a brief historical note

Luther M. Siler

First things first: while I am not expecting people to come to their senses in any meaningful way, I would also not be surprised if we had a new president by the end of the day. The 25th Amendment must be invoked, and I actually do believe that it is possible that it may be.

A whole lot of people need to suffer genuine and severe consequences for yesterday. A whole fucking lot of people. There is no room for reconciliation and no room for forgiveness here, because they already got off scot-free with pulling this shit in Michigan, and if a whole bunch of people don’t pay the price for what they did, either by losing their elected offices, being forced to resign, being fired from their jobs, jail, whatever– they will do it again. And it will be worse next time. Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch failed, remember.

But that’s not what I want to talk about right now.

Cast your minds, if you’re old enough, back to January of 2001. George W. Bush had just taken office, having either actually defeated or come close enough to defeating Al Gore that it didn’t matter. And right away there were all sorts of reports that the Clinton people had done all sorts of damage on their way out the door– there were all sorts of reports of vandalism, of phone cords being ripped out of walls, of W keys being removed from keyboards, of graffiti and things being carved into desks and tables, all sorts of stuff. The news was all over the level of “frat house disarray” that the Clinton people left behind. If you’d listened to any Republicans or to the news in general, you’d have thought they completely destroyed the place.

And that got reported all over the place, and eventually the GAO did a yearlong investigation, and it turned out that while there was some damage– something around 12-15 grand, I think, across everything, which is real money to us normal people but in Washington terms is peanuts– it wasn’t remotely as bad as it had been initially described. Now, I’m not justifying any vandalism or damage here (okay, removing a couple of W keys is kind of funny, but nothing more serious than that,) only pointing out that what was a problem got blown up and magnified into something much worse than it was, and there was never, of course, any attempt to really correct the error. If you talk to most people old enough to remember this they’ll likely tell you that the Clinton people completely wrecked the White House on the way out, even though that basically wasn’t true.

Something makes me think that what happens when this administration leaves office– and they are going to, have no doubt about that– the damage will be both much worse, and much less reported on.

i wish I was surprised

Luther M. Siler3 Comments

The President of the United States must be removed from office tonight. I don’t care how; an immediate impeachment, the 25th Amendment, whatever. I don’t care about the method. He must be removed from office tonight.

His Twitter account and any other social media account he controls that he is using to direct the actions of these people must be permanently banned.

Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Mike Braun, Jackie Walorski and every other member of Congress who was involved in this attempt to overturn a fair and free election must resign or be expelled by the Senate.

Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn should be in jail.

Every single one of these white supremacist thugs, these maggots who have so little fear of consequences that they’re doing this without even bothering to conceal their faces, should spend the rest of their lives in jail for sedition.

After a thorough investigation, anyone involved in the chain of command that led to Capitol police standing down and allowing these animals into the Capitol building without a trace of resistance should be fired and jailed.

Fucking. Enough.

On optimism

Luther M. Siler7 Comments

I am fairly certain that I have described each of the last four years as the worst year of my life. Looking back on it now, 2020 does certainly seem to have won the battle royal– losing my mom is going to do a pretty good job of catapulting the year over the rest of them, even before the global pandemic enters the chat– but if I want to be a bit more specific, April 2019 to April 2020 is probably right about where the break points are. Maybe July 2020, if I want to include losing my cat, who I’d had for 22 years.

All I really want out of 2021 is for it to be better than the last four years. I don’t need it to be great. I don’t even need good. I just need better. My 40s in general have been an utter horror show– recall that I turned 40 in 2016– and I’m more than ready to be done with that.

There have been some vague signs that maybe things are starting to turn. I am, despite the pandemic, happier as a teacher this year than I have been in a very long time. Financially, I’m in the best shape of my life, both personally and jointly with my wife. The vaccine isn’t in ready supply yet, and I haven’t gotten my shots yet, but it exists. My family isn’t experiencing any acute health crises right now; my father-in-law isn’t in great shape, but he’s holding up, and we’re not hugely concerned about anyone else at the moment. And I’ll be an uncle in a few months.

