the practicality of going from a room where sleep still clings to you to a room where the coffee pot awaits. That design makes perfect sense.
“That must be it,” he mutters to himself.
He gets the coffee pot going immediately. He opens the French doors from the kitchen to the cement patio overlooking the yard. The grass is still wet from the morning dew; he walks out, sits on a patio chair, and waits for the coffee to finish brewing.
He starts to rethink why he loves the idea of a staircase connecting the kitchen to the upstairs bedrooms, which has nothing to do with coffee and sleep. He thinks the design decision harkens back to simpler days when the kitchen was the hub of family activity. And even though that was long before his time, the idea of it sits well with him.
In another hour or so, he’ll be back upstairs at his computer, looking at emails and preparing for meetings.
He can’t wait for the day when sitting on the patio is not a prelude to work but rather an interlude to a day without plans or schedules.
As soon as Donald Trump injected himself into the bloodstream of American politics, the Republican party had a problem. And after four years of the Trump presidency, the fascist tendencies he invoked and promoted torpedoed traditional conservatism. As a result, the pre-Trump Republican party lays at the bottom of America’s political ocean, its wrecked hollowed hull a visage of hopelessness.
Although Trump lost resoundingly in 2020, Trumpism remains rampant in the Republican party. Trumpian principles of might-is-right and that lying is perfectly acceptable as long the lies achieve the desired result continues to threaten our democracy.
Republicans in the Senate had multiple opportunities to expunge Donald Trump from the Republican party, with the second impeachment the last best chance. But instead of being proactive, Mitch McConnel and other republicans hedged their bets and sat on their hands. Privately, Republican leadership hoped their voters would have been sickened enough by the events of January 6th to wash their hands of Trump and Trumpism.
Republicans not pushing for Trump’s removal was a strategic decision. The thinking was that if voters said, “enough is enough”, Republican politicians could absolve themselves of the “Trump problem” and avoid getting on the wrong side of Trump. But unfortunately, McConnel and others in the Senate didn’t account for how deeply entrenched republican voters had become in the big lie. They also failed to recognize the degree to which hot-button cultural issues had buttressed the Republican voter’s willingness to turn away from truth and facts.
The Republican leadership’s miscalculation on Trump has led to a “rat-in-the-shower” state of affairs for American Democracy.
Our Democracy is more vulnerable than it’s ever been. And with the midterms in November and the 2024 Presidential election looming, America’s democracy problem has taken on a sense of urgency that we’ve never seen before.
Democrats and independents need to be single-issue voters in 2022 and 2024, and that single issue is Democracy.
Fame is potent nectar, and in America particularly, we crave fame more than any other country.
In America, millions believe that celebrity or notoriety can help one overcome a life that feels empty or seems meaningless. There are television shows that celebrate and glorify instant fame. Some social media platforms provide the false promise that all anyone needs to achieve fame is a webcam and an account.
And when attempts to capture fame crumble and the realization that fame by talent or artistry is unreachable, some Americans reach for the gun.
Because in America, a gun is always within reach, and with it, fame and notoriety.
Many people are angry today because a constitutional right that’s been in place for more than 50 years and widely supported by the vast majority of Americans was overturned by five conservative justices, three of which were appointed by the most corrupt president in U.S history.
The court’s decision does not align with what most Americans believe and want regarding bodily autonomy and healthcare for women.
So, what to do?
Well, for the 2022 midterms, we need to become single-issue voters and do whatever we can to get like-minded individuals to become single-issue voters, and then VOTE!
Vote against any candidate who supports the Supreme court’s decision to do away with a woman’s right to choose.
It’s important to remember the court’s decision does not make abortion illegal. Instead, the decision says the constitution no longer protects a woman’s right to an abortion. It’s now up to individual states to decide whether abortion is legal or illegal. A woman raped in Missouri might be criminally liable if she tries to terminate her pregnancy in that state. But if that same woman crosses the border into Illinois, her right to terminate her pregnancy is fully protected and legal.
The ruling to overturn Roe will disproportionally affect poor women. Keep your eyes peeled for organizations that will connect women who live in states where abortion is illegal to services in states where abortion is legal — and then support these organizations by donating money and volunteering. Help these organizations provide transportation and a safe place to stay for those who don’t have the means to secure resources on their own.
As I listen to the mountain of compelling evidence about President Trump’s attempted coupe, I hear the same complaint repeatedly from friends:
Even in the face of undeniable evidence, Republican voters and politicians continue to deny facts. They refuse to admit that Trump was, and is, a threat to Democracy.
The presumption that Truth and Democracy are unifying principles in America is false.
The fact is this:
Millions of Americans could give a flying-fuck about truth or Democracy.
If Trump supporters had a choice between living in a Democracy or living in a system where “their guy” runs the show (regardless of whether he was duly elected), they’d choose the latter. Every. Single. Time.
For the rest of us, it’s time to stop thinking that Republicans will experience a “come to Jesus” moment as it relates to democracy and truth. It’s not going to happen. There won’t be a tipping point or epiphany where millions suddenly realize Donald Trump lied.
There are two reasons this won’t happen:
1: For most Trump supporters, truth and democracy matter less than their vision for America and what they feel in their gut.
2: Trump’s lies have spread and metastasized as an “alternative truth” in the collective minds of millions of Americans.
