Clear skies and super-bright sunshine this Tuesday late afternoon here in California’s Central Valley — despite the chilled-airish breezes all day (temps in the usually-warmish mid-70s), summer-like shit will supposedly take hold at the end of this week.
We’re forecast to be in the 90s by Friday; unless the wind keeps its cool-down effect going, we’re in for a taste of flat-valley, anvil-like heat of summer. Our environment can get hotter-than-shit around these parts during them dog days — temps in triple figures, no wind.
However, nothing we can likely do at this stage other than weather on; and, too, not freak.
So goes just about all of existence nowadays. This is the first post this month. I’ve been really falling off the work lately, just don’t seem to have the energy and the noted drive to write. I go through these spells, and especially, it seems, it’s happening more and more as I get older (turned 75 last November) — either my energy level down or the laziness factor is up — either way, not much production. I know that doesn’t really hurt/bother/concern many people, not much traffic to bear, old Compatible Creatures — now 17-years old — but it still is a publishable enity.
Another element in this no-post passage of blog time is the horror of the nowadays. There’s crucial, scary, nightmare shit no matter which way to look — doomscrolling is just checking the news instead of actually seeking-out terrible news of impending doom. Catastrophe on a grand scale is by far and away the ‘new normal.’
Today another punch in that doom-stroked gut — pisses the way-living-shit out of me:
Let’s just deal with a very disturbing reality here: this whole process in the documents case has simply not been on the up and up. https://t.co/lFNcNLd133
— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) May 7, 2024
Of course, T-Rump’s horror-nauseous Stormy Daniels court case took center stage today. It’s all over the InterWebs — take your pick, Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, etc., plus all the political blog roundups and commentary. A shitload of live blogging — where I get most of my shit (I don’t follow TV) with a lot of background reading.
Stormy Daniels seems to have a smart head on her shoulders. The threat from some asshole in a parking lot while holding her infant daughter I’d read/heard before, but to recap it in such a scene takes motivation and grit.
I hope T-Rump gets his fat ass kicked.
In a sense of that ass kicking not taking place, the Florida documents case is a deep mad-sad — NBC News this afternoon:
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has indefinitely postponed former President Donald Trump’s classified documents trial in Florida pending the resolution of multiple pretrial issues.
The trial had been scheduled to start May 20.
“The Court … determines that finalization of a trial date at this juncture—before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and CIPA issues remaining and forthcoming—would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court, critical CIPA issues, and additional pretrial and trial preparations necessary to present this case to a jury,” Cannon wrote Tuesday. “CIPA” is a reference to the Classified Information Procedures Act.
“The Court therefore vacates the current May 20, 2024, trial date (and associated calendar call), to be reset by separate order following resolution of the matters before the Court, consistent with Defendants’ right to due process and the public’s interest in the fair and efficient administration of justice,” she added.
And this makes me want to sit in a corner and whine. And rant. And not sit at a laptop keyboard and write about terrible, awful shit that doesn’t make sense in a humane, empathetic sort of way — all cruel, nasty MAGA/T-Rump hate and chaos.
However, one of my favorites, Molly Jong-Fast, did percolate some wisdom — in a piece at Vanity Fair yesterday:
The only problem is that this time around, it’s not Trump’s candidates who are on the ballot; it’s Trump. And the former president has a unique ability to make Americans feel incredibly disenchanted with politics. For one thing, ever since the midterms, Americans have watched Trump systematically weasel nearly every trial and indictment that they ever hoped might hold him accountable. It also doesn’t help that the Supreme Court has thrown him lifeline after lifeline: In March, for instance, it decided that, despite Trump’s incitement of an insurrection, states could not block him from appearing on the primary ballot. More recently, some high court justices also indicated, in all their wisdom, that presidents should receive some level of immunity for alleged crimes, with inane hypotheticals posed by Trump superfans Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. Both of these cases show pretty clearly that the conservative-led court is very much in the tank for its guy—hardly a comforting thought for those of us who were hoping that America’s juridical guardrails might stop the country from becoming an authoritarian nightmare.
Which brings us back to how we’re all so stressed out: This isn’t our first rodeo. We’ve all been through one Trump administration, during which consuming news was like drinking out of a fire hose—every day, it seemed, another scandal would come galloping out of the White House. Remember when Scott Pruitt, then the head of the EPA, used nearly $3,000 in taxpayer money to buy tactical pants and tactical polos? When Trump said he was interested in buying Greenland? And when he toyed with the idea of firing missiles into Mexico?
[…]
The postpandemic, post-insurrection political environment is liable to make anyone feel deeply tired and news-avoidant. People, after all, are scared. They remember the ill-conceived mood around the 2016 election, when they were sure that the normal candidate would win, and then they didn’t. Even today, I sometimes get stopped on the street by people wondering if they should set their expectations accordingly. “Is it going to be alright?” they ask, drawing me in closer.
The thing is, I can’t tell you it’s going to be alright, because I really don’t know. I know what Trump promises to do if he gets back in office—and I know that it’s the stuff of nightmares. Trump will expand the executive branch so much as to essentially become king. And while that might make some voters want to close their eyes, shut their ears, and tune politics out of their daily life, the only way we can avoid it is by paying attention so that what happened in 2016 doesn’t happen in 2024.
Absurd horror for our current situation.– Make sure you fucking vote!
Even then, can you imagine?
Don’t want:
Like riots to overturn elections? https://t.co/m0qQ60OkEe
— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) May 7, 2024
Understand yet my shitty writing production?
Or else, a nightmare mental breakdown:
Disturbed, scary, and sad, or not, yet once again here we are…
(Illustration out front: Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Old Man in Sorrow (On the Threshold of Eternity)‘ found here.)