O, Cataracts! My Cataracts!

O, cataracts, my cataracts! your annoying state is done,

My floaters are about to go. Phantom fruit flies are no fun!

Apologies to Walt Whitman, another Long Islander.  

But that's kinda how I feel as I type this. I am really tired of the floaters. I keep thinking they're fruit flies. Then again, I was convinced I was having floaters the other day when Little Miss told me there was an icky fruit fly on my phone. I killed it with great relish because it wasn't a floater. By the time most of you read this, eye #1 will be done. The Junior Son will be shmoo-herding me for this adventure. I spent most of the day cooking...he should have food if he's trapped in the house with me for the afternoon. It's the least I can do. The Senior Son will come in to handle eye #2 in two weeks. But he'll be staying with me for a few days which actually makes me look forward to it. Everyone assures me this is no big deal, but I still need to be supervised after anesthesia. What I am really anxiously anticipating is being able to see more clearly than I am now. Distance is fine, but I have not put needle to cloth nor hook to yarn in almost a year and I miss having busy fingers. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I read the dumbest thing ever in The Forward. It was an article about how the Bernie memes were viewed by some as sexist. Really? 

Others complained that Bernie was stealing attention on a day that should have been about Kamala Harris, the historic occasion of a woman of color sworn in to the vice presidency. Comments complained that his lack of attention to his dress was disrespectful, or saw in his sullen look the sign of a bad sport who was still angry to have lost the Democratic nomination to Biden. How like a man not to feel pressure to smile at a historic occasion (not that you can see Bernie’s mouth under his surgical mask).

Give me a frickin' break. Of course, I had to leave a comment:

The Wifely Person • 4 hours ago

Oh, puh-leeze..I am a dyed-in-the-wool feminist. I am over the moon about Kamala Harris's election. I celebrate the radiant brilliance of Amanda Gorman. And I laugh at the Bernie memes. In truth, they are just what we needed: our momentary Everyman in Everyplace. Assigning some kind of deep, secret social statement to the Bernie memes means the humorless destroyers of America have won. If we are unable to laugh at ourselves, all the elections in the world won't make a difference.

After four years of terror and hate masquerading as humor, the Bernie memes are a momentary antidote. And Bernie laughed _with_ us....as his team raised millions for social welfare programs in Vermont. Good for them!

Can we back off the political correctness for a moment and just laugh? There are seriously scary people out there, but Bernie sitting on a chair is not one of them.

But during that refreshing moment of jocularity, there were really scary things happening in the background again. Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director, was on NBC and said the following:

"This is what I call the mainstreaming of madness. This is radicalization in broad daylight... To think that the images of U.S. members of Congress are now on those connected dots charts inside some office at FBI headquarters is unbelievable"- 

Listen to the Figliuzzi talk.  This is scary stuff and it's in plain sight. 

Which brings me to another set of thoughts: what is a patriot. 

Look, Marjorie Taylor Greene is batshit crazy.  This is fairly well established by virtue of her own lunatic ravings. However....and isn't there always a however...her constituency knew exactly who they were sending to Washington. And that means there are enough people who believe in the same batshit crazy stuff she does. Then she tweets something like this:

Marjorie Taylor Greene 

@mtgreenee

·

1h

The real cancer for the Republican Party is weak Republicans who only know how to lose gracefully. This is why we are losing our country.

And I find myself wondering if I thought the same thing 4 years ago when Hillary lost. She won the popular vote by a wide margin, but did we just concede without asking the right questions? I don't think that was a batshit crazy idea then. 

If I believed the election was somehow fraudulent, would I have gone to the mattresses to fight for what I believed was right? Hell, the Bush-Gore election went to the Supreme Court. What would have happened had this one inched its way into SCOTUS? (No, I'm not talking about the bull-oney factor with this one versus the debacle of 2000.) But I am wondering did I sound as crazy as some of these people? 

I don't think so, and I don't think there was the same level of vitriol as we have experienced over the course of 4 years. And I suspect there is a great deal of truth in what I said about humor. We've had 4 years of hateful, mocking, bombastic statements that were supposed to be passed off as humor, but only demonstrated how deep the hatred of the other was. And when we finally do laugh at the gentle humor of an old guy on a schmuck bench with mittens, we are almost afraid to laugh at ourselves, lest we demonstrate we are not upright and dedicated to our cause. More like uptight, than upright, but who's counting?

Friday night, Bill Maher did a brilliant NEW RULES piece. He created The Baldy Award for hard working, boring politicians. The sculptured head and first recipient was former Congressman Henry Waxman of California, and guy that tirelessly labored to write legislation for the benefit of We, the People. He was never a glory guy, he was a trench worker, without whom many programs and laws would not exist. This is a guy who kept his head down and his eyes focused on the needs of We, the People. Like the patriots in that hot, sweaty Philadelphia meeting room in 1776, he had a job to do and he got it done. 

Surely, there is a line in the sand that demarcates the separation between insurrection and patriotism? But who gets to define which is which? I'm not sure.

Wait a minute: Like the patriots in that hot, sweaty Philadelphia meeting room in 1776.....those guys were a bunch of old white guys who owned slaves and treated their wives abysmally. How can we possibly hold them up as examples of goodness, truth, and the American way? They were defying King George! They were preaching insurrection and promulgating revolt and revolution! What puts them on the side of right when what they were doing was so wrong? Would I have gone with them? I don't know. 

We, the People, stand at the edge of a precipice. We can all go over the edge like lemmings following a leader, or we can stand firm. But what are we standing firm for? 

I used to think there were absolutes. I don't think that any more. I look at MAGA people and wonder if they really, sincerely believe they are patriots? As much as I would like Majorie Taylor Green to disappear, expelling her from the chamber makes her a martyr to the cause. Censure her, for sure, but don't give her more ammunition. Target that district and get her voted off the island in two years. 

In the olden, golden days, we used to know right from wrong, but it's not so clear now. America at its best is advanced citizenship. The batshit people get to have an opinion, and the rest of us need to work really hard to prove it is a batshit opinion. Facts do matter. Alternate facts must be disproved unequivocally. You don't get to make up your own facts. You don't get to broadcast hate-filled conspiracy theories made up in the basement by some guy out for a manipulative laugh. If you want to be part of the government, you have to be fact-based. Although it does not really explain how Marjorie got elected, and therein lies the really scary stuff. 

We, the People, need boring. We need politicians that care about the outcome for their constituents, not the outcome of their war chest. We need the Henry Waxmans of this world to concentrate on the greater good. Just as we should be concentrating on the greater good.

And right now, the greater good means shutting this thing off and getting ready for tomorrow. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

SEE you all better next week!