I’m sitting in the car waiting for my grandson. Moments ago, I read a post by Grant Faulkner, who in 2016 was the Executive Director at National Novel Writing Month.
“I’ve been remembering the 2016 election this week,”
he wrote.
Normally, he said, November draws thousands of
writers; however, after Trump’s election in 2016, writers’ stories literally
collapsed.
It wasn’t just the NaNoWriMo writers. (Writers who
commit to write 50,000 words for a novel in 30 days.) Many of his friends and
professional writers stopped writing.
They were traumatized.
Faulkner said before that November, he didn’t believe
in writer’s block, but then he saw that writing is difficult and sometimes
impossible for a battered brain.
Trauma and depression can turn off the spigot of
creativity.
“It’s easy to think that our art is
trivial when it’s up against such a menacing and malevolent block of history as
we’re living through, but the opposite is actually true: our art isn’t trivial;
it’s what can deliver us.”
Faulkner said that James Baldwin (Go Tell it on the Mountain
1953, Notes of a Native Son, 1955) expressed the importance of the
role of the artist better than he could:
“You think your pain and your heartbreak
are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was
Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me
most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive,
or who ever had been alive.”
Howard Zinn’s quote, “An artist is a sort
of emotional or spiritual historian,” provided Faulkner with hope
because we need to see that “compassion, sacrifice, courage, and
kindness” are a part of every era.
Don’t let them destroy your connection to life and the
joy of living. Appreciate the world we live in and the fantastic beauty
surrounding us.
I look up from behind the steering wheel and notice
that the great flock of Canadian Geese I admired before settling into this page
have dwindled to about 25.
The 25 are scattered about the grass, their white
breasts glowing like snow patches left after the bulk of snow has been absorbed
into the ground. Some are preening, and occasionally, one—male or female, I
can’t tell the difference –will spread their wings in a morning wake-up
stretch, revealing dark feathers beneath.
(Like some of us, some geese are slower to wake up or
are simply basking in the glory of the day before getting to work.)
The day is overcast. As am I.
As I reflect, I wonder how many of us who lived
through the Second World War are alive today. Do they despair that the U.S.,
the land of the free, the home of the brave, has opened its doors to Tyranny?
I don’t know.
Monty Python:
“Oh, king, eh? Very nice. And how’d you
get that, eh? By exploiting the workers. By hanging on to outdated imperialist
dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society.”
--Dennis (Michael Palin)
I went to sleep last night more hopeful than days
earlier. I wondered if somebody had thrown a monkey wrench in our electoral
process.
Could it be that the numbers are off? Could more than
50% of the voting population see the danger of what just happened with the
Presidential election?
Motive
and Opportunity?
Do you have questions regarding the outcome of the
election??
Oh, I know, Trump got the 270 electoral votes that
declared him a winner. Harris conceded. It was over just like that.
The losers were standing around, going, “Huh?”
No one stormed the Capital. No hangman nooses hung
from platforms. No one was clubbed to death. Harris promised a peaceful
transfer of power. No one was yelling that the election had been stolen from
them. No person clutched the white house carpet like a feral cat we were trying
to extract from its cage.
That was quick and easy. Sap, it was over.
But wait! Were we really that wrong? Did we so
believe in the goodness of humanity that we ignored the fact that a man running
for the Presidency once kept speeches of Hitler on his bedside table? Did we
forget that the President-elect once said he wanted his General to be like
Hitler’s Generals?
See, people don’t remember WWII.
You might say I’m stupid or ignorant but look at it.
Number one: Trump
faces criminal charges which, if elected, he can pardon.
Number Two: One
of the wealthiest men in the world, who gave one person per week a million
dollars to persuade them to register—no tampering with the election- he didn’t
tell them how to vote. This person fired his workers because
they went on strike. This person said the “Alpha Males” should run the country.
“Musk, who has a history of sparring with
regulators, also faces government investigations into his companies that could
result in more lawsuits or even criminal prosecutions.”—Bloomberg News
“Bloomberg has identified more than half a dozen
ongoing legal fights in which Musk is a defendant or a plaintiff, as well as
about a dozen others involving his companies.”
Before the election, Elon Musk said, “If
Trump doesn’t win, I’m F*****.”
After the election, he made 60 million dollars.
(“Tesla headed for a $2 trillion valuation after
Musk’s ‘big bet’ on a Trump win.” Analysts say.") –story by
Breck Dumas.
Follow the money, say the lawyers.
Motive and Opportunity? ask the courts.
Indeed, we have motive. Do we have opportunity?
I don’t know.
“Elon Musk said his satellite internet
venture Starlink now has more than 1,500 active satellites in orbit above
Earth.” –story by Kellen Beck
Could any of those satellites interfere with the
ballots and their outcome?
Does anyone know?
Does anyone else smell what I smell?
