one year since dying

 One year.  To the day.  One year since I died.

While the title might seem self-serving and a tad bit hyperbolic, it is nonetheless true.  And it only seems right that I write this entry to commemorate the single most tumultuous year in my short 60 years here.

To recap (shortly) on December 23, 2023 at about 3PM in the afternoon I literally died for 8 minutes during what was supposed to be a routine biopsy of my left kidney.  That biopsy started at 8:30am and by 4PM, my life was irrevocably changed.  I went in with troubled kidneys, and due to the life-saving measures that were needed to revive me, my kidneys were pretty much gone.  (Full contrast CT's are very hard on your kidneys)

To say that I've gone through a lot would be the understatement of the year.  54 days in the hospital, 4 chest tubes, a thoracentesis, a VAT surgery, CVC implantation, a cardiocentesis (without anesthesia), a nicked nerve in my right leg that make it impossible to walk, countless hours of PT, 2 different types of dialysis and some truly scary moments due to continued hypoxia and low hemoglobin are but a few of the things I've encountered in the past 12 months.  I've also had a pacemaker installed and one ablation done due to atrial flutter.  (not a-fib)  I am now 100% disabled and unable to hold a job.

All of that sounds bad (and it is) but I actually have a couple things to be thankful for.  First off, I know that I have a wife who loves me and has shown herself to be a first-rate caregiver, in spite of my continued lunacy.  It's never been a rose garden to live with me in the first place, but she has tripled down on her love and support of me, and I can't thank her enough for that.  And, if I ever get upset with her, it all disappears every time I see her lug 2 6000ml bags of dextrose upstairs for my nightly dialysis.  Talk about a trooper......I do not deserve her.

Second off, I discovered that I have a brother-from-another-mother in EJ Erickson, who lived with us for 9 months and took fabulous care of me while my wife continued working.  I can't say enough about him and the help he gave us.  We wouldn't have made it without him.

But, after that it becomes a bit of sour-grapes from me again.  Gigging is really hard.  It's hard because I have to time things well and do some pretty creative things if the gig is late in the evenings- like hang a bag of dialysis solution somewhere and fill my perineum with fluid and then be able to play comfortably with an extended belly.  I'm getting used to it, but it kinda sucks.  This means I have to miss a real treatment, and by the end of the next day, I feel like utter shit.  Then there's the problem with my leg that makes it very difficult to walk, so moving my gear around while moving on a cane is a pretty difficult task.

I also have a condition known a myclonus, which is really fun.  What happens is that I get twitches in my hands, arms and legs that can (and have) turn into almost muscular seizures.  While not painful, it is truly alarming to see your right arm just take off on its own and jerk around all by itself.  It gets bad when it's in my legs and I'm trying to get somewhere, and I suddenly find myself on the ground.  There is no cure for this, unless.....

I get a transplant.  

Yep.  A transplant fixes all of this.  I can go back to being normal (as normal as I ever could claim to be) and be out late at night, travel, etc.  That won't bring my leg back to working order, but it would solve a lot of issues.  I'm currently working with 2 transplant centers, but they have mandated some things I must take care of. which I am in the process of doing.  One of the things that the transplant centers have mandated was the aforementioned pacemaker, which is why I had that done.  Once we summit the things they want me to do for the transplant, then I'll start pimping people to literally give me a part of their body- something I'm not looking forward to, as it's such a huge thing to ask.

So, all of the recap and thanks and such are great, but I haven't answered the question I keep getting asked: How do you feel?

That's such a hard question to answer.  I guess the quick answer is, "it depends".  Even though I am in constant pain (thank the Maker for gabepentin) I would say that my physical health is ok, given the circumstances.  I probably shouldn't complain about that, given where I've been.  So, we'll just leave that there.

Mentally is a completely other story.  I'm not gonna lie here - the anniversary of this event brings about some powerful memories, and they are all bad.  All of them.  I remember the pain; the death experience; the waking up 2 days later in ICU- all of that and much more.  That's bad enough, but what it's done to me, psyche-wise is nothing short of profound.  Not only has redefined my relationship with God, but my relationship with people.  The casual observer will say, "well, that's a good thing, right" and my answer will most likely shock them.  No, it isn't necessarily a good thing.

Before my death, I was in the midst of a minor deconstruction from my faith.  I say "minor" as I wasn't sure how far or where it was heading.  Boy, Oh, Boy did I get my answer- or should I say I didn't.  In my death experience, God was nowhere to be found.  In fact, I had the realization that God (as He had been explained to me) was never there in the first place.  To say that I was angry and depressed by this would be another understatement, and to this very day I still feel abandoned by Him.  Every day I try to find Him, and every day I feel Him slip away from me a little more.  I have an earnest regret for spending a good portion of my life preaching to others about something that doesn't exist in the fashion that I was preaching Him, and that gives me a tremendous feeling of guilt that the people who listened to me are gonna find out that I lied to them.

And, speaking of guilt.......wow.  The depth of the guilt I feel over what's happened to me is immeasurable.  I have become a burden to my family and friends.  I have literally been told by one friend over a common shared issue that I'm "out of it because you can't handle it right now".  The trouble is that he is absolutely right.  I can't.

My anxiety level is so high, I have to be medicated.  More than that- my doctor asked me to I have "emergency medication" in case my anxiety is too high for the normal medication.  A few friends know how high my anxiety has gone, and it ain't pretty.  

So with all this negativity here about mental state, I will tell you one really good thing that has happened out of this, and I know deep-down that this would not have happened so quickly and completely without the fun of late 2023-2024.  Ready?

