RAINBOW AT HALF-MAST

It's been a hard couple of days, I won't lie.

There are the inevitable questions: Why there and then? Who was really behind it all? What made him do it? And while there are answers, they won't satisfy, because there are no answers good enough to make up for the sickening horror, pain, and devastation.

 Time does strange things when you're grieving. Two days can seem like a week, and hours can disappear in the blink of an eye. The heaviness I carry around makes me tired without having done anything. Fighting despair is apparently exhausting.

Friends have put up heart-warming posts on Facebook telling me that it's okay to grieve and feel bad, passing along celebrity reactions to the horror, wise and witty memes to distract, and doing what we ALWAYS do when attacked as a group; bucking each other up. Even one of my white, straight, cis-gendered male friend (35 years my junior to boot) reached out to tell me he valued me as a person and a friend. My mother sent me a text telling me she thought the massacre was horrific.

And although all of that helps, none of it makes the fear go away. It's easy to say that we must answer hate with love, that our Pride counters his cowardice, and that just keeping on keeping on is enough. But it's a lot harder to ignore the gut-gnawing fear that swam into my belly as I realized that I'm suffering a kind of PTSD, born of the many times I've reacted to the number of attacks in our history. There have been so many, too many, over the years and like an overstretched rubber band I'm finding it hard to bounce back.

Still, Barack Obama, George Takei, and dozens of others have soothed my ragged nerves some with their balm of rational concern. It will take time (which may pass quickly, or not, depending), but eventually I will carry on again, if not calmly, at least with hope for a better future.

The bastard may have scared me, but not witless. As long as I have a brain, and I can express myself through words, I win.

#Pride #NoHoldingMeDown #AmWriting #PTSD

My Ridiculously Over-Simplified View of American Politics

Politics are pendulums. Everything swings one direction for a while, as it did from the early '60's into the mid '70's with liberalism. Oh, what wonderful years those were. Expansion everywhere with support and inclusivity. Civil rights were understood and fought for with a passing understanding of Constitutional guarantees. Creativity was rewarded and encouraged. Idealists thrived, and even got government subsidies and grants. What a wonderful time that was.

Ever since, there's been a slow and steady resurgence of conservatism. The first I noticed it was when it became important for a significant number of neighbors to be identified with the local churches. That devoted religiosity led directly to inflated patriotism, which in turn led to conservative politics. We're here now, firmly gripped by the grinning jaws of the Tea Party, held hostage by Wall Street, and left out of socially acceptable ways to rise by our own bootstraps, such as college, internships, and sheer hard work. We're busy giving the Koch brothers the biggest {excuse the expression} orgasms of their lives.

America is almost to the tipping point. People, and by that I mean the vast majority of Americans, are feeling economically oppressed. Questions about civil equality are leading to conversations. It's becoming more and more obvious that we are a culture divided deeply into the Haves and the Have-nots. And American Have-nots have a long history of rising up and being heard. Think Selma, Alabama, the vineyards of central California, and Matewan, New Jersey.

Be ready, because the long swing back to liberalism is about to begin, indeed, is already beginning. LGBT folk can marry. Marijuana is being quickly legalized. Black Lives Matter. Soon, those who consider themselves conservative will find themselves questioning their values and choices. Moral weights and measures will change from the rigid, nearly impossible to attain definitions of the 1% for the other 99%, to an expansive understanding of human frailties, realities, and opportunities sooner, rather than later.

So that's my two cents worth of philosophy for today.