A Respite from Outrage




I find that I can’t write about Trump without giving up writing, a state that I have never experienced and never expected to experience.

I, who used to cry so easily, cry less and less as I grow old, and when I do, it’s nearly always because I, who have no ear for music, have been touched by one of two instruments—the bagpipe or the electric guitar.

 
I sobbed today as I lay in bed with Peggy listening to Steve McDonald’s version of Loch Lomond. So much sweat poured from me that I had to change the cover. I
’ve been crying for more than an hour and see no end in sight, but even this is better than three months of powerless outrage.

38 comments:

PhilipH said...

Couldn't play the video you included (not available). Found this one by the same chap: https://youtu.be/0_nnHO-UciQ

Your post is most unusual Snowy. Hope all is well with you dear chap.

Phil

Jennifer Rose said...

bagpipes make a lot of people cry :p

seriously tho, if played properly, its a wonderful instrument

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIq-co2n2jM

Emma Springfield said...

Perhaps your body is taking this time to purge you of some of the feelings of anger and frustration you have been having. Go ahead and release. You will then be ready to begin the fight anew.

angela said...

I too find myself crying at some strange things. Yes music. One is a song that characters sing on a children's show!
I blame menopause so maybe your going through the male version. Or maybe with age it's the little things that trigger our emotions

Myrna R. said...

Sorry I haven't been by in a while. I too have been somewhat immobilized by Trump's win. I find it hard to write.
I did read some of your previous posts and am in agreement.
As for your tears, in a strange way, it made me want to thank you. I've been somewhat numb, but am grateful that you can shed the tears I'm holding back. Please know that I think of you and your struggle with health. I know how this leads you to understand others better, like the lady you mention at the pharmacy in one of your posts.
You have a beautiful heart and that's what I love about you. I hope you start feeling better soon.

Charles Gramlich said...

Mostly I still seem to find it unbelievable that he won, as if I will wake up at any moment.

stephen Hayes said...

It's a beautiful piece of music and I enjoyed it tremendously. Thanks for sharing.

Snowbrush said...

“Couldn't play the video you included (not available).”

It must be because you’re in the UK.

“Hope all is well with you dear chap.”

I’m much better due to what I just posted. I know there are many people who would do better than I if they were suffering from the same problems. However, because of whom I am, I suffer a great deal at times, and the fact that things are quite scary here in America preys on my mind more than it would if I didn’t already feel so vulnerable.

“bagpipes make a lot of people cry :p”

Did you ever see the split screen Gary Lawson cartoon, the text of which read on one side, “Welcome to heaven. Here is your harp,” and on the other side, “Welcome to hell. Here is your accordion”? To prefer bagpipes and electric guitars to other instruments might seem odd, but when they’re played in a certain way, the sound turns some key with me that allows that sound to go right to my depths. Thank you for the lovely video. I can never look at pictures of Scotland without being glad that I don’t live there.

“Perhaps your body is taking this time to purge you of some of the feelings of anger and frustration you have been having.”

It’s very hard for me to stay in touch with my more tender feelings because when I feel threatened, I erect walls around them, and these walls keep them hidden even from myself. Clearly, this crying jag represents a breaking down of walls, but I know from experience that the walls won’t stay broken down. While catharsis can seem like a permanent breakthrough, it’s more like a drug that eventually wears off.

“I blame menopause so maybe your going through the male version. Or maybe with age it's the little things that trigger our emotions”

I’ll be 68 in a couple of weeks, so maybe that leaves menopause out (although Peggy still has hot flashes at 65). I know that old men often cry more easily than young men, yet thus far it has gone the other way for me. Whereas I spent much of my adult life hiding my tears, I rarely cry anymore. I think that this is at least partly due to the various drugs I take but mostly to my ever increasing isolation and cynicism. The Trump election was hard for me for two reasons. The first was that Trump won by appealing to people’s baser instincts, and the second is that so many people were gullible enough to think that giving those instincts free rein (by voting for him) would make the world better. I already had what I considered a low opinion of my species, and after that election, my opinion went into free fall.

Snowbrush said...

“I too have been somewhat immobilized by Trump's win. I find it hard to write.”

