This is Christmas?

I'm in a weird place this holiday season. On the one hand, literal celebrity death watch with a mega prayer hedge for Carrie Fisher after a year of deaths of childhood heroes and icons. On the other hand, watching the seconds tick away on the Doomsdays clock as HWSNBNII spouts nonsense about using the nukes we have because... well what else do we have them for. The complete consolidation of American wealth, hard work and progress is now controlled by the most diabolically self-centered elitists. And the citizens are divided, locked in an eternal dogmatic battle that can not be touched by logic or reason.

My head has John Lennon's "So this is Christmas" in a constant loop in my head. The things that I see, hear, and experience make me think that the decline of American civility and the rise of the alt-right began with his death. The world changed that day. I was so little when it happened. I saw people fall into a heap and sob when the news broke. My mom said it was just like the day Kennedy died. I didn't know what that meant then. I only know that the feeling of "error" came over me, an error that can not be corrected.

That error had ramifications that would not and could not be easily identified. But I think that we are seeing the effects now. Kennedy's death was the first knell. It changed the way the government works. Lennon changed the way the world thought and felt. Without the consistency of his influence, peace and compassion began to lose ground. Hate and fear gained at a faster rate than peace ever had. I knew his life was important then. I knew that the very atmosphere was different. There was a huge shift in how I perceived life. I just had no idea how it all would work out.

I've felt several shifts since then, smaller ones until the larger 9/11. We need his songs and his heart more than ever, but he is gone. And there is no one to replace him. So there is very little that stems the tide of hate. The collective consciousness is damaged without the constant influence he had. I can't help but feel doom. The light is dying here.

I'm not sure I feel very much like Christmas is anything more than just a handful of rituals meant to appease the nature of man.