Now all I need is for a couple of elections in a state I’ve never set foot in to go my way today, and to make it through the next fifteen days without a nuclear war starting or some other sort of nightmare scenario being unleashed on the world. I (and I’m sure I’m not alone in this) have gotten very, very gun-shy about anything that feels like good news over the last four years, and I don’t trust anything resembling optimism any longer. I feel like if it seems like things are turning around a little bit that’s just so that when they all go to hell again it will hurt worse.

Hell, I just want to make it through tomorrow without riots. I would like it if the worst people in America manage to make it through the day without killing anyone.

…at this point, I took about a 20-minute break from writing this, because the despair started kicking in again. There are at least a handful of reasons for actual optimism about this upcoming year. There are reasons to set goals for this year, and not just assume that there’s no chance I will achieve any of them.

I haven’t released a new book in forever. Hell, I haven’t written more than a handful of pages of fiction since Click became available to my Patreon subscribers– and that was mostly a rewrite and re-edit, not an actual new book. I’d like to say I want to get another book out this year, but it’s entirely possible that I’m just done with that. I’d like to be more creative in general this year, to make things, and I’m already looking at the whole idea of creativity and just exhausted by it.

I need a reason to be hopeful that doesn’t wash away a day or an hour or a few minutes after I happen upon it.

I need this year to be better.

Finally

Luther M. Siler1 Comment

Go vote

Luther M. Siler

Vote for the side that isn’t gleefully locking children in cages.

Vote for the side that believes climate change is real, and wants to do something about it.

Vote for the side that believes the coronavirus is real, and wants to do something about it.

Vote for the side that believes that health care, clean water, clean air and healthy food are human rights.

Vote for the side that wants the phrase “preexisting condition” to be something future generations have to have explained to them.

Vote for the side that wants your children to be able to retire eventually.

Vote for the side that doesn’t have actual Nazis and open white supremacists showing up at their rallies.

Vote for the side that doesn’t threaten gun violence every time they don’t get their way.

Vote for the side that believes Black lives matter.

Vote for the side that believes women are human beings and expects them to be treated that way.

Vote for the side that believes people of color are human beings and expects them to be treated that way.

Vote for the side that believes LGBQTIA+ people are human beings and expects them to be treated that way.

Vote for the side that believes immigrants are human beings and expects them to be treated that way.

Vote for the side that understands that trans women are women and trans men are men.

Vote for the side that isn’t represented in government almost exclusively by white men.

Vote for the side that respects knowledge and science.

Vote for the side that knows abortion is health care, and access to birth control is a right.

Vote for the side that doesn’t have racism, sexism and selfishness as the core motivating values of every single one of its policies.

Vote for the side that understands that the minor inconvenience of wearing a mask in public is worth it, because it helps to keep other people safe.

Vote for the side that believes that the ultra-wealthy shouldn’t exist and that the wealthy should pay their share of taxes.

Vote for the side that believes working people should be able to lead comfortable and dignified lives.

Vote for the side that doesn’t think that having a place to live and health care should depend on whether you have a job or not.

Vote for the side that believes access to the vote should be expanded, not restricted.

Vote for the side that believes every vote should be counted.

Vote for the side that doesn’t believe that the police should be able to beat and kill us with impunity.

Vote for the side that respects competence, expertise, and education.

Vote for the side that wants public schools fully funded and high-quality, not strip-mined for resources that could be channeled to wealthy white kids.

Vote for the side that hasn’t had the phrase “death tolls” applied to their rallies by major news organizations recently.

Vote for the side that believes that a healthy news media is a necessary feature of a democracy and not an opposing force to be coopted or silenced.

Vote for the side that believes we should be focusing on helping families during the pandemic, not corporations.

Vote for the side that hasn’t been openly calling on older people to be willing to die so that younger and poorer people can go back to work.

Vote.