There’s a saying that goes, “The most personal is the most universal,” so I know I’m not alone in feeling as I do. Of those who have thus far commented, one is in Britain and another in Australia, and I wonder how much they know of how bad things are here. Watching Trump is like watching a train wreck in that I can neither bear to look nor to look away, so, to use another metaphor, I stand frozen like a deer in the headlights.
“As for your tears, in a strange way, it made me want to thank you. I've been somewhat numb, but am grateful that you can shed the tears I'm holding back.”

Thank you. No doubt being with Peggy made me feel somewhat safer in letting myself go. Peggy has learned that, when I’m extremely moved, there’s no cause for worry, and there’s nothing apart from her nearness and acceptance that I need or that she can do. If she’s to worry at all, it’s when my suffering takes the form of anger because prolonged and helpless rage is like a cancer. I heard recently that when people are in great stress they cannibalize the very people that they’re closest to, and this struck me as true.

“I still seem to find it unbelievable that he won, as if I will wake up at any moment.”

I think you way down there in Louisiana, and I wonder what it must be like to feel as you do while listening to people talk about how wonderful it is that Trump is keeping his promises, which he isn’t, of course, but that’s the fiction.

“It's a beautiful piece of music and I enjoyed it tremendously.”

I’m so glad. I wrote after hearing the album for the first time. He is a performer that I heard on one of the “Natural Wonders” CDs, and then looked up online. I also considered using a live performance of him performing the same piece, but the camera was shaky and the quality of the music wasn’t as good.

Sue in Italia/In the Land Of Cancer said...

Perhaps a good cry is what you needed. I am impressed that you admit to crying. Not many men do.

I don't like crying in front of people. Yesterday I started crying at the end of the movie Lion. I felt vaguely manipulated.

Ah Trump....what a nightmare! I try to escape hearing about him but I listen to NPR podcasts at night and of course, he comes up.

Winifred said...

It's hard to believe that people voted for him. He is such a moron and an embarrassment to America so you must be really frustrated. Don't fret about what you can't do much about Snow. Don't cry try to laugh at him. We all just laugh at him although I know it's not funny having such a dipstick as a president who can be so dangerous.

However I am sure he won't last long one way or another. He's so arrogant he thinks he is invincible. That will be his downfall I'm sure.

Take care

All Consuming said...

Oh sweetheart, I feel for you and think an outpouring such as this is no bad thing, a kind of brief release. I'll mail you later oh, much love Xxx

G. B. Miller said...

Life goes on.

Tom said...

I wasn't familiar with the music, so thanks for sharing. Trump can't make me cry; only my kids can make me cry.

Strayer said...

That touches my heart, that song. Makes me want to sob too. Have had a hard week. The song brings the tears forth. I'm going to my bed now to sob with my cats.

Snowbrush said...

“I am impressed that you admit to crying. Not many men do.”

It’s one thing to admit it to people and quite another to do it in front of people—especially other males (most women seem accepting, and even encouraging, of men’s tears while most men seem embarrassed by them). Still, I must admit that it’s far easier for me to put an angry post online than a post such as this. I almost wince when I reflect upon having shared such feelings as the ones in this post, but I think the real weakness would be, not in having put it up, but in letting embarrassment cause me to take it down.

“It's hard to believe that people voted for him.”

Those of us who ALWAYS thought of him as you do are troubled as much by the fact that millions of people were taken in by him than by the fact that he is president. It’s painful to know that a man whose sole appeal was to such negative emotions as anger, intolerance, alienation, and callousness, could have won the presidency.

“…an outpouring such as this is no bad thing”

I agree. Catharsis is so powerful in the short term that it can make one feel that his or her life has taken a new direction. Have you found that anti-depressants make it harder to cry? I used to, but now I’m

“Life goes on.”

I reflect sometimes that when a person dies, a universe dies, and we all die very soon after we were born.

“Trump can't make me cry; only my kids can make me cry.”

May your kids give you little occasion for tears. I’ve never had kids, but I have cried over dogs and, now that I have cats, I’m sure that I will cry over them someday.

