Some sense of a feeling.

So far, this particular year has been another case of the ‘fours.’ Apparently, from what I can gather from within myself as I age (76 next month), the years of my life ending in ‘4‘ have had some special, striking significance — except 1954, as I was too young to have collected memory (or I can’t freaking remember anything notable, reflection all in a blur of Kodak-enhanced black-n-white snapshots). However, in 1964, I moved from Japan back to Florida (my dad was a civilian with the DOD, and the assignment there was supposed to last two years but ended in less than a year), also The Beatles arrived and I quickly repositioned from a big sports-centric kid to one writing poems, listening to music and watching girls; 1974, graduation from college, smoking marijuana for the first time — enough said; 1984, my dad died, had-a-stake-in and helped open a restaurant (lasted less than a year); 1994, divorce; 2004, departed journalism for the last time (a bi-weekly newspaper on California’s Central Coast), got a job in a video-store; 2014, retired.
Of course, a lot of other shit happened in those years, but the highlights impacted/influenced my life for a goodly while, in some cases for a long time, for others, forever.

And so here we are in growing-late 2024 — to me, this year ‘sounds‘ like a 1970s sci-fi book title and has been an event-punctured time period, from Gaza to Ukraine to a convicted felon running for president to weather terror — with most likely the most important national election in US history less than a month away. The possible immediate-future darkness is crystal clear. If the T-Rump and Republicans win, America is fucked. A thought of no FEMA, or other federal-governmental disaster-relief agency, after two back-to-back Cat 4 hurricanes (which could be the situation if the T-Rump and Republicans win) is a nightmare dream scenario.
In a sane, normal world Kamala Harris should be our next president in a massive, Blue landslide, and the House/Senate follow suit and go big ‘D.’ However, these are the most peculiar times and a year that end in ‘4.’
Despite getting highly hyped by Kamala’s appearance as Democrat nominee (and Tim Walz, too), the nowadays real-time, right now sense has flattened out into a sad.
And a bit frightful, too.

In a straight line, what caused me to get on this odd-shaped, depressive-filtered post was a surreal-like observation baking from years past by Charles P. Pierce at Esquire. Pierce, one of the best in the journalism business and who’s been at it a long while, wrote, too, about a strange twist to the dying days of this particular election cycle.
After that mentioned Kamala/big ‘D’ optimism punch of late summer (he also felt it), Pierce is a bit wary and confused:

I’ve covered enough campaigns to know that they all warp and twist reality to their own advantages. That’s how we got George W. Bush, rhinestone brush-clearer, and Richard Nixon, ace crimefighter, and the entire fantastical flight of fancy that was the public career of Ronald Reagan. (He can be seen as a predecessor to one of the newer characters in our national drama, J. Divan Vance, the suburb-raised Yalie venture-capitalist son of the Appalachian soil.) But there’s something different about this campaign. Reality has been abandoned at almost every level. A deranged convicted criminal is roaming the landscape, telling monstrous and easily debunked lies at every turn. Actual elected officials are talking about dark government forces controlling the weather. There is an organized campaign to destroy national unity in the face of two monstrous weather events in as many weeks. And large and influential media outlets flail impotently when they are not surrendering entirely.

The past eight years have destroyed much of the trust a cynic like myself had cultivated about the political world. I can only imagine what has happened to the psyches of the people who actually work in politics. How do you run a campaign in the dark forest of the unmoored political id? It must be exhausting, because it’s freaking exhausting trying to cover it, pointing out that, no, Joe Biden is not the maestro of the jet stream. That’s what I’m feeling these days—that for the first time, reality has a sell-by date, and that we all may be past it.

Emphasis on that one sentence — ‘Reality has been abandoned at almost every level‘ — pretty pinpoints it, and of course, the way-way-single source practicing this abandonment at every level are T-Rump and his Republican regalia. And that’s the dangerous, toxic rub — how can half the country heartily support someone as obviously shitty, nasty, and immoral as the T-Rump and his horror band of lying criminal assholes?
Seemingly, ‘reality‘ itself no longer exists for a certain humongous group of Americans — current Pew Research polling just published today: ‘With just weeks until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are in a dead heat among all registered voters: 48% say they would vote for Harris if the election were held today, and 47% say they would support Trump. Another 5% of voters opt for a third-party candidate.‘

Listen/watch for details on the Pew polls via Forbes:

As was — how could it be happening? Maybe it’s why I feel a short-range sadness building.

Years ago, before the last year ending in ‘4,’ before this year ending in ‘4,’ the work week was over — Friday was on my mind all day today:

Even a cover for a ‘4’ year:

Sad even Friday has lost its significance, or not, yet here we are once again…

(Illustration out front: Pablo Picasso’s ‘Agonizing Horse,’ found here.)