3:00 am thinking...
Things catch up with me, yanno?
I do what I can, from day to day. Try to find ways to bear light, to oppose the darkness. Keep reminding myself that I can't fix the whole damn' world.
Most days I can find something to be grateful for. The weather. Fresh peaches ripening on my trees. A cheerful phone call from my elderly mother. Snuggles from the Feline Overlord. A bit of news, here and there, of people doing the right thing, the human thing, the loving thing.
Mostly, it's enough.
But lately, just the last few days, I wake in the darkest hours of the night, and I stare out into the shadows of the bedroom, and watch the black branches toss against the charcoal background of the window, and the shadows are full of unanswered questions.
And the biggest question is:
How are we going to make this right again?
Americans, neighbors, people living among us, are committing crimes against humanity.
Americans, neighbors, people living among us, are tearing apart families, locking up children, putting people in concentration camps.
Americans, neighbors, people living among us, are gathering in smug secret little social media gatherings to dehumanize people, to promote bullying and cruelty and cowardice.
Of course, most of them are "just following orders".
And I shiver in the darkness.
Those are words full of deadly weight.
How will we ever make this right?
Even if- in the unlikely event that we hold the "leaders" accountable in some way- (briefly, I fantasize seeing Stephen Miller's dead-eyed face in the dock, waiting for a judge to pronounce sentence... briefly, I fantasize the confiscation of ill-gotten fortunes and the funding of thousands of libraries and day care centers and free clinics...) -what will we do with the not-leaders?
The ones following orders. The ones "enforcing the law". The ones who righteously believe it was perfectly okay to treat human beings like trash, like a disease. In the service of their own faith in the rule of a law that privileges them as somehow right to do so.
At 3:00 am I wonder how it was in some small, quiet German city in 1948. Did neighbors look at one another with unspoken doubts? "Was that you guarding the platform to make sure none of the people being loaded in the boxcars escaped?"
How does America heal from this?
At 3:00 am, I cannot imagine.
And in the sunlight of 3:00 pm, I cannot imagine, either.
Things I considered undeniable truths of our shared communal understanding of rightness are becoming translucent, shaky, fading...
Can we ever make this right again?
sadly,
Bright
= new reply since forum marked as read
The problem isn't that motherfucker, he'll go down in flames one way or the other eventually, lying cheating scoundrels always do... but the real problem is the 42% of the American population according to 538 who have watched everything he's said and done for 3 years and say "Yeah I support that guy!" 
We can't even make it right for the people that our government - in our name - were made to suffer. Maybe eventually we can make it right to somebody else, like their children or another person in their family, or whatever. But that still doesn't let us off the hook.
No more than "affirmative action" lets us off the hook for the fact of slavery.
People's lives are being ruined right now by our government - by extension that's US. They won't heal and neither will we. Somebody has to pay for this pain and suffering, somebody has to make it right. Is it going to be the ones who caused it? Not bloody likely.
I traveled the continent by myself for a month last year, and learned, as I seem to have to repeatedly, what a beautiful place we live in on Earth, how most people want to be friendly, humorous and helpful. The worst of us are really so few. Not even most of our neighbors. We're not really surrounded by evil or darkness. Maybe disillusioned people. Ugly truths will do that to us. But then they set us free, as Martin said.
As I'm sure you already do, I take myself out of this trouble daily, walk out, look up at stars, look at big sky, imagine big universe beyond, how tiny, fragile, we are, how short our time is, how lucky we are to know we're here.
We have to have the Obama hope that we will bring out the best in the most of us. A lot of people in this country feel like you. I'd say millions upon millions.
Shine our candles where we can, be kind. Because hurt people hurt people.
Thank you for your loving concern.
I feel like you, and I don't pretend I'm not also reminding myself when I tell you that we'll get through this, we will, though it's hard to see daylight right now.
These are evil times 