Tag: politics

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 212

garethlivesay2 Comments

Hi.

Coffee:  Maxwell House Master Blend, Office Coffee

I’ve been hearing this is just like Nixon. One big scandal to make the ball drop on a popular president. For those that don’t know, Trump pulled military aid from Ukraine then had a call with their president asking for favors. I don’t know that it matters what the favors were, just that he asked for them. If your boss holds back your bonus then asks you for overtime the next day, it’s hard to see how the money hasn’t become conditional.

But anyway, back to the first point: people are screaming ‘Nixon.’ When impeachment proceedings started against Dick he was still widely popular with his political party, just like Trump. When the Watergate tapes came out and there was suddenly a smoking gun, that support dried up almost overnight. Is that what we’re walking into now? Will the Senate flip on their party head now that we have public memos of corruption?

I remember watching this video from a Trump rally around the time of the 2016 election. It was from a late show and the reporter was asking absurd questions of some of the Trump supporters. He’d say things like “Trump wants to ban all dogs from Mexico, do you support that?” Unanimously, they said yes. And when he asked one guy why he’d support something so ridiculous, and how Trump hadn’t actually said it after all, the guy just said “I don’t care what his positions are, I support him anyway.”

Push a generation deep enough into the dirt, ignore their burnt necks and cracked skin, and desperation will let anyone with a promise seem like an answer. Try to take that answer, or expose it, and they’ll hold on – they’ve got nothing else.

Currently Reading: Queen, Suzanne Crain Miller

Support Relief for Family Suffering at the Border  – RAICES DONATION CAMPAIGN

President Zelenskyy: We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps. Specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.

President Trump: I would like you to do us a favor though…

Memorandum of July Conversation between President Trump and President Zelenskyy

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 201

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Hi.

Coffee:  Maxwell House Master Blend, Office Coffee

I could be watching a crowded stage full of important people debating; instead, I’m sitting by the window listening to a couple kids playing outside.

Tonight, I tried to be peaceful. I went to the store. It was crowded, unusually so for a Thursday at 7pm. I picked out dressing for a salad and thought about buying eggs. I didn’t buy the eggs. On the way out, I walked by the beer aisle where they had a promotion pouring taps. Half-priced pints, tipsy Thursdays. There was a bustle around the bar. There was also one table with two chairs. It was halfway into the dairy aisle. A couple had the table. She was sipping quietly, he was on his phone.

At home, I dressed my salad and added half a can black beans. It’s good to eat cold, crunchy food sometimes. I thought about a rainforest. Less about the fires than about those nature shows we used to watch as kids.

At work, we all got together in the lobby, me and my coworkers. A slow day, so we had time. They were worried about Trump. The election was on everyone’s lips. They made some points and I agreed with them, mostly. But I couldn’t help draining out of the room and into the summer sunshine outside, the tops of elm trees, yesterday’s cut grass. I felt bad for being distracted. I was trying to be peaceful.

The conversation got heated. Three women who voted for a woman who should have won by the numbers, but didn’t. The burnt bones in their throats brought me back down. Oh – peace isn’t on offer to all of us, I realized.

Currently Reading: Queen, Suzanne Crain Miller

Support Relief for Family Suffering at the Border  – RAICES DONATION CAMPAIGN

Damn real live people, getting in the way of peaceful ideals.

John Scalzi, Old Man’s War

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 185

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Hi.

Coffee:  Maxwell House Master Blend, Office Coffee

I was at a kitchen table playing Dungeons and Dragons at twelve years old. It was Z’s birthday. His older brother was DM’ing. We were playing 2nd edition.

I’d rolled an Elven wizard who had 2 hit points. First level spells, hardly devastating. I spent most of the game waiting behind the party line as they fought monsters, scouted traps, preciously keeping my few spells for when they were most important. We went through a dark dungeon and came out of it. Then we met some merchants. Our warrior decided to rob them. I couldn’t handle that so I cast my first spell. I got him with a magic missile and it killed him (he’d been hurt in the dungeons). Promptly after that, our ranger got me back with an arrow to my 2HP skull. Two party members down and no high-level priests around to revive them, we all called it quits on the game. Some of the other kids were pissed. I’d put a stop to the night.

