what are they thinking?

I wonder about the thoughts of law enforcement.  I am told that there is a higher percentage of conservatives in law enforcement than liberals - however the word "liberal" has been vilified so much that I doubt anyone with a law enforcement job would use that word to describe themselves in any way.

Is law enforcement a culture of conservatism?  Mostly?  How much?  I have been looking for hard numbers, a survey, anything, but I'm coming up short.  Media leads us to believe law enforcement skews right, but I'd like to see some stats.

Robert Mueller's team is an interesting example.  The claim is that most of the team are Republicans.  Are most of law enforcement - police, FBI, state police, etc. - conservatives/Republicans?

And if they are, what are they thinking when they ever so gently arrest someone like the murdering white supremacist in El Paso yesterday?

When a trump supporter is faced with apprehending a mass murderer who is a trump supporter, what are they thinking as they take him in? Are there enough hard-right law enforcement that we need to seriously worry about what's happening underneath all the so-called "lone-wolfing"? 

How many white supremacists are there operating actively?  And how many law enforcement are part of the network?

Because the internet has made it easy to have that network. Because we know that network exists, and a lot of it is right out in plain sight, like the vast majority of these mass murderers being white supremacists.  There's more than this commonality, and if it's a pattern, which I think it is, there's no such thing as a lone wolf.  You're seeing a white supremacist terroristic effort, aided and abetted by the words of trump and the inaction of McConnell.  Full stop, this blood is on their hands.

We had a second scenario happen within hours of the first.  Armed to the teeth and covered in body armor, another man opened fire on the public, this time in Ohio.  Within hours.  Hours.  This scenario ended with law enforcement killing the shooter.  The murderer was wearing a face mask, so his race and affiliations are unknown at the time of this writing, but witnesses have stated the murderer was white. 

The El Paso murdering white supremacist was taken alive.  We assume he will answer for his crimes.  The thoughts and prayers from the instigators and enablers in our government ring particularly hollow.  After blocking all legislation that could do something about this, McConnell will have a hard time pretending like he can't do anything about it.  He's already done something about it - he failed to act on behalf of the people to protect them, and protected the money he receives from gun lobbyists instead. 

The occupant of the white house laughed at a rally of his when a supporter said we could solve the migrant problem by shooting them. 

The occupant of the white house who has been stiffing law enforcement the bills for protecting his klan rallies.  He doesn't pay the cops the money he owes them.  The (allegedly) mostly-conservatives cops.  He. Doesn't. Pay. Them.  Are they cool with that?

So, when that happens, when trump screws his own supporters on the bill, does a trump supporting member of law enforcement think maybe he's not their guy?  Or do they double down on thinking he's their guy, because finally there's a racist just like them occupying the white house?

What are they thinking?

not one, but two

PTSD fucking sucks.  I have it, but I wasn't officially diagnosed with it until I was 48.  This is my story.

"Not one, but two" refers to the people that (my first impulse is to write "ruined my life" here, but that's not the whole truth, it's just my first impulse) molested me before I was ten.  It's significant because for a lot of my life I was unaware of the second.

The first was a judge.  I don't know what kind of judge he was, I don't know really how to accurately spell his name, but he was known in the (white, suburban, upper-middle-class) neighborhood as a bit creepy. An older neighbor friend of mine told me he always made women uncomfortable at neighborhood functions because of his "open-mouthed kisses."

What he did to me I will not detail here because the thought of providing wank material to pedophiles on the internet makes me physically ill.  But a point that a lot of people like to make is that I was not technically raped.  It is often repeated to me by people who learn what happened. Therapists, friends, family. They all like to point out that I was not penetrated by his penis, therefore I was not raped.

I was a child of six.  The distinction is fucking meaningless.  I'm glad I was not brutalized further, but trying to box my trauma into being not so bad because he didn't force his penis inside me is sickening.  What he did to me has obviously scarred me for life, so the idea that I should be fine because that specific thing did not happen is, plainly and simply, wrong.

He's dead now.  Neighbors called me the moment he died.

And I got on.  I moved on, I built a life, got married, got (almost immediately) divorced, I roved from place to place, I got a degree.  I moved a lot.  I've lived in five different cities.  I never grew moss.  I never committed to anything - friends, lovers, locations - for long.

Then, when I was thirty-eight, on a trip back to Pennsylvania to visit with the family, all hell broke loose in my mind.

