Just Another Wednesday

This post is set to go off at 3am the day after the election. I have every expectation that it will. I'll be asleep but it will happen anyway. There's always something technical that might gum up the works, but new days in general have a way of showing up on schedule. It's something you can count on.

I don't know what will have transpired last night. It's possible nobody knows for sure, even now. This is normal. It's important to know what you don't know. It's one of the hallmarks of a thoughtful mind. The cocksure are always missing something. The cocksure know everything all along, but it doesn't make them right.

I think most of us voters are driven by fear. It's a powerful motivator. The main difference between the two major American factions is what we fear. The faction I don't tend to vote with is afraid of a lot of things. In my view, most of those things don't exist. They are phantoms produced in the Devil's workshop to divert us from what we really should fear, to harvest our votes for the purpose of further siphoning off our wealth. Thus, the desperate refugee from violence is transformed into a murderous threat. Thus, a righteous movement of patriots marching for justice is transformed into roving bands of thugs. Thus, an attempt to claw back a share of our stolen treasure for the common good is transformed into the Socialist bogeyman, out to pick our pockets. These are the fictions manufactured by the real thieves. The fat cats. The wicked and criminally negligent destroyers of our future.

This faction has been conditioned to be afraid of The Other, and The Other has been defined so broadly it even includes me. A small, mouthy, entirely harmless human, still I am declared an enemy. I have repeatedly been declared an enemy by the president of the United States. I, and a solid majority of my fellow citizens, have been deemed unworthy of protection or even consideration. United we used to stand, but divided we elect Republicans. We're divided. Have we done it again?

I fear that our trust in our civilizing institutions, from the courts to the press, has been so degraded that we will crumble into gang warfare, featuring executions in the street and terrorist acts from all corners, with the heavily armed right-wing players the more dangerous by far.

What I fear more than anything is that we will miss our last chance to pull out of the death-spiral that is our devotion to fossil fuels. We may well have missed it already; we've wasted four precious years on top of another twenty years purchased by the Koch brothers, which they've blown on toys and party favors for their friends. Cheap energy has turned us into stumbling drunks, with decision-making abilities to match.

No matter what kind of world I've woken up to today, my path is clear. I must try hard to live up to my ideals to push my party where it needs to go, and resist the other party with all I can muster, and work for justice always, and do it peacefully. I once thought my political counterparts' brains had been scooped out and replaced by pudding. Of late I realize that pudding has been packed with nails and shards of glass. But I must remember to be kind. Kindness moves more hearts than belligerence. It's not easy. It will take stamina. But if we didn't have stamina, we'd be long gone by now.

I know we can't fight terror with terror. Not if we want to prevail.

Crones United: No Trump

Friday morning, January 20th, 2017, before dawn, millions of us woke up to a now-familiar bolt of dread, the sleep-stealing quicksand of despair, the certainty that all is lost. That everything we cared about, from our fragile democracy to our tortured planet, was to be sold for parts, or discarded. That the train of progress that had, before, seemed so inadequate and slow had been yanked off the track altogether, had pitched into the ravine.

But on Saturday there was a climate change.

On Saturday there were enough of us to hold up the sky.

We could feel ourselves rising. It's a five-mile walk downtown to get to the Women's March and everywhere on every block people were headed the same way, smiling at each other in recognition, daring to hope. Families gathered at bus stops. Busses arrived already packed. By the time we reached the river, the bridges blossomed with pink hats. We pressed into the crowd and cheered and chanted and sang for an hour in the dumping rain before the march began. Soaked, and sunlit from within.

One-sixth of the population of Portland was there. The entire march route had been filled, so it was slow going. It was wet. Buoyant. Peaceful. Majestic.

There were counter-protesters. Three, by my tally, standing on the traffic median with signs ("Not All Women Are Haters"), politely ignored by the loving masses flowing around them on all sides. They looked damp and dispirited, stranded in a dinghy on the ocean.

A crowd like this? It's all hairlines and hat brims from my angle. When you are a small person, you have no idea how big a march you're in. It's like trying to figure out where your home planet is in the Milky Way, just by gazing. Are you at the margins? In the middle? Toward the beginning, or the end?  Could this gentle gathering of humanity stretch the length of the waterfront? Across the bridges? The state? From sea to shining sea? If we all held hands, would our grip redound across the world?

Standing there, rocking a little side to side for warmth, in fearless contact with unknown thousands, we know we are all facing the same direction. We are corpuscles surging in a stream. We are the lifeblood of democracy.

So thank you, Mr. President. We're all awake now.