As for crying over Trump. I can no more cry over Trump than I can chew a rock (I can fantasize about killing him and a couple of hundred other Republicans). I only cry when I’m touched by beauty, poignancy, or grief. Peggy—and women in general, I suspect—has been known to cry when she’s frustrated or angry, but she hates doing so, especially in a work situation (not that she works anymore—thank god. I do remember being astounded one day to see my father become so frustrated that he cried, but since he was transgender, maybe he was different that way than how I perceive—rightly or wrongly—men to be. I just know he was the only man who I ever saw cry until he was touched or grieving.

“Have had a hard week. The song brings the tears forth. I'm going to my bed now to sob with my cats.”

I would that all your weeks be good weeks, my darling Strayer. I sometimes reflect upon the comfort that you find in cats, and I don’t quite get it because while they can be perceptive, I don’t think they’re all THAT perceptive. I’ve seen Peggy really need a cuddle from Brewsky only to have Brewsky get up and walk away. But then it’s the same with dogs. I remember running one night with my dogs, and tripping over a parking lot curb that I didn’t know was there. I hit the pavement so hard that I couldn’t breathe at first and then I couldn’t move. I could have used some support, but Bonnie and Baxter just seemed to be wondering when I was going to get up and run some more. Of course, we’re all limited, but sometimes some limits seem greater with dogs and cats. Of course, they can be superior to human friends and family in other ways.

joared said...

I remember many years ago in the Midwest when I was young and single attending with a date a moving appearance of the Black Watch. Bagpipes can be haunting, Think they may tap into some of my Scottish roots or Irish, or both. Tears should be allowed to flow as readily as we laugh.

possum said...

A beautiful rendition of Loch Lomond. Thanks for sharing.

Yes, these are highly emotional times. I try to not rant about the latest Trump outrage in my weekly newsletter, but I always end up there anyway.
I broke up with my ex when he confessed he voted for Trump. This, our 3rd split, is definitely final. We have not spoken since November. There are just some things one cannot forgive! Stupidity is one of them. Violence is another. That is trump with hatred and just plain meanness thrown in.
One shrink friend called it “malignant narcissism.”

oh crap, here I go again... another trump rant.

I hope you feel better soon, Snowy. My daffodils are in bloom. Wish I could pick some for you!

Maria said...

That is an exceptionally beautiful version of Loch Lomond...thank you so much for sharing! My mum always found Scottish music, and particularly bagpipes very stirring and despite her MS she would 'jig' about! Lol.

Snowbrush said...

“Think they may tap into some of my Scottish roots or Irish, or both.”

For what I can gather, I’m said to be a mixture of English, Irish, Dutch, and American Indian. I’ve long wanted to know for sure, and yesterday finally sent off for one of those DNA tests. What precipitated me paying $100 for a test was that a friend has offered to research my family tree. I spent several hours a day over several days last week putting together what little I knew.

“Tears should be allowed to flow as readily as we laugh.”

I would agree, but I also know that if your goal is leadership, public tears will be interpreted as weakness. It’s a shame, but that’s how it has, so far as I’m aware, always been.

“One shrink friend called it “malignant narcissism.”

Talk about an attitude split: Trump’s approval rating among Democrats is 8% while it’s 82% among Republicans. Two reasons that people give for liking Trump is that he speaks his mind, and that he truly cares about people. I would phrase these beliefs a little differently by saying that (a) he continually runs off at the mouth and never accepts responsibility for any stupid thing he says; and (b) he gives no sign of giving a rat’s ass about anyone but himself. How is is that people can look at the same man and come away with such different impressions?

“My daffodils are in bloom. Wish I could pick some for you!”

Why thank you! They’re in bloom here too.

“My mum always found Scottish music, and particularly bagpipes very stirring and despite her MS she would 'jig' about! Lol.”

MS…I’m astounded by how well people do with problems that are far more serious than the ones I do so badly with. Of course, I know that that’s just depression talking, because, for good and for bad, there’s always so much more to us than what’s visible, even to ourselves. As for Scottish music, to me, it comes in two flavors with little in between. Namely, when it’s reflective, it’s divinely beautiful, but when it’s meant for fast dances, it’s awful. Your mother obviously disagreed.

Maria said...

