The day the music died

I mindlessly snacked on Honey Nut Cheerios while the end of the world started. I’d already read all the things, understood all the realities, warned and whined, donated and drowned myself in independent media. The end of something should mean the beginning of a new, maybe even hopeful stage but not this ending. The one I watched during the last decade was – and maybe historians one day will deem it so – a brilliant and horrifying convergence of efforts from a few factions who do not believe in the common good or any of the things that help to create a functioning society.

The technofascists. The white supremacists. The christian nationalists. The but-maybes (but maybe it’ll be ok when…). And all the other hangers on who make justifications for their aggrieved state while the system kicks their ass and the other hangers on who have stolen all the wealth from the rest of us. There are no rules they really have to follow even if a judge says what the rules actually are. How do you hold the unaccountable to account when nothing has worked?

So, I watched the music dying and the Senators kibbitzing on the stately, blue carpet feeling both helpless and grateful. The gratitude for my personal world being relatively calm at the moment is real. So many Americans do not understand how bad things can get. I want to rewind but wishing and magical thinking is not my strong suit.

I am desperate in my nightmares to stop the horror from coming but it has been here all along. Now it’s just building up strength like a tsunami powering from one side of the ring of fire to all the other shores. There will be a reckoning. What shape it takes and how or when or if it comes at all is unknowable. Meanwhile, even if Cheerios don’t help, they’re a decent pacifier for this exasperatingly sad day.