December 2020 – frustratedboomers

Even Grownups Get the Blues

By Roxanne Tellier

“I just feel so badly that my child will not have a Christmas like I did, as a child.”

“But it could be Great Aunt Thelma’s very last Hanukkah! It’s so unfair to deprive her of our presence!”

Yeah. No. This is not about the kids. The kids have many, many more Christmases in their future, and some will be good, and some will, for whatever reason, not be totally Hallmark. There will be horrible holidays in everyone’s future, because that’s how this thing called ‘Life’ works.

And it’s not about the seniors, most of whom are terrified that you might be bringing them the plague for the holidays. No, this funky stank you’re feeling and scenting is all you.

It’s OKAY to be sad about this crummy December. It’s normal to feel depressed that you can’t get together with your friends and family. It’s completely copacetic to regret not being able to share your traditional holiday goodies, dinners, spiced egg nog, and kisses under the mistletoe. This is.. yes, it’s a terrible year. It’s the Grinchiest Christmas ever. It’s “The Year Without a Santa Claus” nasty. And that was pretty nasty, even by 1974 standards.

It’s the pits! It’s the most awfullest awful! It’s the terrible, horrible, no good, worst December ever! It truly is!

There are restaurants, businesses, and the people who work them who were counting on salvaging this year with a massive influx of sales, and that’s not gonna happen. There are millions of people in the U.S. who were counting on their elected representatives pulling out the stops and getting them something… anything! … to get them thru the last of this year, who are already struggling, frequenting food banks, and praying that they are not evicted on January 1^st.

All of this is for real happening, while you can’t get your hair done, a new holiday picture, or hang out at the mall. You can’t go to the gym, and when you go to the library, all the staff are wearing masks and they look like they hate you for wanting more books that they’ll have to disinfect before anyone else can read them.

What is this, 1918?

So it’s one hundred per cent okay to be sad, bummed out, depressed, angry, frustrated, and feeling out of control. Even if you’re a grown up, and supposedly the person in charge of the family emotions. Maybe even ESPECIALLY if you are that person.

Wallow in that mud! Splash in the acid of your anger! Put on your steel toed boots and kick the curb! Throw something you have always hated against the wall, until it breaks and you’re finally able to put it into the garbage can without guilt! You are ALLOWED to feel all of those emotions. Not for hours – that would be counterproductive. But for .. I dunno, what’s good for you? Five minutes? Ten minutes where you stomp and fume and yell into your pillow? Cuz even grownups are allowed to do that, you know.

And then, once you’ve let off some of that steam, cast your mind back to Christmases past. Like last year, when maybe you realized that you’re tired of doing all the shopping, wrapping, decorating, planning, cooking, and prepping. Remember the Christmas when you were totally broke, and felt guilty about not being able to shower your loved ones with gifts? Remember the Christmas when someone else was broke, and didn’t shower YOU with gifts? What about that Christmas when you lost your job? Or your relationship was breaking down? Or someone you adored was in hospital and you didn’t know if they’d make it? Or maybe a time when it was you who didn’t know if you’d still be around to ring in the New Year.

Remember all the years you couldn’t find that special gift, even though you battled through the frenzied crowd of shoppers at the mall, and you had a huge blister on your ankle, and then, overheated but starting to get cold, waited way too long for a bus to come? Remember when you gritted your teeth and swore that if you heard one more chorus of “Silver Bells,” you would start lashing out at passerbys with a sharpened candy cane? Remember all those years when politicians claimed that their opponents were bent on stealing Christmas? Remember that year when you were working so hard on making everything perfect for the holidays, that you nearly drove yourself into a nervous breakdown, and then found yourself just losing it on the very kids you wanted to gift with a wonderful day, and then hating yourself for losing your temper when all you really wanted was for them to have a special memory? (Oh, they’ll remember it. They’ll remember it long after that expensive toy is dust.)

Remember the big holiday feasts where those relatives that you only saw once a year, showed up and you remembered why you only saw them once a year? Remember how the kids tore through all the presents you’d given them, on Christmas morning, and then whined that the one present you’d missed was the one present that mattered? Remember how you swore that next year, next Christmas, there’d be a ceiling on what was spent on gifts, and it would be stress free, dammit! Or else!

Remember trying to remind ourselves the Seussian truth, that Christmas can’t be bought? Christmas lives in the heart, not the wallet.

What I’m trying to say is that there have been crummy Decembers before, and there will be crummy Decembers to come. As much as we would love every holiday season to be picture perfect and suitable for framing, it’s the rare one that hits all the high notes properly. And if we look really hard, there’s nearly always someone in the vicinity who’s hiding their tears and a broken heart behind their Christmas smile.

