I didn't intend to go quiet on blogging for over six months... but then, I didn't exactly plan on a global pandemic on top of what was already a disastrous presidency either. Life is funny that way. Things don't always work out as planned.
Like so many, it has been a tumultuous year, one of those years that underlines you will end a year not in the place you started. When we started I was mainly concerned about what we could do to make sure we had a better President. Now, that's kind of a distant second to figuring out what steps will be best to
protect the life of my 85 year old mother.
She's fine, and we're coping - which has definitely been the saving grace of all of this. And we did our part in supporting and pushing for what is now, ultimately, the start of a Biden era, the era many of us didn't know we wanted going in, but seems like the only option after all that's happened. Who knew Joe Biden's mix of unspectacular competence and lack of ego would suddenly be superpowers? The very things that, for years, had made him not quite a star among Democrats - the guy who with good ideas but just not quite enough pizzazz to be President - suddenly became not just the best answer, but pretty much the only answer. There will be time enough to lament various aspects of Biden - he wears his flaws as openly as his strengths - but his calm, effective, and competent manner of showing up and doing the work is very much the right thing at just the right moment.
Its all over but the shouting... and goodness, what shouting. Trump was never going to leave quietly or rationally, and like everything in this 4 year tragicomedy of massive errors, knowing that this would go badly is still not the same as going through it. "Coup" or not, "challenge to democracy" or simply desperate attempts to get your way... Trump remains, to the (very) bitter end a Tyrant of the Toy Shop whose tantrums could be checked, if only the Republican party had a competent grown up to step in.
But they didn't and they don't and we continue to reap the whirlwinds, such as they are. As I write, we await word from the Supreme Court that they will (likely) turn away the last gasp lawsuit of the Texas Attorney General whose "pandering for pardons" gambit had to be sufficiently Texas sized to break through. Ken Paxton's lawsuit will be laughed out of court, but with sufficient seriousness to all but guarantee his Christmas wish of a pardon broad enough to make his federal investigations go away. And like so many of these upcoming pardons, it raises the interesting question of "how you can be pardoned for something you said you didn't even do?"
But of course, we will be living in Trumpworld until midnight on January 19th, a fantasy world where criminality is just a dressy outfit at the Grifters Ball. These terrible people, and their awful ways are just part of how life is, for now, anyway. We shall see what the new era, the return to decency looks like come next month -- and not a moment before. But when we do, I suspect a lot of what has been quietly put up with, not talked about, or not brought to justice, will likely face a comeuppance. I know, it doesn't look like that now. Not yet, anyway. But part of why Trump lost -- and despite our "it was too close" anxiety, was pretty much inevitable -- was how much of this indecency was simply unsustainable. Short of walking into stores, opening the registers and simply putting the cash in their wife's purse, how much more could we pretend was just acceptable?
It's been a hard year. It's been a gross, atrocious 4 years of living the nightmare of this presidency. And while the way out of this will not be a sudden snap of waking up... I do suspect that the transition will be more of a whiplash than we can see from here. There is, of course, the last stages of disease and death we have yet to face before, hopefully, the vaccines and a real public health operation help us, finally, get past the pandemic. But there is a sense, calmly, of order being restored. With each announcement, every press appearance, Joe Biden reasserts the power of a presidency most of us remember as the Real Thing. And slowly, steadily, even sadly, the farce of Trump returns to its rightful place -- on the fringes, a sideshow for true believers and sycophantic saps too proud or too bitter to admit that, yet again, they've been had.
Last Christmas, for my family anyway, it was barely a Christmas. We had health issues, and work/life balance to contend with. This year, like so many, we are trying to create Christmas, and find a Christmas spirit, early and brightly. This year really is becoming a season of light - literally, all over town, all over America. Decorations are going up. Tress are coming out. This year.. to save us from a pandemic, we are trying to make Christmas actually special. And really... isn't that reason enough to have at least a little bit of hope?
Comments