We - my immediate family and their various spouses and children - were at an Elvis impersonator show.  I remember how much fun we were having and how great the impersonator was (I particularly loved when he changed outfits - which was often), and how great it was to be out with my family - of which most members are ridiculously hilarious, so being with them is always a great time.

I remember.  I remember the sun shining, the shirt I wore (a loaner from mum), I remember sitting with mum, my sister, my older brother, and maybe dad... I think my younger brother was corralling the kids.

When my sister told me a friend from childhood had committed suicide.

What happened next was like a explosion in my mind.  My mouth barked, "I know why" even before I knew what I was saying or what happened to me.

And the memories, what her father did to me, it all came like a punch.  Not like a flood.  It was all there, suddenly, all at once, everything my mind had shut away for thirty years.

What her father did to me.

How when I looked around for help, they had all turned their backs on me.

I was at a sleepover.

Her name was Lynette.  She was new, and I was always a sucker for the new kid.  She wasn't always nice, but I was naive and forgiving.  She had me and another friend over that night.  We had pizza, I think.  I don't remember much about the night itself - I don't, to this day, remember much about that particular time in my life (my sister has informed me that Lynette had two older sisters, but to this day I don't remember them at all, not their faces, not their names, nothing) - but I remember now, doing the dishes.  I remember him coming behind me and pressing his erection against my back, over and over as my chest bruised on the sink.

I was doing the dishes.

I looked up at him and smiled because my little eight-year-old brain did not know what was happening other than what could I do? What could I do? What could I do?

Looking behind him to see everyone in the room with their backs turned.

The smile, and the backs, and the pain, I remember.  I hate myself for that smile.  I have never forgiven myself for that smile.  I have locked this entire portion of my own life away inside my own psyche over that smile.

And the backs.  I looked for help, and there was none.  It was worse.  Not only was there no help, but I thought help was in reach.  It was right there, but it turned it's back on me.

***

Mental health is stigmatized.  So much so that I still battle explaining wanting to spend money on therapy to members of my family.

I learned that certain types of abuse in childhood stunts portions of brain growth.  Brain damage, essentially.  Learning this was woeful - will I ever learn to use parts of my brain that might be lost?  Are they lost?  Will I ever trust?

But I still haven't had proper therapy.

I'm looking.

I do have a psychiatrist, but he's more about the prescription than about therapy.  And I need that prescription.  I spent most of my life in an inexplicable rage, and I was lucky enough to find a drug that worked (without wooziness or fogginess or feeling like a robot) almost right away.  It released me from almost fifty years of rage that I didn't even know I had.

Finding someone who can treat PTSD caused by childhood sexual trauma has not been easy.  But I continue to look.

Every day, every single day, I am happy that I finally got on the medication that removed the rage. It's not enough, it's not nearly enough, but I am trying to get the rest.

Mental health impairment can happen to you - to you - it's not necessarily what you are born with.  And those cases are important, too.  But my story, my mental health, that was done to me.  By not one man, but two.

Now that I know it wasn't one, but two, I want help more than anything.  I want therapy more than anything.  I want to know how to deal with this, how to trust people, because I am holding the world at arm's length.

What I want, is to state that what happened to me isn't unique.  Repressed memories happen, that's what my brain did, but other brains are different.  Nobody's journey is invalid or less than anyone else's.

And mental health isn't to be stigmatized.  There are many, many, people out there that need help.  Not vilification, not condescension.

It is far more common than you think.

the A word

I have not yet heard an anti-abortion argument that doesn't fall apart on examination.  Most are baldly incorrect on their face.  It really shouldn't even be an argument at this point, but I'll tell you why we are having this argument.  I'll tell you why this is such an issue for so many conservatives.

It's a foundation.  It's a first brick to build on.  It's cracking the door open to get back to what they really, really want in their dark little hearts:  slavery.

The beginning is this, codifying woman as a second-class citizen.  That is why they fight to give a fetus more rights to a woman's body than the woman has.  It's the first step, the wedge, the thing that they can nurture and grow like foul little weeds.

A question not pondered by the ignorant, mostly religious, base pushing giving more rights to a potential human than to an actual human:  what's to stop you, once you've done this, from doing more?

Once they have codified in law that a woman is a second-class citizen, that a fetus is considered more human than women, what's to stop them there?  Do you trust your leaders to just stop there?

