ANOTHER MORNING

     So, yet another morning where after hours of staring at the ceiling, I now sit in front of the screen, staring, wondering, what should I write. Is it a lack of things to write about? Nope. Too bad about that, for the aggravation of life is certainly exacerbated by the people who make the headlines, but I wonder, does anything actually make a difference?
     Guess it is not too easy to be freshly optimistic at this hour of the morning or night or whatever one chooses to call it. Over and over again, all the news feeds are rife with Trumpian disasters, lies and even filth that he and they make sure to spread through the systems of life. Upsetting is not even near the depth of what it generates.
     Once upon a time I was so proud to be an American. We had a government that responded to its people, that searched for ways to improve life in our country and the world, and yes, made errors, some grievous, but always tried, at least eventually, to improve itself. Yet this very system of government has allowed the flaws in its design to overwhelm the rest and we are now stuck with a president whom in my mind and indeed in the minds of many others, is not a legitimate one, because the Founding Fathers, white men of wealth and education, were afraid of the great unwashed masses and so insured that the leaders o the country were elected by an arcane system which allowed the few to triumph over the many. It is a ridiculous system wherein a state with a population less than a small city in another state can have as much sayso, and even more, incrementally speaking, than the larger state and population. That is not pure democracy, is it?
     Now do not get me wrong; I do not wish to overthrow the government and start all over again! Nor do I wish to see how this country and many other countries in today's world are calling themselves democracies yet are ever more dictatorial and oppressive and yes, sorry to say, but we, the United States of America, is fitting quite nicely into its own slot amongst these countries. That is why there is a bromance of Trump with these dictatorial creatures while our traditional allies go hang as far as he is concerned.
     The question in my mind is how long can this, our divided house, stand? There are true patriots left and they are getting angrier by the day. There are true leaders who seek to protect and better their constituents, who hear and respond, but they are often overwhelmed by those in the majority of the Congress now who stand only for hypocrisy, for injustice, for perverse behavior and retrograde thinking. The only 'forward' looking there is to search for more and newer ways to confound and  deceive the populace, to seek from many countries the ways to steal elections. We have, among this party, including its ostensible head, thieves and liars, tax dodgers and evaders, sexual molesters, aged people who need to take their retirement as their minds are apparently lost somewhere and people with no moral backbone or perhaps even a memory of what it means to be upright and honest in thinking and action.
     So where do we go from here? Do we simply give up to despair and exhaustion or do we fight on to return our country to where it should be, to a place where perhaps we can rally the world to fight off the disastrous climate changes coming right down the pike towards us, that are already here? We need to think how to fix our system in the right way.
     As I sit here this morning I think of how we have influenced the world in good times. Our courage, aligned with the courage of brave citizens of oppressed countries, took down the Berlin Wall, won just wars even as we lost wars we should not have been in, encouraged the fall of the Soviet Union - and in turn allowed Putin, the bro of Trump, to start his own authoritarian state once more, and the same goes for all the countries once behind the Iron Curtain. They proudly installed democracy but look at what is happening now.
     Once our freedom of speech was a thing of which to be proud, our media going everywhere, seeking and demanding the truth, and yes, they were annoying at times, frustrating at times, and yet, that is what their job was. But today, we have a President who wants to shut down the press, who calls them the enemy of the people, who wishes to build a wall around this country, wants to cut off the lifeblood of this country, who, what can I say - stinks in every which way.
     Women, children, immigrants, ethnicities, the needy - all are oppressed here within our country today. Signs of prejudice, of hatred, of violent hatred at that, are rife. Yet I will not give up for I also see that there are good people out there who can and will lead given the chance. Are they perfect, free of all errors? No, for humans are by definition capable and even inspired to commit errors for it is often by those very errors that we learn. But they also admit to these errors, unlike the present ostensible leaders who deny, deny and deny further and then attempt to build upon them even more grievous errors.
     Our answer? Get out there and vote. Get out there and make noise. Get out there and demand attention from your supposed representative. Make sure the representative understands that. Vote out the backwards thinking Republican Party  in all its levels and get in a group of people who care for the people and not just themselves.
     I am so tired of all the crap that comes our way from the Republicans. Enough! Vote them out! In droves! Let us take back America, remember what it is and was and let it return to the leadership of the world and perhaps we can pull the nuts of the world out of the political and environmental fires it is in before it is too late. I so do deeply hope and pray that it is not too late.