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It was a Tuesday morning like any other Tuesday morning

I logged on to my Mac, opened Outlook, and started going through my emails. Nothing out of the ordinary, several notifications from colleagues requesting reviews of the latest design changes for the September release, a few emails from developers with review comments for a draft of the documentation I put out last week, and a one-on-one meeting on my calendar with an individual whose name I did not recognize.

The sun was shining and an early Autumn breeze billowed the curtains in my office.

I went on with my business.

The first item was to review a document in Confluence (our internal repository for posting and sharing files). But when I clicked on the link, I received an “ACCESS DENIED” message. This is not entirely unusual. I figured the network was down temporarily.

Time to grab that second cup of coffee.

I’ve been employed as an information developer for over 25 years, with most of my tenure at IBM. At IBM, I created user assistance (context sensitive help, blogs, release notes, and help center articles) for a variety of software products and solutions.

From 2014 to 2019, I worked on IBM’s marketing / analytics software, which our clients installed to analyze and manage their customer’s experience.

In 2019, IBM pulled out of the “martech” space, selling their marketing analytics products to a private equity firm, who spun-up a new company to develop and sell the products. Most of the IBM employees (including myself) retained their positions with this the new company.

I enjoyed being part of a new venture. There was a buzz and energy that comes with being part of something fresh and new. I loved my team and my manager. The tools and processes were all different, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like I had some creative license in my work.

Life was good.

Sitting in front of my laptop with a fresh cup of Maxwell House. I tried to access Confluence one more time, still no luck.

I sent a message to my team lead:

“Hey there and good morning. I’m having trouble accessing internal systems. Have you been able to get to Confluence?”

“Good morning! Let me check. Yeup, I get in fine. Maybe reboot?

“When in doubt… 😊 ”

So, I rebooted my machine, sipped my coffee, and waited…

All rebooted, but still no luck getting to Confluence. I sent another message to my team lead, who responded:

“Weird! Let me ask around.”

“Thanks” I said.

Me: “By the way, I have a meeting with <name> at noon. Do you know who <name> is, or what the meeting might be about? I hate going into a meeting blind.”

“Oh, she’s a designer, works for <our managers name>”

Me: Ah, OK, I’ll drop her a message in Slack. Thanks!

So, I searched Slack for the person that I was scheduled to meet with and sent her a message:

“Hi <name>, I have a 12:00 meeting on my calendar with you, just looking for context 😊”

“Hi Geof. I have some time now if you want to jump on a web conference, we can talk through it.

Me: “OK, give me a few minutes.”

Slightly agitated, I whispered to myself “Talk through what!!??”

Enter that sinking feeling, when you start to piece things together and the most likely outcome is you getting canned.

I closed my office door, took a few more sips of coffee, gathered myself, and clicked the web conference link.

At the other end of my laptop, I see a young woman sitting at her desk. She seems a bit shaken, but gets to the heart of the matter:

“Because of a restructuring, your position at the company has been eliminated. You no longer have a job at <company name> Today is your last day at <company name>. This has nothing to do with your performance and your manager will provide a letter stating so. Stop working and clear your laptop of any personal files.

Me: Damn. Wow. Really?

Firing woman: “I know this is a lot to process. Take the rest of the day to gather your thoughts. We’ll be sending a transition package to your personal email. I don’t have your home email, can you provide that to me?”

Me: “Its reilly – r e I l l y – “G” as in “God, I can’t believe I am getting laid off” “S” as in “Steven” @gmail.com”

Firing woman: “Let me give you my cell. Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions. I’m really, really sorry:

Me: It’s OK.

And just like that, I was done.

I closed my laptop, picked up my cup of coffee, opened my office door and walked to my living room in stunned silence. My wife was home on vacation. She looked at me.

“What’s wrong?”

“I lost my job”.

The words hung in the air between us, and as I spoke them, my brain sputtered a bit, trying to process the ramifications of those words … How will I provide for my family? Will we be able to stay in our home? How will I help my boys with their college loans…

My wife calmed me. “Just breathe, relax, we’ll be OK.”

I love her for that.

Because my manager was on leave, it fell to this other person to lay me off. I actually felt for her. I got a call from my manager later that morning. She was genuinely upset and very supportive – same with my team lead.