Never-mind how you propose to regulate these laws once you've removed all clinics, because I'm going to go ahead and assume you've already planned to regulate internet purchases of abortion drugs, etc.  Let's stay focused on the question at hand.

What happens to women now that a law is made that declares them as second-class citizens?

Would current conservative leaders stop there?  Would they?  Once a woman has no say about her body, what's to stop them from more, from worse, from abuse because now it's ok by law?

Anti-abortionists:  do you think your goals will stop with your goal?  Do you believe that rendering women as second-class-citizens won't result in atrocious abuse?  Murder?  Do you believe that rendering women as less-than other citizens will result in anything other than horror?

A brick in the wall of slavery, they're just dying to build again.  They want women slaves, they want men slaves, they just want slaves again.  It's kinda what's behind a lot of the bullshit now - libertarian values on down. Totalitarian rulers with a slavery citizenry.  It makes them drool at night.

More success with bricks is being made with laws and judiciary.  This excellent summary from Senator Whitehouse explains other ways the bricks are formed and put into place.

This idea that the goal is slavery is the idea.  Those that drive it, pay for it, have been making it happen, don't actually admit it to each other, or indeed speak it aloud.  Horrible word!  So they discuss instead every step along the way, every brick formed and placed, and all comes to the same result anyway.  Enslavement.

Another excellent bit of reading on the subject is this book.  The true Libertarian believes in liberty, all right - for the "property owner".  You must be wealthy to have political power and say.  In the United States, that's how the government largely ran, in a time when property included slaves.  Property included human beings.  These ideas that drove the civil war haven't gone anywhere.  That's America's story, anyway.  Other countries have other stories, but most, if not all, countries have a slavery history somewhere back there, as well.

Owning people, enslaving people, is spectacularly profitable.

Consequently, the ideas that drive these shifts in our politics is a desire to have power concentrated at the top.  Only voting rights and policy shaping for the elite few, and the rest of us be damned.  It's how they avoid specifically stating they're hankering for slavery, by instead rather blithely stating that they want what they want, believe what they believe, without a thought as to how it affects anyone else.  If other citizens are not as immensely wealthy as they are, it's their own fault, and that wealth is the only way you get a seat at the table, the rest of the world be damned.

And when the rest of the world be damned, what you get is slavery.  Oh they might pretty it up, they might call it something else, they might provide just enough meager sustenance to the rest of us to keep up a work force, but not enough to provide strength to fight back.  Tale as old as time. Boils down to slavery.  Hitler did it, and he didn't even bother providing sustenance to his slaves.  He wanted - and achieved - a slavery workforce that he simply replaced as they expired.

I am unabashedly pro-choice.  I'm somewhat of a cheerleader for abortion, but that doesn't make me anything other than pro-CHOICE.  If you feel abortion is morally wrong, then you do not have to have one.  But relegating women into second-class citizenry - codifying it into law - is just plain wrong.  Abortion should not be anyone's business but the person that wants one and the qualified medical person providing it.

Removing the choice from a woman - making it law that we have less rights to our own bodies than any other humans - is wrong.  It.  Is.  Wrong.  Our bodies should be sovereignty - every born and living individual human on this planet.  Potential people should not have more rights than actual people.  This should not be a question.  And no matter what any anti-abortionist tells you - THIS IS THE REAL GOAL.  Their support of laws and bills and regulations that damage actual children's lives shows how little they actually care about children.  The real goal is to make woman less.  The first step to enslave her.

the anonymous op-ed

Thoughts I'm having as a citizen, regarding the insider op-ed published yesterday by the New York Times:

1.  The amount of work needed to feel confident in an opinion.

At first reading, I felt an immediate disgust to this paragraph:

"There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more."

The first thought was "ugh!", but then I started thinking about this being either a trigger to deliberately get that reaction from me, or it really is the belief of the writer that these are positive things, and more of an affirmation to those with similar views.

We have a foreign enemy in the system.  We have a former Russian spy with a propaganda/manipulation/spy machine right now pulling strings and fucking with everyone.  We have a compromised GOP that appears to be conforming to Russian influence due to blackmail.  Mostly because of the stolen RNC data the Russians have, but if they have worse things on Trump than just a golden shower tape, as suggested in this documentary, then you betcha there's a few others in the GOP congress and senate and further that are similarly compromised.  It ain't just their emails that they fear.