Stuff happens. Always has. Always will. Yes, we are all in agreement; this particular holiday season wins the Worst Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Winter Solstice/Diwali/Las Posadas and Chinese New Year ever. EVER. Combined! It does. We all agree.

So be angry. Be sad. You are allowed to feel that way. Watch an old movie and blame your tears on Clarence getting his wings. It’s okay.

Because, at the end of the day, Christmas is really about spending time with the people we love and cherish the most. It’s not about the presents. It’s not even about the food. It’s not about one-upmanship. It’s not about arguing with Great Uncle Bert who is never going to stop being a bigot, so why get your stomach in a knot?

You are allowed to be upset that this holiday season will not fulfill all of your own hopes and dreams. You don’t have to say that it’s about the kids. Sometimes it’s okay for YOU to be the sad child.

At least for a few minutes.

Then it’s back to adulting.

Unless you can find an adultier adult. Cuz adulting is hard. That’s why it’s called adulting, not childing.

<<<<<< >>>>>>

Happy Ho Hos! Merry Crimble! And Assorted Seasonings to you all!

Cogito, ergo sum I think

by Roxanne Tellier

“So this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over. A new one just begun.” (John Lennon/Yoko Ono)

In 18 days, this year – this miserable, disappointing, painful, ugly, disquieting, frustrating and lonely year – will finally end. Good riddance to it; it’s broken far too many of us.

It was a year when being an introvert might have saved your psyche, if it weren’t for the people you were locking down with. Really, the pandemic opened our eyes to how socially distant we already were, in our own minds. For many, not having to be around other people was wonderful. The world, as a rule, is built for extroverts, who enjoy and thrive on the energy generated by gatherings, their brain’s ‘reward’ centre activated. But if you’re an introvert, dealing with others is overstimulating, akin to being drained by a vampire; it takes a while to recover from the contact, no matter how pleasurable.

This year, we learned to fear others, since there is no way to know if that kid on his scooter, the crazy lady in the supermarket, or that guy walking on your side of the street, is carrying the virus. We are less quick to remember the niceties of civilization, like holding open the door for others, or asking a confused looking person if they’re all right. In our misperception, we are more likely to push the automatic door opening button rather than touch the door’s handle, without realizing how many others, potentially infected, did the same thing.

But it’s also the year in which we came together, within our ‘bubble,’ and, perhaps naively, assumed that people we knew, or those who looked the most like us, could not possibly be the carriers of the plague. It was a little like the bad old days of herpes and HIV/AIDS, when many threw the sexual dice based on how ‘clean’ the potential partner appeared. I wonder how many people, grateful to interact, joyfully greeted the instrument of their demise with hugs and handshakes.

2020 was when we learned who the real ‘essential workers’ are, and it’s not the 1%, or the CEOs; it’s the guy or gal on the front line, making your coffee, wiping down tables with antiseptic cleanser, or processing your order. It’s the drivers of the delivery trucks that deliver an unending stream of necessities and baubles to keep our brains and hands occupied. It’s the hospital staff who keep working during the worse time of their careers. It’s the construction worker who is fixing the sidewalk, or the plumber that comes to your house to fix that leak. Now we need to learn that these people who keep the world turning deserve to be paid accordingly.

We also discovered what an enormous role, emotionally and financially, the arts play in our lives. When the world of entertainment shut down, a big part of our leisure lives went with it. The entertainment industry were already calculating at least a $160 billion hit, over the next few years, just a couple of months into the pandemic. The many industries that exist to support theatres, concert halls, and other places that offer music, theatre, and dance are also struggling to survive.

With so many people unable to use the pressure-relieving valve of gathering, be it at work or play, a lot of things we took for granted as being ‘just the way it is,’ were revealed to be illusory. The important things – food on the table, a roof over you head – shone a light on how foolish we had been in equating the skyrocketing stock market with the economy. In actual fact, inequality has never been as sharp. We are a nation of haves and have nots, with one end of society able to ply their trade from home, while the other may be losing their homes and contemplating life in a tent in a city park.

In the United States, more than eleven million people remain unemployed, while 614 American billionaires grew their wealth by nearly a trillion dollars. And in Canada ….

“A report released on June 17 by the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) reveals staggering levels of social inequality in Canada. Often portrayed in the corporate media and official politics as a “kinder,” more “progressive” society than the United States, Canadian capitalism is exposed in the study as an oligarchic social order.

