What's Important?

I make idiotic stuff important. Like ranting and raving about the political structures both here and abroad, that seem to hurt us rather than benefit us. From the small to the large. And I engage in pointless battles on FB about ideologies and which reporter/newspaper/magazine doesn't have a slant. Ad finitum. Fascist or non-fascist, you decide. And how can we, we all might ask?

I don't think I've ever read of a kind act Herr Drumpf has performed - that's an aside. Shouldn't our leaders be kind?

And should I care? Is it my business?

Perhaps when he starts registering Muslims/homosexuals/blacks/Mexicans/Irish/aborting women it will become more my business?

Meanwhile, I feel like pulling away from it all. The flurries from the Guardian, the old writings of Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky and various talking heads weighing in. And why do we praise men writing letters to their daughters? (another aside, he calls his wife a "girl") Shouldn't men speak up for all women and not just their "own"? And pardon me? - model respect for women for their sons? Spare me the daughter drivel.

And the callout from the cast of Hamilton last night to the Veep Elect and the Prez Elect tweeting hysterically about it this morning.

I mean it's all too surreal for this elder-head to handle. My internal logical centre fails me. Completely.

I weep once more for my dog, when we'd play hide and seek around the house. And she'd always find me, no matter how outrageously I'd hide, standing at the top of a step ladder under a blanket in the craft room upstairs with the door nearly shut? - in 2 minutes flat.

But it's not the dog I lament, I know that.

It's everything about this strange new world, blathering its inane way to another teetering Babel of infinite voracious consumption in a tiny finite planet.

As the arctic rolls over and dies.

Despair is my new neighbour.

The Day After

Michael Moore predicted it in July. And I remember back then, when reading it, my heart freezing in fear. But I quickly shrugged and thought: Never.

We can analyze the thing to death but it gets us nowhere when so many feel angry and abused and misunderstood and fall in love with the jingoism of making a country great again. What was great? The Civil War? Endless wars on foreign soil? Women without the vote? Slavery? And on. Maybe Norman Rockwell's portrayal of an America that never existed. Or Hollywood's old black and whites evoking the fantasies of what refugee Jewish intellectuals and artists envisioned as their perfect apple-pie America?

Who the hell knows? Nobody explains it. Gun sales have soared.


So violence comes into it. And outrageous misogyny. And a lack of critical thinking.

And maybe this simplistic, inarticulate, non-intellectual and inexperienced psychopath reflects back onto those who voted for him their own damaged, wounded selves.

Who knows?

But this is only the beginning.

For vengeance is his now.

Duck and cover.

Another Quarter Heard From

Present: Me (M) and two Australian PGs* (APG) both academics on a three month leave - mandatory after 10 years' employment with one employer in Australia.

APG: What do you think of the current political climate in the USA?

M: Pretty scary.

APG: Yeah, especially with that billionaire Clinton woman.

M: What about Trump?

APG: Well, after Sanders dropped out he's the far better choice.

M (aghast): Why do you say that?

APG: He's a businessman. The USA needs to be run like a business.

M: He's a failed businessman. Every business he has been involved with has bankrupted. He's been sued.....

APG: Oh come on, most businessmen have failures, that's how they become successes. They learn from their mistakes!

M: But what about the people who have invested in his companies, their shares are worthless!

APG: That's real life. Some you win, some you lose.

M: So if he fails the USian people, and I can't count the number of ways this could happen, it would be an experiment?

APG: Of course. You don't want another corrupt Clinton running the country for her own personal gain.

I backed away with my hands up and didn't touch on Drumpf's comments on racism, immigration, privilege, creepiness (i.e desiring his daughters, et al)and mockery of those less fortunate.

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*Paying guests