This is truly one of those tomes where all the above is true. It is one day shy of a week when our world turned truly upside down. It has taken at least this long to even try to find a way to express with words, what the emotions are, and honestly even by the time I get to the end of this I don’t know if I will have even been marginally successful, but likely if you stay around until the end of what will be not much more than a stream of consciousness some of it may resonate or at least make sense.

The land that became the United States of America was colonized partly by people fleeing the rule of a kingdom, partly by wealthy merchants looking to build more wealth, partly by people looking for religious freedom, partly by people looking to improve their own economic lives and to become land owners. There were other reasons, but these seem to be among the most categorized and “taught”. Some of the indisputable facts are that much of the land we stand on, that we built on, was either stolen outright or stolen through shady “treaties” and “deals” from the indigenous residents who were here already. It was also developed on the backs of enslaved people who were either brought here for that purpose or locals who were enslaved or conscripted by those with more power, more wealth, more arms or a combination of all three. The point here is that our land of opportunity was not handed over by divine fiat and that we live with the history of this.

The other point is that the horrors of our history have never truly been exorcised. They have, over some generations, been addressed with attempts to make it better, to recognize what was done and to try to make sure that those things don’t ever repeat or worse, get worse. It is no accident that the phrasing is “all men are created equal” as it was written by the patriarchy and that even the male members of the enslaved communities were never considered men, only property. There are many to this very day, who by both actions and words, still consider the women as “owned” or at the very least, somehow sub-human.

I have written before about having been through multiple political cycles with people and policies I agreed with and those I disagreed with so I won’t recap all of that here. I think what troubles me the most is the fact that disagreement has become divisive to the point where true aggression, chest pounding, fact manipulation, lies (both willful and mistaken) have become the norm. Simple facts, those that are measurable, quantifiable and supportable have given way to edicts from god, concepts, supposition and ludicrous statements that become by repetition “facts” (I will only use one example here…the claim of “post birth abortions” being possible) that by their repetition strike fear and that fear is then played upon.

When the hellmouth was originally thrown wide open in 2016, the mantra was “give them a chance, don’t judge on supposition” and that was, at that time, a bit comforting for those of us who couldn’t quite reason as to why it happened. This time there is none of that, we have seen with our own eyes the lack of human decency (again just one example: Jan 6th 2021 and the inability to pass the baton peacefully, all the while continuing the “big lie”)

I think I’ll close this up by saying my real hope is that when I write about the results in 2028, I will lead with the fact that I was totally wrong in 2024 and that none of what I feared came to pass, that would be the best result of all. That said, my plan is to spend 90% more time reading, listening to music, continuing to be educated on events while avoiding the overwhelming noise and bluster of the bully pulpit soundbites and continue to hope that freedom of speech, expression, religion, is not manipulated to mean freedom to only have one kind of speech, expression, religion, lifestyle, and that one day before I transition that the phrase “All men are created equal” can really be interpreted as “all human beings are created equal”. Also that “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” means exactly what TJ intended back when it was written:

Thomas Jefferson’s incorporation of the phrase “pursuit of happiness” into the Declaration of Independence was based on the work of John Locke. Locke believed that the pursuit of happiness was the foundation of liberty, and that it freed people from being attached to any particular desire. He believed that the pursuit of happiness was about making decisions that would lead to the best life possible for a human being.