A - one of many.
Wrecked - failed, neglectful, giving up.
Prophet - still yelling truth against power into the wind.
This week we were hit by the not so, just so fairy tale of an abusive president giving a not so State of the Union address to a not so congress and maybe still Supreme Court.
Any notion that Congress is a separate and equal branch of government is a fairytale. Congressional Republicans no longer make any attempt to separate themselves for Trumps authoritarian agenda fueled by the promise of Project 2025. Not only do they not remove themselves from the most vile and hateful implications of Russel Vought’s masterwork, they now actively engage and give support to the lies of the president in documented words and action.
Meanwhile, that other co-equal branch of government, the Supreme Court, finds itself on the brink of acquiescing to the bully or standing on the firm ground of precedence with an eye to its hallowed place in history. I can’t imagine that the ultimate institutionalist, Justice John Roberts, has slept well these past weeks.
But perhaps I am just transferring onto Justice Roberts my own fears and concerns. Six weeks in and counting, and I simply have two questions for this moment.
Will Democrats and never Trumpers finally find their way out of the labyrinth of their hallowed halls of Congress and emerge into the light to resist and lead?
Is the constitution still the law of the land or is it merely a stumbling block to Alito and Thomas’ vision for King Trump?
Perhaps Congress needs to be reminded of Ripley’s words to a corporate board room of suits at the beginning of Aliens - Did the IQ in this room just drop sharply? This, all this that you think is so important - you can kiss all this goodbye!
Or maybe the Supreme Court needs to heed Gandalf’s words and stance when faced with the Balrog in The Lord of the Rings- YOU SHALL NOT PASS!
I’d like to live in that movie of courage and competence. Instead, here we find ourselves, a democracy on the brink of a constitutional crisis. Your hair may not be on fire yet, to use that fun catch phrase that insinuates anyone paying attention is overreacting (me included) but the electrical outlet is sparking and the cord attached to your hair dryer just went up in flames next to your hand. Seriously. Our collective hair may not be on fire, but how bad does this have to get before we realize that a constitutional crisis is like bankruptcy and pregnancy - it moves slowly until it happens suddenly.
Let’s leave movies and move to the books that shaped my young adult life. Lies, lies and more damn lies. It’s Catch-22. It’s 1984 in the flesh. Up is down, right is left, war is peace, allies are enemies. Empathy for the most vulnerable of the Hebrew/Christian bible - the widow, the orphan, the homeless, the poor - is a sin. Empathy for the Brave New World of tech bros and oligarchs is a joyous future that you will willing walk toward whether you like it or not.
Chainsaws are scalpels. Bodies are fit but minds are full of fat. My body is not my own, it is your choice.
But back to the speech.
Let’s applaud a childhood cancer survivor and then cut off the credit cards needed to buy the supplies to continue the cancer research that saved his life.
Let’s cut Medicaid, and Medicare, and Social Security, paid for safety nets that represent the best angels of our human nature to fund tax cuts for the .01% of the world’s wealthiest individuals.
Let’s fire the experts who understand and can respond to Avian bird flu and tell Americans that this creates just a wee little disturbance in egg prices that will pass.
Let’s allow Russia to own another sovereign nation with our tacit help, leaning into the narrative that the extraction of another country’s mineral wealth and colonization is peace.
I am reminded of another classic movie line, this one from Team America, the most vulgar and funny marionette movie ever made. In a song about the transactional nature that is the hallmark of today’s foreign policy we hear - Freedom is a buck-o-five. That is, everything has a price. Everybody has a price.
The toddler temper tantrums of our president in speech and in executive action remind me of the Rudyard Kipling Just So stories, fables that tell us how a leopard got its spots, how the elephant got his long nose or how the whale got its small throat. These stories were told each night as a way to calm and put to sleep Kipling’s young daughter. They are told Just So because any deviation resulted in his young daughter demanding that he stop and tell it in the right way.
Trump routinely floats his own Just So stories for the American childish populace. Why is there crime in America? Because Sleepy Joe Biden opened the border to murderers, rapists and immigrants who eat our cats and dogs. Why are our children unsafe in public schools? Because woke librarians stock libraries with books that groom boys to become trans girls in middle school sports. Why do we still have inflation? Because the horrible members of Congress knowingly and purposely appropriated funds for activities in the federal government that are hothouses for waste, fraud and abuse.
I am tired of all this. I think finally of my favorite dystopian, sci-fi movie - Blade Runner.
At this point, I see Americans as both the dying, rebellious replicant holding on to the memories of his brief existence in a cruel world that used him up, and I see Americans as the exhausted, injured and confused blade runner, simply trying to do a job and finally coming to the realization of how much pain and suffering he has caused in his quest to fix what big tech had wrought. At the pivotal final encounter, the two exhausted bodies sit on a wet roof top and we hear the replicant give voice to the endpoint of all their struggles - All this. These too shall be lost, like tears in the rain.
I can feel myself on that wet roof top as the replicant opens his mouth to the weeping sky and takes his last breath.
I can feel myself ready to give up.
I can feel the introvert that is me folding in on itself.
So, I take this day off to fight these feelings of hopelessness. I kickbox at the gym. I write this blog. I make lunch. I pop in Mars Attacks and Buckaroo Bonzai because both movies have the best satirical takes on alien invasion and I need to laugh.
And then I get ready to walk downtown for a protest at my local Courthouse.
I am not giving up yet.
Peace.