We also have corporate money in the electoral process on a scale never seen before.  While some of these democracy-damaging directives from corporate interests coincide with Putin's, we're talking Saruman and Sauron here.  Power isn't something these people like to share.

So I don't trust my first reactions anymore. I've learned to follow facts as far as I can without relying on my gut for truth.

I don't know if this op-ed was sincere.  None of us do.  I don't know if the intention really was to "sound the alarm" as some reporters put it, or if this is a nefariously planned thing intended for a specific action or actions.  I don't think, if sincere, this will have any effect on the GOP's actions against Trump.  His approval rating hasn't sunk low enough, and if they're all compromised by the stolen data Putin has on them, I doubt any will ever move directly against Trump for fear of Putin retaliation.

2.  What action(s) will this justify?

I don't think my opinion on this is very clear, either.  It does give Trump a great excuse to fire everyone within reach, but I don't know how or whom that serves. This wasn't written by Jeff Sessions or Rod Rosenstein. If everything goes back to Putin (and not every single thing does - the op-ed author triggered me specifically due to the purist libertarian ideals), then maybe this was done to clean house of anti-Putin people surrounding Trump.  

This op-ed will deepen Trump's sense of paranoia, and of isolation.  He tweeted himself this morning that he and Kim Jong Un would "get it done together".  Get what done?  The thought of the two of them doing anything together gives me goosebumps.  Unless it's just another photo-op.  These things swing that way in speculation.  This is the information era plus Trump.  You never know if it's going to be a huge nothing, or if it's going to be a huge fucking disaster.

So.  Right now, I can see this giving Trump a reason to get rid of even more staff.  If there's Putin-players ready for installment, then there's your reason.  If not, then it's not.

3.  Who the fuck's in charge?

The op-ed author claims to be working with others to "put country first."  Makes a fine showing of saying the right things about reaching across the aisle, yadda yadda.  But this means that Trump's directions are not his, and are not being heeded, and that someone else is basically in control of Trump.  Someone else has power over Trump's actions.  I mean, we knew he was figuratively out of control, but this would (if true) confirm that he really, REALLY isn't in control.

Anyone with that power over him is not necessarily acting in the interests of anyone else.  We don't fucking know.

If there are multiple persons in the administration disobeying Trump, how do they decide what to allow and what to not allow?  The author claims they are acting as a barrier to stop Trump from his own worst impulses.  But do you think that's all these people with control over Trump are doing or want to do?  I sure don't.  The praise of deregulation and tax breaks may have irked me, but those actions benefit only a tiny number of citizens, such as Charles Koch.  So are these people controlling Trump?  I didn't vote for that, either.

But I don't know.  We don't know if the writer is sincere.  We don't know if the writer is acting in the rich donor class's best interests, the country's best interest, or in Putin's best interest.  It's all speculation.  But none of it is good for the country.  This is a much bigger problem than just Trump himself.

the beginning, and the end

As a species we started believing in a world behind the world as a way of explaining what our early brains and early store of knowledge could not explain.  Why does the ground shake and the mountain explode?  Why does the sun come and go?  Why did the lightning destroy the forest?  We had big, curious, problem-solving brains.  And while those brains developed to keep us fed and sheltered and breeding, curiosity and a need for explanations are a result.  Organized religious belief may have developed as a way to organize tribes as opposed to a tyrannical bent for power and desiring to control peers.  The fact that it can be used for either is simply a consequence.

A consequence of united belief in something for which the leaders of that belief are not required to provide any proof whatsoever.

I feel that surely there have always been doubters as well, always been one hominid that considered the religious leader might not have any more knowledge about the subject than themselves.

It began innocently enough - this need for explanations.

It is not ending well.  Thousands of years have passed.  Our brains have changed and grown and adapted and are now stuffed full of information that has little or nothing to do with being fed or sheltered, or producing offspring.  There are many, many more doubters now - a consequence of unrelenting gathered information.  A demand for real answers, not comforting ones.  Our curiosity will never stop making us turn over rocks or look to the skies.  We are insatiable seekers of truth.

But there are many many others that have drawn a line in their knowledge.  They are satisfied with answers provided hundreds or thousands of years ago, even as they benefit from real progress and real knowledge and real advancement in every way.  Worse, they will bend current truths to continue to believe what comforts them, they will deny reality staring them in the face.  They will stop or drag back progress wherever they can.

