The Witness Chronicles, April 20, 2024

The year in a day

Photo by Kayle Kaupanger on Unsplash

A Strange Year in America, and Beyond

We’ve never seen politics like this

An ex-President, running for re-election, sits in a courtroom, stony-eyed, while a jury is picked for the criminal trial he faces. Prospective jurors ask to be released out of fear for what his followers might do to them. And outside a man obsessed with bizarre conspiracy theories sets himself on fire, eventually dying from the burns.

That’s just one day. Soon we will see a porn star testifying in the same courtroom and possibly claim the sex she had with the ex-President was not consensual. He does not deny that the sex took place, paid her well to keep it quiet so he could win his first election, and allegedly hid that payment, breaking the law.

In Congress the Republican House Speaker, a far right evangelical conservative, breaks with his fellow right wingers and finally passes aid to embattled Ukraine, while those same right wingers speak well of our country’s greatest enemy and prepare to try and oust their Speaker.

Hurricane season is predicted to start early and there are an estimated 24 possible named storms. Normal is 14. Atlantic Ocean surface temps are far higher far earlier in the season than ever recorded, fuel for those storms. And in the states most frequently hit by those storms, home insurance has quadrupled, if you can get it.

A women’s college basketball final draws a bigger audience than the men while WNBA pros make a tiny fraction of the men’s salaries. A court in Arizona revives an ancient law that calls for doctors performing abortions, any abortions for any reason except to prevent the death of the mother, to be jailed for years. 

A war simmers in the Middle East, driven by the near maniacal leaders of Israel and Iran. The Israeli leader is another politician facing criminal corruption charges if he is booted from office. The current American President, a staunch lifetime supporter of Israel, struggles to rein the Israelis in as thousands die in Gaza, many of them children. Israel is fighting to avenge a terrible day of terror last year, but the death and destruction they have unleashed horrifies the world.

That Israeli leader is wildly unpopular among his own people. But they hesitate to remove him during a time of war. It is in his interest to keep that war going as a result. 

I write about politics nearly daily but this year it’s hard to keep up with all the moving parts. And I have not even mentioned the danger to democracy that the ex-President represents if he is re-elected. He may be a convicted felon by that point and his cult like followers say they don’t care.

They would be willing to have a criminal as leader of the free world. And he has vowed his first actions in a second term would be revenge on anyone who has disagreed with him. Anyone.

It’s hard to write the words ‘existential crisis’ without sounding wildly over dramatic, but they fit the times as they never have before. Our existence as a nation is on the line, all because a narcissistic man can only win by dividing us from each other.

We have another seven months of this before Election Day, and will undoubtedly see months or years of turmoil after, because that narcissist cannot accept losing and will divide and incite violence if he does. We know this because he has done it before.

None of this is in dispute by any reputable observer, yet there are entire media companies that exist to keep these lies alive, for ratings and the money they bring. One of those media giants is the most watched news source in the country, even as they admitted to outright lying and paid a huge civil settlement. And they face another suit, an even bigger one.

The Washington Post’s fact checker column estimates that Donald Trump has said 70,000 lies since first being elected. This basically says that nearly everything he says may be a lie and that his millions of supporters are perfectly willing to accept and support that.

There is an epidemic of apathy in our country, a willingness to let these alarming actions take place as long as they have their comfortable lives. Of all the scary developments we face, that apathy and selfishness scare me the most.

The words civility, decency, civic pride, and kindness are being replaced by anger, blaming, hate, bigotry, and paranoia on a scale not seen since our historical Civil War over slavery, over 150 years ago.

The answer to all of this is relatively simple: do the right thing. We all know what it is, even as many pretend not to. This is as clear a choice between good and evil as we have faced since that Civil War. We won that one, but only after hundreds of thousands of Americans killed each other.

Do the right thing. Not such a hard choice when you think about it.

~ I write The Grasshopper, a letter for creatives, The Witness Chronicles, a place for my articles on politics and climate, and The Remarkable, a recovery letter, about my addiction and reentry experience. All are weekly and free, however this is how I live and I strongly believe all writers and creatives should get paid, if we provide value. Your upgrade to a paid subscription helps make that happen. 

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Believe me, it makes my day. M