As some of you know, 2024 had already been a difficult year here at Stately Dog Manor. In May of 2024, we lost our beloved cat, whom we will call “Mr. S,” to an awful disease. Ironically, this occurred when the Loquacious Pup, only 24, was herself fighting a similar disease. I am somewhat pleased to report that her fight, which involved well over a month as an inpatient and many months of other treatment, appears to have gone successfully, and she will soon be advancing her education in another city (alas, in a red state). And of course, TD father in law is now 96 and still living with us, still carrying on. In the middle of this, Mrs. TD and I were fortunate to have sufficiently benign work situations so that we were able to provide the time to care for both the Pup and F.I.L., and still keep our jobs. Let me be clear that, despite the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, this is not the norm in this [shithole] country.
Most American workers would, at a minimum, have to take a huge hit in income to care for loved ones for a prolonged period of time, or would have to outright give up (or more likely be sacked from) their jobs. And we were doubly fortunate to have excellent health insurance, both our own and the Pup’s (which thanks in part to the endangered-species-policy called the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare), did not result in crushing health care costs for her treatment. This being America, of course, her employer did use the opportunity of her illness to sack her as soon as it was legal to do so.
On to the 800 pound orange gorilla or the, ahem, elephant in the room, the resounding electoral win and restoration of one Donald J. Trump. For good measure, Trump also carried the Senate, and while the House of Representatives has still not been called yet, the Reactionary Republicans may well take that too. Obviously disheartening, but we have been here before. Explanations and finger-pointing will be abundant, but as I said in my most recent post, it isn’t as if the trajectory we were on under Dem leadership was particularly good. In this case, Kamala Harris was put in the untenable position of being charged with the unpopularity of the incumbent President without actually having the agency of being the incumbent President, and that President was blamed for inflation that could largely be laid at Trump’s feet (supply chain issues caused by a mismanaged pandemic, a badly designed Covid stimulus package that included massive PPP loan “forgiveness” to the already rich, inflationary tax cuts to the already rich, extreme price gouging by the already rich, etc.), but she largely left those on the table, instead chosing the “orange man bad” strategy that worked so well for Hillary. For more context on this, noted historian Allan Licthman had, prior to 2024, called 8 of the last 9 elections accurately (with only the controversial 2000 election and U.S. Supreme Court intervention to install George W. Bush as his only “miss”), but Lichtman notes that he got 2024 wrong and offered an explanation, including misinformation and the unique circumstances under which V.P. Kamala Harris had to run as “Schrodinger’s Candidate” (my phrase, not his), to wit, the incumbent but not the incumbent.
None of this matters. But for Covid, we’d have had Trump for the last four years (I mean eight), and now… the nightmare delayed was the nightmare denied. Right back into it. We can expect international alliances to be frayed, environmental, social, economic, education and income/wealth inequality problems to get worse while the public rhetoric will get toxic, and while full-on Third Reich policies appear not that likely (many of Trump’s billionaire backers happen to be Jews, for example), they absolutely cannot be ruled out. In short, the American people, most of them peasants, decided that the price of eggs was too high and they decided that democracy wasn’t working out for them anyway. They will soon get the fruits of their behavior, good and hard.
As for the rest of us, I don’t really know what I have to offer. I heard the quote below on the radio yesterday driving home from the dentist, and I will just offer it, because it seems so simple, yet so, SO important. I’m willing to be a friend for others to turn to. And I value and cherish those friends and loved ones in my life willing to have me turn to them. It’s all we got. But it’s far from nothing. And when you boil it all down… maybe it’s everything.
Recent Comments