Despondency and Hope
2024 has not been a banner year. A few weeks ago, a young woman whom I knew from birth died in a tragic and senseless motorcycle accident.
My car was broken into and cataract surgery on my left eye failed, essentially blinding that eye permanently. I fell headfirst down an escalator. A week or so later I was sent to the emergency room because my blood had either a too-high or too-low acid content. I stayed in the hospital two days and three nights and developed a taste for institutional meatloaf. Out of sheer curiosity, I timed the appearances of doctors assigned to my case. Five doctors spent a total of eight minutes with me over 60 hours. They often offered contradictory opinions. The physician at the first hospital I was sent to said his institution did not have the necessary equipment to diagnose me, and rushed me to another hospital.
Even as I celebrated 33 years of sobriety, a person I love is still drinking and slowly killing herself.
Almost 15 years ago, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer and after 39 surgeries, the disease endures. My 40th surgery is scheduled for early January. The chemotherapy and immunotherapy treatments I received had nasty side effects that include a recurring rash and peripheral neuropathy. This incurable condition affects my feet and legs and makes balance haphazard. Throughout these adventures, I’ve also been troubled by depression as thick and as viscous as an Exxon oil spill.
A best friend fell down the stairs of his house more than a year ago and still struggles with the ramifications of the incident. He’s in constant pain and facing more surgery. And so it goes, yadda yadda yadda.
So yeah, it’s been a bad year, though I should note that I’m still making music with my friend Mike, and new glasses allow me to drive during days when the sun isn’t shining too brightly.
***
And then, of course, there were the elections. Many shortsighted idiots elected one of their own President of the USA. All these people preferred an abusive and convicted felon who encourages violence, misogyny, racism, and catastrophic ignorance, to a highly qualified woman.
It is facile to see Trump’s election as a threat to democracy, and potentially as an end to the country’s greatness. That’s wrong. The elections proved democracy works. The voters who really yearned for Trump—the rightists, the very rich and the MAGA folks—wanted him more than the Democrats thought possible. The rightists voted en masse, the Dems did not. It’s that simple.
As a president who will spend much time on retributions and vendettas against people he does not like, Trump will not be a very effective ruler. He is not a smart man, and we know he finds affairs of state boring. He likes dictators, and they’ll enjoy using him. He’s in poor and worsening health, and likely struggling with the early stages of dementia. If he dies in office—of natural or unnatural causes—his VP will take over. Unfortunately, be he ivied or not, JD Vance is not very smart either. We are looking at dumb and dumber, at a time of great international danger when too many countries have the means to destroy each other. There are terrorists in our midst, real ones, not the deluded fantasies of Trump and his minions, and a confederacy of dunces (with apologies to John Kennedy Toole) seeks to rule.
But here’s the catch; the nation has survived idiocy before. It will survive these two mental truants. In two years, we will have the opportunity to change things once again, to toss out the inept and those governed only by self-interest. We can take back large parts of the country and right the ship of state. It is doable.
Start planning now…
My car was broken into and cataract surgery on my left eye failed, essentially blinding that eye permanently. I fell headfirst down an escalator. A week or so later I was sent to the emergency room because my blood had either a too-high or too-low acid content. I stayed in the hospital two days and three nights and developed a taste for institutional meatloaf. Out of sheer curiosity, I timed the appearances of doctors assigned to my case. Five doctors spent a total of eight minutes with me over 60 hours. They often offered contradictory opinions. The physician at the first hospital I was sent to said his institution did not have the necessary equipment to diagnose me, and rushed me to another hospital.
Even as I celebrated 33 years of sobriety, a person I love is still drinking and slowly killing herself.
Almost 15 years ago, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer and after 39 surgeries, the disease endures. My 40th surgery is scheduled for early January. The chemotherapy and immunotherapy treatments I received had nasty side effects that include a recurring rash and peripheral neuropathy. This incurable condition affects my feet and legs and makes balance haphazard. Throughout these adventures, I’ve also been troubled by depression as thick and as viscous as an Exxon oil spill.
A best friend fell down the stairs of his house more than a year ago and still struggles with the ramifications of the incident. He’s in constant pain and facing more surgery. And so it goes, yadda yadda yadda.
So yeah, it’s been a bad year, though I should note that I’m still making music with my friend Mike, and new glasses allow me to drive during days when the sun isn’t shining too brightly.
***
And then, of course, there were the elections. Many shortsighted idiots elected one of their own President of the USA. All these people preferred an abusive and convicted felon who encourages violence, misogyny, racism, and catastrophic ignorance, to a highly qualified woman.
It is facile to see Trump’s election as a threat to democracy, and potentially as an end to the country’s greatness. That’s wrong. The elections proved democracy works. The voters who really yearned for Trump—the rightists, the very rich and the MAGA folks—wanted him more than the Democrats thought possible. The rightists voted en masse, the Dems did not. It’s that simple.
As a president who will spend much time on retributions and vendettas against people he does not like, Trump will not be a very effective ruler. He is not a smart man, and we know he finds affairs of state boring. He likes dictators, and they’ll enjoy using him. He’s in poor and worsening health, and likely struggling with the early stages of dementia. If he dies in office—of natural or unnatural causes—his VP will take over. Unfortunately, be he ivied or not, JD Vance is not very smart either. We are looking at dumb and dumber, at a time of great international danger when too many countries have the means to destroy each other. There are terrorists in our midst, real ones, not the deluded fantasies of Trump and his minions, and a confederacy of dunces (with apologies to John Kennedy Toole) seeks to rule.
But here’s the catch; the nation has survived idiocy before. It will survive these two mental truants. In two years, we will have the opportunity to change things once again, to toss out the inept and those governed only by self-interest. We can take back large parts of the country and right the ship of state. It is doable.
Start planning now…
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