Ed. Note: A myriad of reasons why I’ve been quiet here since I last posted, most of them boring, so I won’t go into details. The world has changed dramatically, however, since the the U.S. presidential election this past November, and I need somewhere to kick around thoughts more complex than social media readily accommodates.

Tragically, we are now through the looking glass. Our democracy is now firmly in our rear view mirror. We the People, doubtlessly hopped up on the propaganda pumped 24/7 through the right wing infosphere (the new “mainstream media”), decided to reelect the Insurrectionist-in-Chief, a nearly inexplicable decision to those who still believe in things like science, rational thought, and objective-reality-based knowledge, not to mention fundamental decency, good will towards all, and the whole slate of notions and ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

So that happened. Now the nation finds itself in an early-stage modern authoritarian state (Day 4, to be exact). Though I still believe that many who voted for Trump had no idea they were turning their backs on every principle this formerly democratic republic was founded on, that matters little to our present circumstances.

To ease back into the swing of things, I offer this short essay, first drafted (but unpublished) in 2017, a few months into the first Trump administration. — A.West, Jan. 24, 2025

—May 14, 2017—

Ach. The rollercoaster of emotions. The breakneck speeds some days. Sometimes a slender 24 hours passes between apex and nadir, between a heady jubilant optimism (leaping at the first glimmer of possibility) and a rapid plummet to the depths ·(watching the glowing tendril of hope get crushed again under boot). Despair washes over like an inky black sea until I slip beneath the surface to drift, limbs akimbo.

Eventually, the screaming demands for oxygen lurches limbs into action. Thrashing wildly, I again break the surface casting about for a plank in the wreckage to cling to and something, anything that might carry my fading hopes to shore.

Get up and make coffee. Start the day. F**k. Out of coffee. Early morning run down to the market. Summer is around the corner, berries are coming into season. Outwardly, everything seems much the same. Making my way through the checkout line, quite literally everything everything seems perfectly normal. This is how it is.

I unload my items, greet the cashier in that absent way, knowing in that nibble-at-the corners-of-consciousness way that she doesn’t give a damn about me and my K-Pods and berries. Flash a polite smile anyway because we’re not goddamn savages—not yet—and that one simple gesture acknowledges our shared human experience, however briefly before we each drift back into our private reveries. Fiddle with the new chip reader, momentarily forgetting and sliding my card until an alert rudely beeps a reminder: Please insert card.

That, ho-hum, same-as-it-ever-was feeling? That’s an illusion. Another day in a Southern California paradise? An illusion, though a good one, admittedly.

I’m struck suddenly, incongruently, that the bedrock of this Southern California Sunshine Paradise is liberal democracy. Hmm. I never noticed that part before. Without democracy, though, today is just another sunny day. They have those in Uzbekistan, too.