Week One at the Interplanetary Meet-Up

While some of us are wringing our hands, worried, for instance, about massive cuts in Medicaid that would cut the legs out from under long term care for seniors, a big share of the country’s grown-ups think things are just ducky. One side says something and the other responds in Pig Latin. With an accent. It’s crazy and getting crazier.

Sometimes, the conversations seem like they’re from some weird kind of interplanetary meet-up. We can’t possibly inhabit the same place, much less the same planet. But we do.

While Dr. Phil is out with ICE lending credence to the claim that all the undocumented criminals are finally getting picked up and deported and his audience, I assume, is clapping and doing two-finger whistles, many of us are sitting on our porches ready to bang pots and pans to warn the neighbors that scary-looking official vehicles have rounded the corner.

The rule-compliant among us (I would be one) are beside themselves that customs and norms and rules of governing are being bunched up and thrown in the trash like so much used Christmas paper. We’re like “You can’t do that!,” little thin voices in the uppermost rows of the theatre that is this new president’s playground. But his lovers are cheering. It’s what they’ve dreamed of for years. Somebody who would really fuck things up.

On the way to the dog park, there is a billboard that has two outreached hands. The gist of the billboard is how we should all just sit down and talk, isn’t it about time, the billboard asks. Oh, maybe, I think. You can always find common ground with someone, even if it’s a shred, a little clump of dirt with four blades of grass just hanging on to life. We need to try harder. I tell myself this like the little Girl Scout I am.

And then there are the pardons of all the January 6th perpetrators. Never mind. We’re moving forward. Let’s not get stuck in the past. This is when I think I’m losing my mind wondering why the earth hasn’t simply stopped in its tracks. How do we let violent criminals loose?

Tomorrow, I’m going to an event here in Milwaukee where Harry Dunn, a retired Capitol police officer, who was beaten in the January 6th attack will speak. He is a hero. But only half the country thinks so, apparently. Good Lord.