May 31, 2017 (Wednesday)

by Yule Heibel on May 30, 2018

The sky is an even light gray, thick-looking. Not a wash, not some kind of gauze, but a thick coating of industrial-strength latex paint. Not a plaster gesso, some kind of pigment applied to al fresco plaster, but a uniformity of gray. A uniform. It’s somehow so suitable, like a suit – as uniforms are. Not like a power suit, more like the bland wear of inmates in an institution. I have these trees to look at, but as I’ve already mentioned, they worry me. Soon they’ll be touching the roof of the sunroom I’m sitting in. This is the problem of having no backyard to speak of (although it’s big enough as far as I’m concerned) and neighbors who do nothing to control the random seedlings which sprout and grow into thirty-foot trees. I need permission to cut the trees, to go on their property, and I haven’t been able to contact these people. It’s frustrating.

I want to leave. The feeling is strong, very strong. It’s not a good feeling because I have no plausible plan for where to go right now. But I know I’m barely moving – ha, there’s that word again – on house projects, and that’s always a sign something is wrong. I guess people who are constantly tinkering with their homes, constantly fixing and renovating and maintaining them, like the domestically-minded Mole, friend to Ratty and Toad, in The Wind in the Willows, these people are perhaps sublimating an urge which still seeks a different outlet for me. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t say this, at least not definitively, for I’ve done my share (and then some!) of Mole-work. But when the Mole-ing stops for me, I know I’m done. The question now is, how long do I have to hold this limbo pose before I can unbuckle and bolt to somewhere else? Would I be happier right now under a gauzy versus industrial gray sky? Maybe not. In some ways it really doesn’t matter.

In other news: I’m getting seriously concerned by what looks like collective insanity on the part of our media “culture,” our establishment, and our seemingly overwhelmed citizenry. I didn’t vote for Trump, I don’t like him, but I’m really getting worried by how Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) seems to be ratcheted up to increasingly hysterical levels with each new day. It’s the goddamn amplification via social media which contributes mightily, and it’s creating – has already created? – an apparently unstoppable feedback loop. It’s not that I feel sorry for Trump that people are piling up on him for tweeting a nonsense word (covfefe – it’s of course already a hashtag). I’m worried instead that the Republic could be plunged into chaos over what’s probably a typo. Or something. But anything, literally anything, now serves as fodder for TDS, and TDS is the “people”‘s spearhead to lead to impeachment and/or “incompetency” findings.

This all wouldn’t be so horrifying if I had any – and I mean any – confidence in “the other side.” But from their behavior to date in the Trump presidency, all I can smell is corruption and outright unhingedness. John McCain should be struck dumb, for example. Instead, every brain fart he has is bruited about. Hillary Clinton and the whole Clinton family should disappear off the media landscape. Instead, all their utterances are solidified as milestones and “refuges” in this shitstorm. It’s truly insane. It’s dirty. It’s deep. And no good will come of it, none whatsoever.

I read an interview (in Slate, of all places) by an Isaac Chotiner with Stephen F. Cohen, contributer to The Nation. No raving rightwinger, he was making eminently rational observations about the hacking hysteria and claims of Trump’s alleged stupidity (he disbelieves both “truths”). Yet the article is called, “Putin’s Defender,” his “claims” characterized as “mind boggling.” This is where we’re at: the death of rational inquiry. #sad

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