Social Justice

Laying on the Horn

Lester

As I write this, my spouse is in the hospital. (Nothing currently life-threatening, just severe systemic pain from a common localized infection.) She’s been there pretty much the whole time since three days ago. It seems likely she may get out tomorrow.

I’m holding down the fort, which mainly means keeping our dogs from stressing in her absence.

My biggest problem right now is trying to divert my autistic hyperfocus from being pissed off that, because the hospital didn’t actually admit her as an inpatient, our health insurance won’t pay for the over-the-counter painkillers they’re giving her, and as of yesterday that meant $500+ in debt for Aleve. I’m expecting about $1k by the time she’s out.

It’s infuriating, because we’re helpless under American healthcare. And when I’m furious, my brain fixates on figuring out ways to make someone responsible regret their choices.

(Example: While I was teaching Kate to drive, we came to a complicated two-way stop involving a Wisconsin state highway that makes a right turn into downtown Elkhorn. Kate’s extremely cautious. The guy behind us laid on the horn. I said, “Oh, hell no. Put this car in Park.” And I went back to explain to him, in detail, smiling politely, the facts in those two sentences. After a few minutes, he was begging me to please just go back to our car and leave. I took my own sweet time strolling the distance.)

I’ve been too tired for the past few days to distract myself with work. Here’s hoping for a little relief today, by focusing on Children of the Elder Sign Kickstarter progress.

But, good god, once Jen’s back and settled, several somebody’s are going to discover just how annoying a pissed-off, hyperfocused retiree can be.

Deadly ICE

Lester

I hate making posts like this. But in case you haven’t seen …

Yesterday an ICE agent shot and killed a 37-year-old American mother of three in Minneapolis. A woman named Renee Good. And sadly it must be said—for those tempted to justify this an immigration stop gone wrong—a white woman.

The Administration immediately cast it as a case of self defense.

Then eye witness video came out, revealing the lie.

Fox News blamed the city, the mayor, and the protestors. Anyone but the ICE agent who pulled the trigger, shooting her three times in the head. An agent who then left the scene, contrary to police procedure. Or the three ICE agents who threatened to shoot a volunteer bystander who offered medical aid. So Renee Good bled out in her car, dead by the time an ambulance arrived.

This is intolerable. We can’t afford to normalize anonymous masked agents wielding firearms in our streets. And we can’t afford to lose our outrage from sheer burnout.

Meanwhile, the Administration continues to defy an act of Congress, demanding the rest of the Epstein files. At this point, the only logical assumption is that those files will reveal our President to be a serial pedophile.

Hang tough, friends. We can face this stuff head on while also reserving some time and space for mental health. In that vein, I’m promising myself and you that my next post will be about anything but the news.

With love,

Les

Stairway or Highway to Where?

Lester
Pilar Romero Meza, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Last night on YouTube I listened to an operatic singer and teacher reacting to her first hearing of the Led Zeppelin song “Stairway to Heaven.” As a singer, she focused mostly on Robert Plant’s performance, of course. The emotion of it, conveyed by his masterful technique. (The sheer length of time he could hold a note without breathing!) But she also had much to say about the beauty of the song’s overall composition, its slow build from a restrained wistfulness to an eventual crescendo of wild energy.

And the power of the drums. Which don’t enter the song until about minute four of its full eight minutes. I hadn’t realized what a legend John Bonham is among drummers. His inventiveness and performance in this song prove why.

Last night I heard “Stairway to Heaven” for the umpteenth time in my life, but this time with a deeper appreciation for the creativity and expertises threaded all through it. This time I was pretty much awestruck, misty eyed even, at the sheer creative beauty accomplished by these four human beings.

Last night I went to bed feeling better about the world.

This morning I woke to the news that my nation had performed a wide-scale military strike on Venezuela, blown up parts of Caracas, and captured their President and First Lady. That we’ll be “running their country” for the foreseeable future. A land and resource grab under the pretense of a drug war. Or smoke and mirrors to hide the Epstein files.

So much for my feeling better about the world. Today I’m once again heartbroken, frustrated, and angry.

I find myself perpetually confused that the human race can contain at the same time people of such creativity, and those of such destruction. How we continually put into positions of power people who add nothing to human accomplishment, but whose only skills are hoarding, destroying, and propagating the myth that they’re the cream of the crop.

These words don’t express the depth of my dejection right now.

There are old friends and family members whom I’ll never again be able to look at in the same light. Whose innermost hearts have been revealed, and I’ll never again be able to give them my trust.

Many of them are Evangelical Christians. Some of them even pastors. But their religion has proven itself a servant to their politics, and their reading of holy texts a servant of that debased religion. To paraphrase the Hebrews 11:1 of my youth, “Now faith is the [rationalization] of things hoped for, the [pretense] of things not seen.”

I’ve never been able to wrap my head around the fact that some people are so full of goodwill and creation, and others so tightfisted and destructive. How desperately ignorance protects itself from enlightenment. How tradition, the peer pressure of the dead, is so often used to excuse hatefulness toward the outsider.

At times like these, I wonder what’s the point of existence. If we aren’t here to help one another—everyone another—then why bother.

I suppose because of “Stairway to Heaven”s. At least until the last copy of that masterpiece is buried in the rubble of war, along with so much other art, as sacrifices to the merchant princes who would be gods.

60 Minute Blink

Lester

Here we are, in Project 2025 America, sharing a bootleg Canadian screen capture of a “60 Minutes” documentary about US deportations to CECOT, which CBS cancelled at the last minute, to placate our Dear Leader.