2016 can bite me

You know...this year didn't start out too bad. Husband and I drove to Florida for our 10th (!) anniversary, spending four nights on Sanibel Island and two at (a mind-boggingly crowded) Disney World, where we rung in the new year. 

For the record: yes to Sanibel, any time, even during a hurricane. Disney at the holidays? Fuck no, never again. 

We don't have actual human children, so that means I'm not destroying someone's burgeoning psyche by refusing to put myself through that crushing hell of humanity ever again. 

And from January onward, 2016 rolled along as mostly usual. I traveled to the UK on a work thing, which was cool and fun. And ended the same contract with two of my favorite folks at K-Paul's in NOLA, which I had been dying to go to for years. 

Then, as late June rolled around, I finished up what had basically been four months of non-stop work and before I knew it, it was time for our planned Fourth of July getaway to Michigan.

The week we spent outside Coloma was restful and a nice chance to catch up with old friends.

And then...

Yeah. Couple of things: 1. yes, we're lucky to have survived and 2. I do wish all sorts of ill upon the driver who was probably high and/or on her fucking cell phone when she came barreling directly at us, after crossing a double yellow line, at 60 miles an hour. My belief in karma prevents me from hunting her down and exacting my retribution. (But on the off chance that dummy happens to read this (if you can read, you hillbilly fuck) just know that you'll never again have a moment's peace. Your soul is fucked and I weep for you.)

Fortunately, I was blissfully unconscious for the impact and most of the extraction the first responders had to do to get me out of the car. That's probably a good thing as when you have two open fractures, you really don't want to be actively aware of it.

All I can tell you is the net result for me was: a tibia plateau fracture, a fracture in my femur (which after my initial 6 hour emergency surgery, required another surgery two weeks later to correct the first one), a staph infection from the fractures that required six weeks of not-at-all fun IV antibiotics, a broken humerus in my right arm which stretched my radial nerve, which has severely limited the motor function in my right hand (thank god I can still peck at the keys with one finger on that hand), three broken ribs, a fractured orbital bone below my right eye and a broken front tooth, oddly on the left side.

The hand is the most distressing injury as: I fucking need my right hand. It's my favorite and always has been. Hopefully the nerve will completely heal, returning all or most of my motor function. But the prospect of recovery is loooong—bones heal, nerves take FORever, at the rate of an inch a month. So, while I've gotten back some motor function that the radial controls, it will likely be another 6 months or so until it all returns.

Since late September, I've been spending 3 hours a week going to 'occupational therapy,' which is code for 'bending your wrist and fingers in directions they haven't wanted to go in months.' It's painful and tedious, but there's apparently no other way forward. Likewise with my right knee, which will bend, but only if you drug it up and ask nicely.

And then...

Another car crash. Seriously, I am so fucking angry with Michigan for fucking up my life twice this year, I may never set foot there again.

(And I'm still unclear how a year that starts under warm Florida skies ends in complete carnage.)

So, yeah. That was 2016. It wasn't all terrible, but the sooner it's over, the better. 

We're done now

If you're a carbon-based life form with half a functioning brain stem, then this has been the most dispiriting few weeks, certainly of your year and quite possibly of your adult life.

If not, I'm guessing you're either a Trump voter, delusional third-party candidate voter or somebody who didn't vote because, "they're both bad" or some variation on that sentiment.

And if you're any of those, then move along.

No, really. Go away.

Because it's not my job to educate you or introduce you to widely available facts—particularly that The Orange One is a lying liar—or argue with you or try to change your mind.

And I speak from experience when it comes to living among the 47% of you who not only voted to wallow in your own ignorance, but are angry that the rest of us—the folks who have Hillary winning the popular vote by the third largest margin in U.S. history—have no interest in joining you, worrying about your 'economic anxieties,' er, racism or listening to your ill-informed bullshit.

In the aftermath of this shitstorm of an election, there's no shortage of hand wringing/flagellation/magical thinking about what the direction forward should be for Democrats. (Really Thomas Frank? Joe Biden was the secret all along...I don't think so)

Here's my advice to you: stop it.

Because there is always going to be just enough of a segment in this country that is just stupid enough to respond to dogwhistle racism, casual sexism, blinkered nationalism and cheer on a profound contempt for anything that smacks of being 'intellectual.'

My personal experience with this comes out of growing up in one of the most racially segregated regions in the country—Northwest Indiana. For years, I listened to embittered working class white people bemoan the death of Gary and place all of the blame on 'the blacks.' African Americans who had the temerity to elect the nation's first black mayor of a major city and won the (cue the inchoate horror/protests of whitey back in the day) right to live wherever they chose.

Nevermind the fact that the true unraveling of Gary, as a company town born of US Steel, started when the jobs flowed overseas in the 60s and continued to disappear as automation allowed for high outputs with fewer human hands involved through the 1980s and today.

Nope. The "good"[1] suburban folks who I grew up around in Crown Point, a majority white suburban enclave roughly 15 miles to the south, resolutely stood by their narrative that Gary's downfall was all on African Americans.

This time, aggrieved whitey is in Ohio, West Virginia and they're angry at: Mexicans, the Chinese and, because it never ends in this country, "the blacks." As was the case during my growing up in the 80s, the 'good' folks of in the Rust Belt are still wrong. Blame the loss of manufacturing jobs on automation, not globalization.

And while the fear and loathing about jobs among working class whites in these hollowed out communities may be legit...their expression of rage against the government is wildly misplaced; in the south particularly, its also wildly dishonest: because they get more help from the federal government than other states. 

The truth of the matter is: these people 1. want to be lied to about "morning in America" and long-gone jobs magically coming back and 2. have swallowed the Fox News talking points so whole heartedly, they wouldn't know policies that would actually help them and their situations if they were hit over the head with them.

The correct answer this election is: stupid is as stupid does.

The root of this is that the GOP has, for years, used stupidity as a handy pose to condescendingly appeal to 'common' voters. By doing so, the GOP has emboldened enough of a tribe of know-nothings to now elect someone who really (and arrogantly, dangerously) doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.  

So, congratulations, morons. Enjoy your shit sandwich, which your president will keep insisting is really filet mignon.

[1] See 'the banality of evil.' Even if Hannah Arendt's take on Eichmann was way off, the phrase is useful and quite aptly describes the sort of placidly ignorant beliefs of a distressing number of people in this country.