July 3, 2020 - On Despair (by a Friend)
Updated: Aug 27, 2020
Buckle up because I’m going there…
But first, let me say that ‘inward giggling satisfaction’ is my new favorite phrase. And it describes not only these malevolent Republicans, but also any of us who have thought in our worst moments that people will finally get their come-uppance for not wearing masks… and so, here we are. Let’s not forget how thin the veneer between civility and annihilation.
These times, they feel biblical… truly, have we arrived at the end times? Maybe. I just had a realization today that my end game (moving to France, but honestly who am I kidding?) - if Trump wins another term - is no longer a possibility for as long as the EU continues to bar Americans from entering their countries. I feel we may be trapped by the outsized ignorance of our countrymen, locked in forever with them and their feckless leader. I watched ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ with growing alarm last fall but was still feeling somewhat safe in the remoteness of that fiction. More and more, I fear a semblance of that disaster is upon us.
When you say you have found some peace, what does that mean? I am glad for you, and I hope it can last. I feel like the bartender offering an alcoholic that first drink after rehab. I vacillate between two states of being… utter, annihilating rage at the state of things and a sort of numb complacency in the knowledge that I have not yet been directly impacted by recent events, beyond inconvenience.
There is no question that Trump is not revealing himself to be something even worse than we already knew him to be. This incompetent, imbecilic, hateful man has always been thus. And yet, the power lies with him and his cronies right now, and there seems to be nothing anyone can do about it. The toxicity of his malfeasance is breathtaking - for even ONE of the terrible things discovered about him in even the last six months (since impeachment), he should have been run out of the White House on a rail. He scurried into that bunker because he knows deep down that he deserves to be skinned alive by the mob that circulated outside that night. And yet. Then you have the overreaction of those idiots in St. Louis, emerging from their overwrought mansion in their dinner-stained t-shirts, brandishing weapons with impunity. The sight of these chicken-shit white people pointing guns at a peaceful procession is just the latest in a series of horrifying images splashed all over the media over the last few months, and it makes me realize we as a country are further gone than I thought. Even if Biden wins the election in November, and the Democrats take the Senate and increase their majority in the House, I fear this bottle cannot be re-corked. We know the enemy, and it is us. There’s so much fear and hatred to be undone, where do we start? The Democrats will have a lot of work to do… are they (are we) up to the task?
Stay strong, friend. Looking forward to your next missive…