I am a completely changed man as to how he accepts others.  And it makes sense that this would be the change- with my rapidly vacuum-filled space where faith once kept me from engaging people, I find my acceptance of others is now easier.  I see that the christian faith (de-capitalized for emphasis) that I had really was nothing more than a reason to not fully engage with people unless was had that common ground.  Note that I didn't say that we believed the same things.  Belief was never a part of it for me (something else I found out from death)  as it was the ability to talk the same talk seemed more important.  That shallowness of faith bred a similar shallowness of relationship.

Now, I just love people.  I don't care what their faith is/not is - in fact, faith doesn't enter into it all for me now.  This makes the christian apologist in me reel - and I don't care if it does - but I'm not so sure that the Mormons have it all wrong.  Or the JW.  Or muslim-islamic-messianic-jewish-christians-tralfamadorians or whatever.  None of that matters.  What does matter is our humanity and the fact that we all bleed the same color red.  It's interesting to note, for instance, that archeologically, it's near impossible to tell where a human skeleton came from.  We can tell if they were male or female, but not their locale.  It's not lost on me that our skeletons are all humans foundation.  Think about it. We are all the same, foundationally.  And yet, we as a species, kill each other over where we think we will go when we die.  How fucking stupid and wasteful is that?  Or slightly less than that- we discriminate over how another meat-puppet thinks to how your own meat-puppet thinks.  Or less than all of that- how one person wants to deal with/use their junk.

This has also led to a clearer view of the world.  And mind you- clearer doesn't mean better.  In fact, that's the part that is kind of distressing.  For instance, in November, the American people learned that decency and building up the other person is a fool's game.  We would rather place our leadership in the hand of a convicted felon.  Over half of my countrypersons would rather take a chance on draconian governmental practices than to go with the opposite side of that thought.  And no, thoughts aren't reality, but it's much easier to call that side out if they don't do it than to call the other side out when they do it.  

I now find myself angry over stories like the guy who shot the CEO of United Heathcare.  We've COMPLETELY lost our sense of decency here.  This guy (I'll not use his name) shot a man in broad daylight over his occupation. No regard as to him being a brother, a son, a husband and a father- over his fucking job.  And like the coward he is, he ran.  The media and social websites are calling it a "referendum on healthcare" - uh, no.  It's not.  As someone who has seen the business end of the healthcare in this country, I can tell you that there are problems, and I've had them happen to me.  But there is no way in hell I'm gonna go shoot somebody over it.  The guy who did this is a miscreant, full stop. There is something seriously wrong with him, and he has no excuse. But the media thinks we want to know about his time in Hawaii; talk to his roommate; broadcast that, after he was arrested, he was in jail (no shit, Sherlock)- I know more about him over the last 72 hours than anything else- and the victim is ignored.  I know nothing about the victim other than he had a wife and a couple of kids, but no one wants to know about his time in Hawaii or what his whereabouts are now as he travels from street to the morgue to funeral home, nor will they broadcast his funeral- but you can bet that there will be live team coverage of this asshole's trial.

Lest you think I'm hung up on one story, think again.  We only care about these things because we are told to care about these things.  And that is also how christianity has been doled out by a lot of the churches today.  We are told that abortion is a sin, and yet it is not mentioned anywhere in scripture.  (And, yes, I know the verse that they use.  Weak.)  We're told that masculinity is the thing the christian man should be striving for by teachers like Mark Driscoll and Jack Hibbs - again, nowhere to be found in scripture. The same is true about "making America a christian nation again" when it never was in the first place. We're told this and we're told that and no one sees any value anymore in yelling "BULLSHIT!" because that isn't the "right" thing to do.  We'd rather find out what the shooter of the CEO was wearing that day.

This last part has been truly exhausting for me.  Before 12/23/2023 (or more correctly 2023/12/23) I never really paid attention to this, but now.  Yeesh.  It's just so stark now.  It's so not important and yet it's so important.  It's not important because it ignores the important things.  It's important, because people make no attempt to show their ire, if they have any.  And they should.

 Don't take this the wrong way but, no, I don't feel "lucky to be alive", although I've been told time and time again that I should.  There was a simplicity in death in that everything that could or should have happened did, and that was that.  Even though I didn't get to experience that feeling for very long, it was beyond satisfying to do so.  There was no anxiety and no place to be and no one to answer to. 

So, there you have it.  I'll give myfirst bonus year of 2023-24s a C-.  Definitely below average, but certainly not a failure.  I'm hopeful for 2025, but..........? 

unsaid

 "What's all this I hear about presidential erections?" - E. Litella

While usually a pretty funny statement (said by the late, great Gilda Radner on SNL) - this year it seems like that's the underlying raison d'etre for much of what we're seeing in these last few days heading into what promises to be a pretty nerve-wracking Tuesday.

While I have no interest in adding to people's anxiety level, there's 2 things I see (or haven't seen) that have been largely overlooked by all the media outlets.

1. The "Big Day" really isn't November 5th.  Let's not fool ourselves- there will not be a clear winner on Tuesday night.  I expect that it's going to be at least a month before we know who the winner actually is.  (I am not commenting on "cheating" with that statement.  Not yet, anyway.)  The "Big Day" is actually January 6, 2025- when whoever has been declared the winner has the election certified.  That's when the orange will hit the fan.
2. Which brings me to the bigger point- the real issue here is going to be race for Democrats to take the majority in the House of Representatives.  If they do, then we will have a new Speaker of he House- and that, my friends, is who certifies the election based on the Electoral College.

Here's why #2 is really more significant than the actual race for POTUS/VPOTUS.

