This has been quite a year, I guess it’s been a long four years really, but the end of the trump administration will definitely go down in the history of this country as some of the worst years. From his inception rolling down the escalator calling brown people rapists and murders, and today, trying to stay in power though he lost the election. Whether you care about the image of America on a global scale or not, you can’t say he hasn’t hurt the reputation of this nation. From the view of an insider or an outsider, we are altered. Some even say that our democracy is sliding into fascism, and the way the Republican Party has acted the last four years it’s easy to see why they would think this.

But this isn’t about him, it’s not about the politics that are hurting us as a nation. This is about me, a typical American. I’m not rich. I’m not connected. My family has no power. I live my life like most Americans, I work, I pay bills, I plan vacations, I have weekend brunches, I food shop and buy most of my clothes from J. Crew.

This year has been anything but this normal routine I play out on the daily. It started off normal, as normal as can be under an administration that took the norms of our society and tossed them out the window, In January of this year I bought I new vehicle. My best friend was coming home from a tour in Kuwait, I got a raise, I was coming back to Texas after an extended vacation in my hometown with family and friends. I was making plans for the spring and summer. It was going to be an amazing year, especially because my best friend was going to be back in the states.

I read the world news since I have family outside of the states, and there were articles spreading about an unexplained virus coming out of China. This was in January, they were calling it a global threat. The articles were very few but alarming. I ran out to Walmart and bought up masks and sanitizer. Then the panic started to hit the American media and the administration came out and said it was nothing. It wouldn’t hit our shores. I thought I wasted money on buying masks and wondered if I should start spray painting things to use them up. It’s funny now to think how ignorant I was then. At the same time Italians were falling victim to this virus like nothing outside of an actual war.

That all feels like a lifetime away from where we are now. There are vaccines days away from being approved here. In the UK they have already started giving them. Through this whole global mess, we see what the American government is willing to give to their people. Outside of America, nations with less gop than we have are giving thousands of dollars every month to stay home. To stay safe. Our government doesn’t work for us. Some people got 1200 bucks way back when, way back when this all started. Since then people have lost their jobs, their businesses, their homes, apartments, they can’t feed their children. Mitch McConnell, the senator from Kentucky, has blocked every bill that could have helped. He has done so much to undermine American democracy, and yet, this year Kentucky could have rid him, yet he remains, so much for exceptionalism.

You never hear of democratic countries falling, it’s mostly all about the soviet era, and communism. We are on the decline. We are Rome. We will fall just like them. It will be a slow process, the rest of the world will move along without us and we will crash and burn. It’s already around global warming. We refuse the evidence that it’s real, that it exists, and we will be left behind.

We have a new administration coming in, but it’s a four year gig. The last four years has taught us that you don’t need principle, you just need to pander to the lowest of the low and create a base of haters. I hope this new administration can turn off the visceral in this country but as long as we have networks like foxnews we’re in this for the long run.

The vaccine will change us, it’ll bring us back to some kind of normalcy. We have lost 286 thousand people, our own people because of a government that didn’t give a fuck about you. Those people won’t get the vaccine, they aren’t coming back. The families that have lost their loved ones will never get to go back to normal. The rest of what’s left of this nation will get back to normal, but what about all the forgotten in this last year? Is this something we will move on from or something we’ll use as a case study?

I know I said this would be about me, but when there is this much carnage, how can I? This has been so much bigger than me. This year has shown us as a people that our government doesn’t give a fuck about us. The richest Americans gained more money then 95 percent of us. We need change.

I was reading through some hashtag 9-11 stories on twitter earlier and at first I was just going through kinda skimming them, but the more I read the more it started to effect me. I started to feel remorse and sadness for their experience’s. And it kinda hit me that with everything that’s been going on lately, this entire year, more so these past four years, that i’m filled with so much anger. Mostly at the current state of affairs effecting us, but also much more.

What I remember most about after the towers fell was the entire country coming together to grieve and then, because we are America and it’s all we know to do, rebuild. We pulled together as a nation, even with a feeble President on deck, Bush managed to keep the racism to dog whistles, which most of the uneducated racists didn’t understand. This was before Facebook and twitter told people what to think.

This anger I’ve been carrying around is linked directly to the fall of what I perceived to be the country I was born into. As a child, living through my parents and their friends conversations and explained experiences, I don’t see that same America anymore. I don’t believe those values exist today. I do believe the majority of this nation is good and will do the right thing when given the opportunity, but the opportunity to do bad and be rewarded is recognized faster and lifts you up further, regardless of principle.

