2023-12-27

I have a lot of joy and hope in my heart. But it's conflicted, and I have to fight to keep those feelings on top. This post is a jumble of a lot of thoughts that have been banging around in my head. It probably doesn't make sense. It probably isn't fun to read. But by jove I needed to get it off my chest. So here it is.

The good

The holiday was good, indeed one of the best I've had in years. I cherish the memories. And for everybody who struggles with the season, or went without, I hope you find peace and balance somehow else. I'd give you a slice of my peace if I could, but obviously metaphysics isn't pizza.

I was out at a local shopping center today, and it felt like the world was healing a little bit. Kids were running around and playing; shops were open and actively selling things; most of the storefronts were cleaned up; the concourse of different restaurants had people milling around, sitting, chatting and laughing. After the veritable nightmare we've been through it does seem somewhat to be on the up and up. For that, I'm grateful.

The bad

It's not all eggnog and bacon though. There is a darkness brewing. I can feel it in my bones. I can feel it weighing over my shoulders and my heart. I can't explain it beyond that in datively driven, quantifiable ways that would actually make sense to people. But I'll try anyway.

I just feel like next year there will be a lot of unrest, and conflict, and anger, at home and abroad. The US loves to export its politics. Trust me, it's no fun living there either, in that regard. I worry if people start acting rashly. I wish nothing more than to hide away from it and leave it be. I am no politician, no activist, no warrior. I just want to live my peaceful life and help others build theirs.

The uncivil

But this rising sick feeling in my gut tells me that I might not afford that luxury the whole time. It fills me with a deep sense of unease that people would be so firm, so angry, so direct in their convictions that fighting their own people over disagreements could ever even enter the zeitgeist of citizens beyond cultists and criminals.

It's as if a small portion, yet way too large for taste, of people here are almost eager for some kind of civil conflict to come from the goings-on of the election cycle next year. They _want_ to fight. It's utterly alien to me.

Allow me to remind you: we did this already! The bloodiest days of conflict in our entire history, the most American blood spilt over a single battle, were the days of battles like Antietam and Gettysburg - not the Bulge, not Pearl Harbor, not Fallujah, not Da Nang, not D-Day. Our bloodiest days were fought against ourselves. Fathers, sons, brothers, going against each other with shot and bayonet, over the abstracted (and more complex than your history class was willing to tell you) machinations of two very different regions of a really big country and continent.

It feels like the horrors of those days have been so thoroughly lost and decontextualized after a century and a half that certain factions among us are starting to think it's the good way to solve problems again. That's a failure of our education system, that's a failure of our parents, that's a failure of our institutions and our culture, that we have forgotten the horrors visited upon our own nation by our own hands.

The hopeful

It is my hope, my heart's desire, my prayer, that somehow we come out of 2024 even-handed and without incident. Somehow, someway, I hope we find some way to bridge the gaps between our rapidly fracturing and factioning populace, and remember what really matters, what really must be done, to keep our lands and our freedoms intact.

The bad again

The wolves are circling, and the wolves are watching. The world waits with bated breath for how next year turns out. If you don't believe that people inside and outside the country aren't going to capitalize on all the fuss, I'm going to kindly recommend that you review what's gone on with certifiable election meddling, misinformation, and foreign influence being exerted over both the election, the electors, the common people, both in season and out. And then multiply that by every foreign interest and the several conflicts across the pond that we have stakes in. This is _not_ the kind of time or place where weakening our resolve by fighting amongst ourselves is at all helpful, for us or anybody else.

These little things, the happy moments in my own local community, I am grateful for. They anchor me, and help me weigh down these fears while buoying up the good moments in life.

Every day, it comes across my mind that I've got a nonzero fear, a small but undeniable admission, that these beautiful moments might be jeopardized. Jeopardized by people who don't know their neighbors or their history. Infringed upon by people placing their temporary and pointless greed and gain over the basic needs of others. Interdicted by people half a world away, holding grudges earned or not, against a flag and a polity that has wronged them somehow, paying no mind to the vast throngs of souls standing behind it by birth and happenstance, whose biggest differences from them might well be just a mother language and a passport stamp.

Cling to your peace. Help your people, your nation, your country, maintain it. Or you might wind up like me and so many others, who can sit and ask themselves today, without joking, whether or not within their lifetime they'll see that peace called into question, with all the chaos, fear, and blood that might entail. Even as people in multiple countries already see that chaos, fear, and blood play out every day for actions they didn't commit or approve of by default, due to military action they probably weren't involved in or consulted on.

The being wrong

I say it to myself every day. "May I be completely incorrect on this." I would love nothing more than to be woefully, completely, comedically wrong about everything I just said. I would love nothing more than to read the news one day and say "everything's gone off without a hitch, mostly; and now we're okay. Tune in again at 6 for a killer tuna fish sandwich recipe; the election was literally that boring."

I hate that I can't trust myself to be, enough to relax about it.

Stay safe out there. Prepare a way and means to keep yourself fed, warm, safe, and perhaps mobile over the next few months. May you never need it, may this talking idiot head on the internet be completely wrong. But if you do, may you have it in store and prepared already befitting your needs.

Until next time,

wholesomedonut(at)ctrl-c(dot)club