AnteMaga Fantasy

"Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were."

-Marcel Proust

Back in PC, where it's incredibly hot and humid to the point that going outside after about 8 a.m. is almost unthinkable. I walked out onto the patio to snap this shot of the bay, then disappeared back behind the sliding glass before the boob sweat started running down my middle.

August in the panhandle is as February is to New York--the extreme season has been upon us for a couple months now, and the season of nature relenting feels far, far from here. Given the choice between the two locales, I'll take the gray snow and gray skies. One can at least dress for it.

The boats out there have formed a sort of moored flotilla that never moves. A couple of the vessels lack masts, and rarely if even does a human figure appear on deck. Peg is extremely agitated by this, and keeps bringing it up. I looked up the local ordinance and state statute that limit one's ability to make the bay one's marina and toilet, and both seem rather toothless. Freedom, baby!

Speaking of which, it's primary day here. Florida's 2nd Congressional District is a fanatical Republican lock, as is most of the rest of the state thanks to gerrymandering. The primary will, then, almost certainly decide the election in November, and given the frothy state of the electorate the candidates vie for which represents the most despicable Christian xenophobic worldview. Giving the people what they want.

Last night we had supper with an old friend who remains an R but has turned away from MAGA after voting for all this twice. January 6th was his turning point, as well it should have been. We had a cordial meal together, talked politics and local gossip and life in one's 60s. I've been of a mind these last couple years that no forgiveness should be extended to the people who voted for this mess, but my theology and my heart mandate that someone who truly repents should not wear the albatross of supporting MAGA for life. To err is human, after all.

But most won't repent, a topic we discussed at length last night. Almost no one in 2026 admits a mistake, or tries to make amends. Don't expect our MAGA neighbors to don the hair shirt and experience a metanoia after all this. Instead, there will be not so much excuses, but a reshaping of reality to demonstrate that supporting fascism wasn't the cause of the tidal wave of woe that's heading our way.

Take Iran. Please.

The ceasefire ended yesterday, and Iran matter-of-factly lobbed a missile at a tanker traversing the Strait. It's becoming manifest that the war isn't going to end soon, and more likely than not the 48th president and a Democrat-led Congress will be left with this fiasco, along with shattered alliances, a national debt that's has drifted into exponential growth, stagflation, an aging and shrinking (but increasingly white!) workforce. In short, a complete mess.

The R pivot, one might anticipate, will be to stand on the sidelines and carp about how the incompetent Dumocrats and libtards can't figure out how to solve a thing, how to pass legislation, how to deal with foreign threats. If only we had a strong America First chief executive, and a Congress to match. There will be zero mention of who got us here, or the complicit role played by my neighbors in Florida and other strongholds of mass political stupidity.

That's what's going to happen. Because there's no returning to the world of 2015, or 2001, or any of the other politically salient moments in our plunge down the conservative tunnel to a place where we count as our allies countries like North Korea. We can't un-f*ck this country after what's happened, any more than the Germans or the Japanese in 1945 could return to the halcyon days of 1933 or so. Well, that wasn't really a "halcyon" time for them, but you get the idea. When everything's destroyed, you can't just turn back the clock, and it would be an act of foolish nostalgia to try. The only way home is forward.