Lent prep.

It’s definitely a big fat Tuesday.  At 11:00 this morning, I was shocked to see that it was indeed 11:00, as my subconscious had led me to believe I had already eaten lunch and we were well into the afternoon.  And then I remembered it’s Tuesday.  And not just any Tuesday.  Tuesday of a five-day work week.  Life is hard.

Lent begins tomorrow.  I am giving up Facebook because it’s annoying and Twitter because it turns me into a rage-against-mostly-Paul-Ryan-but-also-others-machine.  Don’t worry, I will continue to blob, but I won’t be posting to Facebook.  Allow me, then, to shamelessly beg you to subscribe to my blog.  If you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you will see a box where you can enter your email.  I’m pretty sure it won’t spam you.  Blogger is a Google operation, so if you have problems, take them up with Will.

As our President would say, a blessed Lent to all the haters and losers.

Drastic times.

Listen, I really am trying not to interpret everything as signs of looming World War III/American implosion via class warfare/anarchy/eventual nuclear holocaust.  But suddenly preppers seem a lot less crazy.  (Don’t worry, I’m not building a bunker but our storage room may serve, so that is where we keep our bottled water and canned tuna.)

I’m not the only one freaking out:

Catchy new tagline.

I’m just very disturbed at how faithfully Orange Julius is following the authoritarian playbook.  The scapegoating of particular religious, ethnic, and non-heterosexual people, for instance, was an old standby for another thin-skinned dude who liked to yell and had bad hair.  (Ok, you caught me.  I’m not above a Hitler-Trump comparison.)  NEWS ALERT: Muslims aren’t killing us by the thousands (guns are), Mexicans aren’t stealing our jobs (automation is), and transsexuals aren’t grabbing your daughter’s pussy in the women’s room (she should watch out for our President though).  Picking on minority groups and the vulnerable may make some (miserable) people feel better, but it does not solve problems.  It actually creates them.  Stop me if I sound crazy.  Oh right, you can’t.

Here’s a problem created by the dogwhistling and hateful rhetoric that spewed from the Trump campaign, and now spews from the White House:

 

In case your preferred news source didn't cover this, vandals desecrated 100 graves at a historic Jewish cemetery in St. Louis this week.

As it turns out, bad people are empowered to do bad things when we do not actively embrace tolerance and respect, when we elect people who do not actively embrace tolerance and respect.

One of the most moving places I have ever been is the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague.  For over 300 years, it was the only place the city’s Jewish people were allowed to bury their dead.  The graves are stacked layers upon layers, making “ground level” something like thirty feet above the current street. Up to 100,000 people may be buried there.  Seeing these graves all crammed together sparked a major understanding in my brain when I visited with my family a few years ago.  The Nazis didn’t cook up anti-Semitism in the 1930s—it was hundreds and hundreds of years in the making.  Passive cruelty and episodic violence were the norms.  Europe was so primed with anti-Semitism that it required just one particularly evil man to twist prejudice into holocaust.

Photos can't really capture this place. 

I’m not saying Donald Trump is plotting to murder all the groups he recklessly scapegoats.  But I am saying he is too cozy with authoritarian methods of exploiting fear and prejudice.  People like David Duke, Milo Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer, and cowardly grave vandals should not feel encouraged by the President of the United States.  But they do.

I’m still hopeful our nation's history has primed us to love and defend freedom.  But I fear this slippery slope we’re on.  I love you, America, but I don’t like you a whole lot right now.  We need to open our eyes to reality.  Democracy dies in darkness.

My fellow Austrians.

Good evening.  You may have noticed the Blob’s small hiatus from its regularly scheduled cutting commentary.  My apologies.  We’re living in a reality show conducted by King Man-Child and Mr. Bannon-Goebbels and it is exhausting.  I’m so exhausted that upon waking up to a rare San Francisco peal of thunder recently, I assumed we were getting nuked by North Korea and was surprisingly okay with it. 

But this is the tactic of our Orange Overlord, right?  Inundate us with bullshit from all angles so we are stuck spinning in excrement, all while he dances around tearing down democratic norms?  Our free press, our independent judiciary—nothing is safe from his vindictive incompetence.

I can hear some of you thinking, “Oh Claire, you’re being dramatic.  Can’t we go back to the fun, non-political times of the Blob?”  NO WE CANNOT.  I attempted to write a light-hearted post last week but it turned into a real tearjerker about how I feel like CAPTAIN VON TRAPP SINGING EDELWEISS TO HIS DEAD AUSTRIA.  I need you, Julie Andrews.  And right now, I’m sparing you the very poignant lessons we could learn from the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague (but don’t worry, I’m saving it for later).  It seems that all my blob brain is wired for right now is finding parallels between our current state of affairs and the rise of the Third Reich.  THANKS, OBAMA.

And now, we breathe.  During the hiatus from substantive blobbing, I had the great fortune of attending two meet-ups of strong lady friends (Feminist Fight Club last Tuesday and Babes Brunch yesterday).  We discussed current events, brainstormed ways to get involved, and ate delicious food.  I recognize my tendency to sit at home and fret, so it was good to meet up with smart, kind women and plan for action.  I highly recommend it.  It’s healthy to get out of social media world.

Womankind, arise!

That’s all I got for today, y'all.  Good night.  God bless.  Call your senators.  Tip your waitresses.

Though we adore men individually,
we agree that as a group they're rather stupid.