Every morning, around four a.m., there’s something that wakes me up. I don’t know if it’s a noise from the street, a neighbour heading to work, or a very punctual raccoon with OCD, but nearly every day, there’s a sound that rouses me from my dreams and leaves me washed up on the shore of my thoughts.
The reveries that preoccupy me in the hours between four a.m. and an almost normal six o’clock rise are the ones that might flit through your mind during the day, but that are not chewed over like they might be at say .. quarter to five in the morning.
Thoughts like, could Melania actually be Trump’s Russian handler? Is this weird red mole-y thing cancerous? And, why is it that so many males, from boy to man, love running around pantless?
The wee hours are also the time of déjà rêvé.… Déjà vu is French for “already seen” and déjà rêvé is French for “already dreamed”. Depending on whom you ask, it could mean that weird feeling you have when you’re in a dream and you suddenly think and believe you have dreamed this exact dream once before …or that your dream is a prophesy of something that has yet to happen.
I get that a lot, and for me, it’s like being partway into a movie and thinking, “damn! I’ve had this dream before and I know how it ends! The alligator eats the drummer!”
A bit of a lunch bag letdown, if you will.
This morning I was thinking about how refreshing it was yesterday, to have a day when the antics of the madman to the south were not front and centre, or even lurking around a corner.
It was all about the kids, about common and uncommon sense, and what the future could look like, if all of the cynical, corrupt shysters who’ve warped our perceptions of the world to shape their own fever dream were forced to stop. No no no no say the kids … you’re not gonna get to use us to line your pockets with the NRAs dirty bribe money. We’re not gonna let you use us as human targets for those who snap under the pressure of hormones or fear or paranoia, so often engendered by adults who labour under their own heavy weight of paranoia and discontent.
Never again! they shouted, those children who, 37 days ago, spent the scariest six minutes and about twenty seconds of their lives, wondering if those were the last minutes of their lives.
Emma Gonzalez‘s speech was the loudest silence in the history of U.S. social protest, said Mother Jones magazine. As I watched those attending struggle with the silence, I thought how uncomfortable people are when they have to contemplate the absence of sound. People were visibly distraught as tears poured down Emma’s face, and the silence stretched on interminably.
” “Never again,” many in the crowd of 500,000 chanted in response. After her timer went off, Gonzalez said, “since the time when I came out here, it has been six minutes and twenty seconds. The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape, and walk free for an hour before arrest,” she said. “Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job.” And then she left the stage.”
” At least 73 teens have been shot to death in the 37 days since that massacre, according to HuffPost’s review of a database compiled by Gun Violence Archive, a not-for-profit organization that tracks shootings across the country. (Because Gun Violence Archive culls its data from media reports, there may be cases that haven’t been included.)
That’s a rate of nearly two teens each day. Among them were Kaiden Vague, a California student who died on his 16th birthday after accidentally killing himself at a shooting range, and 15-year-old Jay Diaz in El Paso, Texas, who survived a childhood fight with cancer only to be killed when a family member fired his shotgun while cleaning it.” (Huffington Post, 03/23/2018)
Kids are being shot and killed, all over America, by people who put their ‘right’ to own guns over the lives of their own children. And it is increasingly clear that those same Americans, who so loudly and proudly proclaim that owning guns is their god-given right, are incredibly lax in how they handle those guns.
There is no respect for either guns or the law in the heart of the woman shot in the back by her toddler with “a firearm that slid out from under the driver’s seat.”
The “responsible gun owner” is largely a mythical creature.
Every day there’s another case of people just leaving their guns around for kids
to play with. On March 12th, a one year old boy was accidentally shot and killed inside his home in Mobile, Alabama by his 2 year old brother. In the time it took for the mother to tell the grandmother that she was heading for work .. boom!
And how much care and gun sense was in place when a four year old child in Temple, Texas shot his seven month old sibling two days ago, with a gun that was also apparently just lying around?
Sicker still, a neighbour being interviewed by the press volunteered that he did not blame the family, since “in my family, it happened once with my cousin. My cousin killed accidentally my other cousin. It happens. Accidents happen.”
