I could barely keep my eyes open by 9 last night, so I went to bed. 8 hours' sleep would have me waking up at 5 and I did wake up around 4:30, then went back to sleep and was awake again a bit before 8. This is the ideal schedule, to go to bed around midnight or 1, and wake up around 8 or 9.
More horrifying developments on the radio: The Dump has stated, in so many words, that he wants all "rules and regulations, including those in the Constitution" to be suspended and himself re-installed as president. There's a big court case coming up that supposedly will determine states' rights to ignore, if they like, the results of their elections and have their electors determine their state's vote for President. This was what was attempted in 2020, through threats, attempts at coercion, and good old wheedling that the Dump is so good at.
I'm old enough to remember the Nixon and Reagan elections and nowhere, anywhere, was there talk of suspending elections, nor were the death threats against politicians, large or small, that were rampant in 2020. 2020 saw threats against the lives of everyone from local school board members to the sitting vice president. Given what the Republicans are, this can be expected to only get worse.
If states' rights (a term the Klan is so fond of) are determined to be this strong in the upcoming court case, things will get interesting. States like California and New York will stay fairly sane, at least for a while. With the Dump given nearly absolute power, anything progressive that's been enacted at the national level can be expected to disappear.
This will mean everything from the military being re-segregated to the Interstate Highway System, AKA the National Defense Highway System, Ike Eisenhower's project, becoming a toll road system in Red states. It would mean the elimination, down to the very name or leaving shells of their former selves, the CDC, the FDA, hell the FAA and the National Traffic Safety Board. The free market will take care of all of this! Just like in Somalia!
It may well mean Social Security, the thing I've been hoping to be a lifeline, become something you have to pass a "political purity test" to get. Or a racial purity test. Or both.
It will mean the politicization of, well, everything. What feels like an age ago but was really only a few years, I was able to converse with Red the flute player without politics entering our conversation at all. If I see Leroy the sax player again, I'll have to convince him I'm not "one of those". I will, in turn, have to suss out the politics of others, like the Nazi violin player I met in Mountain View years ago - I bet he's happy now!
This really doesn't change my plans. I believe that just as I experienced in the mid-80s, Hawaii's about 1/2 as expensive to live in as here, and since I wasn't smart enough to bugger off to France in my 20s, being back home, where at least I know where everything is and can say "I went to high school *here* and I worked *here* and *here* and *here*, is my best chance.
I may have voted in the US's last election, that would be recognized by the world as one.
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