I Am Surrounded By Weirdos
Jan. 20th, 2021 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousme Peggy has decided to try to dig furiously in her crate, for reasons best understood by her. As long as she's not trying to chew or rip apart her bed I don't mind, but it's weird. Dig-dig-dig. Scrabble-scrabble-scrabble. I love my weirdo dog. The cats are also weirdos, but right now she is being the queen of weirdos in this household.
I watched Joe Biden's inauguration in bits and bursts throughout the day. It's really hard to watch an inauguration *and* take part in video conference calls, turns out. Who knew? XD It was a nice change from the last inauguration, but didn't feel particularly different to me from most other "normal" inaugurations I've seen, apart from the fact that there was no crowd (pandemie oblige and all that). I caught Garth Brooks singing part of Amazing Grace, but unfortunately missed the poem read by Amanda Gorman, 'The Hill We Climb,' which apparently was extraordinary. I heard most of Biden's speech, and I teared up a little bit only because it felt like such a relief to hear a normal speech, you know? I am sad I didn't get to see either Biden or Harris get sworn in, but my work day kind of swallowed me whole after that.
I am not actually super optimistic about our immediate future, either here in Canada or in the USA. Voters have very short memories, and the 'honeymoon period' of this new administration is going to be very, very short. If it lasts the entire first 100 days, I will be pleasantly surprised. The thing is, right now, everything sucks and is likely going to continue to suck because the hole is so damned deep. The economy isn't going to miraculously rebound, the pandemic is going to continue to ravage the country, and there are still a shit ton of honest-to-goodness Nazis and fascists in positions of power.
I worry that when "Uncle Joe" doesn't pull a miracle out of his ass, voters will turn against him, and in four years we'll be staring down the barrel of another worse right-wing extremist President. Worse because they will have learned from this experience, and they will pick someone less erratic, perhaps more charismatic, and they will know exactly how to manipulate people and the media because they saw what worked for years. They will shamelessly gerrymander, suppress votes, fuck around with the system in general, and cheat their way into a dictatorship, and a significant enough percentage of voters will be so "disillusioned" that Biden didn't "save" them that they will cast their votes in favour of it.
It might not happen. I just worry, is all.
This is my worry about our neighbours, but I worry a lot more about us, not going to lie. We've seen a huge surge of right-wing extremism here. Canada has always had a racism problem, but the MAGA/Trump supporters in the USA emboldened them. The current leader of the Conservative Party actually ran for leadership on the slogan "Take Canada Back." Like, take it back from whom, exactly? Pretty sure he didn't mean he was planning on restoring land to its indigenous people (just a hunch).
My provincial government is doing its best to emulate the USA's dystopian nightmare, within the confines of our more robust social support system. They've eliminated the requirement for paid sick days (in the middle of a pandemic in which they have declared a lock down and are telling people to stay home, which totes makes sense), and up until early 2020 were slashing spending in education and healthcare like it was going out of style. And now they are all shocked!Pikachu that the system is crumbling under the pressure of a global pandemic. They keep making speeches assuring us that they care deeply and are committed to taking care of their citizens, while literally doing the opposite.
People praised the premier (Doug Ford) in April for making the "tough choices" of locking down and requiring social distancing and implementing testing sites, but as someone else said that's like praising the arsonist for not parking his SUV directly in the path of the fire trucks as they try to control the blaze.
I don't know. Politics have not given me a lot of reasons to hope lately. I'm doing what I can (working with local activists, voting in all the elections, etc.), and for the rest I'm just hunkering down and trying to ride it out.
It's been a bit of a long day (albeit productive!), so I am going to leave this here. Perhaps tomorrow I will find something to talk about that isn't work or politics!
I watched Joe Biden's inauguration in bits and bursts throughout the day. It's really hard to watch an inauguration *and* take part in video conference calls, turns out. Who knew? XD It was a nice change from the last inauguration, but didn't feel particularly different to me from most other "normal" inaugurations I've seen, apart from the fact that there was no crowd (pandemie oblige and all that). I caught Garth Brooks singing part of Amazing Grace, but unfortunately missed the poem read by Amanda Gorman, 'The Hill We Climb,' which apparently was extraordinary. I heard most of Biden's speech, and I teared up a little bit only because it felt like such a relief to hear a normal speech, you know? I am sad I didn't get to see either Biden or Harris get sworn in, but my work day kind of swallowed me whole after that.
I am not actually super optimistic about our immediate future, either here in Canada or in the USA. Voters have very short memories, and the 'honeymoon period' of this new administration is going to be very, very short. If it lasts the entire first 100 days, I will be pleasantly surprised. The thing is, right now, everything sucks and is likely going to continue to suck because the hole is so damned deep. The economy isn't going to miraculously rebound, the pandemic is going to continue to ravage the country, and there are still a shit ton of honest-to-goodness Nazis and fascists in positions of power.
I worry that when "Uncle Joe" doesn't pull a miracle out of his ass, voters will turn against him, and in four years we'll be staring down the barrel of another worse right-wing extremist President. Worse because they will have learned from this experience, and they will pick someone less erratic, perhaps more charismatic, and they will know exactly how to manipulate people and the media because they saw what worked for years. They will shamelessly gerrymander, suppress votes, fuck around with the system in general, and cheat their way into a dictatorship, and a significant enough percentage of voters will be so "disillusioned" that Biden didn't "save" them that they will cast their votes in favour of it.
It might not happen. I just worry, is all.
This is my worry about our neighbours, but I worry a lot more about us, not going to lie. We've seen a huge surge of right-wing extremism here. Canada has always had a racism problem, but the MAGA/Trump supporters in the USA emboldened them. The current leader of the Conservative Party actually ran for leadership on the slogan "Take Canada Back." Like, take it back from whom, exactly? Pretty sure he didn't mean he was planning on restoring land to its indigenous people (just a hunch).
My provincial government is doing its best to emulate the USA's dystopian nightmare, within the confines of our more robust social support system. They've eliminated the requirement for paid sick days (in the middle of a pandemic in which they have declared a lock down and are telling people to stay home, which totes makes sense), and up until early 2020 were slashing spending in education and healthcare like it was going out of style. And now they are all shocked!Pikachu that the system is crumbling under the pressure of a global pandemic. They keep making speeches assuring us that they care deeply and are committed to taking care of their citizens, while literally doing the opposite.
People praised the premier (Doug Ford) in April for making the "tough choices" of locking down and requiring social distancing and implementing testing sites, but as someone else said that's like praising the arsonist for not parking his SUV directly in the path of the fire trucks as they try to control the blaze.
I don't know. Politics have not given me a lot of reasons to hope lately. I'm doing what I can (working with local activists, voting in all the elections, etc.), and for the rest I'm just hunkering down and trying to ride it out.
It's been a bit of a long day (albeit productive!), so I am going to leave this here. Perhaps tomorrow I will find something to talk about that isn't work or politics!