The current Speaker is Mike Johnson.  He is a far right GOP member and an avowed "the 2020 election was stolen" guy.  If he is still SOTH on January 6th, I think there is a very real chance that he will actually refuse to certify the election if Kamala wins.  He's as much as said this on a few interviews, and some press is actually paying a little attention to this- the operative word being "little".  No, Johnson cannot legally do it, but by virtue of the fact that the SCOTUS has been stacked enough to overturn Roe v. Wade after 51 years, I think it's fair to say that this same court would allow Johnson to not certify the election.  

Full disclosure- I was very vocal about SCOTUS not actually rolling over to Orange is the New Black.  Boy. was I ever wrong about that one.

If the Dems can get SOTH by getting that majority, then we have Mr. Hakeem Jeffries who will take over.  While the GOP paints Mr. Jeffries as a "commie-leftist", I have personally found that he is actually a pretty moderate Democrat (a unicorn!) who seems bent on doing what's right for his constituency and really doesn't fall into the mire that some Democrats seem to be fond of thrashing around in.  I would go as far as to say that Mr. Jeffries would most likely certify an election that didn't have Kamala as the winner with little thought to what he might actually want to do instead.

As it happens, I am a fan of HOR majority having the opposite party affiliation than POTUS because that offers a nice, can't-get-around-it kind of cheque and balance to the whole equation.  I really don't care for POTUS and HOR being aligned on the same side of things.  But not this year.  

Why?

Because as Representative Adam Kinzinger so eloquently put it during the DNC:

"The Republican Party is no longer conservative. It has switched its allegiance from the principles that gave it purpose to a man whose only purpose is himself." -A. Kinzinger, R-Illinois

And while that's mildly amusing to hear during the DNC, it is painfully true.  I, myself, and a RINO (Republican In Name Only) just as Mr. Kinzinger is, and for a time that was a derogatory term.  But that is a monicre I wear proudly now, as I still do believe much of the conservative mindset, but not the mindset of the GOP.  The GOP now literally worships the Golden Calf all the while their apologists - who claim Christianity - utter things like this:

Or spill weapons-grade stupidity like this:

No, Matilda- the GOP has completely lost it.  As such, a GOP based HOR is going to be a disaster of historic proportions - even more so if Randall Flagg  and his monkey side-kick win POTUS/VPOTUS.

I find all of this being left unsaid, hence the title of this blog entry.

Then, there's a little matter of the impending civil war that I am 100% sure is going to happen.  Here's those scenarios:

Kamala Wins: A whole bunch of knuckle-dragging, eyebrow sharing Neanderthals who up for the (now) regular "Stop The Steal" convention on the steps of the Capital on January 6th.  This time they're organized, and this time there's a lot more of them.  Ah- but the Capital police are also organized, and there's a lot more of them, and they're backed by National Guard and/or active duty service members.  While the cops might show restraint, the guard and others won't, and when the first fool in the invaders fires a shot........yeah.  That's gonna be ugly.  And probably needed.  That one will be over fast.

Kamala Doesn't Win: This one is WAY more scary and will absolutely happen.  It goes like this: some city near D.C. has some civil unrest to protest the fact that Kamala didn't win.  Guess Who sends in the National Guard; several people die; The Klueless Klux Klan declares martial law, and now it's game on with the 1798 Foreign Enemies treatment, internment (or worse) camps; blockades at ports and border shutdowns and the military hunting anyone that is deemed "subversive".  That's gonna get really bad, and it will drag on for quite a bit.  Everyone (except for you-know-who) will feel that one, and I can see that one tangenting into a lot of really, REALLY bad things.

The Playing Field Leveler: Providentially (not luckily) there is provision made to handle this in Sections 3 & 4 of the 25th Amendment of the US Constitution.  This outlines the criteria and process needed to remove the POTUS from office without impeachment.  I have to believe, in my heart of hearts, that those folks in Congress - when the chips are really down - will do the right thing here.  I know that sounds naive and all, but by virtue of the fact that some Republicans were willing to give up their careers in order to best serve the country, I think that there are even more who would do that if we were in armed conflict with each other.  I just do.  At some point, even thought the media and our respective echo chambers would have us believe otherwise, some will step up.  Yeah, it may take them being threatened directly before they'll take that stand, but at the end of the day, Congress is made up of intelligent people (who are sometimes not very smart) and they won't let this happen.  Keep the Faith here, folks.  We've seen that several times in our history already.

Or maybe this will all blow over and nothing will happen.  At that point, it will be as Ms. Litella also said, "Oh.  Never mind."

Get out and Vote.

accuracy

 Been a while......sorry about that........

I suffer from a malady.  My problem is that I hear things that are supposedly accurate, but I just can’t believe all of them.  Most of the time, if I dig just a little bit, I find that the story isn’t quite what I’ve been told.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve become something of a CNN fan.  I thoroughly enjoy Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper and Kate Bolduan – and I largely find their news to be pretty trustworthy.  Being that here in the US it’s pretty much either MSNBC (yeesh- too liberal) or Fox (YIKES- too GOP oriented*) so it’s nice to find something that’s somewhere close to the middle, and for me, that’s been CNN.

That is, until this last weekend and their coverage of the Golden One’s rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.  CNN described it as a “profanity laden 2-hour speech” where the crowd was “urged to repeat profane chants back to [main speaker]**”.   As I’m watching this report, I caught myself thinking, “surely he can’t be so dumb as to do that in a public setting”.  So, this morning I watched all 2 hours and 15 minutes of the rally and took 4 pages of notes.  (Please don’t feel the need to say you’re sorry.  I chose to do this.)

(Here is the video I watched if you'd like to see for yourself.)

