Things Are Slowing Down. Can You Feel It?

Things are slowing down. You can feel it, can't you? It's almost boring. Almost.

There's less to be upset about, or at least to be upset about as much as we were upset, say, a year ago. Then, we walked around upset as much as we breathed; tense, distracted, and afraid of another four years of lies, nonsense, exaggerations, and bad, racist policy. We tried not to scream and succeeded only because help was coming, or at least we got ourselves to believe that and, thank goodness, it turned out to be true.

The other side continues to demand denial, but the edge is wearing off. Arrests for Jan. 6 continue. People are getting more confident, or annoyed, in their pushback against the lies. Time between the main event and the present day, without proving anything else decisive or in the least way deviant, grinds on, and with it, grinds false claims into sawdust.

Decent government, and the facts, restore order. Chaos keeps pushing. It's finding a wall.

Remember the big deal about Arizona? Where did that go? Now Republicans in Pennsylvania want to try. Fine. Let them. All that energy, and for what? There is no magic, no sudden discovery of treachery. Numbers are numbers. All signed off and tracked properly. Done.

I'm ready for someone to say the word "irregularities." I have three questions:

• To what are you referring? Please answer with verifiable facts;
• Tell me how the 2020 election was soooooo much worse and/ or dishonest than every other election, ever; and
• Tell me how that translates to Joe Biden not being president.

I try not to think about it beyond that. Like you, I'm getting tired of following, and responding to, all of this. We'd like a rest. The other side won't allow it, though. They'll keep pursuing it and attacking an empty fortress and grabbing headlines. It's all a variant on the mentality of attack and victimization: Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head, and now critical race theory.

It's mostly an attempt to create exhaustion. That, and the new voting restrictions that have been ratified by a twisted Supreme Court, might easily turn the country backwards once again. That is, if we decide that when it's time to act, we don't.

But maybe not. Nobody has said that someone can't vote. Some people just want to make it harder to do so. It's vital, like it was in 2020, that we respond to the new restrictions with new determination. There is an end point to all this, and we're approaching it. Meanwhile, we have to ramp up the energy again.

If ideas really do matter, the structural blockades Republicans keep putting up there won't stop them. They really will start to lose to numbers that will be decisive. Wisconsin's gerrymandering is running into a Democratic governor who will intercept it. Stay tuned. In the meantime, patience and persistence are necessary.

We can't change the anger. Most of the time, anger is irrational, anyhow, and the more people stay angry, the more reasons they have to create to do so. Things become more and more absurd. Q-Anon remains viable if only because it's kind of fun to tweak the powers that be with absurdities and the demonize the relatively decent and normal because, well, they aren't decent and normal. At least not anymore.

We can't wait for this tantrum to pass. All we can do is outvote it. To lose connection due to sheer boredom and de-energizing is tempting. It's important that we don't. If we stop paying attention to what's in the news, we'll stop caring what the point is. If we don't go to the trouble, it'll be the sure way to get back into the four years of trouble we've just endured.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark