OMG. It’s just….

So, I’m still healthy. I’m losing my mind, but that’s a separate story.

My daughter had a confirmed COVID exposure on the job and was sent home to isolate. She didn’t develop symptoms and got tested and was cleared to go back to work as of yesterday. We are all still healthy.

I’ll spare you the rant about how fucking stupid our Governor Florida Man is. He’s dangerously fucking stupid.

I’m still shaken and outraged about January 6th. I’m scared for the Inauguration next week. We have a lot of crazies among us, but they’re organized in a way they never were before. They’ve gone from swapping batty conspiracy theories in chat rooms to actually organizing insurrection, and this is fucking terrifying. Add that it appears that some Republican members of Congress were in on it, and holy shit.

I’ve known we have a dangerously crazy white supremacist underground for a long time. I’ve lived in FL for a long time, in a fairly upscale zip code (I am one of the poors) and I’ve always known that the “toothless redneck right wing nutjob” was inaccurate. There’s plenty of racist right wing wannabe Nazi types in golf club neighborhoods. I live among them now.

I’ve lost friends – more accurately, I backed away from friends when their crazy went from an occasional questionable take on a topic to stuff too crazy to overlook. A long time friend, a woman I’d known for decades, went full racist and Trumper in 2016. I didn’t realize it until we got together for one of our occasional “wine and cheese and talk about family and bitch about our jobs” sessions in my living room, and she veered off into ranting about her black neighbors. She used every racist trope, “Their trash is full of fried chicken and watermelon…” and by then my jaw was openly sagging. She saw my face and said, “I don’t care, I’ll say it, I’M A RACIST, OKAY?”

I’m thinking, “Yeah, yeah, you sure are, because you are renting on a fucking golf course in a very nice neighborhood with excellent schools, and I’m willing to bet that your black neighbors are more educated and have better jobs and have a lot more class than you’ve ever had, and THAT’S why you can’t stand them.” (BTW, if you are thinking she was a Floridian or some Southerner raised to be racist – she was born and raised in New York.) I was honestly surprised that she grew up middle class in NY, because she drove a pickup and had tattoos and just seemed like a redneck girl who made good. Hell, I trained her for the job she has now, making more money than I do.

I wish I could say that I responded with something pithy and cutting or clever, but I was truly dumbstruck. I’d known her for around 20 years and never heard anything like that from her before. She realized she’d gone too far and pulled herself together,we made small talk for another ten minutes, (me being awkwardly polite, hinting that the evening was over) and she made her excuses and left. We’ve never spoken since.

That’s the thing about being an older white lady in this area – people just start talking like they expect me to understand/agree, and when I don’t respond with, “Oh, I know!” conversations get awkward and then end.

The place where I work has told everybody in state capitals and the DC area in particular to work from home next week, in anticipation of violence.

I’m not sure where I am on praying. I was raised Catholic, but “fell away” by the time I was 14 (I was skeptical by the time I was 8.) I tried going back to Christianity a few times over the years but it just won’t stick. I’m not an atheist, I’m probably best described as a lazy sort of Unitarian/Buddhist/Whatever. But I hope God will accept my prayers for the entire Biden Administration, from Joe and Kamala and their families to the White House staff, including the porters and gardeners and everybody in between, and especially the Secret Service. I fear that we are in for a hell of a ride.

ON THE PLUS SIDE:

The NYT reported that President Biden plans to hit the ground running with Executive Orders reversing a lot of the incredibly stupid/racist/vile Trump moves. The US will be rejoining the Paris Accord, undoing the racist Muslim ban, and work to reunite the children the Trump Admin kidnapped with their parents. The vaccine program will be organized and functional. Unemployment and financial support will get real. It’ll be months before life is anything like normal, but we will have grownups and doctors and economists and scientists in charge again. Even semi-normal is going to feel weird. We moved so far from normal government in just four years, it’s going to take a bit to wrestle it back.