Shame serves

I hope I’m wrong.

I really do.

I hope in a year or two or four years, my readers will look back on this and think how idiotic the ghost was. I hope that Trump ushers in a new golden age for the U.S.

But I really don’t believe that’s going to happen.

As many do at this time, the ghost feels ashamed for what was his country.* Don’t give me that “you can’t only support your country when you win” crap, and I won’t respond with the pat answer about “dissent being a democratic value”. This is different, and if you don’t know it, why am I even talking to you?

Shame on each and every one of you who voted for this penny ante dictator wannabe. Shame.

The ghost stated up front that these posts and pages were not a democracy. But this is a blog, not a democratic republic thrown to mean and rabid beasts. The blog was started to spread thoughts and some compassion, and occasionally political opinions as well. But while one can share thoughts, one can’t make people think beyond the walls around them.

Not that the ghost is perfect by any means. One has but to read past posts and see the spelling and grammar errors, the patchy writing, as much writing from the heart can be.

Yet, one tries to be as perspicacious as possible, even within one’s considerable limits.

Long experience has taught the ghost that one can’t change people’s minds. Sadly, most people would rather adopt their thoughts from something viewed on television or heard on the internet than think for themselves.

The ghost listens. I’ve heard prattling rhetoric about the economy and immigration. Smoke and mirrors! Rhetoric distracting weak minded people, coercing them into participating in a coup which is so far from being in their best interests that it astonishes the mind.

As if the president sets gas prices. As if the Vice President makes policy about foreign wars. If it really were the economy, stupid, the pain would make the present days seem like summer meadows awash with butterflies.

Not that people aren’t struggling. Many are. And much of that struggle persists because of policies stemming back to at least the 1980s. But again, Reagan cutting the U.S. education budget by some 80% is largely forgotten now no matter how much that lack of education now echoes in the legacy of a much less educated mass. Now grown up, these uneducated and undereducated former students lack any semblance of literate or civic grounding. That they fail to see broadly or deeply is not their fault. So many have been taught only to read the title on the Cracker Jack box. They miss the horizon to scramble for the possibility of a penny thrown from a billionaire’s passing coach. They mistake tech phone savvy for understanding and they equate wealth with wisdom. We have engineered generations of fools and now we all stand on the precipice, ready to step off of it.

Lest any reader should think the ghost a whining Democrat, the ghost assures them that he has never been subscribed to any political party. Aside from being a ghost, which removes him from politics, he thinks for himself. Seems like more people should do that, or should have done.

Too late now.

You may not hear from the ghost again, so mark my words:

Granted, the U.S. has been and is a troubled place. All places have troubles. But Trump voters have stolen my country from me and put it into the hands of a criminal and his sycophants.

My country, yes. I venture that aside from my Native siblings, my family has almost certainly been here longer than yours.

I cannot help but see the Trump voters as bigoted and stupid. How stupid do you need to be to be so colossally short sighted?

Either thou wilt die by God’s just ordinance
 Ere from this war thou turn a conqueror,
 Or I with grief and extreme age shall perish
 And nevermore behold thy face again.
 Therefore take with thee my most grievous curse,

Which in the day of battle tire thee more
 Than all the complete armor that thou wear’st.
 My prayers on the adverse party fight,
 And there the little souls of Edward’s children
 Whisper the spirits of thine enemies
 And promise them success and victory.
 Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end.
 Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend.

Richard III, 4.4.193-205

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it think.

Can’t we all get along? It’s just politics, after all.

No, you sad pathetic moron. It’s a coup, engineered by billionaires and perpetrated upon an unwitting electorate. If you cannot begin to see what’s around you, cannot see the house afire when others are struggling to get out, we cannot get along. Wittingly or unwittingly, you have hurt me, my family, my friends, and the whole world. Now, I’m left to try to deal with the hand you’ve deliberately dealt me, and I don’t begin to know to what extent that will even be possible.

And on this post? You can make all the comments you want, but I’m unlikely to respond. Angry much? We’re finished here. Dust.

Bad moon rising? Trouble on the way?

You ain’t seen the half of it. But I wager that you will.

You will.

Not afraid?

You will be.

And you’ll regret it. More deeply than you can imagine.

Maybe not now, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your days.

Don’t turn to the ghost then with your “who would have known?”

To those who remain undeserving of this curse, best of luck. The whole world will need it now. Even those who don’t yet know it.

*Talking about United States of America voters, as opposed to Americans who live in other parts of North or South America.