If the past four years of living under the cloud of political madness has affected you like it has my wife and I, we sympathize hugely.
It must also be said that the past one year of Covid-19 hasn't helped a darn bit, either.
The coronavirus kept us indoors around the clock, with the exception of the wife running to the grocery store, pharmacy, and library. She would don her mask and gloves and avoid anyone who even looked like they may get closer than six feet. It's been pure hell! No one should have to live this way. We celebrated with great hoop-la when we got our first vaccinations last week.
But, with the nation approaching 500,000 deaths and several hundred thousand struggling with the virus, I couldn't begin to compare it to the struggles we have endured with our country suddenly and swiftly making a ninety degree turn from democracy and heading straight into hell's version of the Star Trek Borg. They were a pseudo-species of cybernetic humanoids, or cyborgs, from the Delta Quadrant knowns as drones. No single individual truly existed within the Borg Collective, as Borg were linked into a hive mind which connected all of them and allowed information from every drone who had been brought into the collocative to be shared.
That was how the "Trump Collective" worked. He was the "beginning and the end of all thought" for those who followed his every word. It was as evil as it was eerie!
It was excruciating to watch it all play out on our every minute of national news. His worshippers believed all 35,000+ fact-checked lies he told. He told them to ignore the rest of us for clinging to the values we were watching disappear. We were the wrong-headed ones! Day after day, we tuned in to watch the ugly rallies he used to spread his lies, the gangs of anti-American pseudo-stormtrooper demonstrations in the streets, and the constant drumbeat of "the media is the enemy of the people."
It gets to you and you begin to wonder how much more you can take before you think about actions that you never in a thousand years thought you would consider. Of course, you know you need to keep on keeping on. It will end some day. We are resilient and we can take a little more of it. But it's so hard to watch your country spiraling down the drain.
Well, he's out of office now. There isn't much he can do to us now. But his followers? Most of them are still as hell-bent on resurrecting him from the ashes as ever. They still want him back! What is this all about? What did he ever do for them besides a few moments of fame and false power? Where have they all been, before him, and how long has this been festering? And most important, WHY?
The answer may be simple. He needed a base of support to prop up his coup attempt. He needed a mass of people to tell him he was worthy of the position of leader for the new authoritarian government he was planning. He needed to hear those screams of support, and they needed to hear a leader say he was taking them to the "promised land." Maybe it was all just that simple.
But they're still here. They didn't leave with him.
And he still whispers into their ears in the dark of night: "Stand down. Stand Ready."
When, dear God, will it ever be over?
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