Without a paddle

It’s Monday January 75th here in the DC suburbs of Maryland. It’s very cold and will remain so for several days - at least a week. I worked at home today because we got a foot or more of snow and ice, and the DMV shuts down in these conditions. OPM ordered maximum telework today and I’d have had to stay home anyway because my rinky dink little street will be among the last to see a plow. 

I didn’t leave the house at all on Sunday, not even for a moment. It snowed almost all day, with some sleet for good measure; and it was freezing, freezing cold. Everyone who is protesting in the streets of Minneapolis is my hero right now, especially Alex Pretti, who tried to help a woman who’d been knocked to the ground by ICE thugs and who ended up dead on the street, shot 10 times. And despite overwhelming video evidence to the contrary, the criminals at the head of DHS and ICE and the Border Patrol claimed and are still claiming two days later that Pretti was brandishing a gun. 

“They lie to us. We know that they’re lying, and they know that we know that they’re lying, and we know that they know that we know that they’re lying. And they keep lying to us and we keep pretending to believe them.” This is paraphrased and an approximate translation from the Russian quote attributed to both Aleksandr Solzenhitsyn and Elena Gorokhova. Soviet cynicism seems particularly relevant now. 

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It’s Tuesday now. I was very happy to learn earlier today that Greg Bovino had been unceremoniously yanked out of Minneapolis and shipped off to California to sit behind a desk from which he will not even be able to shit-post for eight hours a day because they cut off his social media access. Considering that most of this administration are nothing more than content creators who think their sole job is to own the libs on the internet, this is a very big demotion indeed, and I’m here for it. I’ll be happier still to see Bovino, Noem, Lewandowski and the rest of them fired in disgrace and left to fend for themselves as Trump washes his hands of them. People who sell their souls to the devil usually learn the hard way, and too late, that they are getting absolutely nothing in return. 

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Speaking of shit-posting, I sent something about Minneapolis to the wrong group chat yesterday, and I don’t even care. Anyone who is going to be mad at me for talking about government agents murdering people in the streets can stay mad. Stay mad! 

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It’s Wednesday now, and I left the house for real, as in driving down the road, for the first time since Sunday. The driving down the road part took a little time because I made the mistake of turning my wheel too soon at the end of the driveway, where I promptly got stuck in a micro-tundra of snow and ice. My husband had even reminded me to pull all the way out of the driveway before trying to turn my wheel and drive away, but I forgot. So I was stuck. And I was absolutely determined to get unstuck, without any help. So I got out a shovel and I started digging out the snow and chipping away at the ice and I could see the tundra shrinking a bit. I tried again and I was still stuck, but I’d moved a little bit farther back. So I pulled back up and started shoveling and chipping again, and got back in the car again, and bumped my way over the snow and ice and was on my merry way. 

I had texted my boss to let him know that I’d be late. He told me to just go back in the house and telework, and I was tempted, but the car was stuck halfway out into the street so I had to move it anyway. And I also wanted to win. A little ice isn’t going to scare me back into the house.  

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It’s so hard to concentrate lately. I’m constantly anxious and distracted at work, and it takes me forever to finish reading a book. I’ll probably fold a load of laundry, clean a few countertops, check my email, and straighten the shoes in the mudroom before I even finish this paragraph. 

Oh, and the government might shut down again. I will not be affected unless it’s a protracted shutdown, but lots of other people will. Three of our four snow shovels broke, and there are no more snow shovels to be had. The Washington Capitals can’t win a game to save their lives. And it is STILL JANUARY. My gosh. 

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There’s supposed to be a general strike tomorrow. I have mixed feelings about this. I believe in strikes, but I also believe that most people in the United States need to keep their jobs and it’s not at all unreasonable to choose your family’s livelihood over activism. But I won’t buy anything tomorrow, and if enough other people don’t buy anything, then maybe the powers that be will get the message. Business leaders are already starting to speak up a little bit - far too late and far too little but better than nothing. Minneapolis got rid of Bovino. Yes, they ended up with Homan in his place, but they still made a difference. They still forced a response. If CEOs and rich people in general start to feel a little bit of economic pain, things could start to change. 

Or maybe not, because it looks like Jeff Bezos is passing along the economic pain resulting from the almost certain failure of the $40 million Melania movie to a few thousand Amazon workers. The billionaire “job creators” giveth and they taketh away - very little of the former, and a lot of the latter.

*****

It never fails. Bruce Springsteen says (or sings) something about injustice and fascism in America, and a bunch of idiots who have obviously never actually listened to a Springsteen song in their lives start crying about rock stars “getting political.” “Streets of Minneapolis” brought them out of the woodwork. The song actually isn’t very good in strict songwriting terms - the lyrics are pretty clunky, and I wish that he had been a little less literal, not least of all because Trump and Noem and Miller do not deserve to have their names mentioned in a Springsteen song, even a song that calls them out as the criminals they are. But it’s still pretty impressive that he wrote, recorded, and released it within two days of Alex Pretti’s murder. I’m glad he’s on the right side of history. 

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Catherine O’Hara? Are you fucking kidding me? 

I haven’t been this sad about a celebrity death since Carrie Fisher died. We watched “A Mighty Wind” tonight. This was the first movie in my Catherine O’Hara movie marathon. Or maybe I should just move to Schitt’s Creek. It seems like a nice place.

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It’s Saturday morning now, beautiful and bright and sunshiny and very cold. I’m getting used to it, and it’s a good thing, because the cold is going to continue for at least another week. It’s still quite early and I don’t yet have a plan for the day. I’d like to try to stay away from current events for the next day or so but if the rest of you have to watch this shit show, then so do I. I still think it’s going to get better; rather, I hope that things are going to get better. But not before it gets worse. I’ve heard that the latest Epstein documents are pretty horrifying, which means that we’re due for another violent distraction - maybe an attack on a foreign country or maybe a bloody crackdown on domestic dissent - or maybe both. Anything could happen.  

But anything good could happen, too. It would only take a bare handful of Republicans to force Congress to do its job and stop these criminals. I remain hopeful. The Capitals even won two in a row!! Anything is possible. And January is finally over.