“These are the times that try [our] souls…”
Thomas may have been a pain to some, but he lit a fire under a bunch of bums that had gone numb from the lashes of tyranny…
… or so they’d have you believe. Things weren’t that dire in 1776. It’s not like fascism was descending on a would-be democracy. The republic was not yet public (prepublic?), and Britain was, if anything, a disinterested stepmum, salutarily neglectful. But after she lost interest in her other endeavors, she turned her attention back to Cinderelly in the Western Hemi.
Face it, a bunch of white dudes were sick of being pushed around by another bunch of white dudes across the ocean. Of course it came down to taxes. Doesn’t it always? What’s in it for me and all that jazz. No coincidence that Adam Smith was simultaneously sketching the blueprint that countless sociopaths perverted as a justification for toxic greed…. But in Boston, New York, Philly, etc., it was a proto-nationalistic ego push that they justified with some cool ideas that they plagiarized from some philosophers, so there was that. They were locked in with a full tabula raza in their invisible hands. They saw an opportunity and seized a day they didn’t want to rue so close as they were. Far be it from me to mount a skewed take on this separation of will from power. They’d have you believe they were enlightened. Millions of unpaid plantation workers would beg to differ if they were allowed to read the fine print1.
Two-hundred-and-forty-nine years later here we are. I want to believe that it’s darkest before dawn. I want to believe that something miraculous is in the offing. I’m literally typing this at 12:34 PM on January 20, 2025. My television is off. I’m not watching any live-streams. I’ve disassociated. January 20, 2025 marks the start the The Great Disassociation™.
The Great Disassociation™
The Great Disassociation™ is my way of coping with this dystopian state of america. I’m not completely going dark. I’ll engage enough to be sufficiently informed, but this society is toxic and to fully engage would be to put my mental and physical health at risk. No. Today starts the redoubling of efforts to be the change I wish to see in this world. Today is the day to be so radically free with loving-kindness that my mere existence is an act of rebellion. Call it Zen Existentialism by way of Siddhartha Camus.
And ain’t it strange that a polar vortex is descending so far south that Winter has come to the US capital. Hell hath frozen over and all the devils are sunning themselves in the artificial light of the rotunda.
And what can you do? I can’t go and interrupt the proceedings like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. Not tuning in is the most I can do to not feel completely impotent about something that is so seemingly important. What does that portend? How does one flounder in such helpless ineffectuality? Make videos on Tik Tok? Any port in the storm.
There’s always abysmal screaming but really there are enough monsters and they don’t need me to become another howling banshee in the bewildered herd (yaheard?) of chupacabratic lemmings. I’m mixing metaphors like a simile in a food processor. We’ve all got to process somehow. My drug of choice as of late has been a spiked punch-up with a side of word-salad. Now’s about the time that I would like to say that I’ve got more soul than a sock with no hole, but it’s hard to quote the greats when we’re motherf*cking doomed and I know that humor and wordplay is a mental mask I wear. Just a little bit of gallows humor before the blade drops.
The Reason For The Season
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s day. He gave a speech at the nation’s capital, too. I hope the masonry in the mall still reverberates with his exquisite baritone. I hope the vibes from August 28, 1963 shake the granite and drown out the cacophonous din of tyranny. Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. An immensely powerful, magnificent soul said that. An immensely powerful soul who dared to dream out loud across time and space. A soul who ripped his own heart from his chest and nourished all of humanity with each beat.
Today is not an inauguration so much as a commencement. We’ve graduated. Nobody is coming to save us. We are on our own. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men have no interest in putting us back together again. And if we try to engage with them on their level to wrest back democracy from the jaws of oligarchy we will surely lose. You don’t need to consult the oracle to see how to hack this matrix. Morpheus Luther King, Jr. gave us the source code over half a century ago:
If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.
And so it goes. Many small things in great ways. Starting now. Smile at someone who needs it. Carry love in your eyes and shine it out at every opportunity. Wait the extra 7 seconds to hold the door, let the person who entered the exit lane too late get in front of you. It costs you nothing and it’s the thought that counts towards a much more lucrative ledger.
The Great Disassociation™
from the algorithm
from the rhetoric
from the fear
from the despair
from the anger
from the vitriol
from the mindless consumerism
from the grievance
Lead us not into toxicity and deliver us from anxiety
Grant us peace in our days, that by the inner mercy that burns in all of our hearts we may always be free from distress. Make me a beacon of loving hope, a lighthouse for the lost ships in danger of running aground.
- Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness subject to race, gender, sociopolitical status, restrictions may apply. ↩︎
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