FOWC with Fandango — Captured
My marriage is fine. My house is not falling apart. The car was repaired and runs well. Yet I feel quite unhinged. A prisoner of war in my own country. Or that’s how I feel.
From Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman’s “Good Omens”
The World is killing me. I live in a country where the courts think it’s okay to kidnap and cage children. To put five-year-olds in front of a judge — without a lawyer.
There was another mass shooting today.
If somewhere there exists a particularly reactionary and stupid lawyer, Trump will appoint him or her and while I won’t live forever, my kid and granddaughter will spend the rest of their lives in this oppressive world we have created.
My world is crumbling. So is yours, even if you don’t know it.
I am troubled. I have nightmares. Small things which would normally not bother me are making me crazy. I feel damaged as if I’d been in a car accident.
I have trouble finding anything funny because today there was another mass shooting and there are thousands of children in cages.
The world is broken; I am bruised all over. I feel helpless to fix anything. It’s a bad way to feel. It’s also weird. I’ve always been able to separate the personal from “the rest of the world.” Somehow, I can’t seem to do that anymore.
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Categories: evil, gun control, guns, Hatred and bigotry, History
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
This is a brutal and honest reflection of the reality we are living in where its ok to cage children and people argue about their second amendment rights over the lives of innocent people killed in the gun violence.
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Horrible, isn’t it? I can’t find anything positive about any of it.
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Yes,there is nothing positive about it.For some reason gun violence has become a new normal here.Which shows which way the humanity is going.After the Sandy Hook incident I thought laws will change drastically but when it didn’t I realized there is something dead inside these law makers who oppose such amendments
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I feel exactly the same way, Marilyn! So do many people, the majority of Americans, I suspect.
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I believe you are right, especially since he was not elected by a majority vote. The problem is, once ensconced in office, it is VERY hard to dislodge any sitting president. Technically, it should not be … but really, it is nearly impossible. My mother was sure that Harding was poisoned by his own staff while out on a boat. “Food poisoning,” they said. And he was the only one who got it.
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Aw shazbat. I had this HUGE long comment and WordPress ‘ate’ it. 😦 I’m going to put it in a condensed form and try again. And bear in mind this is my opinion, so it’s not worth too much. Just how I see what you’re discussing here. You have a great life, you listed some of the reasons in that first sentence. You can’t change anything vis a vis stupidity in government nor getting other people to see sense and reason, so why drive yourself to depression by dwelling on it? You have MUCH….friends, a loving husband, cool pets that make your readers laugh and smile. You have your photography, at which you excel. You have a beautiful place to live (nature wise..I know the house thing drives you nuts).
Let us rebel in our own ways and gain what comfort we can from doing that. In some countries it’s not allowed to complain, especially about the ‘leaders’. We can say anything we want to about that orange idiot and not be shot or taken out at midnight covertly and never heard from again. Maybe that situation is coming, but it’s not here yet.
I said this would be short. More fool me, huh? My point is dwell on what you CAN do, on the positive things in your own life, and I suspect you’ll feel much better, if not completely healed. You have close family and friends, which is more than many of us can say. That alone should make the burden lighter because you’re not bearing it alone. Take care Marilyn. Maybe a brighter day will dawn?
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I understand — even agree — with what you are saying and that’s where I was until now because we cannot live in constant despair. I’m just having a really hard time doing it. It’s like the heart has gone out of me.
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You are right about counting one’s blessings, but when we feel compassion for others, we cannot help but despair. But we all do our part. I think if we figure out what part we are able to play to make things better, it helps our own well-being.
It’s like music – I sing in a choir and we practice singing longer lines using one breath. But sometimes we have to take a breath! Since it would sound terrible if the entire choir (or section) breathed in the middle of a phrase at the same time, we stagger our breathing. I take a breath at one spot while the rest of the choir goes on singing. They carry the burden until it is their turn to take a breath. Then I can sing with the group and the person who needs a breath can take one. When I think about life under Trump this way, I feel calmer that I don’t have to participate in every march, every action of protest, I don’t have to fly down to the border to rescue children! By knowing what I can do and what I can commit to, I feel less despair.
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I feel better taking pictures of flowers. I’d like to think that we can’t REALLY be stupid enough to let this go on forever.
