Gloomy

The year is three-quarters over.  It's been a terrible year.

The country is broken and our Republic is dying.  The soulless Mitch McConnell, a democracy-destroying constitution-shredding republic-wrecker, is busy turning our country into a kleptocracy with conditions more akin to Louis XVI's France than to Eisenhower's America.  Read A Tale of Two Cities for what we are rapidly becoming, then read Lincoln's second inaugural address for what we still could be.

Fifty-one senators represent 18% of the American population, exposing a glaringly unrepresentative flaw in the Founding Father's vision.  This gives absolute power of governance to the Rasputin-like McConnell who impeded the popularly elected President Obama at every turn, has enabled the faux president Trump in all his corruption and monomania, and has stacked the Supreme Court unconstitutionally (remember Merrick Garland?) so that that formerly august body has been thrown, perhaps irretrievably, out of whack.  Women will lose control of their bodies to religious ideologies and pinch-faced men, corporations will further reign supreme, the environment will be even more ravaged, gerrymandering will run further rampant and the flood into politics of hidden money, both domestic and illegally by foreigners, such as the flow of money to the Trump campaign in 2016 from Russian oligarchs through the NRA, will so corrupt our republic that it will steal our democracy from the working stiffs, the rightful owners of it, along with their futures.

Things aren't any less bleak personally.  I've lost 20% of my retirement savings this year, and all anticipated travel has been postponed, perhaps permanently.  Worse, my eye surgeries have left me feeling almost out-of-body as I heal, with at least one more eye operation on the horizon.  I don't drive after dusk, it's so hard to see in the dark, and my vision out of my oil-filled eye isn't so clear, for sure.  The occasional sudden white flare bursts within that eye are driving me mad.

A cousin of mine died, another one suffered the same eye surgery I had, her husband suffered emergency organ removal surgery, both operations thankfully successful, a boyhood friend suffered lower spine fusion surgery even while he lives all alone in a new city following his recent divorce, a close friend suffered a fall and awaits surgery following it, a sister has lung cancer, and a brother sent me an unhinged effin-laced email screed which I perceived as a potentially lethal personal threat, and in which he unpleasantly and pointedly asked how my kids were (he knows I haven't heard from any of them in 15 years).  But he went to Yale from his elite prep school, and we all have seen recently what very special people those type of entitled, besotted Yale alumni are.

The last thing bothered me a lot, as my estrangement from my three sons, a result of The Divorce, is tragic and taught me that life is too short to act permanently and without measure upon petty personal grievances, no matter how great a slight a rational person might fancy them to be, then or now.

I'm getting on, and soon enough I'll be moving on, undoubtedly.  I hope to see any or all of my children before then, and even the daughter-in-law I know about, so that we can start living our familial life going forward, one day at a time.  I have always been available for them for all of their three decades of life.  Monday's a holiday, Columbus Day.  I'll be at the regular place for lunch then at noon.  ;-)