See- here’s the problem: there is no doubt in my mind that Cheeto Christ is not sane, and he’s not qualified for the job.  He says and does so many ridiculous things that we’ve all witnessed for ourselves - eating pets comes screaming to mind - and he continues to do these nutty things with little or no sign of stopping.  So, there is no need to exaggerate these rallies.  Here’s what I found after watching the rally:

1. For 33- minutes prior to him speaking, the crowd had to listen to songs lie "Top Gun Theme", “Ave Maria”, “Nothing Compares 2U” and others played at concert volume levels.
2. [Main Speaker] entering the stage at the beginning of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” and him standing there, swaying, waiving and pointing at people in the audience and singing the last chorus.  Stranger even still, they played Chopin's "Marche Funèbre" just before Greenwood.
3. He launched into his Arnold Plamer story (complete with description of Mr. Arnold’s manhood) which took 12 minutes to tell. 
4. During the Arnold Palmer portion, he said, "Everything the current administration tries turns to…” whereas the crowd said “SHIT!”.  One time and that was all.
5. He described Kamala Harris as “a shit vice-president” One time and that was all.
6. He was taken aback by the build of one of his secret service guys, and said, “Holy Shit” One time and that was all.
7. He said something about kicking someone’s "ass.” One time and that was all.
8. The speech clocked in at 1 hour and 37 minutes, and almost all of the profanity happened in the first 20 minutes.  

And that was it.  Now, I don’t know about you, but this is hardly a "profanity laden speech".  So, he used a couple of bad words- big deal.  There was plenty of other crazy to go around:

·       All the usual suspects - Election was stolen; we’re laughed at by the whole world; he won the Florida case; corrupt judges; it’s all a scam; Kamala is the same as Biden; she shouldn’t be the candidate; Democrats are “lunatics”; Biden is old; Chuck Shumer and Nancy Pelosi “to ok the nomination away [from Joe Biden] him”, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum, ad infinitum.....

·       Some new ones, though:

• Harris is dumb, and she didn’t show up for some Catholic dinner.  She “knocks religion” and that “the current administration has been persecuting Catholics – (this was the only mention of Christianity in the whole thing, btw)
• Railed for 2 minutes about Elizabeth Warren and called her “Pocahontas” after assuring the crowd that he’s not a racist.
• Spent 3 minutes talking about Elon Musk, the rocket booster landing and Elon’s black hat.  And that Elon has a golden cap.
• He closed the rally by playing "YMCA" by The Village People- which he danced to.  (He clearly hasn't read the lyrics to that song, which makes it all the more creepy.)

I think you get my point.  There were however, two statements that actually were worse than if he had had a 2-hour profanity laced speech - and neither of these were covered by any media:

In reference to the upcoming election: 

“The 2024 election will usher in a golden age [for the USA] for the next 100 years.”

When talking about “restoring our sovereignty”: 

"I will unlock our magnificent destiny.”

Both of these statements are too close to some of the things a certain German said back in the 1930’s for me.  Quite frankly, I find those more disturbing than the cursing.  Pointing out the cursing is quite pale in comparison to those statements.  (If you haven't read my blog article on that German, you should.)

I must say that while I personally don’t really care much about the cursing, it does demean the office of POTUS.  I would like it if he didn’t do that, but I cannot STAND the bald-faced lies of a stolen election, “the best that ever was”, "never before in history" or the myriads of other somewhat-less-than-true things he’s said.  Salty and exaggerating is one thing; liar is quite another.  Accuracy seems to be a forgotten commodity now, so that means it's time for a story....

(...and the crowd goes mild......)

My paternal grandfather was a Methodist minister and an incredibly smart man- the smartest person I have ever known, and probably the smartest person I will ever know.  He and my grandmother had taken the Methodist vows and treated them very seriously- those being no alcohol, no gambling and no swearing.  (among a few others) He was a very difficult man to live with (yep. that’s where I get it from) and it was near impossible to put one over on the man in any sense of the term.  

When I was young, I had this “gift” of taking my bicycle apart and not being able to put it back together again, whereby I would take it to grandpa, and he would do it for me.  I must have done this at least 5-6 times, and the last time I did it, I managed to be there when grandma had just finished making lunch, so I stayed to eat, even though grandpa had finished fixing my transportation.  So, it’s me, grandma and grandpa eating lunch, and my grandpa starts a conversation:

“So, why do you keep taking apart things that you can’t put back together?” asks Grandpa

“What do you mean?” I reply.

“Like your bicycle.  This must be the sixth time I’ve fixed it for you.” he says.

“Oh- that’s because I’m not strong enough to put it back together.  You’re much stronger than I am.” I answer.

Grandpa takes a bit of his sandwich and looks at me out of the corner of his eye, and speaks with a full mouth, not even trying to hide his real feelings.

“Now, Marc.  You and I both know that’s bullshit.” he says.

Grandma nearly faints.

Grandpa had this thing about “always be accurate” in what you do and say.  Don’t get into hyperbole, and for God’s sake, don’t EVER lie.  If you do, you will get found out, and being called out on stuff like this is pretty terribly in it’s own right.

I’m not saying that CNN lied- Orange Julius Caeser did swear, but it was hardly “laden”.  What frightens me more is how people hear the words like “destiny” and “100 years” come out of Mango Mussolini’s mouth and they think nothing of it.

So, all that to say, check your sources, people.  It’s not hard to do.

 *The GOP is a political party that used to represent Conservative values.  Now, they do nothing but worship a Golden Calf.  You can be a Conservative and not be a member of the GOP.

** I refuse to use this person's real name on the internet, because I will not contribute to the algorithm that catches metrics associated with his name.  If you use his name in a comment below, I can and will delete your comment.

not chicken little

People who know me, know how fond I am of dispelling the notion that "the sky is falling" when it comes to doomsday politics. No POTUS in my lifetime has ever made me truly worry about them, because I studied the US Constitution, and I am well aware of the limitations of power in that office.

Until now.

