Funny-peculiar (not funny-ha-ha) how often we humans get what we most fear.
Well, it's official, not that there was much doubt: A majority of the nation's voters are freewheeling into full-blown psychosis, handing off a fixing of the Senate to those who broke it in the first place, to those who moved heaven and earth to sit on their hands and do precisely nothing for years on end, save work on their skills with barricades, stalls, quashes, and stone-walling.
The pieces of our political system, the Senate-sized ones, be assured, will be pummeled and smashed into finer and finer bits -- the political version of road-gang prisoners making small rocks out of the big ones.
There is no analogy I know of that completes the full conveyance of political imagery and what-nextedness, which would be the quasi-governmental quarrying of taking those first rocks and chipping them into flagstones, then grinding those into gravel, and then pulverizing them into sand, and then blasting the sand into talcum powder, and then disintegrating the powder further, in order to negate them for any purposes of human usefulness, and morph the powder into subatomic particles.
You see: We must all of us get used to thinking far more creatively about out language usage, as this new stretch of time will confound any previous sense of imagery and description. This is true for now, and up to the next election cycle -- wash my mouth out with LSD, I know, I know -- when we get a Republican president...
... which will complete the political trifecta, and, against all normal notions of number and language use, will, according to Tea Baggers, allow the GOPpers (pronounced like the open-mouthed gawkers and gapers) to seize all 29 branches of government -- the legislative, the executive, the judicial, the elemental, the magical, the military-ial, the militant (far right branch only), the corprative, the essential, the nominal, the diabolical, the financial, the profitable, the preacher-cle, the mythological, the quizzical...
... and all the other many branches of self-governance, as according to troglodytes, Tea Baggers, those with tee times at the country club, and all other Toxicus Bufoonus Americanis who subscribe to the forehead-slapping D'oh! Dance of the Dingbat and Dunce.
* * * * *
[ clears throat and starts sweeping off clothing repeatedly with hands, in attempts to brush off something very worrisome and toxic, but totally invisible ]
* * * * *
Yes, it's true, I do not deny it. At first, I was popping my cork, my brain fizzling and sizzling, pouring out acrid smoke, all set for a political wake, the death of reason and reasonableness -- then I realized I should be popping a different cork instead, pouring champagne, and celebrating this day instead.
Yes: It's a short, highly compressed journey of the spirit and mind encountered today, one that went from daring to read a headline in what passes for news summaries anymore...
... to being thunderstruck and lightning blasted, then spiraling down into vast and seemingly endless desperation, despair, depression -- then collapsing the grieving process into mere nanoseconds, and emerging into daylight once again, calm and content in the thoughtful, split-second voyage that is possible only after clawing out of a dark pit and scrambling for answers, and peace.
The thing is, today may -- OK, does -- mark a flabbergasting moment in American history, where we've gone from the inmates increasingly running the asylum (thank you Republicans!), to today, where the psychotics are writing all the medical prescriptions for simply everyone in the country, well or sick, high or sober, deranged or becalmed, bright or burned-out.
Those prescriptions are, I have to tell you, all mandatory, people, and soon enforceable by law, writ, and firing squad -- so, I would urge you to lay in a good supply of leather tabs and bullets to bit down on, because the psychos, from Reagan to the Bushes, the Palins and Nugents, and the black-hole, collapsing-star throngs of wrong-wing media, and beyond, are just now getting warmed up.
Everything you have disagreed with in this country, as a reasonable person, and for the last 25 years and more -- far more, Flying Spaghetti Monster help us -- has been the weak-kneed preamble and wiffle-ball warmup in the bullpen.
In keeping with the need for maximum linguisitic flexibility, in this new era, the analogies are all over the road here, in keeping with the inability of Republicans to maintain any sane or decent concept, awareness, or decency in our human need for self-governance.
So, the training wheels are coming off, the new team's coming off the bench, and it's a whole new level of a burger-flipping day, America!
Meanwhile, I will burrow myself in a singular notion -- one that is desperately trying to make sense of, and then survive, this unbelievable landslide of straight-laced, clear thinking by voters, and make do with this avalanche of strait-jacket curve balls being jazzed all around.
The comfort I take is simple: As least the waiting is over. It's been a long, slow slide from the days of moderate Republicanism -- Eisenhower's time, I'd guess -- down on through the spoiled excesses of the 60s and 70s, to the greedy and self-centeredness of the 80s and 90s, to the purposeful disasters, pervasive inequalities, and the turning of blue hearts, and states, purple, and then red, and then pitch-black.