'Snowbrush' I had my DNA done last year and straight away I found cousins I hadn't known of, living in the next state. I introduced them via emails and phone calls to cousins that I did know of, so suddenly the very disjointed Italian/ Aussie part of my family has grown in unity and I've now, with their help traced back another generation of my father's family. I was lucky though that others had also taken the test otherwise there would have been no matches. Another surprise result of the test...my mother had always intimated that her family were Irish from way back. My DNA disproved that...I'm only a small percent Irish...I have nearly as much U.K. as I do Italian...so I have a lot of Scots and English. Also some North African ( from the Sicilian part of me) and 1% European Jew! A real mix!

kj said...

hi snow,

i'm trying to look ahead even as i wince. i want to still believe that because the great majority of americans reject trump's horrible isms, the mid term elections will begin to right things. i know the odds are with the redistricting, but surely this man will fail. surely.

love to you,
kj

Snowbrush said...

“Another surprise result of the test...my mother had always intimated that her family were Irish from way back. My DNA disproved that...I'm only a small percent Irish.”

That’s how it goes on the TV commercials, by which I mean that the people on those commercials always discover that they’re not what they thought they were! I know—or think I know—that I’m Native American and Western European (Dutch and Irish), but we’ll see. I joked to Peggy that I’m probably half black, and she asked how I would feel if I am, and I had to think about it. My conclusion was that I don’t want my ancestors to have been spread all over the world because I won’t be able to trace them all, and I especially don’t want to find out that my great great grandmother was a slave who was raped by her “owner.” As for the mere fact of having black ancestors, I wouldn’t care. In fact, I would find it interesting if not, in itself, desirable. That said, it might very well make me send off for a second test to verify that the results of the first test were for real, something that I would like to do no matter how the test comes back.

“surely this man will fail. surely.”

He sure has a low bar for success! I listen to NPR for hours everyday, and was struck yesterday by how much praise Trump received based upon the fact that so many people thought that his speech to Congress sounded “presidential.” Imagine being praised for no better reason than that you managed to read someone else's words for an entire hour without departing from them and railing against the media, the CIA, the Clintons, or all of the above. As for sounding presidential, I just thought he sounded flat, completely disconnected from his words, but then nothing he can do at this point would raise my low opinion of him by the width of a cat hair, and, if anything, I hate that bastard Paul Ryan worse than I hate Trump. After watching a few minutes of Trump’s speech with Ryan and Pence smiling smugly in the background, nodding their heads as if on cue, standing to applause after every sentence, and staring at the back of Trump’s head with what they hoped would pass for adoring absorption, I turned off the TV because my thoughts were going to the kinds of fantasies that would bring the FBI to my door if I wrote about them too much.

I’ve been told many times that I need to get behind Trump because if he fails, the country fails, but that’s just bullshit piled upon bullshit because if Trump succeeds in his uniform stupidity and wickedness, it certainly doesn’t mean the country has succeeded. One might recall that Hitler succeeded in taking Germany where he wanted it to go, but only rabid racists would be so dim-witted as to say that Germany succeeded, even before losing WWII.

As for your hope that he will fail, he already has. Everytime he signs an executive order (which he trashed Obama for doing—his argument back then being that only weak presidents rely on executive orders), he fails. Everytime he says something bigoted, oppressive, pandering, or moronic (i.e. everytime he opens his mouth), he fails. Everytime he appoints a new head to an agency, he fails. Unless he’s able to take a good shit on a given day, it’s failure from the time Trump awakens to the time Trump goes to bed, and all we can hope for is that we will still have a rebuildable country in four years, but if we don’t, it will be because we didn’t deserve one. Sure he lost the popular vote by 300-million, but that still leaves a whole lot of people who are (a) as wicked as he is, or (b) as easily duped as the Republicans need them to be in order to maintain control. When someone tells me he or she is a Republican, I know that here’s a person regarding whom I will never let my guard down and, sad to say, that includes a close relative. The only way I can deal with my relative voting as he did is to tell myself that, at age 87, his intelligence is surely on a downhill slide.

rhymeswithplague said...

300 million? Really? Maybe you went a bridge too far there.

