Weekend self-care open thread: In memoriam

This weekend we mourn a country which has gone adrift. We mourn a country which, in a fit of selfishness and madness, chose the worst possible outcome for itself.

The pundits and the nabobs are all busy pointing fingers and apportioning blame. Democrats failed. Joe Biden failed. Kamala Harris failed. Standing up for trans rights was a mistake. Focusing on abortion lost votes.

They're all wrong. They all want to keep their jobs. Therefore they don't state the obvious.

It wasn't Democrats. It wasn't President Biden. It wasn't Vice President Harris. It was the voters. The voters chose this. The voters pushed the button. The voters are to blame.

There is no way around that. Inside baseball and politicking don't capture the moment. They obfuscate what is the cause. The cause is that we have a selfish and illiterate electorate, which doesn't much care about anything except its own comfort. And because of that, it chose someone whom they—wrongly—think will bring back "the good times."

What good times are they looking forward to? The Muslim ban? Migrant children in cages? A catastrophic response to a pandemic? What? Because eggs were "too expensive"?

Humans are their own worst enemies. They can't see beyond their immediate needs and desires. They are too easily led astray. But that's a cop-out. They're not "led astray". They willingly blind themselves. They practice forgetfulness. They vote for change, and then cavil that the change they voted for is taking too long, or wasn't what they expected. They expect instant solutions to problems which were decades in the making. They are incurious, easily plied with propaganda.

Remember 2020? Remember when people flooded onto the streets in celebration when the election was called for President Biden? I do. But many of them have forgotten. It is the human condition. This scene from John Boorman's Excalibur neatly summarizes what we face:

"For it is the doom of men that they forget."

Humans have to learn the same lessons over and again. For they can't retain what they've learned. They degenerate back into past pathologies. They think, "Well, this isn't working out exactly as I wished, so let's blow it all up." Foresight is in short supply for most people. They operate on their base instincts. Patience is non-existent. 

Mourn, if not the death of this country, then its latest momentary lapse of reason. But I hold to Dr. King's words: The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice. This will be the guiding principle of this blog. This will be this blog's reason for existence. It will be a candle against the dark. 

I will leave you with words which always inspire me.

Be well, my friends. And be at peace. The darkness is a passing thing. The light will shine again.