Time to turn off the TV news and re-read 1984. Or Brave New World (order). I don’t know about you, but I’m still in shock and grief is still only on the horizon in the distance of January 2025.
Fear will come, too, but no rush – – there are over a thousand days for that lying in wait ahead.
No optimism here either, not today. Only anger and incredulity bubbling up. And under those, I suppose sadness; a deep, rocking sadness which can lead to that grief. And also despair ,if I don’t decide to change course, away from fatalism. But not today. Today it’s the chilling awareness that simplistic messaging, no matter how untrue, if said repeatedly, can become truth. The west coasters crowd is right: we do create our own reality.
Late last night I was thinking through some of this. I was still trying to stay optimistic. But I was already speaking with and depressing some of my pessimist friends.
My first thought was, Orange Julius’ followers will find out that He doesn’t care about them. And they will suffer too, along with the millions of us who see what’s coming. But then this even more disturbing thought: Nope; that may not happen at all!
People who throw in with a charismatic, deranged Daddy figure — even a homicidal religious fanatic — may believe anything, and everything that the 2nd Coming of Christ says. No matter how elaborate the fantasies, illogical the reasoning, no matter the number of lies, no matter the obviousness of the lies, like today’s Red Scary Party litmus test, “Who won the 2020 election?” If you say Blue did, then you’re out. You must say Red did, and then you’re in, and you get to live. You must come to love Big Brother or you stay in the cage with the hungry rats. (Although me, I love rats; they’re beautiful, sensitive, gentle, loving creatures; in many ways preferable — and less dangerous — then self-deluded homo sapiens.
You must obediently follow the killer-leader to your own graves. And with today’s social media and TikTok news and now A.I. coming on fast to make it all faster and deeper and darker and Musk-y… oh boy.
America is now Jonestown. Trade out the white tennis shoes for red MAGA hats. Tens of millions of people in this country are drinking the Kool-Aid. And coming back for more of it. Years more.
Sorry, today is not my day for optimism. I see all the worst of America getting much worse, much faster. Accelerating off the capitalism cliff of consumerism. And into the climate crisis abyss.
“Maybe now that the MAGATs have a mandate, the Party of T, the new American T-Party will be more reasonable. They’ve caught the government bus they’ve been chasing since the Gingrich stole Congress. So now they don’t have to dismantle it, as they’ve been doing since jolly old Newt first realized Team Red could, instead of governing with compromise and consensus, just obstruct. Obstruct the functioning of government. Then blame an obstructed government for failing the people. Which gets more Team Red elected into power. And repeat the cynical cycle. To dismantle more of government, what Evil Steve (#1) Bannon cleverly branded The Deep State. Which lets Evil Steve (#2) Miller work his deportation wonders. Exactly the kind of damaged, angry, vindictive characters you want nowhere near power.
I’ve spoken to a few left-leaning activists over the last few months who were critical of “both sides,” including over Gaza. I get that. I really do. I even get the partial truth of simplistically lumping both parties together as one corrupt, warmongering capitalist system. But then whom to vote for? And what outcome do you get in the current system, if 18% vote for a 3rd party who will not win?… Well, now we’ll have our answer.
Let’s see if MAGATs, back in the White House, shred the few remaining ramparts of our democratic system. And unleash the Steves of War on America.
One smart young liberal male acquaintance postulated to me over the summer that if Rump wins, then maybe the whole system has to break down first. For a “reset.” It was all too rotten to salvage. A system where the dislikes of Elon and Bezos and Zuck rise to the scummy top. Winners of the capital gains game. Capitalists Uber alles.
I told him what I tell you: that’s soooo easy to say, and I get the appeal. Don’t fight the rape, just let it happen and it’ll be over sooner.
But that’s one thing to say, but exquisitely painful to live through. Ask 1930s Germany. So much suffering and pain and death and destruction and waste to live through, to eventually reach a German “reset” years, decades later.
Turns out my young, resigned friend may be right. November 5th, 2024, is a day that will live in American historical infamy.
For me, being such a big lover of wild nature, I feel sadness, anger, shock, and beneath it something deeper and darker: despair. The (capitalist) system has already been assaulting and, to put it in the blunt language of today’s social media, killing the natural world; chainsawing its trees, masticating its plants, heribicide-poisoniing more plants, and soils and waterways and furry woodland creatures.
This has been ongoing for decades. And under Blue/Dem administrations too — undermined by the usual House of Republican Obstructionist Horrors.
But now. Now. As of Nov. of 2024, and throttling up in January of 2025… all bets are off. When I wander into nature I will expect more chainsaws and more herbicides. And fewer trees, and fewer bees and fewer crickets and… you get the grim picture.
I will, of course, continue to do what I do. I literally have nothing better to do with my time, and my life, than to advocate for nature, for wild nature; all the fragile, diminishing, precious, magnificent life that lives mostly beyond our houses, apartments, our Netflix, our backyard lawns and our so-called smartphones which clearly make us dumber. And meaner.
Maybe it’s time for another Giant Coast Redwoods Experience with a few people who feel as I do about Her, Mother Nature, away from Man-Not-So-Kind. One place where Earth’s diminishing wild things still roam freely. (Which makes me wonder about the fate of the Point Reyes Tule elk, but that’s a blog for another day.)
The forest is where, when I visit, I feel most alive, most joyful, most at peace, happiest and healthiest. To quote John Muir, “To lose my mind and find my soul.”
Today, I’m not fighting the sadness, the coming grief and likely despair. I’ve lived long enough to know (and be taught by women, especially), to let the feelings come, even as my man-mind wants to stop, block, moderate, modulate those feelings by “mind-fucking,” by thinking them away. “How’s that workin’ for you, buddy?”
But even my thinking mind, which wants to escape, accepts the idea of the 5 stages of grief. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. Remember, people, the “stages” can come in varying order, they may overlap, there are backtracks and repetition. It’s not so neat and orderly and tidy as these words might lead you (me, really) to believe. Try though I may to avoid feeling feelings lotsa times.
Perhaps I’ll see you on the other side of the giant California redwood I’ll be hugging tightly for timeless 1/2-hour sessions, far from the screens and the screams… but today, it’s mourning in America.
For the wild,
Jack