According to the PBO, the share of wealth held by the top one percent of Canadians is 25.6 percent. This is almost double the estimate of 13.7 percent given by Statistics Canada.

According to the new PBO estimates, the top one percent in Canada owns about as much as the poorest 80 percent. The upper middle class and petty bourgeoisie, the 9 per cent immediately following the top one per cent, own 30.8 per cent of the wealth.

The millionaires and billionaires in the richest 10 per cent of the population own a staggering $5.829 trillion. “

There’s an ever-widening wealth gap between the rich and the poor, in Canada, as in the rest of the world. The richest one percent of the globe’s population possesses twice as much wealth as the poorest 6.9 billion. And that has had devastating consequences on those struggling to survive. The poor are more likely to have less access to higher education, to suffer from health problems, and to die many years earlier than the wealthy.

COVID-19 has had a profound impact on our personal and financial circumstances, even before you take into account the emotional toll it’s had on us. As humans experiencing the trauma of the pandemic, many are experiencing depression, anxiety, panic attacks, grief at what has been lost, and suicidal ideations. Worse, whole communities are being impacted, so that the pandemic is about to leave a societal scar. Beyond the struggle each of us are dealing with, we are experiencing a collective or communal trauma. Psychologists say this can impact the psyche and culture of our communities, sometimes spanning generations.

2020 has been a horrible year for so many reasons. But it’s also had a few bright spots. There’s been a number of scientific breakthroughs that may help curb the effects of climate change. A drop in pollution caused by commuting has brightened our skies, and even made the Himalayas visible for the first time in thirty years.

In Europe, an app developed in Denmark called “Too Good To Go” has kept over 30 million meals out of the trash by connecting businesses with excess food to consumers who can buy that food at reduced prices.

A Brazilian and U.S. non-profit initiative is paying farmers and ranchers to keep the Amazon forest standing. The pandemic also shone a light on the ‘wet markets’ where poorly handled animals being consumed contribute to about 75% of recently emerged infectious diseases affecting humans, with cities finally willing to work towards shuttering these places.

The wave of kindness and community that blossomed at the beginning of the pandemic is waning, but in its place are new and often renewed charitable agencies helping people to get through these tough times. Volunteerism is up. Animal adoptions are at an all time high, as people connect with a furry friend and companion.

In the States, Joe Biden is the president elect, and Kamala Harris is the first woman, the first African American, and the first South Asian American to be elected to the vice presidency. In just over a month, the reign of error that was trump will hopefully be in our rear-view mirrors.

Not one, but several vaccines have been created at breathtaking speed, and are being distributed around the world, leading to hope that within about a year, we can look forward to returning to some kind of normal. And the pandemic itself has taught us some important lessons about responsible health care that is already having an impact on the rate of colds and flus that regularly take us down when our bodies are stressed. Turns out, washing your hands, wearing a mask, and staying home when we’re sick has a positive outcome on lots of more common illnesses.

So it’s been a year that closer resembled a Chinese curse than a gift, but it’s almost over, and many of us survived. We’re all a little older, wiser, and greyer. Some of us have less money than before this trial, while others learned that money really can’t buy happiness, but a CERB cheque can buy a lot of cool junk on Amazon. And they deliver.

What a ride, eh?

Wishing that your holidays be merry, and your new year a blessing. Love to you all.

You Say Sedation, I say Sedition

by Roxanne Tellier

In the face of a soon to be ex-president who has lost spectacularly and consistently, at the polls, and in and out of court since November 3^rd, it’s hard to grant any credibility whatsoever to the Republican Party – no, scratch that – the Trump Party. The cult is being run by a master gaslighter, who tried, but failed to steal an election, despite using every dirty trick in the book, who is now arguing that the election was stolen from him, he believes, by a better thief than he.

Let’s be very clear; if there is one thing at which trump excels, it’s gaslighting. He is a walking Master Class in the art of brain scrambling. His particular brand is almost indistinguishable from the sort of emotional, verbal and physical abuse routinely dealt out to children and spouses by malignant narcissists. Those who manage to escape from that sort of trauma generally need years of counselling and treatment to find their way back to emotional equilibrium, post abuse.

Trump told the nation repeatedly that the election would be fraudulent. He seeded the ground for his base to believe that anything but a trump win would be illegal. He said that he would not lose the election, and that he was going to continue being their president for as long as he wanted. He told them he wouldn’t be going. He told them he wouldn’t concede. He told them that there’d be no peaceful transfer of power. He told them over and over again exactly who and what he was.

