When do you know?
When it is too late?
How do you explain
what’s you-obvious but they-invisible?

Where will you go?
Will you move in time?

Can we yet reclaim
wider considerations?

All the clues assembled for all to see!
Have they lost their minds, their hearts?
Or are you completely insane?

You walk now through a whirl
upside down and getting upside-downer for years
every time you think the cruel silliness has played itself out
it doubles down and leaps up again — this time with more adherents, more normalcy

Surely this is an abuser groping first your shoulders
and then down your back
and then around your waist
and every step getting you
and all the witnesses
a little
a little more used to
a little more sympathetic for
a little more inured to
a little more resigned to
a little more ready for
his deeper purpose

Or are you just chicken little?

Are you a some crazy and/or corrupt wolf-crier?
Or are the wolves all assembled,
wearing now snazzy gowns of mere bluster
and
different but not therefore evil interpretations
of the
still of course
oh so treasured
government of by and for the people,
wearing now the merry certainty of politics as usual in a land where voters always get a say;
but underneath, some knowingly and others perhaps not so much,
carrying the tools their leader’s been warming us up to for the last eight years
loss of power prestige opportunity for those who oppose his will, prisons for those who really annoy him, a media tamed to follow his lead, a judiciary understanding the law must bend to serve only his greater ends, protests violently silenced, elections that he — or his chosen acolytes — always win because of course the winners must always win (only stands to reason!)
?

Who is crazy in this madness?
Who is sane in this unbalance?

In democratic republics (where the citizens serve as a final check on madness, corruption, incompetency, and mean lying rotten behavior), the government is incentivized to honestly, openly, and competently seeking win-wins for all the citizens.
In autocracies (where the citizens learn every day a little better that disagreeing only jeopardizes the safety and security of themselves and their loved ones), the government is incentivized to get and keep power — whatever the cost to the citizens of the nation.
The former is a spiritual good because the government and citizens are incentivized to together find a way forward for all.
The latter harms individual and collective spiritual growth because all day long every day one is deciding between the safety security and happiness of them and their loved ones and telling the truth, doing the right thing, saying no to corruption, cruelty, dishonesty, mean boring crime.

Where are we on the spectrum now?

Is not the RNC falling to the evil?
If they win here and now, is this GOP not likely to drag the us all into a great crime against ourselves, the world, and the soul of things?
Is this not a great folly?
Are the applauds in the RNC convention not a crime?
Not necessarily applauds for a certain and definitive termination of our democratic republic; but applauds nonetheless for happily subjecting us all to the very real threat of a transition from rule of the people to the rule of those politicians and oligarchs who are wise enough to get in now?

What is going on?
Who is crazy here?
I say you are risking turning the USA into Putin’s Russia.
You say I am full of baloney.
Who is crazy?

Or are you only saying I am full of baloney out loud?
In your heart of hearts has the worm turned?
Are you ready and even kind of thrilled to get in now, while the getting’s good?
But don’t you see (perhaps you see; but perhaps you do not yet feel): almost no one gets in and stays in when the law turns to crime.

The question of evil at this moment
is a vague question
a question about how the worm turns within mere ideas, mere stories, narratives, possible futures

It’s been a good run, USA
all these years of having our cake and eating it too
all these years of freedom to think, speak, create
The joy of being a US citizen
has been
the joy of
children caught up in the safety
of parents who provide and are kind and reasonable
in
the joy of
a happy home
the joy of
not being abused

No, this joy
has not been for us all in all our times
But a government of by and for the people
can and does
learn from its mistakes

If we can keep this democratic republic,
we can

what?

We can what?

America?

I see two roads,
the one almost certainly towards folly;
and the other probably away from the folly
and maybe even —
if chosen sincerely carefully and gently so gently, remembering the Love that makes everything Okay and without which nothing is Okay —
towards renewal,
towards a widening
of the consideration, of the joy, of the shared wholesome fun, of the happy home

What does it feel like?

It feels like
follow Trump and his current crew where they lead
and we will really have to fight to keep our shared sovereignty over this nation;
but we
lack the cohesion
and the fight
and the shared love
to really fight to keep our shared sovereignty over this nation

It feels like
maybe we could muster enough shared insight here and now
to yet stop this freight train from leaving the station

but after that
mmmm idunno doesn’t look good
well, it looks blurry: it doesn’t feel good

What should we do?

Am I crazy?

What is going on?

Author and Editor: Bartleby and Amble
Copyright: Andy Watson