How the Year 2019 Ends: In Fire

I woke up this morning to reports of the US Embassy in Baghdad under siege by protesters angered up by recent military strikes on Shiite strongholds in Syria and Iraq.

For almost a month now, the entire continent/nation of Australia has been on fire due to prolonged drought, rising ocean temperatures, and an ungodly heat wave (it's Summer on that side of the Equator) that are all part of the climate change nearly every scientist has been screaming was coming to kill us all. Those eco-disaster movies from ten-twenty years ago? THEY ARE HAPPENING NOW IN REAL LIFE.

India is on fire this month due to their nationalist Hindu government pushing a citizenship law that would specifically exclude Muslims. It doesn't help that the nation is roiling from a growing rape gang crisis threatening the safety of every woman who lives there.

Over the past ten days the number of antisemitic attacks in America have gotten worse, ranging from vandalism to street assaults to someone with a machete stabbing Orthodox Jews at a rabbi gathering in Brooklyn.

Boris Johnson has cleared out nearly every obstruction in his quest to fulfill a Hard Brexit pullout from the EU, which is now including efforts by the Tories to privatize their National Health Service and make it more like the United States (welcome to medical bankruptcy, Brits!). We are looking at a January 31 2020 where a No-Deal Brexit will happen because the EU won't cave on any of Boris' demands.

Israel is forcing itself into yet another general election because the last three tries failed to form a unified government. It does not help that current PM Netanyahu is facing corruption charges... but refuses to leave office and indeed got an overwhelming vote of confidence from his own party meaning that unless enough voters break with their own parties to support an opposition majority they are stuck in gridlock.

China has entered its umpteenth month (since June at least) of Hong Kong protests over the city/region's autonomous status, which is a serious civil/human rights fight that China will never recognize. Not to mention the ongoing human rights abuses of concentration camps punishing millions of Uyghurs for their religious/ethnic differences.

We're still coping with the ongoing Impeachment of President Loser of the Popular Vote and Eternal Shitgibbon donald trump. With additional evidence showing that members of his foreign policy team - Sec of State Pompeo, Sec of Defense Esper, and NSA John Bolton (!) - confronted trump in late August (before the Whistleblower concerns got to Congress) to convince him to release Ukrainian military aid (trump refused). Not only reaffirming other evidence of trump's extortion racket but that key members of his administration have evidence they still need to present for the Impeachment proceedings.

Everything is chaos.

Everything is on fire.

Welcome to 2020.

It's going to get crazier from here.

Hoping for One Brief Respite In This Year of Madness (and the Madness Yet to Come)

Was everybody seeing this stuff and acting as though they weren't? Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act? - Susanna Kaysen, Girl Interrupted

I may have mentioned before, I've always been sober. I think I've also clarified that I never said I was sane. Well, not fully sane or insane otherwise. I know I'm off-kilter, but still high-functioning and trying what I can to be helpful to the world.

There's a lot on my mind right now. Some of it is NaNoWriMo, it IS that time of the year after all, and while I'm doing what I can to finish enough chapters / sections of my superhero 'verse stories I'm still tempted with the idea of writing about this entire past year (and further back) of this year of madness we've all endured.

I've been helping out with the local Hillary campaign to Get Out The Vote to ensure enough voters are at the polls to make things matter. I've seen what happens here in Florida - 2000, 2010, 2012, 2014, now - when there's terrible turnout and only the crazy ones show up (to vote in crooks like Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott). I feel I haven't done much, just canvass a handful of local neighborhoods, and I can only hope I'm part of a larger group of Pro-Hillary supporters who are doing what they can to ensure Florida does not flip to Trump.

That's been the maddening thing this whole time. Ever since he dominated the Republican polls back in 2015, it's been frustrating as hell to watch around 40 percent of everyone around me - on the media, the Intertubes, the real world - just get suckered into Trump's con game with him this massively corrupt black hole crushing everything into one big disaster.

In three days, maybe two now, this particular madness will end. The general election happens on Tuesday. There will be some finality to that when the ballots are truly finally in.

But I know the madness won't die. It will just turn into a different, nastier monster. Trump's ongoing - and unproven - cries of "rigged" elections that feed into the ongoing Republican efforts to suppress minority voters will see to that: even if a majority of voters on all sides accept the results of a Hillary win, there will be just enough of Trump's followers who never will. Worse, there will be enough Republicans in Congress and in the state governments who have already pledged to obstruct her in every matter - essentially expanding their current obstructionist habits - as though they will never see her as legitimate.

Of course, if Trump wins he and the Republicans will drop all pretense of "rigged" elections and declare it a great moral victory that will continue on the Grand Reagan Revolution of 1000 Years. The elections only count when Republicans win.

I so want this crazy to end this Tuesday, with a large enough victory - a resounding thrashing of the Republican party at all levels of government - to make the GOP Obstruction moot. It'd be nice to think that will happen. Instead I'm biting my nails over whether or not Hillary can even win (GODS HELP US IF TRUMP DOES) and whether or not the Democrats claim the Senate (to at least free up court and executive nominations). I'm stressing out over whether my own home state of Florida stays Blue after two election victories by Obama - the polling is saying one thing, the early growing turnout of Latinos is saying another - because if Hillary wins Florida it's a good sign Hillary's winning the whole Electoral College.

And I'm recognizing that the post-election will remain crazy either way: A Trump victory that will pretty much signal the end of the nation (He will raid everything for his own pocket, subvert every law, destroy every norm, and leave our economy a smoldering wreck before he's even sworn in); a Hillary victory that will signal escalation of hostilities with a Far Right that will never accept her in the Oval Office.

Madness. Takes it toll.

There is only one sane response to all this.

Go see Obama at a Florida rally. One last chance to see him standing there as President of the United States, to thrill in his rhetoric, to cheer with the crowds. As always a student of history and politics, this is a Must-Do before his tenure ends.

I hope to bring back pictures and videos.

A brief respite in the middle of the last days of insanity.

P.S. GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT FOR THE DEMOCRATS IN EVERY COUNTY AND EVERY STATE.