The End of One Narrative

I'll move myself and my family aside

If we happen to be left half-alive

I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky

For I know that the hypnotized never lie

Do you?

-Pete Townshend

The valley of the Chemung is totally obscured by fog this morning, so let's take a look up the hill at the lovely sunrise hitting the bluff above our new condo.

Not the best photo, but you get the idea. The windows, filled with wavy glass several decades old, don't actually open, a condition that drives Peg crazy. "What if there's a fire?", she asked last night. My suggestion of throwing a chair through the window and leaping through the shards didn't seem to assuage her fears.

This morning I find myself pondering the implications of what's happened to our country, and thinking perhaps it's time to find a new topic here. This guy does a great job summing up the steps we've already completed in dismantling our democracy.

https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/america-tips-into-fascism-f51000e08e03254d

And of course LGM has posted almost daily this week about not just the news of the latest authoritarian power grab, but the fact that it's over, folks. We'll never be able to go back to where we were, at home or abroad. This extraordinary age you and I were lucky enough to occupy has come to a close.

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/08/some-good-questions-from-jv-last

They won. And then they rigged the system so they can no longer be removed. One entire branch of government has abdicated its responsibility to govern, and left it to Dear Leader and the Federalist Society hacks at the SCOTUS to rule the country. Our allies have moved on, treating this not at an interregnum of insanity but a fundamental change in how the nations of the world move in their spheres, the end of the Pax Americana.

So no point documenting it anymore, creating the body of a vast indictment no court will read because no one will be held accountable. And as J.V. Last points out, 44 percent of us are okay with it. That's enough to ensure it never ends, at least not short of a violent revolution.

And to whoever at DHS is one of my five regular readers, I'm not advocating that. Not at all. I'm barefooted in pajama bottoms right now. How much of a threat could I be?

So what to talk about, instead? I've been thinking for a while that I ought to be writing the story of my life, slanted off course to make me seem less ridiculous than I am. I find myself forgetting more of it every day, part of a natural senescence accelerated by Cabernet and worry, so I probably need to start that project soon if I'm going to compile something that doesn't look more like a pamphlet.

Or perhaps that onanistic adventure would be a little too self-revelatory for this forum. Maybe I could write about history, or airplanes, or some interesting jurisprudential development. You know, I used to really love the law as an intellectual exercise before my role devolved into Overpaid Case Manager. A trip back through the foundations of my neighborhood of the law could bring back a little professional joie de vivre.

Or hey, why not poetry? It's all become so free form that the fact that I'm a talentless hack would stand in plain view while still invisible because of the lack of any objective standard of badness. Except maybe using the word "badness", I mean. Post-modern freedom, baby.

But for now I find myself compulsively playing with the new zit I have on my cheek, making me feel like a teenager again. If my face has decided to return to my pimply physical glory days in 1980 or so, why can't the rest of my body be persuaded to follow suit? There are medications for that, I guess.

Enough of this. I need to run through the grocery store, review a contract for my very favorite client, and then start a mediation in two hours. A busy day ahead.