I didn't think it was possible, but I am more depressed today than I was last year when Trump managed to beat Clinton in the national election.
Back then I was depressed not so much because a serial liar and conman like Trump won The White House, but because so many of my fellow citizens chose pure selfishness over the welfare of the country as a whole and voted for the guy. I figured my depression would eventually go away when he and his minions got voted out of office during the mid-terms and the next general election. In the meantime, I figured, it would be almost entertaining to see this buffoon stumble through his first term.
And it has been entertaining to catalogue his growing list of lies, to listen to his sycophantic supporters (Read: Hannity) invent ways to excuse his inexcusable behavior, to notice that none of his pandering promises were coming to fruition, to notice not a single legislative achievement. The government was at a standstill, but courageous individuals and courageous states and businesses helped pick up the slack and kept this country of ours holding the course against all of Trump's ham handed and vindictive attempts to undermine Obama's legacy.
All that has changed. The world is in a mess. Trump's agenda, to use a favorite Trumpean term, is a disaster. Our position on the world stage has been weakened. We have ceded control of the Pacific Rim to China. We have ceded the lead in alternative energy, once again, to China. We have earned the enmity and scorn of any nation with a diverse population. We have goaded North Korea into even more brazen attempts to terrorize the world with a nuclear threat. And through all of this, Trump and his ass kissers actually believe that all we have to do is get tough and the rest of the world will acquiesce. What bullshit!
Look at today's (11/26/17) headlines:
"Discord in D.C. Shutdown showdown may loom"
"Korean Missile Test - D.C. may be in reach"
"Activist group chimes in on Colo. gay-wedding cake case"
"Air Force Academy - Scandal-filled sexual assault office 'derelict'"
"Bank drive big gains to record highs"
"More than 70% in U.S. shopped over weekend"
"Big contracts, no storm tarps for Puerto Rico"
"National Monuments - Trump announcement Monday in Utah"
There is a lot to worry about in those headlines. But the headline that will actually shape our reaction to the current situation is the bank gains and the Black Friday shopping spree. Voters can shout for equal rights and opportunities, can shout out their sympathy for the underprivileged, but they will quickly forsake those principles if it means padding their bank accounts. It drives me crazy.
On top of all this, I am, as an article in last week's (11/20/17) New Yorker tells me, "Getting On." I am one year away from 70 and that means that, like all OLD people, I am getting marginalized. In other words, it really doesn't matter what I think about the appalling state of the world because just like me, my opinions are dinosaurs. We are irrelevant. We are overwhelmed by the speed and complete fucking mystery of technology. Not only that, but the elderly are like "locusts who swarm the earth consuming all our resources." We, people over 65, are "part of the dependent rather than the productive population; [we] are the burden the young must carry."
This attitude is made even worse by the fact that households led by old people are fifty times as wealthy as households led by the young. Lots of room for resentment there. I guess I'm supposed to keep looking behind me at my children waiting patiently for me to take up residence in their basement apartments where I will be safe and out of the way. I'm supposed to feel like King Lear looking on his children like ravening wolves.
Did you know that the Marind Anim of New Guinea bury senescent elders alive. The Chukchee of Siberia are more efficient. They stab their senile elders through the heart. That way they don't have to bury them alive. In areas of Polynesia old people are looked on as the "nearly dead."
My mother at age 70 told me that she still felt like she did when she was sixteen. She had the same fears, the same joys, the same dreams. It was just harder for her to get up off the floor after playing with her grandchildren. I feel just like that. I'm 69. I wish I was thinner, but I'm not obese. I still work out. Still hike. I am still (ahem) wittier and quicker than any of my kids. But I can see the end looming ahead whenever I walk into a restaurant and notice that I'm the oldest person there and feel that the place is too noisy. I can see the end looming ahead whenever I have to ask one of my kids or grandkids to repeat what they say because I have tinnitus. I can see the end looming ahead whenever I get paranoid and suspect that when my kids get together they shake their collective heads and comment on how much older I look, or act.
It is all quite sad making. I am furious at the state of the world right now because I want my grandchildren to have long and full lives just like I have had. But I'm also furious because now that I should be hanging out and basking in contentment, I have to be a first hand witness to the maddening unraveling of the world I used to love.
P.S. Kathie and I stopped at Freaky's the other day to get some rolling papers (how young is that?) when I noticed that Masterpiece Cakes was right there in that same strip mall. I had an urge to walk into the place and order a cake for an NRA party I was throwing and ask if they would please decorate it with a pair of crossed AK-47s just to see if, since I wasn't LGBT, they would fulfill the order, to see if the crossed guns might violate their religion. But I went home without causing a scene, knowing it was something for a young person to do.
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