The Afterglow

Okay. It wasn't a blue wave. And as a Democrat (or more specifically, an anti-Republican), I'm confused, saddened and disappointed. I mean, if our contempt for Donald Trump doesn't unite democracy-loving Americans, what will?

We have a fact-checking report that informs us that Donald Trump lies an average of thirty times a day. About his policies, their effectiveness, his political opponents and what he had for lunch.

We have a president on the verge of killing a potentially damaging investigation into his cozy relationship with a superpower politically hostile to us.

That's an impeachable obstruction of justice, right?

I get it that Trumpers would rather have body parts forcibly removed than admit their guy isn't the swamp-draining messiah he promised he'd be. And that they'd rather he sleep with their wives or abuse their children before they'd ever think of renouncing him.

But for what? Are y'all really that concerned about the financial well-being of the one-percent? Because that's what your boy is working on. That's agenda item number-one. He's toying with gutting your social security and medicare to pay for the latest round of billionaire-centric tax cuts.

Eighty-three percent of the benefits of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went to one-percent of the population. You know that's not you, right?

But golly—he did send the National Guard down to the border the day before the mid-terms. And that's gotta be worth something.

Exactly what has your hatred of immigrants and gays and women got you? Has it put you in different tax bracket? Are you tooling around in a brand-new BMW? Do you enjoy a heightened sense of satisfaction when you sense that those whom you hate are suffering the outrageous indignities you are?

Does it enrich your own impoverished existence? Does it nourish the parched earth of your soul?

Where is that indomitable Republican will, anyway? Where's that pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps self-sufficiency? Or are you just another example of American victimhood?

Oh that's right—you're a Republican. You can't be.

I've admitted that Republicans are expert marketers. And brilliant button-pushers. I laughed when I saw the Trump-whore's text alleging that Democrats had allowed cop-killer Luis Bracamontes into the country and then allowed him to stay.

I laughed even harder when I realized you'd believe it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: you're a tool, bro. Wait until you see where the car you're riding in is headed.

A wise old man once said be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

...And I Was Made Grateful

Gratitude comes in many forms. I spent a lifetime assuming that I knew where and how it would arrive. That I knew what it would look like. But clearly, I was wrong.

Long-time readers of this blog are well aware of my struggle to reclaim my pre-Great Recession life, and of my inability to do so. Left to labor in menial, dead end jobs with few—if any—benefits, I ranted and raved about the stupidity and the greed and the utter lack of morality in corporate America.

I shared my personal experiences; the personality profiles and the group interviews and the don't-hire-the-unemployed ethos. The thoughtless and short-sighted cost-cutting and the knee-jerk lip service to the words customer service, which lies at the heart of virtually every one of their two-faced marketing campaigns.

Likewise the egocentric displays of power, mindless conformity and raging hypocrisy.

But none of that exorcised the gnawing, insistent feeling that I was a failure. None of it repaired my broken self-esteem. Not even the knowledge that there were hundreds of thousands of Americans just like me whose lives had been put on hold.

I was conditioned to believe that as a man, I was something less than one if I did not succeed in a system that I now understand considered me an expense. A speed bump on the road to unfettered wealth creation.That I was hired to be fired.

It humiliates me to admit it but yes, I ached.

That is, until I heard U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions speak.

I don't think the former senator from Alabama could recall the thirteen original colonies, much less explain the Theory of Relativity. He doesn't know the difference between Budapest and Bucharest, or the significance of the Magna Carta.

What Jeff Sessions knows how to do is acquire power and please the people who can give it to him—as instinctively as my cat knew the sound of me opening a tin of cat food meant she was going to eat.

This walking mediocrity is a luminous example of the sea-level intelligence which infests the legislative branch of our Federal Government.

One has only to listen to Session's surprise at a federal judge's decision to hear the abundant witlessness and arrogance and prejudice inborn in this man (supposedly expert in the checks and balances within the government that has so generously supported him for the past two decades) to realize what a shithead he is.

And he is the Attorney General of the United States of America.

Just as the NBA doesn't necessarily possess the world's best basketball players (it possesses the best who remained felony-free while simultaneously gleaning a scholarship to a school with a prominent basketball program), our government doesn't necessarily feature the best and brightest minds of our times.

It features the best and brightest minds of those eager and adept at lapping at the food dish set out by the wealthy and the powerful.

Mr. Sessions, thank you. Thanks to you and your generous display of ignorance, I now understand in a way I never quite did before the complete lack of a relationship between ability and success.

I am, if I haven't made it clear, eternally grateful.