Everyone was caught off guard by the speed at which the layoffs came and no one was happy about at how things were handled.

Its been a few days now, and I’ve had some time to think about things, and here’s what I’ve come to understand.

You can work your ass off — put in 12-hour days regularly– sacrifice time with your family — put an immense amount of pressure on yourself to do a good job, to meet aggressive deadlines, to produce quality work — but in the end, if the company has to let you go as part of cost-saving restructure, they will do so, without hesitation.

Corporations are not people (sorry Mitt, you were wrong about that). Corporations are bottom-line driven entities that do whatever needs to be done to remain competitive or survive in the marketplace or keep their shareholders happy. And if that means laying off hundreds of dedicated, hardworking people, then so be it.

But the people that make up the corporation? They are living, breathing, empathetic beings, who (like me) work hard and make sacrifices. And out of this shared experience comes a love and respect for your colleagues.

Sure, we get paid for our efforts, but it’s not just about the money. We also work to ensure the success of the company and our fellow workers, who, over the years become kind of a second family.

I hold no ill will towards the company that laid me off, because I understand what companies are, what drives them, what they need to do to survive.

For me, it’s the people that matter.

I’ve received a great amount of support and encouragement from colleagues who also lost their jobs this week, as well as from those who remain employed at my former company. I can’t express adequately in words how much that support and encouragement has meant. It lightened my spirit in the days that followed that Tuesday morning, which, as it turns out, was not like every other Tuesday morning.

Dangerous sheep in MAGA hats

“I know you don’t like Trump, but….”

I hear this from people all the time — people I thought I knew.

I’ve come to realize we don’t really “know” anyone except our family and closest friends.

I’m done assuming that the people I “know” and associate with on social media are decent-minded — as if “decent-mindedness” was an inherent human trait. It’s not. Decency is taught, learned, and practiced — it is fed, nurtured, and supported by those closest to us, but only if those people themselves have been taught or shown what it means to be “decent.”

What I’ve learned over the last 4 years, in an eye-opening-perspective-changing-punch-in-the-face, is a fuck-load of my “friends” are not decent-minded at all.

Despite the never-ending shit-show of the last four years, many of them are unwilling to call a liar a liar, a criminal a criminal, a traitor a traitor, and a demagogue a demagogue – even when the President (through actions and words) demonstrates he is all those things.

I wrongly assumed that if I just pointed out the obvious, people with a modicum of intelligence and a smidgen of integrity would be able to connect the dots — especially when those dots reside on a fairly straight line — that the President of the United States is a habitual liar, a criminal, a traitor, a narcissistic demagogue and, in the words of his own sister, has “no principles and cannot be trusted“.

The President’s desperate attempt to cling to power, which is inextricably tied to his fear of criminal prosecution, come at the expense of our national security, the safety of our troops, the health of our citizens, our national unity, and the principals of western democracy on which our country was built.

I wrongly assumed that the continuous four-year flow of misinformation and lies that fall from the President’s mouth, like garbage from the back of a sanitation vehicle, would be evidence enough to convince all Americans that the President of the United States is a threat to the country.

Instead, what’ I’ve learned over the last 4-years is that none of the President’s behavior matters to the millions of sheep in MAGA hats, who are so full of fear and drunk on conspiracy theories, that they follow this President like bewitched cultists, bludgeoning our democracy with their bibles and strangling our freedoms with the American flag.

I left Facebook because every time I logged in, I was reminded that America suffers from a malignancy of dimwitted nationalists and hateful bigots — and unfortunately, my Friends-list was littered with them.

America will collapse under another 4 years of this President unless decent-minded citizens show up en masse on November 3rd 2020.

We must end this in November

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I’m not a violent man, but every time I see him on TV, I want to punch that mother-fucker in the face.

That petulant dumpy fuck, arms crossed perpetual thin-lipped scowl, with that fake orange tan and fake-ass hair.

He’s a soulless empty suit of balsa-wood and blubber. No guts, no steel, he’s an unsteady hand in a time of unparalleled turbulence; he’s a loud and useless howl of vainglory, cheaply disguised as bravado. If those around him had the balls to simply blow in his direction, he would fold in on himself like a house of cards, and this sad chapter in American history would be over — the lack of courage and integrity is as abundant as the president’s midsection.