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I’m with you, Marilyn. I wouldn’t want to be a young person today, having to face what’s coming.
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Sometimes, being old has its good points. However horrible things get, I won’t live forever. That’s something.
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Yes, but what will our children and grandchildren have to deal with?
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I don’t know. But like my parents, at some point it’s no longer my concern and they will have to figure it out. My granddaughter didn’t bother to vote. She said it had nothing to do with her and my son voted for one of the idiot third party candidates. They truly have themselves to blame.
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It was a little disconcerting to hear Carl Bernstein talking last night of the “Cold Civil War that we are living in.” I am trying to take heart in the fact that the Federal 9th Circuit Court in California has actually given the Administration only 10 days to reunite the young children with their parents and 30 days for the older children. I am considering a crash course in Spanish language so I have the option to move to Mexico!
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If we had money to go anywhere, this would be a good time to go there. I wouldn’t blame you a bit. I hear Spanish is one of the easier languages to learn.
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Fortunately, I have the language skills to move just about anywhere in the Americas (except Quebec). After your crash course, immersing yourself is the best way to learn a language.
But about the judge’s ruling, what is the consequence if they don’t do it? Trump is used to getting his own way, and if he decides not to reunite the families, what will happen? Probably nothing. He’ll get away with it. The only hope I have is that Mueller doesn’t let him get away with whatever treason he committed involving Russia.
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I have no idea. No American president has ever refused a supreme court order.
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Maybe contempt of court — is that stronger when the court is the supreme court?
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Honestly, I really don’t know and I doubt anyone knows. In a more normal administration, there would not be any question. The supreme court rules and that’s that … but today?
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Andrew Jackson did. His quote “The Chief Justice has made his decision. Let’s see him enforce it.”
Nice guy. Trump’s hero.
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And, as I recall, they didn’t enforce it. SCOTUS doesn’t have an army.
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I believe there are consequences — perhaps reunite families or release all — I’m not sure. However, I am seeing that there is now also pending legislation requiring reunification. The sad problem is that it will be almost impossible to reunite all the separated families, due to lacking identification of the children! I agree about Mueller!
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I don’t think a modern president (Andrew Jackson did and he won) has ever challenged the court so I’m not sure anyone really knows what comes next. Let’s hope it doesn’t get to that point.
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You have quite accurately and effectively expressed how I’m feeling these days. It’s hard to feel humor or to listen to others struggling to find humor in all this madness.
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It’s hard to laugh at real despair and to know that somehow, at least by accident, we’ve been part of it. I simply don’t know where to go with it. I need to snap out of it, but I am not sure what will make that happen. A long vacation? Oh, wait. No money. Maybe a medical coma for a year or two.
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It would appear that since the days of Edward Bernays, the snake oil sellers (those engineers of consent) have been playing with our minds, and while we’ve been so diverted (and for nearly 100 years), they have been busy taking over the world. Not sure how we get it back again. Bernays’ 1928 book Propaganda can be read for free at archive.org – if anyone wants to know how we got where we are now: https://archive.org/details/EdwardL.BernaysPropaganda
His dogma was spawned out of the Creel Commission set up by Woodrow Wilson in 1917 to sell the rightness of entering the Great War to the American public. The techniques – now dubbed ‘fake news’, and also ‘false flags’ that stir us up into accepting the fact of international conflict – have been used on us ever since, and most of all by those who rule us, the very people whom we voted into office. Not a pretty picture.
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And always, we do these awful things “for a higher cause.” Or what someone else sees as “a higher cause.” I’m already so depressed about this that I actually don’t think I can read anything else about it and keep on the rails. I think the next curve and this train is going to just fall over. I NEVER thought I could feel this way. I always found a way to keep “that” reality and my personal life separate. If not equal. Now, it’s all an ugly jungle.
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I truly do sympathise. I’ve been feeling very undermined, disgruntled, angry and sad over the last months. Oh and helpless too.
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I think a lot of people feel the same way Marilyn.
Leslie
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I know. And I wish that make me feel better.
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but it doesn’t I know….
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I know. 😦
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It’s amazing how many people feel the same way. He has not only stolen the goodness from the country, he has stolen the joy, too.
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