Thursday, October 24, 2019

  I was telling both the Therapist and the Psych Doc that the most difficult part of all this was coming up with the opening paragraph. It's not exactly a lede for a newspaper story or an opening paragraph for an essay, because whatever this is, it isn't either of those. Anyway.



 Another day of very lovely weather. It started out in the 40s but stayed sunny and crisp all day. A beautiful example of Northeast Mississippi in the early fall. What I've read, though, we're supposed to get buckets of rain this weekend, A good excuse to be lazy, I say.

  We're dealing with the fallout from yesterday's lunacy, from Trump not knowing where Colorado is to House Republicans storming the impeachment investigations for... reasons, I guess. Now, here's the kicker. Trump said he said Colorado "kiddingly", which I assume means he was joke because that's not a goddamn word. That's the president, folks.

 You know, eventually Trump will be gone. He keeps "joking" about taking more than two terms, but even then he'll eventually pass beyond this mortal veil. What sort of precedent are we setting. He's pitching a stroppy over The New York Times and Washington Post, publicly dropping White House subscriptions and apparently leaning on federal agencies to do the same. More "jokes", but about his followers doing violent things to the "human scum" who disagree with him, whether it's Democrats and liberals or Republicans who aren't "loyal". Daily meltdowns on Twitter of varying comprehension and clarity, which the cult lap up like kittens with milk.

 Someday, though, someone else will be in the White House. It may be radically different than it was after 2016, but I do believe the country and the U.S. government will survive this fumbling boob's corruption and ineptitude. In some form or fashion, it'll go on. It survived Nixon, it survived the Civil War, it'll survive this. It's not going to crumble into feudal states despite Trump's howler monkeys "suggesting" they might have to take up arms against... someone if Trump is impeached or even defeated. Frankly, I don't think they have either the organization or the sack, but that's neither here nor there right now.

 But someone else will be president in the future, someone not named Trump. How are they going to handle things, I wonder. People - and candidates like Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg - are hoping to a "return to normalcy," which I guess means How Things Were Done that... lead up to the GOP nominating a unqualified pinhead like Trump. Again, neither here nor there, but I don't see it happening anyway. The country and the system survived Nixon, yes, but it was irrevocably changed and The Way Things Are Done were never the same. If they were, Reagan would've gotten the hook for Iran-Contra.

 So, something will change. The GOP base is ride or die for Trump, and "Trumpism" defines modern American conservatism as much a desire for lower taxes or forcing women to give birth. They're not shaking that booger off their finger anytime soon. If a centrist Democrat gets the nod, who knows, but I do think we're looking at a point in history that brought us the New Deal and the Great Society. The Democrats will have to move to the left to keep the great unwashed from breaking hoisting the black flag and start slitting throats of the upper class.

 But whatever Republican that comes next will have to be as combative and offensive and authoritarian and callow and petty as Trump's been. They are for ripping kids from their parents and putting them in cages or even given to people as "adopted children". They're fine with a president making piles of money and ignoring the Emolument Clause. They're down with an incompetent, even incomprehensible foreign policy that, among other things, tells anyone concerned with climate change to piss off.

 That's what the GOP has been encouraging and molding that sort of base since Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House. If it's biting them in the ass, too bad. You feed a dog gunpowder to make it mean, don't be surprised when it bites your hand off.

 So. Got a little wound up there, but I guess that's what I do. I've about decided the best thing I can do about this, whatever it is, is just let it ride and let it be what it is. I should've been doing this 10 years ago if I wanted to be making money at it now, but here we are. Same thing with posting videos I like from YouTube on Tumblr. If something demands a story, I'll tell it there.

 I need to find some way to differentiate what I write on Blogger and what's on WordPress. Why, I don't know, but it's something to do. Granted, this makes me less inclined to ask other writers for advice on what to write, but there you go. I should anyway, I know, but here's a good excuse to put it off for a while.

 So, let's wrap this up. I've got back into playing the Shadowrun Return games I own. Another cyberpunk deal, sometime I will go into that. But for now, let's call it a night. Adios, space cowboys.