Later, Comma

After the debacle of November 5, I knew that the next four years were going to be difficult. Well, difficult is not the right word. Terrifying springs to mind. Disappointing would be closer to the mark, because life in these United States would have been so much better if the election had tipped the other way.

But my prevailing mood over the next four years will not merely be disappointment. I will feel angry and apprehensive. I will feel grief for what was and what could have been. I will long for the pendulum to end its arc toward magatastrophe and turn away from that grimness and begin to move toward a righteous vision.

Until that turning comes, though, the nation must pass through a time of vulnerability. It seems to me that our newly elected “leadership” disrespects our national legacy of striving to be a more perfect union. They who will be in charge over the next four years (at least) do not care so much for our country being a democratic republic. More than 77 million voters shared this disdain last November. Those voters were sold a bill of goods.

Hostility is the coin of the new realm. Issues surrounding immigration across our southern border appear to be major motivators. But the sloganeering of mass deportation is not so much a policy argument as it is a metaphor for the candidate’s brand. The repetitious use of this and other faux-policy slogans legitimize hostility toward dissenters and outsiders. It is not actual politics, it is packaging. It is the shiny wrapper of hostility that triggers an endorphin rush for some people. That’s what the 77 million voted for. What they got for their vote is a perverted national agenda that thrives on hostility toward anyone and anything that does not demonstrate blind allegiance to the new order. For so many, it feels good to hate. It feels even better to destroy. It is a small step to violence.

This is not progress. It is a rejection of progress. It is a vision of exclusion, disruption and repeal. Our new leader’s imperative to destroy what others have made more perfect is not ideological. It is personal, like a child who starts fires because someone spanked him when he was younger.

He is not about making America great. He has released the worst demons of our nature. The goal is to destroy.

Early in the presidential campaign, our new commander-in-chief defined himself, saying “I am your retribution.” He reiterated his 2016 slogan to make America “great again.” But retribution should not be confused with greatness. Retribution is all about anger and revenge. At its core, retribution is about punishment of one’s enemies to avenge an unfairness, even if that unfairness is only imagined. Indeed, the more imaginary the unfairness, the greater the desire to punish. Those who support him are led to believe that America only used to be great but now isn’t. It is an imaginary story of a history in which America’s greatness was unfairly stolen and retribution is owed.

The MAGA agenda is not the good of the country but the glorification of an old man who has lived a life of privilege and fraud. His proposed cabinet and close advisors will amplify any insane thing he says. In that regard, they are just characters he finds useful in the dark psychodrama that plays out in his senescent mind. Ignorance and incompetence do not matter. Perhaps ignorance and incompetence are virtues from the point of view of this aging man who, because they voted for him, once declared “I love the poorly educated.”  

I hope for a resistance that will counter incompetence and ignorance with intellect and wisdom and that will shame mere performance with qualified leadership. This resistance will be vocal and loud. It will be grounded in the complexity and nuance of reality instead of spur-of-the-moment psychological neediness and game-playing.

I hope for such a resistance, knowing that it might not exist. Maybe it is nothing more than my own wishful thinking. Maybe the grand experiment that was America has in fact been caught up in a spiral of doom. Resistance may be inadequate if not futile.

I hate the thought that I might die in the moment when the nation is falling apart. Despite its once-best intentions and high Aquarian hopes, the generation that I am a part of is failing to stop the spiral and instead has been voting in favor of the nation’s doom.

In my heart, I will resist. I will mute the sound of his flatulent voice. I will not pollute my vision with his deceitful visage. I will not give up hope.

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Some other stuff for later,