I’m taking the day off from the Schwab IRA Transfer and RMD clusterfuck.

 

I can only handle so much frustration in a week’s time, and today isn’t the day. The newest hiccup is I may have to pay a driver to take me to an appointment in San Jose at the US Embassy to get a document notarized, since CR notaries don’t notarize US documents. If there is no way around that, I will have to do it, which will piss me off and cost at least $120 including the round trip drive and the notarization cost ($50 per signature!!!).

 

Yeah, there has to be another way, but I’m not ready to hear there isn’t today, so I’m not going to call to find out until tomorrow after I’ve talked myself down from the ledge again.

 

In Other — MUCH BETTER — News!

 

Another friend has asked me to beta read and/or edit her next novel.  I’ve read her first one, follow her on Facebook,  and know her writing style and attention to nuance and detail, so I anticipate that the manuscript will only need line editing, if that.  I will be looking at part of it today to come up with a decision about what I think it needs, if anything, from me. So, that may become another temporary source of income, which is always a good thing!

 

Walking Works Up a Sweat

 

I got back from my walks yesterday and today sweating some, which is good, because I’m wearing jeans now and because yesterday I wore my new “winter” shirt (heavier than normal) and today I wore a long-sleeved Arctic Cool shirt but didn’t wet it, so it stayed dry and warm.

 

The 600 meters from the soccer field to my home is all uphill, and by the time I get around the soccer field seven times I’m beginning to sweat a wee bit. So, the trip uphill adds to the effort and makes me sweat more.

 

Lots of older folks don’t sweat enough. I never did up north, but down here I do.  That’s healthy, so I love it.  And hopping in the shower afterward always feels great.

 

I walked 8208 steps by 1:15 yesterday

 

…and have walked 10,456 steps so far today (as of 10:25 a.m.). A neoghborhood friend went with me today so we took more laps around the soccer field than I usually do. I’m waaaayyy ahead of the game for today.  I have clothes in the washer right now, so will be taking more steps hanging them up and getting them down after they dry. I may hit 12,000 steps today! That would be cool!

 

A DREAM 

 

Yesterday afternoon when I wnt down for a nap, I dreamed that my sister Jackie was pissed off at me but became less so as she recalled some of the fun stuff we used to do together before she joined the T-Wrecks cult and I began to distance myself out of disgust for her shortsightedness regarding him. (She is completely unaware of his life-long history of scamming and screwing subcontractors  — our dad was a subcontractor, too, so the practice pissed me off especially because of that — and being of fined for illegally refusing to rent his properties to people of color, for example.)

 

In the dream, she wanted to get back to what we had before T-Wrecks groomed her to despise and fear Obama, trans folks, black and brown people, immigrants, et al. I told her I was afraid reconciliation would be impossible until she renounced his cruel, bigoted policies and repented for the malign harm they are inflicting on other marginalized citizens and residents of the U.S., especially given his refusal to release the unredacted Epstein Files and the explosive allegations leveled against him from 13 year old (now adult) victims. I equated him with SATAN, not with Christ, who Jackie also says she loves and reveres.

 

In the Dream

 

… it began to rain and we both ducked into a tent. We were both hurt, feeling unheard and misunderstood. But I just couldn’t ignore and forgive her betrayal of my personal need to feel SAFE, SEEN and PROTECTED by my government and BY MY OWN SISTER. I felt we were at a true crossroads and heading in opposite directions. And I felt indescribably SAD. (Sad but resolved.)

 

Analyzing the Dream

 

It doesn’t take a psychoanalyst to interpret the dream. I feel crushed that my own flesh and blood would choose a twisted, mentally unwell, narcissistic, self-serving tyrant who vilifies people like her own transgender sibling and others. I feel betrayed that she somehow failed to learn empathy for other people’s lived experiences and struggles.

 

But, how can I EXPECT anything more of a person who hated school, rarely read a book that wasn’t assigned to her by someone else (teachers, significant others) about other people’s lived experiences, and lacks empathy and even curiosity about the non-white, non-patriarchal wider world? Wouldn’t I be just like her had I lived within her truncated life experiences? 

 

 

“There but for the grace of God

(education/compassion/discernment/empathy/curiosity)

go I!”

 

Bullied people often become bullies themselves.  Dad was a bully. He  demanded obedience and adherence to his marching orders. For Jackie, that’s still the way the world works: men (no matter how unqualified or malevolent) must be obeyed!

 

So while I pity her, I can’t trust her to have anyone else’s best interests at heart. She’s too busy protecting and defending her own from imagined and greatly feared trespasses. I think it’s fear-based through and through.

 

She doesn’t trust herself enough to figure out the score, so she relies on others to tell her what it is, how to feel about it, and what to do.  And her sources are all lying to her, feeding her paranoid disinformation every time she tunes in.

 

She Resonates to Authoritarianism

 

…because she simply doesn’t trust herself or her education enough to feel in control of her own life. She needs a Daddy figure — a Jack L Smith or a DJT to order her days, to make political decisions and policies, to run everything!

 

She wants someone to take charge and control the world so the bogeymen that T Wrecks has identified don’t knock down her door — the bogeymen being anyone and everyone who doesn’t toe the regime’s line and swallow its bullshit: LGBTQIA+ folks, liberal/progressives, untamed, unbowed, thinking proactive men and women, immigrants, black and brown and native people.

 

She has taken the bait — hook, line and sinker — that a non-white U.S. majority will treat her and her white family the same way that the whites in charge have treated others since this nation was first colonized by European folks.