Snowbrush said...

"300 million? Really? Maybe you went a bridge too far there."

Flushed you out out the woodwork, did I, you old scalawag? Can’t you recognize “alternative facts” when you hear them? Don’t you realize that if I refer to “…what happened in “Sweden, SWEDEN!, last night: that I never meant to refer to a literal Sweden or a literal last night, but that I was simply using a hypothetical case in point in order to illustrate the probable outcome of accepting immigrants into this country, and that those with any imagination at all would have had no trouble understanding this because we all know very well that horrific things sometimes happen and that someday one of them just might in Sweden, so it’s of no consequence at all that it didn’t happen last night, because there are plenty of nights left, and even if it doesn’t happen in Sweden when it happens, there are lots of other places where it could happen.

Or let’s say if I denied under oath having spoken to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and it later turns out that I did speak to him, and not just once either, but two or three times during the period I was being questioned about, then surely a smart man like you can see that I am simply the latest victim of embittered Clinton Democrats and their elite liberal media allies because it is obvious to all true Americans that I never meant to say that I didn’t speak to Sergey at all, but merely that I meant to say that I didn’t speak to him about a particular subject.

Such is truth under Trump. You say what you want to people to think, and when called on it, you explain that you weren’t lying, you were actually speaking quite clearly and reassuringly, but that the elite media and their allies among the embittered Clinton Democrats are working day and night to entrap patriotic appointees with political landmines that will leave our great nation vulnerable to thousands of attacks by millions of radical Islamic terrorist extremists, attacks that the media will then blame on our patriotic president. As you must surely know by now, the news media is no less the enemy or our nation than Iran, and they must be stopped from spreading their fake news regarding our president and his supporters before it is too late. So, my friend, when I gave what you conspired to interpret ase the wrong number of Clinton voters, I certainly never meant to provide a literal number, but rather a number that was reflective of the insanely fanatical emotional commitment of Clinton voters. After all, every vote for Clinton was equal to one IED, and how many Trump voters might have been killed by that IED, or do you even care, you liberal you? However, if you ARE fairminded, then I can easily prove that I didn’t intend to give a literal number inasmuch as thousands of fair minded officials from both parties have admitted to me in private phone calls that Trump would have easily won an overwhelming majority in all fifty states had it not been for the millions of illegal wetbacks that were smuggled into the country by Clinton and provided with a hundred fake IDs apiece which they then used to vote at a thousand polling stations. With the money they made doing this, those wetbacks can now live better than you and I can even dream of, hardworking Americans that we are, and they even pay us to do their yard work, although I'm afraid that the cheap bastards don't pay enough for us to buy health insurance.

rhymeswithplague said...

You are on a roll! One thing I did like about this post was the Loch Lomond video (except for the bagpipes, of course, but that's just me).

Anonymous said...

" Sure he lost the popular vote by 300-million,"

From USnews
UPDATE 12/11 10:55 a.m. ET: More than one month after the November 8 presidential elections, Hillary Clinton's popular vote count continues to go up, now at 65,746,544, with President-elect Donald Trump's votes totaling 62,904,682. This marks a more than 400,000-vote increase in Clinton's popular vote count, giving her a lead ahead of Trump by 2.83 million votes.

At CNN I saw she won 2.9 +/- million. Near one third of a BIllION. Where did you get this number?

rhymeswithplague said...

Dear Anonymous, did you pass math? 2.9 (plus or minus) million is nowhere near a third of a billion. However, 290 million is near a third of a billion. You were only off by a couple of zeroes (2.9 times 10 to the sixth power as opposed to 2.9 times 10 to the eighth power). The total U.S. popular vote in the 2016 election for ALL presidential candidates, and there were several, not just two, was around 137 million. 'Nuff said.

rhymeswithplague said...

I apologize, Anonymous. I misread your comment. I see now that you were referring to Snowbrush's number, not your number! But he was not being serious, just cantankerous.

rhymeswithplague said...

