Well, here we are. My first daylog. Thanks wertperch for the reminder that they exist. I find myself in a weird, exhausted state. The week was long- between picture day and a licensor visit I had more than the regular routine to contend with. On Wednesday, I got dinner with a friend, but, truth be told, it was awkward as hell. It felt as though 50% of the time, he didn't respond to what I said. I found myself wondering if he didn't hear me, if what I was saying was going over his head, if he was just too high, or if he was on some strange, sociopathic shit. Or, maybe, he was just disagreeable because of all that's going on- maybe I caught him on a bad day. Or, maybe, it was I who was caught on the bad day.
It was weird, though.
I read today that Trump's assault on the judiciary is far more rapid and aggressive than even Orbán's or Erdoğan's. Where they chipped away at the structure of checks and balances over decades, through the appointment of sympathetic judges and administrative changes, constitutional amendments, etc., Trump is acting as if this has already happened, as though he has already "put in the work" required to achieve such a power.
I fear he may be right, and has discovered a shortcut. Judicial orders are already being ignored, people are already being imprisoned for exercising their freedom of speech, and being deported without due process (sure, we were doing the like throughout the 2000's but that was so different because those were foreigners accused of terrorism, not people living on American soil... right?) After pardoning 1,600 insurrectionists, Trump and Co. have identified the vandalism of Tesla cars and dealerships as "domestic terrorism." Since Congress handed Trump their ass on a silver platter, and the judiciary is largely powerless on its own, it feels the only recourse is the public, which so far has done little but acquiesce and complain, to confidants and on social media. I know this, yet I do it too. I hope I can organize something more impactful, but I also unfortunately need to survive. It seems these two objectives are in near fundamental opposition. And, look, I'm doing it again.
I saw a picture of Trump, followed by Elongated Muskrat holding his son, X æ12 or whatever the fuck, by the hand. Musk and heir dressed in all black, following the orange man like specters. Trump and Musk looked old, pockmarked, and no disrespect, Bidenesque, their mouths half open. I found myself feeling a glimmer of hope. Perhaps, to some degree, fascism is rooted in its proponents' inability to come to terms with their own mortality. Yet, nonetheless they will die.
Perhaps, once they do, there will arrive some sort of coalition between aged Millennials with greater access to political power, Indigenous groups, and minorities (hopefully especially Black people), who will work together to redistribute what they can, and stave off what horrible, unimaginable, imaginable, effects of climate change they can. I doubt it will happen, and doubt further, that I will be alive to see it happen. But who knows, I will keep watching the road unfurl.