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Many years into this blog project, I think it's finally starting to dawn on me that I've made some basic errors in the foundational premises that are supposed to undergird the entire thing. No matter how much care or good intention I pour into it, I guess I haven't been paying attention enough to notice as the whole thing starts to wibble-wobble as the traffic across it in the form of Current Events and the Indifferent Landslide of History marches the whole enterprise into a resonant catastrophic waveform. The bridge, like this metaphor, can only eventually fall into the chasm it's meant to traverse, betrayed by its own form and weight.

What I thought I was doing was providing a space for some light humor sprinkled over the occasional actual serious thought, a bit of purposefully constructed satire designed to jab at or enlighten aspects of social, cultural or political life in the Immediate America of the Aughts, Teens and now Twenties.* What I'm finding is that at some point in the last 10 years, we have lost our capacity for satire entirely. If you want to see what this looks like, tune into The Daily Show with Trevor Noah at any time. What you'll see is a genial, charismatic, handsome man with a soft South African accent expertly delivering a handful of genial, charismatic and handsome jokes, all of which you will begin to forget before he has finished delivering them. Compare this to the sociocultural weight of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart that preceded it, appointment viewing that both drew and intimidated actual power brokers and policy makers, demanding the attention of the very media outlets it purported to lampoon, undermine and chastise. This isn't the fault of Trevor Noah, a dedicated, accomplished, agile-minded professional. Through no fault of his own, the appetite and patience for sophisticated media satire sublimated into steam the second Trump descended from his black-and-gold tower on that stupid escalator to declare himself a candidate for president.

There's plenty to write or talk about, to say the least. Impeachment is definitely still present and still heavily historically significant. A world war centered around Iran doesn't seem out of the question at the minute. Great giant swaths of the world are literally on fire as a probable consequence of climate change. An American witch kidnapped a British prince and stashed him away somewhere in Canada. Associated with any of this, what does the discourse sound like? A GOP congressman wants us to know that Democrats love terrorists. What the fuck am I supposed to do with that? That's an accelerator pushed all the way to the floor. That's a volcanic island blasted clean of all life by 700 miles per hour of sun-hot pyroclastic flow. What is there to push it to, to build on, to look through? The idea is supposed to be to force the rhetoric to its ridiculous extreme in order to educate, to enlighten, to entertain and (this is the most important) to make the writer seem super smart and clever for having birthed it out of her brain. But the discourse itself is made of the ridiculous, of the extreme, of the most hyperventilatingly purplest prose, there's really nowhere to go.

I think, if nothing else, this is the most important reason everyone should make sure they vote in the upcoming elections, which somehow, even though we've been talking about them since it feels like way before the last one was even over, have somehow snuck up on us to be FINALLY HERE. Yes, the future of the post-Enlightenment project of western democracy is at stake. And OK, there hasn't been a propensity toward authoritarianism and reaction since the late 1920s. But really, we need to think of the satirists. This fucking clown show we've had since 2016, it's making us work way too hard to be cutting, incisive, insightful, effective. The right gives Trump too much credit for making moves and countermoves to nullify the attacks of the left, but I see a blundering blind man stumbling around a cluttered house turning on and off light switches, indifferent to any benefit to himself, but just because they're there. And sometimes he accidentally hits one that blacks out our access to something we need.

Like the ability to sit down and knock one of these goddamned things out in like 45 minutes instead of 2 1/2 hours. You should see how many tabs I have open on this browser just to find something, anything, to give me a few breadcrumbs toward any idea of any relevance. And look, after this whole week, this shit you read is the best you get. Next week you're getting more movie reviews. But I haven't seen anything else lately, so maybe I'll just have to do Star Wars again. I'm exhausted, man.

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*Holy fucking Jesus I just realized I've entered my third calendar decade as an active blogger. Is this an achievement or a surrender? If it's the latter at least I can say it's a committed and prolific one.