It's true, that what I am celebrating is a bit difficult to do, and that it's on the order of celebrating one's own frontal lobotomy, but I am trying to retain the presence of mind, so to say, that this landmine-pocked, shell-shocked road the country's on will actually dump out into fair terrain at some point, down out of the wildly curving nosebleed heights of high insanity, down off the mountain of knee-jerk idiocy, and down to earth once again, where oxygen is plentiful, and deep breathing may help clear our minds and help more blood get to our brains, so something akin to thought, logic, and sense might once again plop down for a long and determined stay.
At least we don't have to watch, wait, and experience that long, slow slide -- the transition from common human reasonableness to blind animal howling -- to rake and claw every millimeter of our flesh. The wait is over. The terror most reasonable and reasoning people have feared is already here, full throttle, and we must expect to be fully throttled by it.
At least the wait is over. The suspense of the wait is over. No more fearful anticipation -- and, like finding yourself pitched out a window from a great height, in your nightclothes, there's just limiting the damage to your person as best you can.
I figure we can sweep up the country later, and get collapsed infrastructure finally rebuilt, and make amends of some sort with all the countries we'll have our next endless wars with, until America wakes up, slaps itself in the face, downs three grande vats of espresso, and comes to the powerful realization that allowing Republicans to be in charge of anything is more like letting chimps fly fighter jets...
... and that no amount of waiting, now matter how many keyboards and word processing gear we can muster, could ever hope to help these same Republicans produce any intelligent thoughts, let alone coherent or interesting novels, no matter how long we keep them in their rubber rooms.
The sooner America sees these clowns at work, the sooner we can get on with the business of outlawing clowns and running the sort of country we can once again be proud to call our home.
The sort of place where people are impressed and a bit envious, when hearing where you;re from -- not fearful or doubled over in laughter and pain.
It's been a long time since I've been from that place. It's been a long time since I have agreed with, and been proud of, my country.
I remember shifting my head to the side and clucking appreciatively, saying, "Man, what a country!" in something close to awe and amazement.
Now, and for the past few decades, I find myself bowing my head a bit, shaking it slowly, side to side, and pridelessly mumbling, flatly, almost shamefully, "What a country."
So, pop a cork everyone, and let the wine flow. We'll need a drink for the short haul. Just remember to keep the cork and savor the scent through the coming years. The wait and the suspense is over. The loonies are in charge. The psyche patients are your pharmacists now.
The sooner they ruin the country completely, the sooner we can let this rampage of a party run its course.
And then, just like always with Republicans, the grownups -- the rest of us -- can clean up after their binge, and keep the keys to the jet fighters, the infrastructure, the laws, the banks, and all the rest, including the keys to the national liquor cabinet, out of their hands forever.
* * * * *
Every new beginning requires a collapse: This seems to be a necessity with humans, the way we insist on going back almost as many paces as we go forward. Still, I can never resist the urge to imagine where we might all be, now, if our species was a bigger fan of dancing in a straighter line, forward, instead of these constant ebbs and flows, back and forth, into one era, and out of the next.
Good thing we're not migratory birds. It would take us millennia to migrate even one time, the way we skitter, fall, and crawl, everywhich way and that, forward and back, scattering and squandering centuries as if we had all the time in the world.
* * * * *
Here's a salute to deep and satisfying change -- the type all can celebrate, not just those who have offshored their factories and fortunes, cheating their country and their clan. Here's a toast to the sort of basic, fundamental change where all partake of that dream of home, and hearth, and happiness -- and not just those few at the top, where almost all the wealth and opportunity resides. Here's a prost to the deepest heart of change, where everyone is allowed to contribute, and everyone contributes in turn.
Yeah: that old dream.
We just have to endure the pain of right now, and wait until we all wake up from this nightmare of being pitched out a window, at great height, in our bedclothes, while sleeping.
The trick is patience, endurance, self-control, going on defense, and limiting your damages to your own self, to your home, to your loved ones.
Oh, and -- try not to scream. It won't help wake anyone from the American nightmare any sooner. Sometimes, pain is the only teacher that some people can hear, and the only experience that gets their attention long enough to allow any learning to kick in.
In the meantime, the rest of us have champagne.
Bon voyage.
