I do this from time to time because (a) I’m bored, (b) I’m curious, (c) something breaks, or (d) I want people to think I’m engaged, paying attention, and updating because, you know, I’m trying to be current or relevant or…
Yeah, whatever. I’m never sure what it is I’m trying to accomplish when I switch themes. Probably the equivalent of Spring Cleaning, only not as physical.
I any event, I’ve been doing the usual gaping in dismay at the national (and state) political scene, trying to find something to say that might make it all fit an understandable set of parameters, and the last couple of posts I wrote about it were attempts at explaining larger forces. That’s my way of dealing with the world, trying to comprehend, describe, and thereby put it in some form that allows me to make sense of it.
This time? I’m watching the Republican Party turn itself inside out and for the life of me it doesn’t make any sense. I mean, they’re trying to gain leverage by aligning themselves with a proven liar, a mediocre businessman, a berserker, an anti-intellectual, a boor, a sexual predator, a supremacist, someone with the verbal skills of a third-grader who has no sense of history and seems distracted by bright and shiny with no regard for worth and substance. I cannot help but think he’s got a black book on these people that puts Nixon’s enemies list to shame. But then, I look at the last four years and can’t help but think that, even if he had, he’s just not capable of using it. Not well.
So my best response usually is, WTF?
So far, Biden is doing exactly the right thing. The job. He’s not getting drawn into making comparisons, denying allegations that have no substance, responding to the kind of shallow gotcha polemics that can do nothing but make everyone look stupid. He’s not rising to the bait. And his spokesperson, Psaki? Brilliant. If they keep to this, at some point the GOP will finally crawl up its own rectum and suffocate on the nonsense.
One point for all you folks who may be on the fence about the GOP: McConnell has declared his intention to follow the same program he did with Obama—block everything he can, no matter what. That means the GOP will do nothing. Nothing will be accomplished that they can take any credit for.
In his case (McConnell’s), I believe this is because he is frankly not smart enough to know when he’s punching himself—and his constituency—in the face.
All in all, we have reached a point where there is, in fact, nothing left to say concerning the post mortem of the previous administration. I can think of one or two things that came out of it all that have some merit, none of which I can honestly attribute to any kind of studied comprehension on the part of the ex-president: We’ve been talking for decades about China and the need to address the violations in trade practices and so forth and, ill-aimed as it may have been, that shot was fired. From what I’ve seen so far, the Biden administration is not rolling back aspects of that which may do some good. It needed to happen at some point. It was a start. There were one or two moves in the Middle East that were not horrible and something can be built on it, but moving the embassy to Jerusalem was perhaps ill-advised. It may, however, have unforeseen positive consequences. It was a bone thrown to the far right of the party.
Not much. Certainly not enough to justify the tidal waves of stupidity that flooded the country from twitter and the administrative butchering our institutions received. Not enough to make the level of civic ill-ease worthwhile.
Not enough to forgive the unparalleled wreck they made of our pandemic response. And before anyone shouts “But this was unprecedented!” let me say, yes, but the previous administration had put together a response playbook which was basically thrown in the trash. Work done by even earlier administrations in anticipation of something like this was ignored as well. Preparatory groundwork was laboriously done which these people didn’t understand, wouldn’t spend the money on, and therefore faced a challenge which they subsequently mishandled. It’s amazing to me more people aren’t dead. But the damage is ongoing because the final injury done was to validate stupidity. People who feel empowered to dismiss fact and science and reason because they were told not to trust anything coming from anywhere but the president (even though very little actually came from him) will continue to thwart efforts to contain this epidemic. We may not achieve the kind of herd immunity we need or could have, not because we don’t know how but because people refuse to cooperate simply because.
Well. Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest.
I haven’t been writing fiction lately. I have a novella in the queue at Analog, but I don’t know when that will be coming out. I’ve got a few short stories that are making the rounds. And I’m shopping for a new agent. I’ve been here before, but I’ve never been here when I’ve been this tired. I have one story I’ve been laboring at for months now. Partly, this is a time issue. Partly, this is a recovery issue. The holiday season just past taxed me to my limit physically. I’ll write about that some other time. I’m 66. I don’t bounce back like I used to, although to be honest I think I’m doing pretty well for a 66-year-old. I still get the gym, I still put in a full day’s work, I’m still alert. But I’m no marine. Partly, also, there’s a certain amount of discouragement attaching to all this.
I put my photography galleries online for the purpose of selling my visual work, but to date I’ve gotten very thin response. I’m not sure if people realize they can buy the work available. I’ll be revisiting that whole thing in the coming months.
I’ve had both my shots now. I’m officially vaccinated. We were lucky not to have gotten ill. It will be nice to be able to go out again, but I doubt anything will be normal for a while.
My father is in a home. None of us wanted this to happen, but it did. He’s 90. Mom is coping as best she can and we’ve been visiting her more regularly. Things are murky in that area. No matter what, nothing will go back to what it once was. Seems to be the theme of the last few years.
This has been a catch-up kind of post. New look, a state-of-the-union statement, so to speak. I may be writing more personal reports in the coming year. Stay tuned. And I hope all is going okay with you.