And all of this would make a difference if the U.S. President were chosen by popular vote (direct democracy, also known as mob rule) but he/she is not. He/she is chosen by electoral vote (representative democracy) in which we have essentially 51 separate elections on the same day (50 states plus the District of Columbia), not a single grand mass. So huge pluralities amassed in individual states (say New York or California) determine only how that particular state's electoral votes will be cast. The states, being equal despite differences in population, are not all lumped together into one huge total, although the statistics overall do make for interesting reading. The relative desirability and attributes of various candidates, however, falls outside the scope of rational discussion on the topic (though not necessarily outside the scope of our host on this blog) and is better left to the long view of history to decide.

Snowbrush said...

“More than one month after the November 8 presidential elections, Hillary Clinton's popular vote count continues to go up,”

Yet, I continue to prefer my tally.

“Where did you get this number?”

I relied upon alternative facts that (in the spirit of our president after his gross overestimate of the inauguration crowd was disproven by a lot of pesky cameras), I feel no need to share much less to prove. Like God, Trump’s word is the measure of truth, and this frees him of the burden of ever having to prove anything, and, being no less worthy than Trump, I make the same claim to truth. You, of course, enjoy the same privilege as Trump and I. You just have to be megalomanic enough to claim it.

“But he was not being serious, just cantankerous.”

I’m going to come clean here. I wasn’t being cantankerous, I just screwed up. I meant 2.8 billion (see, I just did it again—screwed up, I mean) because once I get past thousands, big numbers tend to LOOK pretty much the same despite the fact that I know they are very much NOT anything like the same). So, back to what I meant to say, my memory of the number of Clinton’s popular win was indeed 2.8 million, but I rounded it up to 3-million, but that came out 300-million which, of course, was absurd. It would take someone like Trump to throw numbers like that around with a straight face. So, to you, I apologize; to Anonymous; I apologize; to the whole world, I apologize. In this, I am very much NOT like Trump because one has possess the ability to accept personal responsibility before one can apologize, and his mind is too diseased to do that, and I DO literally believe that. There was a time when I found it hard to believe that so many people voted for it. Now, I find it even harder to believe that so many people continue to think he’s sane.

“The states, being equal despite differences in population, are not all lumped together into one huge total”

Yes, the idea surely being to give states with a low population greater representation, yet is it not true that it is those very states that most oppose the electoral college? As in voting for Trump, people who are poor and the rural (and therefore have a greater reliance on government aid), shot themselves in the foot by voting for a man who opposes their interests, so do those same people oppose the electoral college. When I think back to the Civil War, I can but wonder how it was possible to find so many people who were economically disadvantaged by slavery who were willing to fight and die so that rich men might have slaves (and, when they lost, enacted Jim Crow laws), and so it is that I can but reflect that the South, in particular, has always been its own greatest enemy.

Snowbrush said...

“The relative desirability and attributes of various candidates, however, falls outside the scope of rational discussion…”

Rhymes, do you not see that, in making such a claim, you deny the objective desirability of ethical behavior over unethical behavior, and that the logical outcome of doing so is a denial of the existence of ethical distinctions? I say this to you in all seriousness: when we replace objective ethical distinctions with “relative desirability,” words like honor and nobility become meaningless, and we are left with nothing nobler than greed, fear, lust, hatred, and bigotry. We can feel good about toppling tombstones, shooting dark skinned people in bars, burning houses of worship, denying equal rights to minorities, and refusing oppressed peoples entry into our country. Once we have denied the rational basis for preferring some actions over other actions on the part of our politicians, we can do the same with ourselves. Trump has given his followers. permission to allow their submerged hatefulness to rule their lives. Do you not regard the toppling of tombstones and the threats to synagogues as logical precursors to the extermination camps? It is so easy to deny that such things can happen here, but why can’t they happen here? You speak of choosing a candidate for president as if it were a meaningless game in which objective moral distinctions are impossible, yet I know you would not have said the same about Hitler, and I see but little difference in how he started out and how Trump is starting out, unless it be that Trump is creating something that I don’t think he will be able to control even if he wanted to. Every hurtful act on the part of Trump and his followers makes the next act more imaginable, and thereby paves the way for escalation.

