Eight years since I was around this neck of the woods. Eight years. A near world has passed by. Lifetimes have changed. I have friend who didn't just have children, but those children are actual walking and speaking people. Like. They are little people still, but still people. Old enough for school, sadly old enough to apparently get shot while trying to be educated.
Eight years. And while so much has changed nothing has at the same time. Which is sadly ironic.
Last time I was about here it was what? God, eight years. That makes it the middle of Obama's second term, right? So a good two years after Sandyhook. Thoughts and prayers were big back then. Eight years, oh wow, Roe was in pretty good shape but those in the know were shaking a bit in the boots. Hang in there Ruth. Oh. Yeah. Eight years.
So, let me try and catalog things. Eight years ago things were not awful, but they were far from great. We had Afghanistan going on, which was not good. ISIS was doing their thing, likewise not good. We were dealing with the rise of the Tea Party which seems like multiple decades ago at this point. Things were not on the rails, but not off the rails, and we had all the third rails which we all agreed not to touch.
Now we're grabbing third rails.
I feel like I have lived through some highs, some lows, and now I get to witness some dystopian reality from which I wake up hungover wondering if it was all a dream. Then we all get to skip through the day of reality going, 'Nope! This is real!'
Really, people. Really. Sit back and rewind eight years ago, eight years since I last even bothered writing, eight years. Eight years ago would you believe that Donald fucking Trump would be President of the United States? Did anyone every imagine THAT would be a THING? Didn't some of us believe, even two years out at that point, that Sandyhook would at least be a watershed? That place where we might agree to disagree but when it comes to kiddos we have a point of solid agreement that they shouldn't get dismembered by AR-15s inside of a safe-space called school? I could have sworn there was a majority agreement about that in the nation .. eight years ago.
Man. I would love to rewind to eight years ago.
But. Past is prologue. Future is tense. English jokes.
So now here we stand. Wrestling still with a pandemic that has claimed a million lives in this nation alone. A percentage of the population afraid of getting jabbed by a vaccination and spreading disinformation at an alarming rate. A world in utter disarray with Russia bullying about Ukraine and NATO losing their minds. Roe is about to get over-turned, solid 80% chance with banking on the sexual abuser Kavanaugh to get us out of it. Good luck. Door open to over-turning everything based on privacy. Which is a whole host of things we all love and adore. Kids still getting shot in school. People still getting shot in grocery stores. People still getting shot in the streets. Cops still killing because why not? Everyone else is doing it apparently. Eight years.
Eight years and nothing has changed. It has only spirals into the whirlpool. We went after navigating Scylla and Charybdis and we managed to hit both. Torn in twain. Spiraling in separate spheres and spitting vitriol at each other as we all get the chance to drown equally.
This. This was always meant to be the great experiment. We are experimenting in Democracy. That's why we're a Democratic-Republic, didn't go all in just enough to give this a go. And right now? Right now we're failing.
We're failing our children. We're failing our women. We're failing ourselves. Each and every day is another failure.
And I don't want to point blame.
I don't want to.
Won't say I am not going to.
Thanks Republicans. Thanks. For giving us nothing and stripping out everything we figured made us good. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers and children die in their schools. Like you usually do. Thanks for voting down trying to solve a problem with mother's attaining BABY FORMULA. Thanks for trying to shoot down health care at every turn. My now dead brother loves that one, so does my still living family. Thanks for stomping all over Roe because .. you know, women. Why bother? Thanks for kicking everyone not white off voter roles in states you want to win, great Democratic values right there. Thanks for every damn miscarriage of justice over the last five decades.
Including the last eight years.
Fuck.