There's Got to Be a Morning After

The hopeful theme after the disastrous Poseidon Adventure may as well be the them for the day after the next election. I've always been afraid that regression would be the course for America, part of my natural pessimism I am sure. But mostly it is my history with Committed Bullies and their tendency to double down on the hateful rhetoric and follow through with debilitating attacks when they have been admonished that created the fear. The 1960's anti hate movements and the relative success of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcom X was the admonishment of a group of people who's backward thinking and barbaric mistreatment of human beings was not going to be tolerated any longer. The bullies were put in their place. It was only a matter of time before they rallied.

I feel the same toward the success of environmentalists who have tirelessly worked to keep America clean, bright, healthy despite unhealthy business practices. Applauding their victory over the last 40 years but feeling that somehow, this Golden Era of Stewardship would end with the doubling down on the Right of Business to Rape the Planet.

The grumblings of the Business Sector about workers rights, safety, living wages and the rampant consumerism that doesn't allow the natural course of any life to flourish would eventually be loud enough to drown out what is morally right, common to the nature of all men and return the people to a state of serfdom not seen since our ancestors left medieval Europe.

So this Wednesday After the Election I don't know what America I've woken to.

Have I woken to Soviet America in which the Government and Business have fused to come out from the shadows to be the dastardly and open Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned us about? The standard of living will shrink for all classes save the elites of American society while the children of the social elites will thrive under the trappings of prosperity.
The freedoms we have enjoyed will shrink as austere policies of intolerance force, oddly enough, religion on a populace that would like to decide for itself what to believe. Intolerant behavior will become the new norm and freedom of the press will disappear. ; in practice, some are more equal than others. (Those would be the red lines in my new flag.)

Or have I woke up in Putin's America? Which is not so much a Soviet lifestyle of austerity as it is the new Oligarchy.

 The elite children will prance around dripping gold in pompous circumstances like the elite children of Russian wealthy. In communist Russia there should not be any wealthy people. Right? I mean doesn't communism teach that all people are equal? Of course it does, on paper; in practice, some are more equal than others. (Those would be the red lines in my new flag.)
All of the best of anything will be reserved for those who are taught they deserve it by virtue of being born to parents of wealthy and not by virtue of being born. You've seen it here already. A growing movement based on the idea that nature, beauty, comfort and the basics of life belong to those who have the money for it. When in fact it is a right of human birth to be able to enjoy the things that are God given regardless of who your parents are.

But worse than either one of those two choices for a new American life is the one that I fear is the most likely to be true.

I am pretty sure I woke up in Nazi America. With all of the hate mongering that he did to stir up support, if he doesn't follow through and develop the conditions and implementation of pogroms to fulfill his promise that Mexicans and Muslims would be removed from America, then his homegrown, homespun, mass of ignorami will do it for him.

And anyone who would keep a level head, and open hearts to those people who are not at all unlike OUR IMMIGRANT ANCESTORS who came teeming to these shores in the face of war, poverty, and reparations will be summarily rounded up with the targeted groups. And I think it is safe to say that with as much as the Neo Nazi party in America has kept the flame of Antisemitism fanned these last 60+ years, the Jews will go with the Muslims and Mexicans. And then, emboldened by the rampant hate in this election cycle, the Blacks, Gays and a handful of Women are going to find life under this regime to be punitive to say the least.

Though I don't know which of these Americas I live in yet, I am certain of one thing. Now that the gates of stupidity and fear have been opened they are not going to close easily. I don't know that there can be a hopeful theme for this kind of disaster.