We have weak and feckless men in leadership positions, where the lowest common denominator is a thirst for power, money, and sex. And though it’s always been that way, today it’s worse. It’s worse because our president is more vindictive than a cheerleader mom, in addition to being vile, insecure, and inept.

If you vote for this fuck after all you’ve seen, after all, you’ve heard and witnessed, you should be embarrassed and ashamed of yourself – a vote for Trump in 2020 is akin to banging nails into your child’s coffin while wearing a crazed a shit-eating grin on your face.

Wake the fuck up! Wake the fuck up! Wake the fuck up!

We are running out of integrity – running out of resources – running out of grace – running out of time.

End this disgraceful chapter in America’s history this November.

Down Rabbit Hole We Go

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Welcome to Stupidville

next stop, Devastation town

I’m Donald, your conductor

I moved on her, I tried to fuck her

now Americas’ my biggest sucker

Dr. Deb toes-the-line

and disregards the asinine

She hides her frown

and coddles the clown

he dons her complicity

like a crown

“It’s just hunch I had at lunch”

a Lysol-laced epiphany

a moron-led symphony

a crappy dog and pony show

and down the rabbit hole we go

There’s no respites from test kits

and the mask discussion has no end

all the wrong decisions that got us here

become impossible to defend

“Suppose we hit the body with a powerful light?”

It never fails, we’re off the rails

the string detaches

from the kite

As we flail and wail into the night

Fascism’s Forest

All together now! Puppet faces others, all with raised hands

Every time he speaks

I hear the bluster and the lie

and what my mother taught me

about empty barrels

making the loudest noise

bubbles up inside

And I wonder how

the plainly evident

gets skewed in the eyes

of so many others

what did their mothers

teach them about

boisterous bullies and

skirt-chasing scoundrels

Perhaps the words

were never spoken

or maybe only as a token

and so,

we have the lost and broken

Unable to separate

the shit from shinola

they bend to the viciously simplistic

The fake paternalistic

Father-knows-best

how to rule the rest

They never question

they simply fall in line

No matter the level of asinine

As we march democracy

towards that empty pit

in fascism’s forest

we hope against hope

that eyes will open

before that final blast

to the back of the head

Thug

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“She’s gonna go through some things.”

“Take her out.”

“Get rid of her.”

Menacing phrases that we’d expect from a mobster, a gangster, a thug – not the President of the United States.

When a president wants to replace an ambassador, a simple letter asking for their resignation and thanking them for their service is the norm.

Instead, we get:

“She’s gonna go through some things.”

“Take her out.”

“Get rid of her.”

Instead, we get presidential tweets and ginned-up articles from right-wing propaganda machines that sully and degrade the reputation of a career diplomat with an impeccable record of service and sacrifice.

Instead, we listen and watch as the most powerful man in the world publicly drags a distinguished member of our foreign service through the mud.

And for what?

Because her high ethical standards served as a barrier to the President’s craven lust for power and political advantage.

“She’s gonna go through some things”

“Take her out”

“Get rid of her”

Trump’s threat to Ambassador Yovanovitch and the smear he initiated during her testimony (via a fucking Tweet) were despicable and beneath contempt, and ANOTHER example of the character (or lack thereof) of our President.

How much more evidence do people need that the President is a thug, driven by self-interest?

What is the moral tipping point for those who use low unemployment numbers and a high stock market as rationale for turning a blind-eye to presidential thuggery and crimes?

By the way, we can have a decent and moral president – AND a strong economy – Just look at our last president.

Everybody sing along to the Troompa Loompa song . . .

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Troompa Loompa dipitty-dee

We’ve got an orange presidency

Troompa Loompa

Liar in Chief, a two-bit gangster

A thug and a thief

What do you get when you vote for a schmuck?

A science-denying know-nothing fuck

When the guy at the top

Doesn’t know how to think

The world will always be on the brink

Troompa Loompa dipitty-dense

The orange-faced-moron

never makes sense

Troompa Loompa dippy-dang

Be better off with a President Yang

What do you get when you vote for fool?

