Good-bye, Agony
Hello, Ecstasy
I have earned degrees at an advanced level of education. I am relatively intelligent. I am curious by nature and absolutely guaranteed to go ballistic when viewing or experiencing an act or threat of injustice. I am an 83-year-old Southern white woman born in, reared in, and totally committed to the romantic roots of my (currently sadly misguided) home state, Texas.
So, my hackles rise and my gorge turns on two separate instances now regrettably so common in my daily life.
1. Rituals of Resurrection: I cannot even despair when I read numerous progressive thought leaders mewling about Election 2024 and trying to raise from the dead a political party which no longer exists except as a voracious fund-raising arm for indolent holders of public office at the state and national level. Its true heart and soul are dead and gone, boys and girls. Its leadership got drunk on a successful overreach in Election 2008 and grossly miscalculated the mathematically probable cultural blowback in Elections 2016 and 2024. Only a global pandemic interrupted Donald John Trump’s march of madness, cruelty, corruption, revenge, and blatant self-enrichment. He is the weak-willed hand puppet of the Billionaire Boys Club in its campaign for inter-galactic control of power and wealth.
2. Offensive Big Words: If I had to look up a definition for “paradigm” and “inflection,” just what meaningful impact on the minds does anyone really believe any discussion attached to those concepts could have to the members of a working-class family? A carton of eggs at Kroger’s yesterday was priced at $7.46 a dozen and purchases of that product were limited to two a customer. Paradigm and inflect that, you pointy-headed apologists.
The pandemic gave the Democratic party a shot at its promise to redeem the soul of a democracy that Donald John Trump had so badly and publicly compromised during his first term in office as the Big Clueless Bully in Chief. At home, Joe Biden did a great job on damage control economically. Internationally, he mended NATO fences and refused to talk to Putin. But time was not his friend. And the Heritage Foundation was too well-financed and cunning for the likes of James Carville and his fellow thought and policy travelers. Deep in the hole of the consequences of its strategic hubris, the Democratic party blinked when Joe’s age betrayed his hopes and ambitions. In the only reasonable and best possible way forward, Kamala accepted the cloak and role of hopeful martyr. Quit blaming her for almost succeeding.
Here’s what everyone knew so well they even said it out loud.
Eat or Be Eaten
From 1991 to 1995, Texas was blessed with three strong women at its helm. Ann Richards, Molly Ivins, and Barbara Jordan were an amusing and formidable force for equity in a state so paternalistic that it appears in my dictionary next to the word “irredeemable.” I have taken it as a great honor in my lifetime to be confused with Ann in appearance, action, attitude, and effect. Ann baked cookies for their enemies. Molly disemboweled their pretentious self-serving posturing. Barbara was a political voice and force at the national level. In crude land pointed language, Ann is credited with being the first politician candid enough to summarize budget battles in language common enough for everyone to grasp—Show up to represent your interests or forfeit a bargaining opportunity.
During a public forum at the 2024 Munich Security Conference in Germany, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken echoed her hard-nosed wisdom when he warned the diplomats of the world, “If you are not at the table in the international system, you’re going to be on the menu.”
Dinner for Two
Victor Hugo famously noted that the Renaissance was the “setting sun all Europe mistook for dawn.”
Last week the titular heads of America and Russia had a 90-minute conversation. The call was inevitable. The full content may never be known. The available snippets provoked a wide range of reaction and comment.
For progressives here at home, it seemed as though the chaos, hardship and terror caused during the first 3 weeks of implementing Project 2025 proved either insufficient or just an appetizer to the odd mind and flaming ego of Donald John Trump. Onto the dumpster fire of confusion and concern already merrily blazing away, the 47th president of the barely United States of America tossed 108 years of foreign policy. And in the process, he disrespected every dime invested and every life lost in support of national security under the banner of inalienable human rights.
Early reports from abroad indicate Europe saw Trump’s grab for Ukraine’s rare earth resources as foregone. Lords chuckle over liquor and ladies titter over tea. Rearmament and realignment are on the tongue and table.
Trump and Putin did not invite Ukraine or NATO to their table last week.
They should not haunt their in-boxes for invitations to dinner in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, or London.
Trump’s second administration appears intent and content to revisit the blunders of the first, upping the ante and doubling down in every place and instance. It is easy to view the Ukraine Accord as Just another setting sun for the whole blessed paternalistic world to mistake for dawn.
Those two jerks seem to rejoice at the notion that democracy is dead. Long live all the various kings of chaos and repression.
Not So Fast, Sparky
Let us turn away (for the moment) from the urge to comment upon Europe’s eagerness to throw off the yoke of World War II restrictions on its essentially internecine nature. Let us, instead, stay focused on basic human needs and effective communication regarding them.
How do you get field workers to come to the table?
You ring the dinner bell.
What’s for Dinner?
Something solid, nutritious, and sustaining.
Like hope and reason.
Side dishes of common regard and respect.
Eggs for your stomach and gas for your independent action.
Who’s the Cook?
I am.
I am the Power of One.
And I am legion. A true plurality of We the People is as common, as reliable, as spontaneous as me. Or, as plants turning to sunlight.
We the People cannot live in the darkness of tyranny and repression.
We the People will find a way to survive and thrive. We are constitutionally unable not to yearn for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We the People truly want to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure the domestic tranquilly, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
And we won’t need or heed big words lacking immediate remedy to our hunger for more and better than the Right Here and Right Now of Trump 2.0.
So, give up on being a Democrat. or a Republican or a Libertarian or Green or Just Plain Pissed Off.
Be an American.
Trump and Putin didn’t invite you to their table.
Don’t let them eat at yours.
Every day in every legal way use your person and your purse to demand a shadow cabinet and a third set of articles of impeachment.
Stop the bleeding.
Don’t just survive Project 2025.
Rise to delay, deny, and destroy it root and leaf.
Prevail.
How very kind, Georgia. You flatter and energize me. Thank you most sincerely.
I'm kinda toying with a thought in my head that is a blend of "of course" and "now what?" - and I am breathing deeply as I allow the question to actually BE in my mind. What if: Trump has actually 1) sold the presidency and 2) lost his mind? In response to your encouragement to deal with what I can, I'm not sure what steps to take. It's not like his cabinet is going to hold him to the 25th Amendment - not his principal officers in the executive branch, not the House or the Senate, and even if they did, JD isn't going to do anything against Musk either (or Thiel). But seriously, how do you read this part of the Amendment?
Section 4
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.