I’ve been thinking about you in relation to Trump’s accusations that Obama wire-tapped his phone. As is his habit, Trump gave no evidence to support his claim, and I’ve been wondering why such unethical behavior doesn’t appear to bother you (I say this because you seem dismissive of my concerns). Then I came back to your comment, and it hit me that, of course, if there is no rational reason to justify choosing an ethical candidate over an unethical candidate, then we are left with nothing more weighty than personal opinion. What I see in the modern evangelical church, Rhymes, is an institution that has renounced its responsibility to make meaningful moral distinctions, and this means that honor is meaningless. The church’s preference for one candidate over another can therefore be based upon shared fears and bigotries with no apologizes needed. I see a church that puts all its efforts into such trivia as telling transgender people which bathroom to use while ignoring the grossest ethical violations on the part of its president. As Jesus would have said, “It strains at a gnat but swallows a camel.” I don’t think you voted for Trump, but now that he’s president, you seem so accepting of his behavior. When I think about why this is so, I can but conclude that you exist in an area that doesn’t care what Trump does as long as he supports popular bigotries. If I am right, this means that if you speak out, you might as well move.

rhymeswithplague said...

You make an awful lot is sense, as usual, which is not to say that I agree with every point. The last thing I want to do is get in a long discussion of our differences. I don't have the mental or physical energy.

rhymeswithplague said...

of sense

Optimistic Existentialist said...

I haven't stopped crying since election night lol

Snowbrush said...

“The last thing I want to do is get in a long discussion of our differences. I don't have the mental or physical energy.”

I know. You often say what you think, but if I disagree, you don’t want to engage. I have always taken that to mean that you are adverse to what I would call friendly debate, but what I think you would call argument. Now your last sentence makes me wonder if something else is going on, something pertaining to your health.

“I haven't stopped crying since election night lol”

At least he makes the news more interesting. I got so sick of years of every NPR program being about the Middle East, a part of the world that is too wicked, sad and stupid for me to even want to hear about it. Of course, Trump’s behavior is wicked, sad and stupid too, but at least it’s relevant to my life (sometimes, a bit TOO relevant).

Anonymous said...

Wondering about you; concerned. As for the political 'hogwash' I'm leaving it alone these days. I delete it all. Whatever happens, we as individuals have no say about it - not at the end of the day. Finding my life is w/o conflict feels so good. This is the way it should be, for our time of life is too meager to worry about 'the big dogs' and their growls. It's GOOD to cry; washes away toxins of body and soul (yes, we have a soul!). A sad situation that 'men don't cry'. Yes, very sad that society is going at it the wrong way - from the day we are born to the day we are gone, guided/led by a Head Lemming Guide. Choose to step aside, Snow. Choose to let the world go it's own way - it will whether we fret or not.

Snowbrush said...

“Wondering about you; concerned.”

Thank you for honoring me with your concern. I’ve never taken so much time away, and I’m sure the genealogical research has a lot to do with it. I am new to it, and am like a child with a toy.

“Whatever happens, we as individuals have no say about it - not at the end of the day.”

I have thought much about this statement and of what I might say in response. An Edmund Burke quote JUST came to me: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” I am currently doing nothing, yet I am completely convinced that the only chance our nation has is that more and more individuals come act together to oppose Trump. Otherwise, those who support him will be the only voices heard, and the country be run based upon their fascistic values.

“Finding my life is w/o conflict feels so good.”

Another thought I had is that it’s easier to stay out of the fray when it doesn’t affect one too closely. For instance, it would be easier for me to take no action if my neighbor turned his lawn into a junkyard than if your neighbor did the same. Yet, to feel as I have felt of late is crippling, and so it hurts me without benefitting anyone.

“A sad situation that 'men don't cry’.”

Peggy cries more than I, but then she cries for more reasons than I. For instance, she sometimes cries when she’s mad or frustrated, whereas I ONLY cry when I’m touched or in grief. I’ve also observed that old men cry more easily than young men, and maybe more than old women. I’m not sure why this is, but I see it as a good thing. Unfortunately, men are judged negatively by society as a whole when they cry, so I can well understand why they don’t feel free to cry.

By the way, please leave a name when you write. Staying “anonymous” is fine, but if you would just include a name with your comment, I would feel a sense of continuity with—and a growing knowledge of—you.