First Thoughts

… and so begins the day of purging… hardest part of a colonoscopy… the dreaded prep… perhaps the silver lining being that i will head into turkey day with some room to spare, ha, ha…

… i have the Gregorian chants going this AM… and i did my morning stretches which i had gotten out of the habit of…

… sleep last night was fitful… awake at midnight, awake at 1 AM, awake at 3 AM up at 4 AM…

… i am a little anxious, about the prep, about getting to the procedure, about what the procedure might reveal… each one of these things the necessary journey through the portal of having it done, hopefully for 5 years, at least for 3 years…

… HCR meter, broken but very necessary to be played again and again, record… Democracy is under threat… the struggle between the mostly white patriarchy and the rising multiarchy is real… and it is far from determined which will win… by 2024 we could be heading into autocracy or, worse, fascism… this is not the system i wanted to spend my old age in… and i shouldn’t forget the threat of war on the eastern front, Ukraine… will Putin attack?… will NATO assist Ukraine?… interesting times will continue… are we heading towards a blood letting?…

… i have decided the extra money i have accumulated will be spent to whatever degree it needs to be on making a nice Christmas… i am gathering ideas for gifts, planning ahead… i will work on a new computer in the new year…

… back to the political situation… i saw what all this was years ago… i saw the desperation of the patriarchy to secure control before their numbers were insufficient to do so… i knew the struggle would be very difficult but i had optimism that in the end they would not succeed… we should know that in the pretty near future… at this point, it all hinges on voting rights legislation… the infrastructure bills will be helpful in making people feel better about their economic lives… this is important, but not determinative by itself… it needs the assistance of voting rights legislation which requires that Manchin, Sinema and any other moderate democrat attached to the filibuster be willing to do a carve out, at minimum, on voting rights… my perception being that if this does not happen the game is lost…

… not smoke, fire…

… about the debt ceiling fight, 45’s control of the Republican Party, the efforts of a hyper-radicalized minority to seize control of the country…

… we are heading towards a full bore constitutional crisis that will play out in the next two election cycles… 2022 will give us a good idea of where the country stands…

… Democrats have the power to reign it in, if they become willing to alter, limit or abolish the filibuster… so far they have not been willing to do that, but the debt ceiling will present itself as a continued battle in December that may require it… will Senators Sinema and Manchin get on board?… or will they go down in history as the two senators that could have stopped authoritarian rule but didn’t?…

… the country has been to this kind of precipice before… the last time a civil war broke out…

… it seems we come to the precipice periodically and manage to preserve democracy, albeit at great cost… will it be preserved now?… hard to know…