Newsflash, bozo – accidental gun deaths don’t happen when you treat guns as the killing machines that they are, rather than something that you casually leave around the house, like your sunglasses or your copy of the National Enquirer.
Guns are not ‘magic.’ Guns are killing machines. When you buy one, when you pick one up, you and you alone are responsible for happens next. No excuses. No exceptions.
Every one of the kids and speakers at the “March for Our Lives” spoke to power, and they did it with the verve and energy of the righteous.
“David Hogg went on to call out local lawmakers and the NRA for not taking the lead.
“It just makes me think what sick f–kers out there want to continue to sell more guns, murder more children, and honestly just get reelected,” he said. “What type of sh–ty person does that? They could have blood from children splattered all over their faces and they wouldn’t take action, because they all still see these dollar signs.”
Yes, kids .. it’s time. It is YOUR time. And we all thank you.
I’ll bet Trump’s handlers weren’t thanking you, though. Can you imagine what it must have been like, down in Florida, as his ‘people’ tried to keep him from exploding over someone else getting all the attention? All of those hours when his name and face weren’t glaring at people from every form of media? Oh, it was lovely, all of those hours with nary a tweet nor an opinion from or on Mad King Trump.
All of those hours without the human equivalent of the lactic acid which makes milk taste sour.
It was like spring finally sprang.
it was like the birds came out and sang like they haven’t since November 9, 2016.
It was like an old timey Disney movie when all of the animals dance around Snow White!
But, inevitably, it had to end, and we were back to the gloomy, pessimistic, and frequently salacious non-stop drip of Trump’s bareback rape of America.
I cannot stand anything about the man; he triggers in me an awe-inspiring level of hate and violence – and I’m pretty sure that is how many people feel, both in Canada and the United States.
What motivates this madman? What makes him, time and time again, choose to burn down the village rather than built it up? What makes him so focused on proving others wrong just so that he can call even a mild rebuke fake news? What drives him to behave like an abusive parent or husband, giving free rein to his worst impulses, while screaming LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO! LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!
” What had most struck me during my two days with Trump was his sad struggle to extract even an ounce of respect from a political establishment that plainly viewed him as a sideshow. But what I didn’t realize at the time was that he’d felt this way for virtually his entire life — face pressed up against the window, longing for an invitation, burning with resentment, plotting his revenge.” McKay Coppins
Well, whatever the reason, America is headed to a precipice .. a crisis in which it will be determined if rule of law and democracy holds or if they have quietly surrendered to authoritarianism and a wannabe ‘president for life.’ Trump the bully, that bundle of ‘malevolence tempered by incompetence‘ will fire Special Counsel Mueller, sooner rather than later, and when he sneers, “what are you gonna do about it?” the course of America’s future will be set.
A democracy or a fascist dictatorship. “What are you gonna do about it?”
I think that moment is swiftly approaching. The countdown began when General McMaster was forced to resign and John Bolton, the warmonger who wants to ‘clean house’ and bring in his own staff of warmongers, was installed. As Trump toys with the idea of running America all by himself, taking on the roles of Chief of Staff, Secretary of State, Spokesperson, and, probably, his own living statue for the tourists to admire, he’s just waiting to hear the last senator’s tires leaving Washington for their spring break.
Oh yes, we’ve heard from ‘the boys’ in The House, as they swear that Trump’s told them he will not, absolutely WILL NOT fire Mueller while they’re on hiatus, and he also promises that he won’t drink all the booze in the liquor cabinet, smoke pot, or play with guns or firecrackers. But …
When the adults have all gone off in all directions, leaving Trump home alone until they return on April 9th to get back to governing ….
.. you know it’s gonna be the Trump equivalent of Risky Business…
The House and Senate insisting that there would be no need to protect Mueller from being fired, (wink wink nudge nudge,) based on Trump’s assurances that he hasn’t the faintest inclination to do so, are the weak sauce of a government branch that sorta kinda maybe wants to know what really DOES happen when you let a three year old play with a nuclear bomb.
They know damn well that he’s going to fire Mueller … just as soon as he hears how Fox and Friends want him to proceed.
How bad does he want to fire Mueller?
That’s how bad.
frustratedboomers 