Warning Lights on the Control Board

Ugh. The funk that is this less-than-stellar week continues.

I do not drink, nor do I do any drugs. I dislike inebriation, find it a turn-off.

But at times like these, I see the appeal of creating for yourself a blackout period. You dive into non-consciousness. You wake up, days later, and resume your life. It's nothing like that, really, I know. Actual blackouts are terrifying for loved ones and no picnic to pick up after for anyone.

But the fantasy of just turning off for a while, sleeping through it, like a surgical procedure: that has appeal. If perfect cryonics existed, I'm sure people would dip into the freezer for weeks, months, years at a time, just to escape . . . everything.

All these thoughts, I know, are little warning lights blinking on my mental control board. "Check engine." "Maintenance needed." But that's costly work. It feels better to power off and restart in the hopes that jump-starts things.

Except I have stuff to do yet tonight, stuff I wasn't able to do earlier because Reasons.

I've checked all my usual news sources for some inspiration about what to write about. I do not recommend such an activity when the warning lights are blinking. Evidence increases of Trump's having done--or at least having tried to do--exactly what the whistle-blower's complaint alleges: using military aid already allocated to Ukraine to get Ukraine to investigate/embarrass his political rival. Republican response? Condemn the inquiry, disrupt it, delegitimize it, call any GOP member who dares question Trump "human scum."

The Wall Street Journal editorial, apparently (it's behind a paywall) suggests that Trump ought not be impeached because he is too inept to have accomplished the crime. As with the Russia thing in the Muller report, Trump tried his darnedest to break the law, but his own people foiled him. He tried to bend Ukraine to his will via pressure, but someone cracked and filed a complaint. I'm worried that argument--he would have done it, but he didn't--will actually work.

I'm more depressed, though, that it just seems impossible to foresee a working democratic government emerging from this crisis.

Such is the working of despair. Hope is forward-looking, future-imagining. Despair is stuck on the present, extending the worst aspects of the now into the forever.

Perhaps my worrisome fantasy of "just sleep through it" is hopeful after all. At least I imagine waking up. At least right now I do.