 

BUT LOOK AT THE NON-WHITE MAJORITIES IN CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA

 

Here, no one is considered “less than” or less worthy or more dispensable based on their race, gender, trade or class. Here, everyone is entitled to — and afforded — dignity and respect, from the president to the sanitation workers and field hands. Everyone holds their heads up here and looks each other in the eye, and most of them smile and look glad to see you, unafraid, unsuspicious. With total strangers!!!

 

The U.S. Powers that Be

 

…are racist, sexist and white male supremacist. Its long and continuing history of native genocide, slavery, and indentured bondage/servitude is proof positive of this assertion.

 

Central and South America’s History is Very Different

 

As conquistadors came ashore south of what became the southern U.S. border, so did Catholic fathers like Father Casas who, from the get go, asserted that what colonizers in the earliest times in the US called “manifest destiny” (including genocide, enslavement, forced conversion to Christianity, and race/nationality bigotry) was dead wrong. For every cruel, colonizing Columbus south of the border, there was a CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR who said, “What you’re doing is WRONG!!!”  (Need proof? Read AMERICA AMERICA A New History of the New World.)

 

So, the AMERICAS possess a split personality.  And things only get worse in Central and South America (and in Canada) whenever the U.S. (in any century to date) inflicts its malign spirit on them.

 

Look at How the World Views the U.S.Right Now

 

The world — especially our former allies — is HORRIFIED that the U.S. has become far, far more malign than it ever has been before. It has opened its insatiable maw and threatened the entire globe with the prospect of mutually assured destruction. The State Department has issued a WORLDWIDE alert to U.S. citizens abroad: shelter in place and prepare to leave on short notice (in the Middle East); follow the U.S. embassies’ suggestions in all other countries of the world — yes, even here in PuraVidaLand!

 

REMEMBER BORING GOVERNMENT?

 

Many of you haven’t been alive long enough to remember when the federal government was boring. Carter, Clinton, and more recently Obama and Biden…

 

Remember when you could wake up and not have the dread of wondering what fresh hell the federal government had unleashed on a growing segment of its citizens and the outside world?

 

I know it has been a while, but do you remember? Remember when the “outrage” of the day was a blow job by a consenting adult intern? When a tan suit consumed BREAKING NEWS  for days?

 

Or, go even farther back… Remember when DEMS and REPUBLICANS used to sit together in the Chamber, instead of on opposite sides of an aisle? When they debated by day and shared dinner and drinks at night? When they had friends with differing viewpoints in Congress, but no real enemies?

 

Then along came Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist and Rush Limbaugh to demonize and vilify  the DEMS and create political wedge issues so they could demonize and vilify people who believed differently than they did about them.  Abortion, immigration, equality, DEI, human rights.  Suddenly progressive politics that leveled the playing field for the marginalized and suffering were deemed “communism,” “socialism” and “Satan-spawned.”

 

Before then, the Oval Office was level-headed and policy wonk centered

 

… not “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats!!!” “FAKE NEWS!!!” “murderers and rapists” (pot calling the kettle black much???), “trans is terrible!!!”etc.

 

What a breath of fresh air to recall the federal government of yesteryear

 

…before Nixon and Reagan. Was it perfect? NO!  But it was at least SANE!  We citizens could go about our business without thinking much about what our BORING federal government was doing, or conspiring to do against us. (I realize I’m writing this from a position of privilege, being a white dude. The federal government has a very mixed history of doing the right/boring thing for marginalized, under-represented Americans, black, brown, indienous and female.)

 

The U.S.Needs to FINALLY Grow the Hell Up or DIE!

 

Let’s put real diplomats and people of good will in positions of power and authority. What we have now is chaos and depravity on an unprecedented scale for everyone who isn’t white, male supremacist and patriarchal.

 

JEEZ! An Afternoon Nap Sprung an Essay!

 

My mind is a miraculous thing. It always finds its way to some kind of workable outcome.

 

That’s the indomitable OPTIMIST in me working to stay alive in spite of current conditions. It’s what kept Anne Frank going. (Her book has been banned. Read it anyway. The Diary of Anne Frank. It’s very instructive at a time like this.)

 

I’m tired of people dying and being harassed just because they don’t align with T-Wreck’s Aryan Nation ideology. DO BETTER, VOTERS!  Someone you know and love is in the current regime’s crosshairs. VOTE TO DEFEND THEM!

 

JOIN A NO KINGS PROTEST THIS COMING SATURDAY IN YOUR AREA. THE DEMOCRACY YOU FIGHT FOR IS YOUR OWN. DON’T LET YOUR NATION’S 250TH ANNIVERSARY THIS YEAR BE ITS LAST AS A DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC!

 

THIS IS ON YOU — ON ALL OF US WHO VOTE (AND DON’T). REGISTER TO VOTE IF YOU AREN’T ALREADY! CHECK TO BE SURE YOU HAVEN’T BEEN PURGED FROM THE VOTERS LIST IF YOU ARE REGISTERED.

 

AND THEN DO IT!

 

I’LL BE VOTING FROM COSTA RICA. I love what the USA can and should be, not what it is.  I’ve seen what decency and respect and care does right here in Costa Rica.

 

YOU CAN DO IT, TOO!  SUMMON THE BETTER ANGELS OF YOUR NATURE AND MAKE IT SO!

 

THE ENTIRE WORLD IS COUNTING ON YOU!