The days after the attack in New York were met with warm hands, warm hugs, it was a city that would move past this because it’s New York, and you can’t push around New York. A global city for sure, but as the nation gathered to mourn the towers, nyc police and local FBI started logs and lists of Muslim people within the city. The federal government started to record all our phone calls (and still do) they could arrest you for having a non American name, we gave up rights for the freedom of being American. Nineteen years later we are still being spyed upon. When the only terrorist attacks we have on American soil these days come from the right wing gun carrying nuts within these borders.

19 years ago we came together to fight a common enemy. We now have a henchman in the administration that finds humor in dividing us, an administration that can’t stay in power if the people came together. We have come so far since then, but have we went in the right direction? I don’t know, I don’t think so. America has so many ways of finding out the people outside of our country that want to do us harm and handle it. These days the terrorism comes from inside our borders. Who is there to stop them? We see police are friendly with these right wing groups. We see the FBI trying to look like they earn their paycheck.

Whats so crazy about all this, is it happened in less then four years. America fell to it’s knees in less then four years. By a grifter. Not some mastermind, not some genius, a grifter who wanted to take this country for a ride. We have people in the government steeling monies and no one seems to bat an eye. There is so much corruption that theft is too small to be noticed. But the corruption has a base, a swatch of Americans who have been turned down and turned away from both parties and would prefer the country to burn. Thats where we are at now.

The Supreme Court ruled this morning that employers could not discriminate against lgbtq people, shocking me to almost speechless. I really didn’t expect this court to be in favor of anything that’s post 1950 Americano. Of course there were some judges that chose to deny gay Americans in 2020 the same benefits straight people wouldn’t even have to think twice about, but overall we won this one. In this crazy environment we are living through we have to take what we can.

Thats the whole thing isn’t it?, this crazy environment where up is down, wrong is right, and grifting is a part of the political landscape. That is how a certain supreme court judge got his seat isn’t it, not that anyone would be keeping track of such things. So naturally he was one of the nay votes, not to be outdone by the other two nay votes, he had to write his own dissent saying this should be left to lawmakers and not the courts.

He’s right though. The people we elect into these powerful roles in our government should make laws that protect all Americans, including gay and trans people. It’s also 2020, should we even be having a conversation about such a trivial thing, shouldn’t employment protections already be covered for all Americans, shouldn’t it just be a given that we can all love who we love and still be gainfully employed without fear?

I don’t want to downplay this moment because it is a landmark decision. One I think many Americans were not expecting, but a quick look outside your door, you see that injustice in this country is part of the fabric. It’s been woven into the conservative platform for 50 plus years. It’s so ingrained into the american landscape that giving basic employment protections to a certain community seems like a landmark.

If this was 1956 I would be walking on a cloud. But this is 2020, as a nation we should be so much further ahead than we are. Is progress really happening or are we just moving in circles? In the last 20 years I’ve worked at two companies who had lgbtq protections baked into their policy handbooks, one even offered same sex benefits way before marriage equality was a thing. I assumed all companies were so forward in their approach to obtain and keep qualified employees.

This is happening while the country slowly burns because the biggest injustice, the longest running injustice, continues to plague us. Racism is alive and it thrives in the open. Maybe not in our everyday conversations, but in the systems that have been built along the way to what America is today. I heard a black lady sum it up like playing monopoly, but every time you get ahead, they burn it all down and you have to start over. do that for 400 years.

We’ve got a long way to go to make this place inclusive for all people. Black people were brought here by force, by no choice of their own and they are still fighting. American foundations need to change. Let the change start from the bottom and trickle up, just replace trickle with a rocket. Enough is enough. This version of American only works for a few, they can’t hold back change. The days of false words and hope are over. We have seen it for too long. The time for change, real change is now.

One week after Amber Guyger was charged for killing a man inside his home in Dallas a Fort Worth police officer said hold my beer. The differences between Dallas and Forth Worth are like night and day. Justice is said to have a blind eye, we will see once the killer cop finally speaks.

Will the jury in Fort Worth follow the folks of Dallas and hold this person accountable for their actions or will they continue their racist heritage of hanging the colored person?

When the hero has a gun and kills the innocent, is that an act of war or a common place? I’m asking, because I don’t know anymore. When do we stop calling them the hero’s and calling them what they are? Killers of our neighborhood.

The last time I called the police station was for a water leak in a car garage and they laughed at me. It was non-emergency. Maybe if I had dialed 911 something would have been done.

Atatiana Jefferson didn’t stand a chance. Her killer was a 20 something year old, on the force less than two years. He wanted to be a hero, but he’s just a killer. He murdered a young women inside her own home by window, like a movie from HBO. But it’s not a movie, it’s real life. She was a real person.

Now she’s gone and her family and friends have to pick up the pieces. To her family and friends she meant something, She was a light, she was a confident, she was a sister, a daughter. This man took that away.