So why is anyone surprised that that is exactly what he’s doing now?

What DOES surprise me is how meek the Democrats have acted in the face of this sedition. While I understand Biden’s wish to soothe America’s soul, there will be a point at which even his supporters will consider his soft-heartedness as simply the mirror image of the political depravity of the GOP.

Leaving aside the issue of whether or not Trump will be held accountable for his crimes against humanity throughout his presidency, can someone tell me why Lindsay Graham was not charged when he attempted to interfere with the results of Georgia’s election? On November 17^th, he told reporters straight out that his efforts to overturn Biden’s win included pressure campaigns in Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona.

“Sen. Graham is bordering on a crime against his country by trying to overturn a free and fair election to keep Trump in office.” PoliticusUSA

The decision to not charge Graham, or at the very least sanction him publicly, has been read as license for other Republicans in the party of ‘Law and Order” to throw caution (and legality) to the wind, and go even bigger.

Sure, there was an ethics complaint filed by Walter Shaub, demanding that Graham’s conduct, which constitutes an abuse of office and conduct unbecoming, be investigated, after Georgia’s Secretary of State confirmed that Graham had called him in an attempt to have him throw the election. But that, and a couple of bucks, will get you a coffee at MacDonald’s. By the time the complaint inches it’s way to the front of the line, most of us will barely remember this seditious action.

“Results of a Washington Post survey of all 249 Republicans in the House and Senate that began the morning after Trump posted a 46-minute video Wednesday evening in which he wrongly claimed he had defeated Biden and leveled wild and unsubstantiated allegations of “corrupt forces” who stole the outcome from the sitting president… showed that just two Republicans consider Trump the winner despite all evidence showing otherwise. And another 220 GOP members of the House and Senate — about 88 percent of all Republicans serving in Congress — will simply not say who won the election.” Washington Post, December 5, 2020

Truly, any Republican senator who refuses to recognize that Biden won the election and must be respected as president elect, should resign their seat, since what they’re saying is contrary to their oaths to protect the constitution, the results of a free and fair election, and democracy.

By their words and actions, every one of those Republicans is guilty of sedition.

“By assaulting U.S. democracy in so many ways, Trump has shone a light on its weaknesses. We should seize this moment to strengthen our institutions,” Fareed says, proposing nonpartisan boards to oversee US elections, a requirement that presidents place their business holdings in blind trusts, and other changes. “That way, if another Trump-like politician (or Trump himself in four years) tries to pervert the system again, American democracy will be better equipped to withstand it.” (Fareed Zakaria)

You know what’s the craziest part of it all, through this insane clown rodeo? That so many high-tension moments in the last four years have just passed through and been forgotten in the diarrheic flow of yet more unbelievable moments. Madness piled upon insanity, a never-ending story of cruelty, sadism, vengeance, and hatred. Stunning moments of craven loyalty, followed by equally stunning acts of retributive disloyalty. A nonstop flow of adrenaline raising accusations and hysteria, that never allows America’s cortisone level to return to anything vaguely resembling normality.

In the face of this, is it so hard to believe that those of weaker minds and ethics have simply had their ability to reason broken? That it becomes easier for them to hear the unbelievable and wonder if perhaps, just perhaps, it IS all ‘fake news’, and that it’s trump that’s telling them the truth, despite his history of tens of thousands of lies?

I’m a huge fan of the bellicose and belligerent newscaster Keith Olbermann, who hosted a political web series called “The Resistance” for GQ from September 13, 2016 to November 27, 2017. He’s back, with another round of very loud yelling at the soon to be ex-president with a new grouping of targeted accusations, that he’s calling “Olbermann vs Trump – The Worst Person in the World.”

Here’s his latest screed, post trump’s whinefest in Georgia, in which he describes how trump accidentally conceded the election by baffling his own self with his own bullsh*t, and then names names of those blatantly committing crimes in support of the failed president’s tantrums. It’s six good minutes any NeverTrumper can thoroughly enjoy.

“As of Friday, the leading cause of death in America is Donald Trump.”

73 million people voted for Trump for a second time, in November. They wanted more of a pathological liar, a sadist, and a malignant narcissistic sociopath, who bullies the handicapped, and lacks empathy even for children. Trump is the Mad King, the ruler in near exile, who wants America to prove its loyalty to him by ripping itself in half. The worrying thing is that, while Biden will very likely be inaugurated on January 20^th, 2021, the damage to the nation may never be completely healed, a Trumpian legacy that no one saw coming, despite the neon lights and klaxons that heralded its approach.