For the very first time in my life, I am actually worried about this country.

I cannot count the number of times that I have dialed people down in using the term "Hitler" to describe The Orange One.  To me, historical context around that name is extremely important, as in order for Hitler to come to power in the first place took an inordinate type and number of circumstances. Permit me a little cold (and high altitude) history lesson, but please do note some striking similarities: 

WWI was a war that Germany (which was a relatively new country at the time) was ill-advised to get into in the first place with the Austro-Hungarian Empire (that was collapsing); they had been decimated in terms of the number of young men who died needlessly, which helped to bring industry in Germany to a grinding halt; the Treaty of Versailles mandated that Germany repay the other European countries for war expenses and did not allow Germany to keep an active military.  The eventual default of Germany on their loans resulted in an economic micro-depression before the Great Depression of 1929 making the German Deutschmark completely worthless. DM1,000,000 could not buy a loaf of bread.  Hyper-inflation, starvation and disease gripped the entire country, and the German people were left holding an empty bag.  People left the country in droves as economic refugees.  Pretty damned hopeless.

In 1918, a ne'er-do-well named Anton Drexler started a little movement in Bremen, Germany in order to restore the economy and national pride to Germany.  The truth is, there many such groups in Germany that were tried to do this, but Drexler's group gained the public trust. In February 1920, this group became known as "Der Nationalsozialistische Sozialdemokrat Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" (National Socialists German Workers Party), better known as the NSDAP, or Nazis, and moved their headquarters to Munich.  Their platform was that they would restore the God-given glory that absolutely belonged to the German people and do so thru citing "Christian beliefs, actions and ideals" as their central message.  

In November 1923, the Nazis had an uprising against the Reichstag in Munich, led by a former Wehrmacht corporal, Adolf Hitler who was a soldier in the front lines of WWI.  They were declaring that the German government was incapable of governing properly and tried to start a larger movement to overthrow it.  They failed, miserably, and the Nazis were banned in the country.  As a result of the uprising, Hitler and several others were jailed in March 1924, where Hitler wrote the book "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle) which became the playbook for the Nazi Party.  In it, Hitler raged against those that started WWI and against the conservatives that were in power at the time because of their "weakmindedness" and inability to see things thru.  Instead, he suggested it was time for the workers to take the country back as God originally intended.   Hitler was pardoned from prison just a few months later, and with his party re-instated, managed to secure a seat in the German Reichstag. 

The Nazi Party was definitely a fringe group, and despite the violence of their actions steadily grew more and more popular with a lot of the German people. In early 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire, and while it was never conclusively proven, the popular belief was that the Nazis did it.  (They probably did) This was the last straw for President Von Hindenburg who had grown more and more scared of Hitler and his thugs.  He made Hitler Chancellor of Germany and capitulated the entirety of the Reichstag to the Nazi Party. 

Hitler immediately banned all other political parties, instituted martial law, suspended elections and the police departments in favor of a Nazi run organization called "der Gestapo" (who were basically nothing more than terrorists) and seeded the entire government with his cronies.  He also appointed a new cabinet position called The Ministry of Propaganda and put his friend, Josef Goebbels as Minister.  He assigned his very elite (and most psychotic) troops called the Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron) or SS into roles in the Wehrmacht (Army), Kriegsmarine (Navy) and the Luftwaffe (Air Force) in order to ensure that his control was complete.  In November of 1938, the Nazis staged "Krystalnacht" (The Night of Broken Glass) against the Austrian Jews, which is considered to be the first act of The Holocaust.

Not wanting the rest on his "laurels", in 1938 he also  annexed Austria and declared the Sudetenland (an area annexed by Poland within the borders of Czechoslovakia) was actually part of Germany; in 1939-1940 he invaded  Poland, France, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Greece, Denmark, The Netherlands, Norway and parts of Sweden and attacked England and so on......and from 1938 to 1945 managed to kill 85% of the Western European Jews, and most of the Romani, Jehovah's Witnesses, old and infirm and many, many, MANY more.

And all in the name of "Making Germany Great Again".

I am, in no way kidding.  This is not hyperbole.

Historically, there have been several Constitutional items that kept Cheetos Christ from actually being Hitler.  The first one was that the POTUS is only 1/3 of the government, and he's the weakest part of it in that his time is limited as are his powers.  He is the Commander-In-Chief of the military. (but the military can refuse orders if they are illegal)  He has the ability to pardon crimes.     He has the power of veto from bills being passed into law, he can appoint judges to the Supreme Court and he has a limited ability to execute temporary measures called "executive orders"- and that's it.  Full stop.  He doesn't control the banks and he can't enact laws -not even thru Executive Orders .  He doesn't employ the government (except for his immediate staff) and he has to answer to the people for his actions.  

He is also a US Citizen, and as such he is held to the standard of the law.

Or should I say, he was.  But that's not all.  Not by a long shot.

Schedule F is a proposed restructuring of US Government personnel that would change 50,000+ government positions to be at the discretion of the POTUS.  That is on The Orange One's radar, and if it becomes the law of the land, he will literally have 50,000 jobs that he controls and can say who has them or not.  So much for cheques and balances. 

In Project 2025, which is 900+ page document created by The Heritage Foundation- which is the transition plan from what we have now to complete Orangedom, it outlines things like the abolishment of the EPA, FBI, Department of Education and a host of other things that we have all taken for granted.

And, since this country's laws are based on the Rule of Precedent, once these things go into effect, it will be very difficult to extract ourselves from them.

With these three things and stroke of the pen on some tactically made Executive Orders, he will have roughly the same kind of power and control once afforded to little man with a bad moustache and Parkinson's disease that made a lot of trouble for a lot of people all over the world.

