Stage Four

It is Sunday morning….and the sadness is not overwhelming like it was Wednesday, when I woke up to the end of America. Profound confusion is more the ground I walk on now. It occurred to me after I woke up that in the weeks leading up to the election, I was building up my excitement level for after the victory. That all would be right in the world, and I could get on with my life. That victory would be the mythic starting gun signaling real progress on all the projects I was working on. With that thought I now realize how damaged the future now is. The VA called last night with good and bad news. What could end my life in a year will not this year, but the other thing that definitely will end my life, perhaps in not very many years… is progressing.

It started going bad for me on September 10th with the Polaris Dawn billionaut mission. I thought that was rock bottom…for Human Space Flight anyway. Then lying in bed with Covid I watched the chopsticks catch the shiny and called that the new rock bottom not only for Human Space Flight. Now….as I reflect on stage four of the grieving process, depression, I believe today has to be all the way down to rock bottom. Nihilism is eating away at my soul, and I feel zero hope for the future.

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It is noon and I am arguing with myself about what to do next. What is there to do? Listen to a comedian.

So… to go along with Stage Four, Al has a depressing one for a change.

This started well and relit some hope of progressing to stage five (acceptance). The first bit of knowledge leading to processing what has happened being Norm citing the main factor as Covid. Every developed country, conservative or liberal, experienced inflation from the Covid supply chain breakdown and suffered a popular backlash.

Family hardship bred the sense that the government was indifferent to the plight of the “working people”, and this led to a distrust of “elites.” Populist backlash against experts and elites goes back to the Tea Party and after Covid those intent on dividing and conquering portrayed Trump as the anti-elitist and opposite of those who seemed to have disdain and condescension for the citizenry. The price of eggs ended America.

With the exception of Jews and black women, every group moved to the right. Over half of Latino males, at least in Michigan, ignored the racist Madison Square Garden rally and voted for Trump. The media kept treating Trump like he was not what he is and only became super-critical at the very end when it was too late. The sane-washing of Trump by the media took him to victory.

So… essentially, something we knew was going to happen eventually, a pandemic, raised consumer prices and this inconvenience enabled the neoliberals to drive our consumer-programmed democracy to suicide, aided by a profit-driven “free press.”

What will happen now is preordained.

“Well, one of the ways that I fear Trump will act is -to do what Orban did in Hungary…to get states and the courts and maybe even the congress to do a set of things that will turn our elections into, you know, turn our elections into a farce – where – they’re tilted so they win no matter what.”

And that is how America ended.

How long before acceptance?