Political Prairie Dog

"And I could find another dream

One that keeps me warm and clean

But I ain't dreaming anymore, girl, I'm waking up"

-Jason Isbell

One thing about being laser focused on school these last four months: I've not had time to really ponder what's going on in this political moment.

So now I'm sort of like a prairie dog poking his head out of his hole, rubbing his eyes, and looking astonished at what's going on around me.

Or maybe Rip Van Winkle, twenty years asleep in the beautiful Catskills we'll meander through on Saturday on the way back home.

What've I missed?

We've gone to war with two countries, and by all appearances are about to attack a third. Three unprovoked attacks in five months? The world hasn't seen that cadence of military adventurism since Hitler.

Speaking of whom . . . apparently anti-semitism is all the rage again, the latest manifestation being a lightly researched piece in the NYT that describes Palestinian prisoners being sodomized by dogs in an Israeli prison. I'm told that's a physical impossibility, but it's sufficiently outrageous that people are riled and being Jewish is suddenly a risky identity. Folks are shooting up synagogues, accusing Jews of conspiring against "real" Americans. I never thought I'd see the day.

Meanwhile, the Confederacy has reformed, and blacks are being disenfranchised en masse. Reconstruction has ended, again, after a pretty good six decade run. If I were an African-American living in the South, I'd be filling my car with that sweet, sweet $5 a gallon gas and driving north to safety and freedom.

Back in Washington, there's now a taxpayer-funded slush account ostensibly to compensate the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol in January of 2024. A lot of those guys were convicted by juries, although now they're pardoned and, apparently, on the cusp of financial gain for what should have been a hanging offense. Trump buying the loyalty of a violent, ignorant incel militia. What could possibly go wrong?

Best of all, in the recent primaries my Southern neighbors crushed any candidate in the Republican Party who had the temerity to suggest they weren't okay with all of this. Which is to say, of course, that my neighbors are in fact okay with all of this.

I go back to Florida this weekend, and it's going to be hard to mask my revulsion at all of them, all the people who smile and make nice small talk when they see me at the courthouse, then talk fascism when they get together for lunch with friends. Peg and I actually experienced this, at the next table, the last time we were in town.

None of this global MAGA catastrophe would have happened without them, without people willing to vote for this.

Can I just crawl back into my prairie dog hole, or lay back on the mountainside and return to my blissful slumber?