Historically, the phrase “The truth will come out” implies that truth cannot be suppressed forever. Eventually, it is revealed. In the past, when truth was revealed, there was some sort of backlash against the lies and liars who tried to suppress it. Those days are gone.
In America, truth has become inconsequential. Today, when the truth is revealed and that truth conflicts with what millions of Trump supporters want to believe or what they feel in their gut, they simply deny the truth.
So, what’s the consequence of truth becoming inconsequential? Disorder and conflict. And that’s where America is heading, sadly.
Republican voters were fed a constant diet of lies from when Donald Trump became the leader of the Republican party.
There were lies from Trump and his surrogates.
There were lies from Fox News.
There were lies from conspiracy-based websites and groups like QAnon.
A constant diet of lies is not unlike a constant diet of junk food. If you eat nothing but junk for years, your body turns to shit. Likewise, if you consume nothing but lies yearly, your mind becomes damaged and malleable mush.
Honestly, it’s difficult not to get angry at Trump supporters who constantly spout nonsense entirely refutable by facts. But getting angry at them is like getting angry at a 10-year-old who still believes in Santa Claus.
From the time that 10-year-old child was old enough to comprehend language, they were fed the Big Santa Claus lie — most likely by someone they trust.
Trump supporters (like that 10-year-old child) were lied to for years by a person (or a website or cable television network) that they trusted implicitly. As a result, millions of Americans refuse to believe the truth, and a boatload of truth-denying anti-democratic politicians seek public office.
American Democracy is teetering on edge. Will you fight for it?
She can feel the weight of her son’s head on her chest and remembers how she cupped the back of his head and ran her fingers through his dark curls.
She still feels him squeezing her rib cage. She remembers him loosening his embrace, his arms slipping from around her, before letting go and walking through the front doors of his elementary school.
She remembers the carefree smile as he looked over his shoulder toward her before disappearing forever.
She can’t bear waking up one day and not feeling the remnants of that final hug.
She hasn’t slept through the night since the incident and can’t forgive herself for letting her boy walk through those doors.
She wants to close her eyes, stop feeling, and succumb to the eternal blackness.
Knowing that other mothers suffered before her and still more will suffer after her, with no substantial changes to gun laws, hollows her out.
Her son was murdered by an 18-year-old boy with an AR-15. His gun purchase was protected by an antiquated and misused 233-year-old constitutional amendment and a gun-loving governor.
Her son’s right to live and grow up was not protected.
Over the last several days, she’s listened to pointless academic debates about that amendment and its meaning. It doesn’t mean anything to her.
It’s all just words and platitudes.
After everything is said and done, her boy is dead.
She enters her bathroom, places two framed pictures of her son on the sink, and runs a hot bath. She removes her clothes and sits on the tub’s edge, staring at his smiling face.
She remembers the day these pictures were taken.
In one, her son is wearing his Houston Astros baseball cap and clutching his glove to his chest. His first baseball game with his father. His smile bursts through the glass picture frame, and she feels a sudden pang in her heart.
Her husband took the other photo and gave it to her last Mother’s Day in a frame with brightly painted flowers. In it, her son is seen squatting in the flower bed on the side of the house, joyously pointing at a snail that he discovered. The sights and sounds of that day are still fresh in her memory. She can still see the mud from the freshly watered garden seeping from the holes in his Spiderman crocks — and she still hears all of the questions about this newly discovered creature.
“Mama, does he live in that shell…. is that his home?”
“What happens if he gets too big for his shell? – where does he go then?”
She remembers telling him that the shell protects the snail from harm. And that memory triggers a flood of emotions. She can’t stop thinking about how vulnerable and scared he must have been in those final minutes and how no one could protect him from harm.
She opens the medicine cabinet and takes out a razor blade. She picks up the framed pictures and kisses each one, tears running down her cheeks. Then she turns the pictures away from the tub to face the wall at the back of the sink.
She shuts off the water, slides into the tub, and carefully cuts open the veins running from her wrist to her forearm. She does this on each arm. Then she drops the razor in the tub and feels it slide along the side of her hip before resting underneath her left buttock.
After the latest mass shooting of children, I cringe with disgust at my fellow citizens crowing incessantly and selfishly about their right to own and carry an AR-15.
As their toxic attitude elbows its way to the forefront of a national discussion on safety, we watch news coverage of funeral processions for the 19 elementary school children slaughtered by that weapon.
It’s fucking infuriating.
I’m tired of the threadbare and ill-fitting argument that tries to square a 233-year-old constitutional amendment with the right of an 18-year-old fast-food worker to purchase a weapon designed for inflicting mass casualties. The argument collides inhumanely with grief-stricken and shell-shocked parents with pierced hearts and tattered psyches.
With images of their dead children still fresh in their minds, grieving parents listened to a United States congressman argue his constituents need the AR-15 to shoot varments.
We should be enraged by what happened in Uvalde, Texas. But, we should be just as enraged by what’s not happening in the aftermath.
Small and incremental change in the face of a full-blown public safety crisis is like placing a band-aid on an AR-15 gunshot wound to the head of a 9-year-old. We need substantial changes to our gun laws if we’re genuinely interested in saving lives.
Tweaking existing regulations around the edges is mere window-dressing for politicians. It will do very little to prevent the next mass shooting.
bendingtheneedle 