If you've read this far in this post, I sincerely hope that this comparative history lesson is making your blood run a little cooler that it was.  If it hasn't done that, remember that the #1 reason that Germany started WWII was Hitler wanted to make Germany great again.  And before you think that my entire alarm is over the similarity of *that guy's* slogan, think again.  The similarities between what Donald of Orange has been thru and the things he's done are so eerily similar what happened back then.  Remember, too, Hitler did NOT run on the promise of ridding the country of the Jews- that came later, and it wasn't his original idea.  That, like Christian Nationalism, had been around for a long time, bubbling just under the surface, looking for a rogue hero to set it free.  And look what that cost in the runtime.

I love this country.  And I'm proud of my heritage as well.   I can't stand to see what's happening here.

So- what do we do about it?

I've been thinking a lot about this.  Here's some ideas:

• We all need to ardently defend our correct history in order to know what's wrong here.  Know your Constitution.  Know what's in it.  It's not complicated.
• VERIFY the things you hear on ALL sides.  I'm sorry, but I've heard a ton of refutable crap coming out of all sides of the rhetoric.  It's more important now than ever to be accurate and discerning.
• Know the enemy and do your homework.  Check out things like Project 2025 and Schedule F and the host of dysfunction that is headed our way.  It's easy to find on the interwebs.
• GET INVOLVED!  Do things like attend school board meetings and your local governments.  There is great, great power at the local level.
• DO NOT BURY YOUR HEAD IN THE SAND.  This is as real as it gets, folks.  This country stands at the edge of a very dangerous precedence.

One las thing- and I hope that I am 10,000% wrong about this, but I'm actually afraid of what may happen if we have an Orange Loss in November.  I can see the makings of a Beer Hall Putsch (the 1923 Munich uprising) happening after that.  So please everyone- be safe.  Make good choices here, because I fear that good choices will not be the majority no matter how this shakes out.

<insert your deity here> bless us all.

inconveniences

 It's been a minute since I last wrote here.  Life has moved on, relentlessly forward, and as the saying goes, "Time waits for no man...." - and that is certainly true for me.  In late May, I ended my HD dialysis, had my CVC catheter removed from my neck, and am now doing peritoneal dialysis at home, while I sleep.  That works very, very well, and a lot of quality of life has returned to me.  (at least I got the 12 hours a week I spent sitting in a chair back.....)  Unfortunately, now that I have a lung that doesn't work right as well as an extremely compromised right leg, I am pretty much disabled and not able to do my day job anymore.

In order to pass the time, I've done several things here at home- I've automated a good chunk of my house with Raspberry Pi's and automation software; set up a home lab network with a 3 node Proxmox cluster and a scad of VM's doing various things and been boning up on one my earliest passions of philosophy and its relationship with religion and politics.

(Who needs running and exercise to get the cardio-vascular system to work hard, right??)

George Santyana once said, "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it", which, besides being a rather coy thing to say is also 100% true.  As such, I have always tried to stay up on current events and how events of the past can coincide with them.  While we, as a society, have made great strides to make ourselves better (and have succeeded in some ways) the things we miss and constantly get wrong seem to present themselves daily with no end in sight.

What I'm talking about here is (at this point) is the rise of Christian Nationalism.  It's something that has bothered me for a long, long time, way before I started this new "season" (yuck- I hate that word) of Deconstructionism.  (or, as I like to call it, "Reformed Reforming of Reformation") If you haven't heard of this before, I will try to explain.

Christian Nationalism is the idea that government should be influenced directly by those who are the keepers of the traditional Christian faith, because it was God who created governments in the first place.  This viewpoint is almost exclusively held by people on the far, far right political spectrum.  The government (especially the US) should be a direct reflection of the Judeo/Christian beliefs and conduct instead of what it is now.   This means to outlaw same sex marriage; degrade the rights of the LGBTQ+ community and women; remove the idea of gender affirming healthcare; outlaw abortions and birth control, to name but a few.  Further, Christianity would be the "official" religion of the country, in keeping with what the Founding Fathers original intent for this country was. 

However, there is a HUGE flaw in this idea.

What is that flaw, you ask?

Well, it's pretty simple.  The Founding Fathers never once said that it was a Christian nation.  In fact, one of the preeminent authors of the Constitution put this entire topic to bed in his letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1794:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties."

                    - Thomas Jefferson

This same sentiment was echoed by all the other authors of the Constitution, most notably by James Madison.  The Christian Nationalists, however, disavow this.  In a speech given to the congregation of a church in Colorado, Representative Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) said:

"The reason we had so many over reaching regulations in our nation is because the church complied.  The church is supposed to direct the government.  The government is not supposed to direct the church.  That is not how our founding fathers intended it.  And I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk that's not in the Constitution.  It was in a stinkin' letter and it means nothing like they say it does."

                   -Lauren Boebert, R-Colorado

And yet, the very first amendment to the US Constitution reads:

 Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So, clearly, Boebert is wrong.  I'd like to believe that she doesn't know what's in the Constitution, but I'm really not sure that makes it better or not, since she took an office to uphold and defend the document against all enemies, foreign and domestic.  It's gonna be a bad day for her if someone challenges her in a life of death situation on this, when she has to say, "Geez.  I didn't know that!".

Now, granted: there's a lot that can be interpreted/misinterpreted over a single sentence that contains only a single restrictive clause element.  One can hardly say that this one sentence has completely and exhaustively stated and exposed the topic to a mike drop and a statement of "full stop".

Or does it?

Ah- here's where this topic gets really interesting. 

