I am sure I can be heard to say often in a loud whiny voice when confronted with having ‘to deal with it” – “oh, but do I have too”. There is so much it seems to deal with these days that at times it is overwhelming.
Then I realize I need to get off my pity-pot. I am not in Yemen, in Syria, or a Rohingya refugee fleeing a bunch of crazed and murderously thuggish Buddhists. Buddhist in name only I might add and the same really as being Christian in name only for so many these days. And I am not in a cage along the U.S southern border nor am I a pregnant woman searching desperately for a legal and safe abortion. I am not an African American teenager fearing death when simply walking down the street, barbequing or mowing a lawn. I am not married to another man and the likelihood of that happening is about the same as every black hole in the Universe having a little man in the middle with a flash light wandering around looking for a breaker switch: h/t on that to Jim Parsons of the Big Bang Theory.
For me to be complaining from the sidelines about the stress I am personally under in Trump’s America is really a refection of the tremendous privilege I enjoy but this in no way should let me off the hook in protesting his every despicable move. Though in an attempt to be able to deal with it all these days I have recently been escaping into binge watching a British comedy from the late 1990’s called “As Time Goes By” starring Judy Dench who has a remarkable sense of comedic timing. I think it is showing on PBS but I need a more sustained hit to be able to cleanse my brain and so do my binge watching on Britbox.
And of course with the most recent Grateful Dead incarnation, Dead and Company, currently on tour I have been faithfully watching the concerts streamed live for a very reasonable price and no I won’t tell you how many shows I have watched and risk getting a psychiatric hold placed on me. Interestingly the first set opener from Saturday night, very shortly after I started writing on our topic of ‘dealing with it’, was an old Dead tune called “Deal”. On first hearing it many years ago and only catching the occasional lyric I assumed this was a song that referenced a drug deal that went down or didn’t. Turns out it was a song about a card game and being careful about the hand you might be dealt. Though it’s not a really good fit with today’s topic, something that has never stopped me before, here are a few lines anyway:
I been gambling here abouts
for ten good solid years
If I told you all that went down
it would burn off both your ears
It goes to show you don’t ever know
Watch each card you play
and play it slow
Wait until your deal come round
Don’t you let that deal go downGarcia/Hunter. (First performed by the Grateful Dead in February of 1971.)
I missed the large march in Denver Saturday the 30th of June protesting family separation at out border with Mexico. I was in the mountains with friends watching the large wildfire in near Fairplay from a safe distance. The increasing number of these horrible fires compared to decades gone by is most definitely fueled in part by climate change. How Trump and his toxic minions sleep at night is beyond me. I suppose Trump himself dozes off into a coma induced by cheeseburgers and French Fries while Scott Pruitt slips into dreaming of new coal fired power plants snuggled-up on his used Trump hotel mattress. You really can’t make this shit up!
The many insane examples of the current madness are so unrelenting that they really do induce fatigue and often deflect and create distraction. We can’t let this happen though or it will “burn off both our ears”. Dealing with it demands that we confront it and resist at every turn. To do any less is to simply give up or for some of us perhaps fall back on our privilege thinking we are safe from it all. Fantasies we can ill afford to indulge in – deal with it!