Post 252 - November 18, 2020

Day 252…

The sheer repetition of these endless very short days is wearing on me.

I am sleeping well most nights. I’ll admit that. Between Michael and the cat, I wake up several times each morning. When I am really awake, and the two of them are elsewhere, I’ll get up and make the bed.

The extra pillows are stacked on a rocking chair in the corner. They were stacked there, by me, some hours before. The time between the stacking and the unstacking and the stacking again seems to get shorter and shorter.

I then take my vitamins. This annoys my doctor who says I should take them with food, but whatever I am doing seems to satisfy the blood tests for him, so that’s what I’m doing.

I then make some coffee and turn on the news.

These days, the news appears to be exactly the same day in and day out. It’s like the screen has frozen.

“States tighten restrictions as cases, hospitalizations surge.”

Every single day without change. Cases on the rise. Unchecked. Republican officials throughout the country blocking any and all attempts to contain it.

The Governor of South Dakota, solidly in the President’s pocket, still refuses to issue a mask mandate despite the fact that the infection rate in her state are the highest in the country.

On CNN, a rectangle in the upper right-hand corner clocks the case rate numbers. Day by day, they climb relentlessly.

What, I wonder, was in that corner of the screen before all of this started?

Then below that rectangle on the screen, there’s another one. The electoral college map. 306 Blue (51%) 232 Red (47.2%). Blue has nearly 6 million votes more. That’s become a permanent part of the screen too.

And still the Republicans refuse to accept the results.

The President’s $20 thousand/day lawyer Rudi Giuliani is not faring very well in the courts trying to get the results over-turned. Arguing in generalities rather than specifics, all he is doing is delaying the inevitable. And driving up his billing hours.

In Pennsylvania yesterday, the Judge said to him, "You're alleging that the two individual plaintiffs were denied the right to vote. But at bottom, you're asking this court to invalidate more than 6.8 million votes, thereby disenfranchising every single voter in the Commonwealth. Could you tell me how this result could possibly be justified?"

There is a 5pm deadline today on the GOP getting Wisconsin to do a vote recount. A full recount of votes in Wisconsin would cost $8 million. That wouldn’t be taxpayer’s money that would pay for that, that would be money that the President’s campaign would need to provide.

The campaign is floundering in a massive amount of debt as it is. The recount will not change the results. It will just delay the inevitable and drive them further into the hole. The President has a long history of not paying his debts.

Chris Krebs, a senior Department of Homeland Security official, said that the 2020 election was the most secure in American history.

So, yesterday, the President fired him.

Krebs was fired for no reason whatsoever besides the fact that the President doesn’t want to hear the truth. He. Lost.

The President has stopped doing his job. Over the course of his term in office, he spent more days golfing than any other President in history. Now, however, he doesn’t appear to even be trying to make a show of governing. He has not had a public engagement in days.

His brand-new acting Secretary of Defense announced yesterday that thousands of troops would be pulled out of Afghanistan and Iraq. This move would accomplish one of the President’s political goals. But without having, in any way, addressed any of the issues that have led those troops to be there in the first place, the results could be a disaster.

Without our presence in Afghanistan, there will be nothing keeping the Taliban from reasserting its control there. It will allow them to become stronger and, as a result, more of a threat to our safety here. Without our presence in Iraq, the democratic government currently in place, may not be strong enough to survive. We will lose influence in the region.

The President’s blanket policy of doing nothing about anything is not going to work.

Not attacking this virus is going to kill countless more Americans and, potentially, cripple our economy.

Withdrawing troops and not engaging with the forces they are there to protect us from, will only allow declared enemies of our nation to grow stronger.

Not conceding an election that he has very clearly lost in a secure election does nothing to get him any closer to being declared the winner. Instead, keeping the new Administration from being able to begin their work, creates a national security risk.

Throughout all of this, the Senate and the House remain completely deadlocked on approving a new stimulus bill. More and more, it is starting to look as though there will not be any sort of meaningful legislation passed until after January 20th.

So, we wait.

I used to think that there would be a point at which even the President’s most loyal supporters would finally have to say enough. I no longer think that. They are going to sink with the ship - waving their flags and wearing their red caps as the water rises over their little empty heads.

Apparently, even once he left the office in complete disgrace, President Nixon still had 25% of the country behind him. These people will not learn anything.

I am starting to feel like I am in a rut in terms of where I walk or ride each day. I was thinking that I would go up to the Cloisters, which is all the way uptown, but they are closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Yesterday, just to get out of Manhattan, I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge. I pretty much had it to myself.

It wasn’t a very nice day weather-wise and what I really wanted to do was just curl up on the couch and watch TV. But I didn’t. I kept going.

I don’t want to just stay still. That can’t be what these next months are.

In the past, I used to dream of days like this. Days that were unscheduled where I could go where I want and do as I pleased. Days where I could clean out a closet or reorder the office supply drawer or go through my books. Days where nothing was required of me.

Be careful what you wish for.

I am slowly but surely working through all of the papers and letters and photographs that contain my family’s history. I get to it in fits and starts.

Some of it is fascinating, like all of the letters my father wrote home during World War II, and some of it is mind-numbingly dull. There was an argument about a farm that was jointly owned by different branches of my Dad’s side of the family. The letters about that stretch out over decades and they are completely without interest. The farm was finally sold years ago and the proceeds, such as they were, were divided up. I remember when it was finally done, how relieved my father was.

A little bit each day and I will get it all done. Sorted, scanned and accounted for. It makes me start longing for days where I would be too busy to even think about it.

We always seem to want what we don’t have.

Change will come.

The assertainment, the start of the formal process of transition, will start. One day, the news will report it and the waiting will be in the past. It will get underway.

The President-elect will become the President in a few weeks and begin the work that we have all chosen him to do. With each passing day, the current President seems determined to make that work harder.

Let’s remember all of the people who are helping him do that. From the Senate Majority Leader whose only aim is to obstruct all the way down to the Broadway performer who just told all of his fans to take off their masks and sing to the Lord.

Remember them, not to take revenge, but rather to help us recognize the right people to admire and chose to represent us as we move forward. Who is helping and who is hindering. Who is thinking of the greater good and who is only thinking of themselves.

Now as comfortably warm as it is on this couch, I need to get up and take a shower and go out into the day. I don’t know what I am going to do out there yet, but it’s time I found out.

Life isn’t going to live itself. It requires some active participation.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.