As Christians, when presented with statements like, "you know, the Bible says that if a man rapes a woman, she must marry her rapist" (Deuteronomy 22:28-29) we'll say, ""that was a long time ago" as historical context is the argument to sweep that away.  I mean- yeah, you're right- that was a long time ago, and Christ came to fulfill the Law of Moses, blah, blah, blah.  There is a context to the First Amendment that darned near everyone in this day and age have forgotten about, and it's something that, if you consider it, there really is no question as to the meaning of that sentence.

Ready? 

If you had paid attention during history class instead of sleeping or wondering what this class had anything to do with you some 200+ years later, you'd know that the men who had written the Constitution were either directly affected by or had immediate family members who had been directly affected by the fact that they been forced to come to this part of the world (North America) because of religious intolerance and persecution in Europe.  They were literally told by (as an example) the Church of England that since they weren't obeying that church (the only allowed denomination in England) that Puritans would have to leave or face execution.  Hence, Roger Williams and Puritans landed in Rhode Island.  The same was true for many, many others- the Amish, the Pennsylvania Dutch, the French Protestants, etc.  The Founding Fathers were determined not to let the sins of Europe and the causation of a lot of death and disease repeat itself, and they instead put legal measures into place to make sure it never happened again.

Quite literally, the Christian Nationalists are trying to make sure that this discriminatory practice happens again, only with a slightly different set of marginalized people such as transgender, LGBTQ+, and women.  There is very little difference between this sentiment and the Back To Africa movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, or the beliefs of Margaret Sanger.  Remember, too- the Nazis were originally founded as a "christian" organization as well.

If you don't see the danger here or think I'm making a lot about nothing, well I hope you're right and that I am extremely wrong.  But, again, we are preparing to repeat a piece of history that not only has happened in the past, but the Christian Nationalists are attempting to rewrite the narrative through deceit and inaccuracy, and while their actions to this end might not be dangerous, forgetting it definitely will be.  

This is why it is so crucial to have at least a semi-working knowledge of history.  Both of the US and elsewhere, because in trying to suss this stuff out with critical thinking, you need to understand where we've been so we can figure out how to get where we are going in a constructive way.  You need to know the past to identify the future, plain and simple.  And, if you stand idly by and think "this doesn't affect me", please try not to look surprised when your rights are eventually eroded away by people who think they know best.  Make no mistake- Christian Nationalism is not a slippery slope.  It's more like pulling carpet, the foundation and all the earth simultaneously out from under your feet.

If you are one of the people that is espousing the idea that this was originally a God-founded country and that's where we should be, I invite you to contact me.  I would absolutely love to converse with you about this.  But bring your A-game.

changes me, changes you

I must apologize to Crimson Fable family and fan(s) for the title of this post....

One of the things that really fascinates me is how huge events in one's life bring about changes in things that seemingly have nothing to do with the event itself.  And, even more fascinating is when that happens to you.  Luckily, I’m either overly self-aware enough or completely narcissistic enough to notice some of those types of changes in myself.  

(Shut up, Gary Z.  No one asked you.)

When I tell people that I was dead for 8 minutes, I’m almost always asked how I managed to not have any brain damage.  I have no idea how that happened, but my overly-glib, smart-assed self almost always gives an equally smart-assed retort like, “you mean even more than I already had?” and I can manage to not really answer the question.  But the fact of the matter is that I have been changed from this experience. I'm not the same person I was.

I have made a statements here like how I’ve de-constructed my faith.  Dying has nothing to do with it.  Honestly, I was on that road months prior to December 13.  My de-construction wasn’t kicked off by dying; dying and what I experienced during death was more a confirmation of my suspicions than anything else.  No extra clarity was presented here.  No, nothing that grand or that obvious.  The changes I've noticed in me are far more subtle than that.

When I got home from the hospital on December 23, a full 10 days after the event, I sat on the couch in my family room and I cried for a full 30 minutes straight.  I’m talking utterly uncontrollable, biblical-style weeping.  I was completely overwhelmed by everything that had happened to me in those 10 days.  I had been convinced that I was going to die in that hospital; that I would never see my family and friends again; and that hadn't been the case.  I was home now, but what came home with me was an overwhelming sense of grief, guilt and loss over the fact that I would never be the same again.  I was now a burden to others.  I was completely disabled.   I would have to be hooked up to a machine on a regular basis, and not being hooked up to that machine meant certain death in under 5 days.  I wasn’t ready to retire, financially, and yet there was no way I could work as I couldn’t walk, couldn't breathe or see well, couldn’t drive and had absolutely no energy whatsoever.  I had to sleep 18 hours a day.  I had no retirement savings left, as I had to spend it on house payments and bills since I had been laid off from my job just prior to getting sick.  I felt that while I had managed to cheat immediate Death in the hospital, it wouldn’t be long before Death found me again, and this time there would be no escape.  I was terrified, anxious, overstressed and overcome with guilt and grief and could do nothing but let my wife hold me as I sat on the couch, while I just came completely and totally unglued.  And this is where, even in the midst of this grief and fear, I noticed the first small change in myself as I finally stopped crying.

It was silent in my house.  Not a sound. 

I know how strange and kind of anti-climactic that sounds, but silence is something I cannot handle.  It has always made me really nervous and anxious to be in a completely silent environment for any length of time.  I’ll almost always cough or sneeze or crack my knuckles in those situations, but for some reason I didn’t do anything.  I just sat there.  My wife started to back off the couch, and gave me a kiss on the forehead.

“Are you hungry?”, she started to ask. 

I closed my eyes and held my index finger up in front of my lips, in that universal sign of “be quiet”, but I made no sound.

“What is it?”, she said, looking a little concerned.

I said nothing.  I sat back, staring at the ceiling, tears and snot from crying running down my face and soaking my shirt. I didn't make a sound.  My wife stared at me for a couple of minutes, and got up and walked out of the room, looking confused.

