What Did I Have to Be Thankful For?

     Thanksgiving was days ago and, to me, it was like any other day. Same with every other holiday. Barb and I used to cook holiday dinners on Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Now that she's dead, every holiday has been drained of its joy and significance.

      But even if she were still alive, hale and healthy and we were living happily together in our old home, it'd still be difficult to see for what we should all be grateful even if I squinted. Being a liberal, I don't wait for things to personally affect me before I start complaining. My heart went out to those who were in danger of losing their SNAP benefits early this month (even though I was affected)  just as my heart goes out to those 20,000,000 who will see their health care premiums get bloated by 200% or 300% because of the rapacious greed of so-called health providers and the Republicans who are in lockstep with them.

     It's difficult to see what there is to be thankful for when our federal judiciary is, at best, semi-functional and is rotten from the top. That would be the same Supreme Court that essentially ruled Trump can do whatever he wants as long as they're "official acts" (while denying Biden his EO modestly forgiving student loan debt).

     It's difficult to see how Trump is making America great again by insulting our allies in the Oval Office while kissing the asses of murderous dictators in that same Oval Office.

     It's difficult to see to what good end it is to have our government fan out across America like something out of an Orwell fever dream and arrest brown people for absolutely nothing and decimating communities.

     And it's difficult to see what there is to be thankful for when this is all being done at the behest of a doddering old pedophile who, even as he's filing lawsuits to prevent people from getting adequate food assistance while he's making literally billions from cryptocurrency schemes and building a $350,000,000 ballroom paid for by the oligarchs in whose service he is.

     While I will never believe for a minute this aging psychopath was legitimately elected in 2016 or last year, I have long since given up on trying to understand the 77,000,000 morons who, just four years after the worst, most ruinous administration ever, decided, "Yes, we want more four more years of this shit."

     This is a bum who said on the campaign trail, "I am your retribution" and called brown people "animals" and "vermin". He openly promised to fire federal employees left and right in the name of rooting out and eradicating "waste, fraud and abuse". Then we heard about his jet-setting FBI Director taking a $60,000,000 jet to see his squeeze sing the national anthem right before a wrestling match and giving her an FBI SWAT team as a security detail. We heard about his DHS secretary living a bloated lifestyle and coercing the Coast Guard to buy her two jets worth a total of $172,000,000.

     Trump is impoverishing America in countless ways but expects us to be thankful for his ballroom that will cost more money than the defense budgets of most countries.

      That's why I bark out a bitter laugh when I read stories virtually every day about MAGA voters, MAGA districts and MAGA states when they whine, "We didn't vote for this!"

     Oh, yes you did, you dumb cunts. As if past isn't prologue. Again, you voted for a disinterested sociopath who let hundreds of thousands of Americans die during the worst pandemic in a century and somehow, against all odds, made his first administration look like FDR's by conspicuous relief.

     Again, he's impoverishing you, denying disaster aid even to red states, is bitterly fighting to prevent you from getting food assistance, refuses to extend ACA subsidies to keep your health insurance premiums from going through the roof and is crippling the government to the point where's barely functioning. Oh. but he'll send you a $2000 check that never seems to come, a payout that will cost the government $600,000,000,000 dollars, add six trillion more to the debt and which even his own administration is saying would be a horrible idea.

     How is none of this blatantly obvious even to the morons on Earth Two?

     So, please, spare me your bleats about how this wasn't what you voted for. He promised to be a dictator on Day One. It's been 344 days and there's no end in sight. His top goons are living the fucking life of Riley while he's costing us millions every week so he can play golf and you're cutting coupons and counting pennies in a vain attempt to counter the raging inflation that's making it impossible for you to feed yourself and your families.

     Spare me. I don't want to hear it.