Waking Dreams

The nights aren't for rest. I settle in watching independant news. I do this to be informed of the coming dread. I do this for the company of others who can see it coming. This dread begs to be shared. It is the slow-mo car wreck that is difficult to look away from. Half the country is gaslit in their rose-colored glasses. I worry. I can see the monsters that lurk in the shadows thrown by the sodium light.

The incoming administration is assembling its cabinet, a grim parade of loyalists ready to destroy and loot the very offices they’re meant to protect.

Independent outlets whisper warnings of a clown show, but the laughter is thin and cold. These aren’t jesters; they’re architects of destruction. They come with their hammers poised to shatter the structures that have shielded people like me—us "small folk"—from the storms. Safety nets are fraying, soon to be unraveled entirely, their threads repurposed to line the coffers of billionaires.

By day, I turn over plans in my head. Ways to protect what little I have. Currency devaluation. Savings. Stability. Cro dismisses my fears, and his calm is an anchor I both rebuke and cling to. He tells me it’ll be like 2016 all over again—bad, but survivable. He doesn’t see the dismantled guardrails, the missing sentenals, the way the country is slipping into the FAFO zone.

There’s talk, too, of resistance. Of standing firm. “Never comply in advance,” they say. Compliance is a teacher, and the Dear Leader—whichever face he wears—learns quickly. But resistance feels like a wall of sticks against the huffing and puffing of fairytale wolves.

The current president holds his seat a little longer. Until January 20th, I think. Time enough to offer pardons—blanket ones like that he gave to his son, Pardons for those who dared to defy the incoming regime. A bulwork for judges, journalists, and the voices of dissent in hopes that they will shore up our way of life. Independant journalists no longer just whisper urgings of "Do it Joe!" His lame-duck rule ends soon. I know he is a traditional 'rule of law' guy. Pardoning those who are on the upcoming regime's perceived enemies list may be a step too far from his buttoned-up sense of what is proper. Saving democracy has to be a better legacy than playing nice and hoping they will too. Do it Joe!!

The election—rumors of foreign hands, misguided domestic hands, satellites and billionaires, oh my! Some dream of investigations, of a last-minute revelation that keeps the fascists from the throne.

Dreams can be treacherous. Democracy, they say, is for the people and by the people ... if we can keep ahold of it.

Morning will come, eventually. Whether it will bring sun or four years (ONLY FOUR WE HOPE) of raging fires remains to be seen.

To lighten my spirits, I turn to the internet for a different kind of indulgence—cat videos, fainting goats, dogs doing absurd tricks, and the endless parade of people slipping on ice or tripping over their own feet. Laughter—even in the dark—is welcome.