Part of the problem of shifting to my New Right Now is that my schedule is all un-scheduled. At my last job, I was working until 2:30, driving my half hour home, picking up a nice coffee on the way, then sitting down to peck away at this at my leisurely, meandering pace from about 3:15 in the afternoon of a Thursday until, basically, [sideway-eight-symbol] o'clock. Not only was it stress-free, but it also meant I had all the time in the known universe to do with my writing what guitar players call noodling, just futzing about with the shapes and patterns I know to no meaningful end, seeing if I stumble across something that pleases my ear. And that's an important distinction: it pleases my ear specifically. Listening to someone else endlessly noodling is to endure a whanging aural cascade of self-indulgence. It's like masturbation in that the rules really change once you have a roommate.
And I do have a roommate these days, or rather a wife who also lives here. She's not the issue (or an issue of any kind. Yes, I'm a newlywed, roll your eyes all you want) though, it's just that I haven't been afforded a rhythm or structure to my days, which means I don't have the luxurious blocks of downy, floofy free time to loll about in on a normal Thursday. It's not that I can't find the time to write on the days when I normally would--look, I'm doing it right now!--it's just that I lack the space on either end of the actual typing bit to form, stretch out or toy with thoughts and phrases and linking ideas that turn blocks of texts into pieces. I don't pretend to be a professional (those fuckers charge), but I try to have standards, even if they tend to shift literally keystroke to keystroke.
Today I'm absolutely feeling pressured as I really think a massive political realignment such as we all experienced just two days ago in America deserves a lot of thought and space to contextualize and metabolize. And mostly I mean to clown on Blue-ass Texas, the state that has been content to feed their citizens into the woodchipper of weather catastrophes and gun violence all in the name of not having a state income tax for the better part of two generations now.
I want to spend more time really thinking about how Republicans thought they could get away with fielding candidates that were, as far as I could tell, deliberately chosen for either their lack of ability or because they were the absolute worst fucking people available. In so many cases they might have had more viable or competitive people running, but the president instead handed them a burlap sack full of toads and said "here, run these." That's how you get Vivek Ramaswamy. That's how you get Ken Paxton.
Ken Paxton was really kind of it for me. That was the litmus test of how far down we were willing to go as a country. Like a lot of people of my political persuasion, I had long ago reached the point where faith in my fellow man in general or my country in particular were no longer serious considerations. Those were the ideologies of a youth misspent on delusion, a character arc of self-deception destined for a messy disabuse about half way through the series run. Like Breaking Bad if Walter White starting taking meth himself around season four.
Vivek Ramaswamy showed himself to be a vile, amoral monster with no visible compassion, charisma or grace, but that's kind of normie shit these days, especially amongst candidates for higher office. Ken Paxton was just... I mean, he's a fucking cartoon of corruption. His only notable character traits are all specifically things that would get candidates disqualified before, like, 2012. Cheating, thieving, lying, corrupt, adulter-ing, but also with all the charm of a half gallon of goat's blood. Not the fresh kind either, one that's been laying around in the sun for a bit. I know the normal thing to expect is Ah Yes, Another New Low For Us As A People since Trump started running for shit, but it really felt like the last straw. Like if Texas was going to elect this fucking guy to ANOTHER something, a federal one not contained inside those stupid borders, just because he's got the R next to his name, when James Talarico was the squeakiest, cleanest, most effortlessly spotlessly goodest boy there ever was, and incidentally with the shark-like political instincts to turn those qualities into advantages at every opportunity, then there was no hope for that state and the state of affairs in this country had no hope of recovery for at least a whole nother generation. We were going to be locked in to Trumpworld as a status quo, the Bucket Of Old Goat Blood Nation, until my grandkids were voters. Grandkids, I would like to point out, who do not yet exist even in prospect.
Instead we all got to sigh some relief, cry a little, laugh a little. OK, laugh a lot, when the shit-weasels got shitcanned and Donald Trump became the lamest duck since the invention of lameness. You have to think that the deepest sighs of relief came from Republicans now released from what they though was the gravity of a Trumpian black hole pulling them all into warping, stretching, noodling nothing, with no stars to navigate by visible beyond the hungry and all-obscuring event horizon. And that's great for them I guess. And we can do real thinking and empathy later. For now, though, in the limited time I have to think about it, every one of them can get fucked. Over here, we're dancing.
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