Post 557 - January 7, 2024

I am back on the couch.  I haven’t written in a while and I miss it. I have been working on compiling my family stories but it’s not quite the same thing, so here goes.

Outside it’s grey and rainy. Curled up inside under the absurdly soft throw one of my sisters-in-law gave us the year before this one is just what the doctor ordered.

The Christmas decorations are down and put away for next year. The rest of January along with all of February and March is stretching out ahead of me in all its cloudy bleakness. Work is starting up again, albeit slowly. Now feels like the time to get things done. Or maybe take a nap.

Yesterday was January 6. For the Western Christian church, it was the anniversary of the Epiphany or the moment the three Wise Men beheld the baby Jesus lying in the manger. For my country, it also marked the anniversary of the attempted overthrow of the government by the recently defeated then-President of the United States of America.

Even during the pandemic, I cannot remember ever having faced the prospect of the year ahead with the same vague looming feeling of dread I am experiencing now.  As much as I try to avoid the news, it still manages to work its way in.

It doesn’t seem possible that a man who, among countless other things, accepted money from foreign powers during his term in office, took classified documents away with him and shared them with others not cleared to read them, molested a woman in a department store, mocked a man with a motor-neuron disease, and instigated a coup resulting in hundreds of people being convicted and sentenced to jail terms could still have a very real chance of being elected back into office again. And yet, here we are.

What are people thinking?

Early in his career, Stephen King wrote a novel called THE DEAD ZONE. Like many of his books, it is, in essence, the story of good versus evil. In the book, an evil politician is ultimately thwarted by doing something at a campaign rally that shocks people into seeing who he really is. As a result, his monstrosity is revealed, and his candidacy is over. I won’t say what he did for fear of spoiling the story, but our 45th President has done far worse on innumerable occasions. It doesn’t seem to have slowed him down at all

That many of the people who seem willing to give their lives for him are Evangelical Christians is maybe the most astounding aspect of the mess we are living in now. This is a man who, arguably, embodies nearly every single negative aspect of humanity that the teachings of Christ urge us all to rise above.

This is a man who buried his ex-wife on one of his golf courses so that he could get a tax abatement.

Again, I ask, what are people thinking?

We all choose to ignore things we don’t want to see. We walk past people living on the street and into warm, fancy restaurants with, at best, a momentary pang of sadness. We happily use our computers and phones without a thought for those suffering in third-world mines across the globe who toil ceaselessly to extract the minerals needed to make these devices work.

Those of us living in big cities are also blithely ignoring the plight of the average person in our country who feels so disenfranchised that electing the man most religions would call the Anti-Christ seems like their only solution.

As someone who is just as guilty of ignoring the great center of America, I will ask the question for the third time, because now I really want to know. What are people thinking?

If we are going to make it through this next year with our Constitution and Judicial systems intact, we will all need to find the answer to this question. Sooner would be better than later.

A lot can happen in a year. If recent history has taught us nothing else, it has at least made us aware of that.

I have always resisted making New Year’s resolutions because they never seem to follow through. I am putting the onus on the resolutions, themselves, when I should be putting it on me. I never seem to follow through.

I do have one, though, this year. I am not going to read any polls. The press takes great delight in pushing us this way and that and firing us all up about things that simply aren’t accurate. This year, I do not want to play that game. Enough is going on without our news agencies making it worse.

In a year, we will be looking back at this year ahead of us and trying to make sense of it. It seems to me that we need to start doing that now to keep ahead of the curve.

It’s not really raining outside anymore, but it looks like it might start again at any second. I think a good book is called for.

Michael gave me a copy of GOOD OMENS by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett for Christmas, and I just finished it. It is, appropriately enough to my current state of mind, a humorous take on Armageddon.

I’m not sure what I’m going to read next but as soon as I can drag myself up off the toasty warm couch, I’ll figure it out.