Hello Goodbye

‘I’ll never forget their screams’: Marjorie Taylor Greene says jailed Capitol rioters ‘are suffering greatly’ https://t.co/EYDdt5yPuL

— Raw Story (@RawStory) November 5, 2021

The moment I write this post and walk away from the computer, I'll be back creating 12 new posts; so I really shouldn't do this.

Anyway....

Autumn and an old man's fancy turns to holidays and what traditions this blog has (few, if any).  Armistice Day is coming (I'm old; I don't like "Veteran's Day."  That's what Memorial Day is for.  We've become far too militaristic since we decided we couldn't be a nation without a standing army.).  Then Totenfest, the Sunday before Thanksgiving this year (Last Sunday of Pentecost, IOW).  Then Thanksgiving, and the Sunday after this year is the First Sunday of Advent.  Always a big deal around here.

So my fancy is turning to other things, and the political whinging about how the Democrats need to be more like the GOP or less "woke" or just more "moderate":

Spanberger says Biden should remember that for many voters, his mandate was quite limited: to remove Trump from their TV screens. "Nobody elected him to be FDR, they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos." @jmartNYT @alexburnsNYT https://t.co/lCa2jKf5tQ

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) November 4, 2021

“What would do justice, and what is badly needed, is an honest conversation in the Democratic Party about how to return to the moderate policies and values that fueled the blue-wave victories in 2018 and won Joe Biden the presidency in 2020.” https://t.co/FnToeRdzC2

— Sarah Longwell (@SarahLongwell25) November 5, 2021

is making me tired. Political post mortems are a dime a dozen, and they all follow a predictable script.  To that point I would recommend Sophia Tesfaye's analysis, something I seldom do. We are plagued by the narratives we keep. Political internet is an outrage machine, primed to anger people and make them click and fume. To that point, I'd send you here. Our problem is also the information we expose ourselves to. The significance of the election in Virginia is all about who won (what? The party not in the White House won the governorship of Virginia? In other news, the sun came up this morning!).  I have, in short, had it with conventional political wisdom.  Well, for a little while.

That MTG thing, for example.  I wouldn't believe that woman if she came into the room soaking wet and told me it was raining outside, until I'd opened a window and put my hand out.  So I'm not best pleased seeing people take her seriously enough to try to make a minor point about reality:

It's pretty common to see people who didn't previously pay a ton of attention to our justice system suddenly see it in action and think people must be being persecuted because it's pretty rough, when in fact that rough treatment is a routine feature.

— Brad Heath (@bradheath) November 5, 2021

MTG heard "screams"? I call bullshit. Where was she, at Gitmo while they were waterboarding prisoners? At Abu Ghraib when W. was in office? "Suffering greatly"? The woman needs to get out more. I guarantee there are people in her district that she doesn't give wet snap about suffering more than the people in a Federal prison awaiting trial or having been sentenced for their part in the violence at the Capitol on January 6th.  Seeing the justice system in action?  Shit, she doesn't understand the legislative system she ran to be elected to.

To my point about the internet being an outrage machine:

This is excellent: https://t.co/BQzBpROVjh

— Jeff B. is *BOX OFFICE POISON* (@EsotericCD) November 5, 2021

I had to read that article to know this was even a thing.  I know, I know, I could have ignored it completely and not been the poorer for my ignorance on this subject.  And I don't care about it, except that it's one more straw on this old camel's back about the internet and outrage and looking for reasons to be outraged. It also induces flashbacks to when I was a pastor, the closest I've ever been to being a public figure, and how anything I said was interpreted by someone to be the worst thing they'd ever heard and what kind of person was I for saying it?  My Lovely Wife likes to say I wasn't personable enough as a pastor, and I am not a people person, I freely admit it.  My shyness makes me almost misanthropic (or maybe that's just me!), but when every word you say to anyone becomes a weapon or a mistake (my most casual utterance could blow up on me), you get tired of it real fast.  So I have some sympathy for Mr. Pratt.

I've had enough of outrage and conventional wisdom for awhile, is the issue here.  I read that Beto O'Rourke, a truly decent person who might actually try to make Texas government serve the people, not bidness, trails the buffoon Greg Abbott by 9 points in polling; and I want to give up.  Abbott is reduced to praying February of this year doesn't repeat next year (and odds are it won't; last time we had weather that severe my daughter was a decade away from being born, and it still wasn't as bad as winter this year) because he led the charge to do bugger all about the power grid in this state.  And yet he wants crypto-currency servers here in the worst way.  I hope they have their own generators.

I'm fed up.  I've had it.  For a moment, anyway.  I have personal projects to work on, I have better ways to spend my time than prowling for things to express an opinion on (mostly expressing MY outrage.  I know what's going on here.).  If you don't see anything here for a bit, that's why.  I'm going to set up the Thanksgiving posts and the Armistice Day posts and the Totenfest, maybe even the first week of Advent (if I get ambitious).  But if it seems real quiet around here, it is.

I got things to do.  Keeping up with politics right now is just convincing me, again, that I am so wholly out of touch with this world I don't seem to belong here.  Poor, poor pitiful me.  Nah, I just don't need the aggravation.  Politics is easy to blog about:  post a tweet, write a comment, done.  I'm taking a spiritual health break.  Try to shift my attention to more important matters, which are just as earthly as politics (I don't accept the Platonic distinction between physical and metaphysical.  The spiritual is as real as the material.  And pace Brecht, mankind is not kept alive by bestial acts.  Maslow's hierarchy of need is wrong in conception as much as it is wrong in execution.  We need each other, first and foremost.  We need spirituality as much as we need food and shelter; maybe even more so, since the latter can be taken from us.  When we give up the former, of what use, really, is the latter?  I think I'll go explore that question.)

See you around.

(And don't be surprised if I post a few things on that question.  I have some incomplete things I may complete.  Or I may just cool down until Advent.  That's always busy time around here. Don't go away, I'll be back.  That's a promise; or a threat.  Your choice.)