For what? I ask because I do not know. I don’t know where we go. Do we follow the status quo or do we move forward? We are Greece 2.0. Can we prove history wrong or fall into a tyrannical state.

 

 

Here are the notes from my halloween movie episode. you can listen here

The Crow – a classic, Eric Draven returns from the dead a year after his death to exact revenge on the folks who killed him and his fiancee. takes place in some dark future or past, he’s watched over by a crow, hence the namesake. 

Rosemarys Baby – Happy family move into a beautiful pre war apartment and the husband sells out his pregnant wife to a devil worshiping cult. will the book keeper save her? watch to find out. 

Flowers in the Attic – hear me out on this one. it’s not a typical horror plot, but imagine losing your father and your normal middle class life to go move into a new england estate and be boarded into a single room with a stairwell to the attic? your mother stops coming to visit and your estranged grandmother is slowing poisoning you. Add in some old school protestant values and wasp ways of the old north east. Nightmares are welcomed when living in an unbearable hell. 

Open Water 2 – imagine, and maybe because i’m afraid of open bodies of water and sharks, having a splendid time on a luxury yacht with some great friends and then being unable to get back on the boat because none of you remembered to lower the ladder. and one of ya’ll have your period, and sharks can smell blood miles away. 

The Others – two small children apparently allergic to the sunlight living in a midivil manor on some long forgotten estate with a crazy mother who paces around waiting for her husband to return home from war. The boy keeps seeing people who aren’t really there. Mother thinks he’s crazy, girl thinks he’s imagining things and just trying to scare her. 

Ghost Ship – in 1962 a passenger ship goes missing. when a salvage ship discovers it years later on the high seas they realize the inhabitants might still be on the ship. just not in the flesh. the first 10 minutes are the best 10 minutes of gruesome movie watching. 

The Gate – parents go away for the weekend and the kids and one neighbor friend find a hole in the back yard that opens up a pure hell inside their home. This movie created a recurring nightmare i had for years. if i only thought about it during the day i would have the same nightmare. it’s the only nightmare i’ve ever had. being a lackey kid i guess i related. 

Hereditary – dark secrets are revealed after the matriarch passes away. this movie is so detailed and deep to explain. every movie minute leads to another. death and hauntings and tragedy follow this grieving family. 

The Wicker Man – (06 version) a girl goes missing in a small town, when a police officer comes to the town to investigate after receiving an anonymous letter he’s told the girl never existed. the movie unravels piece by piece. after being on the small town island he starts to realize the rules of the land are not what they seem and maybe she met her death in  a ritualistic manner. Then he finds his own fate might be in jeopardy. the 1973 version is pretty gory if you want classic 

The Blair Witch Project – when this movie came out people were puking and running out of the theater. in 1999 people thought this was real, low budget and a great PR firm made it seem like these were really lost tapes of some real witch hunt. it’s cult status because heather, in all her fear gave a dying message to her friends and family. While searching for some local legend they get lost in the woods and end up at their demise. 

There you go. it’s not a typical halloween list, it’s a psychological thriller list. enjoy

Another mass shooting in America. This is now part of our culture. Second rate countries are warning their citizens of the dangers in America. America used to be a global destination, now, we have the ratings of a middle eastern town. White terrorists are everywhere.

After September 11 the news all across this country was brown folks are out to kill us. that home grown terrorists were coming to America to kill us and our way of life. Thanks to law enforcement that never came to be. We got past it and thrived as a country. Then Donald Trump became President.

White supremacy started to show its ugly face, racism started to become vocal. This is nothing new in this country. it’s always been there. it’s part of our social pattern. But in the past we had leaders who would condemn such behavior. We as a society would treat those people as outsiders.

Thanks to Fox News, [sic] uneducated folks all over this country blame brown folks for their misgivings. 680 jobs just opened up in Mississippi, foster a child while you’re there. It’s not brown or black or Asian people who have led us to where we are at, it’s the people in leadership who have led us to where we are. Corporations pay our politicians and our voices are muted.

Get money out of politics and they have no one to answer to but the very people they were elected to serve. It’s that simple. Push out the special interests out of Washington DC and it’ll become the dust town it was meant to be. Politicians weren’t meant to live in DC. Our system runs on corporate money which sits inside DC and so do our local elected representatives.

Democracy continues to take a backseat to this current administration, the gop does nothing. To be a republican in todays affairs is un-American. You can’t be a racist and be american, you can’t be for kids in cages, and be american, you can’t hate immigration, and be american.

The world waits for the American elections in 2020. So does the majority of its citizens. America longs to be the front for democracy, voting out an angry racist with money would signal to the world, we’re done with con-men.

Can I get people to vote? Can I get a country that represents the people? All the people.