I'm gettin' sick of this universe
Ain't gonna get better, it's gonna get worse
And the world's gonna sink with the weight of the human race
Hate and fear in every face
I'm gettin' ready and I've packed my case
If you find somewhere better, can you save my place?
Fooling no one but ourselves
Love is dying
Here comes the end
Here comes the end
Here comes the end of the world
-John Entwistle
At my desk at 6:25 a.m., after pushing away less than eleven hours ago and returning calls until nearly nine. 20.3 hours billed in the last two days. Twenty-six hours worked. Not a pace an old man can sustain.
Driving up Harrison to work I created a two-car traffic jam at 4th Street, where they installed a traffic circle for some reason. A guy driving a car whose vanity plate proclaimed him "STD MFN" stopped to my left, and just as I started to berate him as a dumbshit I realized he had a stop sign and I didn't. A stop sign on a traffic circle. The engineer who designed that gem must've gone to FSU.
Yesterday on three separate occasions I found myself in a MAGA person's comment thread on social media. These are people I've liked and known for literally decades now. Each time one reposted something flagrantly, verifiably incorrect, I'd simply write "Incorrect" or "Not True" and paste a link to an article from a real news organization.
Like, for instance, when they cry out that the Dems will impose capital gains taxes on unrealized appreciation in their homes. Not true.
Or the one about how the Harris campaign has borrowed a slogan from the Nazis. Also incorrect.
Now I've sort of given up. Instead, whenever I see a deluded old friend post something ridiculous and Republican (a redundancy in 2024, I realize), I just unfollow them. My world gets smaller. It's a loss, but I reckon a necessary loss if I want to keep my marbles.
Meanwhile, DJT created his own mini 1.6.21 by showing up at Arlington National Cemetery with an entourage and shoving past security for a photo op at the graves of some of the young men who died in the withdrawal from Kabul three years ago.
A campaign that knows no bottom, exploiting the misfortune of the "suckers" and "losers" for a photo op. A rape of one of this country's most sacred places. And the family of the poor bastard decaying under the headstone grinning and playing along. Mostly women. Go figure.
I can't take it anymore. I may go cast my absentee vote and not look at the news until the next inauguration, except to check the outcome of the election so we can start shopping real estate if my neighbors let this happen. It's not that I think they'll arrest me or force Peggy and me to find a way to breed or make us go to church. It's just that I don't want to live around people who think any of this is okay. I sort of feel like Terrence Mann in Field of Dreams, who holed up after the great disappointment at the end of the 1960s to write children's books as a hermit in Boston.
It's one of the funnier exchanges in my favorite movie of all time that Peg can't stand:
Terence Mann : I'm going to beat you with a crowbar until you leave.
Ray Kinsella : You can't do that.
Terence Mann : There are rules here? No, there are no rules here.
[advances with crowbar]
Ray Kinsella : You're a pacifist!
Terence Mann : [stops] Shit.
In the end he finds redemption and reconnection with all that's good about this country, through baseball of course. But he begins the journey trying to chase Kevin Costner out of his doorway with a crowbar. I get that this morning.
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