January 6th, 2021
I’ve been real good at staying apolitical as of late, but I feel like I’ve lost a little of my punk rock attitude and we’ve all been getting along too well. So let’s get to it, friends!
What is happening in Washington right now is just about as anti-American and anti-democratic (as in the idea of democracy, not the party) as anything I can imagine.
I extend my love and compassion to Donald Trump as far as he is a fellow human being on this planet. Apart from that, I think he is a despicable, narcissistic sociopath who objectively does not tell the truth (objectively meaning that there is actual proof he lies).
So what did I do when he became president four years ago? Was I upset? Yeah. Very. Did I complain? You bet. But did I discredit the actual system that our entire democracy is built on because I was in an inexplicable kind of love with a man I have never met?
No. I did not do that.
And that is what is happening now.
I had to deal with the fact that more voters in this country thought like him than think like me. I sorely wish the people in this country cared about one another as much as they cared about one dude who doesn’t care about them at all. I watch these people in D.C. literally scaling walls who were, just months ago, berating folks fighting in the streets for human rights. Like, the actual rights for human beings just to be.
I don’t want to be dramatic, but all of this points to the end of democracy. Truth is the base, and if we’ve reached the point that there is no truth — there are no objective facts, what you believe is more important than what is true — then there is no democracy.
Maybe the end isn’t fire and brimstone and apocalypse. Maybe it’s a bunch of folks in red hats who can’t accept the truth or the fact that they failed at something.
And that’s too bad. It’s too bad that conspiracies and hatred have eclipsed compassion, logic and decency. It’s too bad we’re proving to the world that our ideals as a nation are unattainable. It’s too bad we’ve lost our moral compass, and dived deep into immoral territory, like ignoring science and ridiculing that and those we don’t understand or are different from us.
It’s too bad.
I fully expect backlash from this. But I started with power chords, and I will be playing them until I’m dead.
The Den 