It has happened many times before.

The historical precedent is what leaves me so hopeless in the present time.

I have maintained for years that faith is the greatest con of all time.  To consider belief in something for which there is no proof an actual virtue is indeed the greatest con.  And as it is proven, time and again, falling for one con makes you susceptible to another.

Humans are also filled with strong emotions.  A byproduct of our glands and the necessary need to care for offspring that are born helpless.  Sure, it sounds cold when explained biologically, in evolutionary terms.  But that doesn't mean that I don't value love.

It is our emotional response that convinces us that we are right, or experiencing something supernatural.  It is the emotions and emotional reactions of our own bodies that trick us into thinking there is something going on without.  That thing you feel inside you really is just that thing you feel inside you.

Awe and inspiration and uplifting feelings are wonderful goose-bumpy emotions.  But they are occurring within our own bodies, not without.  They are feelings, they are an emotional response.  They are not the whispers of spirits or gods or ghosts.  They are chemicals being dumped into your body by your body.  No, that is not a romantic thought, unless you're like me and find the fascinating truth it's own exhilarating reward.  It's not a romantic, emotionally-satisfying explanation for many, but it's true.  It's the truth.

All ideological beliefs that have no facts to support them are cons.  There are white supremacists now who claim to be atheists, but they are also driven by an irrational belief that they are somehow superior to people that differ from them in purely superficial ways. There are no facts to support that melanin is some kind of merit scale.  Oh, it's been studied.  Of course it has.  Because some hate-filled person with a lab coat wanted it to look as if they had the facts on their side.  But it never boils down to truth.  The argument collapses under scrutiny because, in common with all ideologies not based in reality, there is no argument on their side other than their feelings.  However, generally, white supremacy is associated with christianity.

How quickly will a conned person fall for another con?  How much money on religious trinkets is spent every day?  On tithing?  Just think of the money spent on religious jewelry alone all over the world.  When you feel that your relic has real supernatural powers, do you realize that the feeling you are having is happening inside you?  That you are the cause of that feeling?

For many of us, it is a horror to admit when we are wrong, but far far worse to admit when we've been conned.  It's traumatic, really.  And I'm afraid it will be our undoing.  That coupled with the astounding number of people that do not question the irrational beliefs they were brought up with, those that never think to question, those that follow quite blindly, those that are satisfied completely with being a part of a tribe and give no thought beyond that.

It is not the norm to question what you have been taught your whole life to believe.  But the consequences of irrational belief are not good for our species, these consequences are easily observable, and the astounding number of people not willing to see this or question their own beliefs when they do cause harm is very depressing indeed.

Aside from the immediate concerns of our species destroying itself over belief in the supernatural and/or the irrational, we are a species out of control in terms of breeding beyond the resources to support it.  This will also form our demise, if we do not succeed in warring ourselves to death first.  We are animals.  We have an instinctual need to breed.  And unfortunately, like many creatures on this planet, in crisis we tend to breed even more.  We are outstripping our advancements in food production, and destroying the very environments upon which our food production depends.  And we have to fight ideological belief in factless claims simply to try to save those environments.

I do not think intellectual heads will prevail.  I do not think the rational will win the day.  There are too many fronts on which our species is under attack by itself.  There are too many irrational beliefs slowing down any advancement to save our species, and the countless other species our species is currently wiping out.  I want to have hope, but I am looking at the numbers, I am looking at our history, and I am coming up with the same answer.

Bleak.  Yes.  What do I do?

I irrationally continue to fight.  I believe, with little facts to support me, that maybe something can be done.  I won't go down in acquiescence.  In spite of it all I like our species, I want us to survive, I wish for the future where we are flying off into space in the name of further knowledge.  Where we've come to some kind of Star Trek-ian unity on earth and have turned it all around to the betterment of us all.  My own irrational ideology.  My own belief in make-believe.

immature choices

I don't know why I'm suddenly interested in romantic notions again at this moment, but it's true I've been thinking it might be time to go out there again.  I'm not exactly very smart with my own choices for love interests.

I've also been extremely lucky.  I've been married, and I've been asked to marry many times.  Luck of the draw.  I also think not really being motivated toward couplehood is in itself an attraction.  An aloofness that seemed to always work for me.

Except when it didn't.

