The Democrats
I made up a truism many years ago, that "In order to salute a flag, you must know what it stands for". The Democratic Party no longer stands for very much, except for Not Being Republicans. The party has become somewhat like an irritating uncle, old, arrogant, white, and unwilling to listen. Its lack of charisma, its inertia bordering on timidity, and the fact that it comes to life only when necessary to defeat young progressives of color in primaries, mean it deserves to lose the 2024 election-- if only the alternative were not so violent and horrifying. But "vote for us because we are your only choice" isn't a platform. I think if I were telepathic and could read Chuck Schumer's mind, I would hear, "Whatever happens, I will be all right".
Voting
Under the circumstances, voting for Joe Biden, if I still do, will be the hardest vote I have cast in my lifetime. I can't even say for sure, because I can't see the future, that it is a vote for the lesser murderer-- just the candidate I perceive as less likely to murder me.
Charlatanism
I have been (slowly) reading Foucault's Birth of the Clinic. The French Revolution being philosophically a battle against all previous laws, rules and standards, the revolutionary government soon discovered that charlatans were now freely practicing medicine, at great harm to their patients, and it began to struggle with the difficult question of how to reinstitute standards without becoming reactionary.
Trump Universe presents the same problem, with the Trumpoid Object himself notoriously recommending injecting disinfectant to treat Covid, and the fad for using veterinary ivermectin for that purpose. Fears of Trump Universe tend to center on chaos and violence, but the general and quite revolutionary attack on expertise, professionalism, and in fact on knowledge and even the concept of knowledge, will be a central feature.
Spring
I have been fighting the new McCarthyism since October, and feel as if I have alternated phone calls and Zoom conferences for the last eight months. Yesterday, a Saturday, the pace slowed down for a half day, and I took a cup of coffee out to the deck and sat, looking at the ocean. Spring had arrived without my noticing. I had put the hummingbird feeder up on spec a few days before, and suddenly, a tiny green being surged up over the railing, hovered, and took thirty or forty sips from the artificial flower as I watched. The little bird existed intensely, and so did I for a moment, caught in its radiance. I flash that civilizations will come and go, including ours, but though we have wounded the spring, it will take more to end spring than it does to stop a civilization.