A monosyllabic orange-faced tool

When the guy at the top

is a know-nothing hack

We never move forward

We always move back

Troompa Loompa dipitty-dump

We’ve got a guy who likes to flag hump

Troompa Loompa dipitty-shit

Aren’t Troompa Loompas tired of it?

What do you get when you vote for a dick?

An immoral moron who makes you feel sick

When anger and fear get spun into hate

We’ll never ever

Make America Great

Troompa Loompa dipitty-doo

To get rid of orange, you gotta vote blue

Troompa Loompa dipitty-dye

Trump is worse than a stick in the eye

What do you get when you fall for the ruse?

A burnt-orange menace who parrots Fox news

We’re deep in the weeds

Stuck in the morass

Still republican’s kiss that sorry fat ass.

Troompa Loompa dipitty-dee

We’ve got an orange presidency

Troompa Loompa dipitty day

Can’t wait for November to vote him away

“Sending Prayers”

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If God is all knowing and all powerful, I suspect a single prayer is all he or she needs (or wants for that matter). Anything more than one is probably just noise to the almighty.

If there’s a God (there isn’t), I don’t imagine him or her saying “99 prayers… Damn! Just one short. Unfortunately, Aunt Bertha has to go”.

I understand the formulaic and informal nature of human dialog:

Person A: “My aunt is going in for surgery today”

Person B: “I’ll say a prayer”

I get that.

But I’m dumbfounded by people who think whispering upward actually makes a difference, or that there’s a correlation between the number of prayers posted on Facebook and Aunt Bertha’s chance of surviving an illness or medical procedure. To me, that’s delusional thinking.

I get annoyed by people asking for prayers on Facebook. I get agitated at the thought of “prayer posses”. Does that make me a dick? I kind of think it does. Why does it bother me so much when people solicit prayers?

I assume that anyone over a certain age and of minimal life-experience knows that prayers or “positive vibes” don’t do jack. Logically, if prayer worked, no one would get cancer, mass shootings would be a thing of the past, and Donald Trump would not exist.

After the first 100 prayers with no results, don’t all sane people come to a common-sense conclusion — that sometimes Aunt Bertha makes it — sometimes she doesn’t, and the outcome has nothing to do with praying.

When a friend or relative is in need, instead of offering prayers, maybe ask what you can “do”.

“If you want, I can bring in the mail and help pay the bills.”

“I can get your kids get off to school every morning and can pick them up from soccer practice”

“I’m preparing some meals for the family, just pop them in the microwave.”

“Don’t worry about house cleaning –I can come over on Tuesdays and get all that taken care of, just focus on getting better.”

“I can walk the dog on Thursdays and Saturdays and my kids can help walk her on the other days.”

These offers are infinitely more valuable than whispering upward.

P.S

You can still pray if you want (no help / no harm I suppose), but follow that prayer up with acts of kindness that help the person in need directly and in a concrete way.

America 2020

lava

Stop asking, “what’s become of us?”

America was cut and scarred by intolerance and bigotry early on, the deep wound concealed halfheartedly by a cheaply applied varnish of “American” ideals.

Under the hot and hateful glare of this president, the varnish has evaporated, and that once concealed scar appears on our society’s skin. You can run your thumb over its jagged ugliness — its toothy sneer snakes across the heartland like a drug-resistant malignancy. Fed by an unrelenting wave of lies, conspiracy theories, and half-truths (shared by the masses like communion wafers and wine), this malignancy threatens the republic.

America is at the precipice of an increasingly unstable democracy, wobbling like a drunken fairy on the head of a pin, while our enemies laugh and smile approvingly.

They never imagined it would be so easy.

The Threat

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The threat is existential

the rhetoric is real

hate can hinder progress

when a liar lies with zeal

Democracy’s a drunk

she teeters on the curb

and every day’s a day

we have to reckon the absurd

America’s in chaos

she’s lost in discontent

fertile ground for revolution

discord and dissent

Ask who stands to gain

when the country’s split in two

the ones who gain the most

are never me and you

Time to take her back

put her proudly on that hill

let her shine

the way she used to

before the Russians

found their shill