jericks

I can’t sleep.

I can’t, because when I close my eyes, my defenses drop. The distractions cease, the denial fades, and I’m gripped by the horrifying realization of just how fucking crazy it all is. How impossible. How… surreal.

Sometimes I feel like I’m the one who has gone crazy, not this country or more than half of the people in it.

There was a 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘱. A real-life fucking coup against the government of the United States, and it was incited by the President. He told people to riot and take control of the Capitol, and they did! The goddamned President got people to violently storm the seat of American government. And they sought out the Vice President and would likely have killed him had they found him. And people died. And when the revolt was finally put down, the President… was still in power! He told the mob that he loved them, then he served out the final days of his presidency, and went on with his life. He was not immediately arrested and tried for treason. We just let him walk away.

Then, as if that weren’t the wildest shit you’d ever heard in your life, he actually became more popular. This human antithesis of American democracy and the greatest threat to the Union since the Civil War consolidated more power, duped more people, inspired more rage, told more lies — crazy lies, obvious lies, lies that any child could see through, lies like some paranoid street person would scream — and ran for president again.

And won.

This madman shit on it all. The Constitution. Veterans. Voting rights. Separation of powers. The rule of law. All the things Americans say are their highest ideals and most sacred principles. And they… they didn’t care. They didn’t give two flying fucks about any of it. Which is crazy to me, because as a liberal, do you know how many times I’ve been told by rabid God-and-Country flag-wavers that I am “anti-American”? But then those people, those very people, chose a demagogue, a cult leader, a violent strongman over every single thing America is allegedly about.

In another time, this man would have been drug away in shackles. In another time — and I’m not saying this is right — but this man may not have lived to see his day in court. And those under his direction and control would have spent decades in federal prison, at the least.

Instead, he made it all the way back to country’s top post, like some third-rate South American dictator or ruthless tribal war lord. And now we’re talking about, what? Tariffs? The board of the Kennedy Center? The fate of the penny?

HE TRIED TO OVERTHROW THE FUCKING GOVERNMENT AND HAVE HIS VICE PRESIDENT ASSASSINATED. THIS IS NOT BUSINESS AS USUAL.

I know you know all this. We all know all this. We go on because we have to. Because we can’t do anything else. I think. Maybe. Or maybe we don’t even want to consider what other people in other countries under similar circumstances have done. Those things are alien to us and our lives. We wouldn’t know where to begin. (Or worse, perhaps–where to stop). So, we cross our fingers and hope that somehow things will work themselves out.

Anyway, that’s why I can’t sleep.

And as I read over what I’ve written here tonight, I think, My god, no wonder I questioned my own sanity: This sounds like the ravings of a lunatic. The rant of a man who has had a psychotic break and is experiencing apocalyptic-level delusions. This man needs help.

Yeah. In some ways, I guess I do. But I also realize that this is sanest thing I’ve thought or said in a long time. And one of the truest. It’s the rest of the time that I’m pretending, ignoring, distracting myself, living in a fantasy. And I hate that I do it, but I know I have to. To preserve my sanity. To keep intact the part of me that sees all too clearly what is real. That fact is, for the few minutes it took for me to write these words, I’ve never been in greater possession of my faculties. And that’s what scares the ever-living shit out of me.