To cut a long story slightly shorter: I have been sleeping with the dog.
Not like that. Get out.
But the beagle is very bandaged up and not very mobile. From Wednesday, she’s going to be less bandaged up, but also not very mobile, but that’s another story. Anyway, she’s still trying to navigate the slings and arrows of her current situation, and quite regularly getting herself stuck. Either lying down, sitting down or standing up.
And so, at the moment, I’m spending my nights downstairs on a spare mattress and helping the beagle each time she gets stuck. It happens quite a lot each night.
It’s not been fun, I’ll be honest. My sleep is so disturbed that my smartwatch can’t even detect that it’s happened. Perhaps because it’s not really happening. And so I’ve been grabbing an hour or two’s nap during the day to try and keep myself going.
This morning, I couldn’t do that, because of reasons, and so I sat with the dog and I read the world news.
Dear lord. It’s not pretty out there, is it?
Because of the situation described above, and perhaps because of just a reasonable amount of self-preservation, I haven’t really been keeping too up to date with the situation in the USA. And of course, it’s always difficult to find objective, unbiased views when wanting(?) to learn about these things, because these days, the world is more polarised than a pair of expensive sunglasses.
But it’s easier to make judgements about the rights and wrongs, and about how I feel about what’s going on, when the actual information is coming directly from the goons themselves. In years to come, historians are going to have an absolute field day with all those primary sources.
They really just put it out there, don’t they?
The scary bits for me are twofold. OK, threefold. But the first fold is a fairly obvious one. Still, I guess that it shouldn’t be overlooked.
The fact that the (apparently, potentially) legitimately elected President of the USA is… well… like that.
250 years of democracy and it’s evolved to give us… him? What went wrong?
Obviously, a lot went wrong: there are many, many factors in how this came about, but honestly… what an absolute disaster for the entire world (minus Russia and China, obviously).
Number two – and I use that term with all of its meanings – that they are so open, so brazen, so completely shameless and unabashed about the things that they are doing and the way that they are doing them. Everyone keeps referring to that guy in Germany in the 1930s, and terrifyingly, that’s quite reasonable, but there have been plenty of other examples before and since and none of them have been pleasant, and none of them have worked out well. The thing is that many of those examples weren’t elected: they seized power via non-democratic means and then held on – and on, and on.
This twat won an election (apparently).
And that brings me on to the third fold. His supporters. It’s a cult. It’s just a well-managed cult of frighteningly stupid, easily-led people.
I don’t use the c-word lightly, but if it looks, smells and quacks like a cult… well…
It doesn’t seem to matter how outrageous the claim or the story (or the lie) that is used to justify the action: it’s lapped up like manna from heaven. There is literally not a second given to even contemplate questioning the motive or think critically about the situation.
Orange man good.
Weird – and I mean really weird – billionaire good.
That’s a cult. And it’s running one of the most powerful nations on earth. It’s unbelievable.
Ah Jesus.
I don’t think I’m going to surprise anyone in making the somewhat radical statement that I really don’t think that this is going to end well. And it’s going to be f******g miserable while it gets us there, as well.
I read the news today, oh my.
I wish I hadn’t.