I sat, alone, in that family room, completely silent, not moving, for 2+ hours.  My mind was totally blank the whole time.  I wasn’t ruminating on recent past events, nor was I considering what life held for me going forward.  I wasn’t thinking about the inevitability of death and a life changed like I had just been.  I had absolutely nothing on my mind at all.  I just sat there and stared at the ceiling.  And the weird part was that I knew I was just sitting there and I knew what this looked like, and still I just sat there.  I wasn’t thinking, “I don’t care how this looks”- I just sat there.  Blank.  Alone.

I’d like to say that I had some epiphytal moment where everything came together, or that something was made clear, but that didn’t happen.  I’d like to say that I was enjoying the peace and quiet, but that wasn’t the case, either.  I didn’t have more questions after just sitting there.  My wife came and went from the room several times, and I was aware of her, so I wasn’t catatonic.  She made no attempt to engage me, and I said nothing.  In that 2+ hours, absolutely nothing happened.  At all. And, after 2+ hours, I simply got up (as best I could), made my way upstairs (with a lot of help) and went to bed, saying nothing.  The next morning, my wife asked me what was I thinking about during that time the prior evening, and all I said was, “Nothing”.   I spent much of Christmas Eve Day saying nothing at all.

This strange occurrence has happened more than a few times since then, but never for a full 2 hours- more like 20 minutes or so- but never in my subsequent hospital stays.  It’s kind of like a reboot, and I don't have any control over it. It just kind of happens......

A couple of weeks ago, a very close friend asked me if I could help his business with a tech project.  This friend had visited me numerous times in the hospital, and he knew all too well everything I had been through. He demanded that if I did take on this project, that I not over-commit and over-stress myself, and work no more than 10-15 hours weekly.  I agreed.  Whenever I take on a project like this, I start to do research, which almost invariably means I’ll write some code- something I haven’t done in a long time - and something I almost always dread doing.  (I have a crippling case of 'imposter syndrome' where coding is concerned....) This was no different, so I went about researching my solution with technologies like NodeJS and ExpressJS, JWT, MySQL and Vue3, all running on Linux - all technologies I know pretty well.  (with the possible exception of Vue3, that is)  As I dug into it and started coding, I found that I was really enjoying it.  I only needed a barely running portion of code to demonstrate the idea I had (aka "Proof of Concept"), but before I knew it, I had built a fully-fledged backend, complete with tests, a GIT repo with CI/CD- and all in the space of a few hours.  That’s weird- I never really enjoyed writing code like this, and something like this would usually take me hours and days to do, but…….

This afternoon, I picked up a bass for the first time in 5 months.  I haven’t touched a bass since this whole thing began way back in late October/early November of last year.  Didn't really want to.  My favorite bass- my beloved pre-CBS Lake Placid Blue 1964 Fender Jazz Bass (with matching painted headstock), which has been sitting in a guitar stand this whole time, had literally a quarter of an inch of dust on it and strings that were deader than Julius Caesar.  I plugged it into my practice amp in my office- a TC Electronics BG250-12- that also had the same amount of dust on it- didn’t tune the bass- put on “Journey From Mariabronn” off the first Kansas album and went for it.  Played the whole thing like I’d never stopped playing, sort of.  And I had a blast doing it.  An hour later, with incredibly sore fingers, I put the bass down.  The fact that I had a blast playing isn’t the surprising thing; neither is the fact that I remembered the Kansas song with all the key and time signature/tempo changes- the surprising fact was that I blew whole passages that I have played for YEARS and didn’t stop, didn’t get mad about it and just kept playing.

Now I know what you’re thinking here- “so what?”

This is REALLY not like me.  I've been playing the bass for 52 years.  I’ve been a relentless perfectionist about my playing.  I am INCREDIBLY hard on myself all the time about how and what I play.  The fact is that while I am most definitely an above-average bass player, I have never felt like I was.  (More of that imposter syndrome....)  Blowing the bridge on “Stop Loving You” by Toto would normally send me into an rage, but I just kept going.  I don’t even know if I ever played the part right as I played that song, but I didn’t stop to figure it out.  And I didn’t even notice that I didn’t stop.  It never occurred to me to stop, and it didn’t occur to me that I hadn’t stopped.  I even played through a handful of tunes from Peter Gabriel’s new album,  “I/O”,  that I have NEVER played thru, lifting them by ear as I played them as best I could. Never once stopped to examine what I was doing. I just kept playing and it was fun. 

When I was done, I came out to our family room where my wife was sitting.  She’s been after me for weeks to start playing again.

“So- how was it?” she asked.  

“Like I never stopped.” I replied, flatly.

“You don’t have your old stamina to play some of that faster stuff.”, she said, smiling.

“I didn’t really notice.”, was my reply.  That was true- I really hadn't noticed it.

WAIT.  WHAT???!?? HUH?!!??  I didn’t really notice?  WITAF is going on here?

This is where these change are.  Even though I have been through the veritable ringer, I’m WAY more ambiguous about my feelings and reactions to these kind of things than I was just a few months ago.  You might chalk that up to me seeing different things as more important now, but I’m telling you, that’s not it.  I’m not slowing down, either.  I’m more determined than ever to get well from all of this, and I know that will take time- my physical therapist can't keep up with me.  But for some strange reason, I'm finding my approach to all these other things in life just a lot more........different. 

Is this brain damage? I tend believe it probably is in some way.  I can’t say I’m comfortable with that thought, and I won’t say that I’m happier as a result of whatever this is, but I’m also not afraid of it.  It’s just a very strange point of view to have, and I’m fairly certain that, whatever it is, I’ve got to learn to live with it in order to keep moving forward.

Moving on...........

Your thoughts?