Generally, I did not pursue couplehood.  The less-than-handful of times where I personally decided I cared for someone and was active in my pursuit of that end, I chose aloof men that couldn't tell me how they felt about me.  It was a disaster each (both) times.  Falling for a man that can't tell you how he feels about you when you yourself can't tell him isn't a recipe for romantic bliss.  Being the fearful one only works when you're with someone who can be brave.

So.  There were two men I was madly in love with, that couldn't communicate mutual feelings to me.  I think they felt the same way.  But there's no way to be sure.  The one I wasted the most time and emotion on (the one that started me blogging in the first place), did give me a couple of sentences at the time that conveyed his feelings were just as strong.  But that was it.  Neither could really profess.  I tried.  I think.  The other was pre-blogging days.  I believe I wrote about him in a journal mostly, and what good is that if I am the only one who reads it?  The point being, I don't know that I was much better at being in love with them as they were with me.  I think there were immature fuckups enough to go around with both in-love instances.

I bring this up now because it's on my mind lately.  I tend to think along romantic, or at least sexual, lines when I've been getting a lot of exercise and when I'm feeling good about myself.

I'm not an aggressor.  And the two times I was in love and being somewhat aggressive about it, I chose men that couldn't even tell me they loved me.  So I think I've learned that this isn't a role I'm comfortable in.

I'm not sure when I'll start seeing people romantically again.  But I do know I'm not interested in buried feelings, or buried expressions of feelings.  And as always, being romantically involved is not a goal of mine, nor is it necessary for my happiness.

But I am feeling the urge for closeness again.  I am definitely wishing there were more kisses in my life.  It usually starts with a wish to kiss - starts when I begin scouring my various tv sources for romantic movies or shows that have really good kissing scenes.  Once I am beyond satisfaction from third-person romance, I'll put myself out there.  Not sure how I'm going to do that, either.  These days there are a million new options.  But it's nice to know that I'm not over these desires.  Nice to know my fuzzy romantic heart is still beating.

who's going to change the world?

Hilariously, but not really, someone has already invented the thing I wanted to invent.  I actually half expected this from the beginning.

In 2009, I watched an excellent lecture from Lawrence Krauss on YouTube that really awakened me to things I hadn't kept track of.  Scientific advancement - somehow I had forgotten that science doesn't stop, and my knowledge of latest achievements never was updated past high school or college.

It gives me comfort to know that out of my notice, the world goes on.

In 2009 I started the year working for a credit union at $10/hour, but ended the year at the magazine where I still work.  2009 changed many things for me.  In 2008 I had decided that I wasn't thrilled with the freelance life or certainly the bartender life.  The older I became, the more I found I didn't like not having a routine.  I didn't like late hours, I didn't like having no healthcare, and I really didn't like the lack of a steady paycheck.  But not having a routine really sticks out.  I longed for a set of necessary actions structuring my days.

In a lot of ways I feel as if I've never grown up.  That I am still very much a kid inside, still naive to many things, still staring wide-eyed at what all the adults around me are doing.  But I found this desire for a routine to be extremely mature.  It was like taking a step toward adulthood in a good way.  And hey, I was 39.  Probably a good time to grow up a little.

I'm slow to get there on a lot of things.  And with the climate problems we are facing, of COURSE someone was already in the midst of inventing something that I eureka'ed on in my own head.  I was late to the eureka.

Another thing that changed for me with time is my desire to leave something behind better than when I found it.  Since obtaining the steady job, regular paycheck, and healthcare, I've become more charitable.  I don't make a lot of money, but I found I could spare a little for charities I thought were extremely necessary and useful.  Now, I want to do more.

It's becoming as insistent a desire as wanting a steady routine.  I am sure our current political situation has something to do with it, but always having a keen interest in science and our species, I think this is what's been coming anyway.

What shape that takes is something I don't know at this point.  But there are too many things going on both inside my own life and without that are making this change imminent.

I long to write about what is going on with me personally.  I don't feel I can do that at this point - detail the drama and bullshit I have been forced into this year, and I'm not talking about our hijacked election or buffoon of a president.  My personal life has come to mirror the political crisis the whole country is in.  There's a huge amount of fodder for a writer here.  There's also a looming legal shadow, where if I want to remain in the right binds me to silence for the time being.

As the itch to do more strengthens, the drama and bullshit only nudge me further.