Every year I get older seems to muddy my convictions. I talk to Trump supporters and try to find the places they tuck away the good. Maybe its that I’ve had a longer life to live out my own imperfections – mistakes and missteps, tumbling off of high highways with no way of getting back.

Currently Reading: Queen, Suzanne Crain Miller

Support Relief for Family Suffering at the Border  – RAICES DONATION CAMPAIGN

It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.

Aristotle, Politics

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 83

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Maxwell House Drip, Office Coffee

A kid at the Chinese take-out squirmed around in his mother’s arms enough to look at me and said: “What did you order?”

I told him what I got – two spring rolls and tofu. He was puzzled, then I asked him about his order and he lit up: “Shrimp fried rice!” All the while, his mom’s got that look that says ‘isn’t my kid everything?’ but ‘I’m watching your every move’ at the same time.

While they were leaving, she says: ‘Say goodbye.’

And he says: ‘Goodbye!’

And I say: ‘Fried rice is classic.’

That was the most interesting thing that happened at the Chinese take-out.

Meanwhile, in Alabama, it’s effectively illegal to get an abortion. The only cases where the doctor’s not liable for a life sentence are where the mother’s immediate health would be compromised. I say immediate, because there’s many physical and emotional impacts of birth and pregnancy that don’t quite tally to death but are still significant and severe. Anyway…

There’s lots of good arguments going around for why this new anti-abortion law is bullshit. A lot better than anything I can say, I’m not a woman and no-one’s got a gun to my bodily sanctity. But here’s a thing I thought about that I think gets brushed over: what does it say to parents to tell them having a child is not really their choice? Accidents happen. People get tossed up in each other and then there’s this new bit of DNA. Maybe you want what it’ll turn into. Maybe you don’t. But Alabama says you’re not allowed to make that choice. Even if you want to be a parent, the kid’s not there because of your intention. She/he’s there because some privileged men knew how to slap a legislative stamp. She/he’s born independent of want or love.

I don’t know about you, but that sickens me.

While he was still on her lap, the mom was rocking the kid with her knee and nonchalantly running one hand’s worth of fingers through his hair. She was checking Twitter with the other. Normal, calm, simple, but wrapped up in her was someone that wanted to be a part of this vibrant, questioning person bouncing on her knee. If I had to guess – accident or otherwise – when push came to shove, she made the choice to offer up nine months of blood and eighteen or more years to give life to her son. Can you feel the weight of that?

But no, Alabama says to hell with that kind of love. You might be screaming ‘state’s rights’ and ‘small government,’ but you’re eager to slip the government’s fingers into other peoples’ pants, or put your long, bureaucratic proboscis into their hearts. You rob them of both their bodily autonomy and the freedom to love. You spoil not only a woman that says ‘no’ but the one that says ‘yes.’ In a grand act of irony, you have devalued both the individual woman and the concept of a family. In fact, the only thing you haven’t touched are greedy, self-obsessed men.

Oh, I get it now.

You are the closest I will ever come to magic.

Suzanne Finnamore, The Zygote Chronicles

Coffee Log, Day 163

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Hi.

Coffee: Fair Trade Five County Espresso Blend, Trader Joe’s Brand

She says she’s running the Libertarian ticket for county treasurer; says the Repub incumbent has been embezzling. She says she believes in Capitalism when it works, Socialism when it works, but it never works so she wants small government. Tomorrow, she’ll canvass for a different Libertarian. I tell her I knew a guy at Duke who repped the party, she didn’t recognize the name. Things change. Politics changes. She grew up in Apex and ran the list of all the small businesses she’s watched close.

I’m working a corner of Cary I didn’t know existed. It’s way West, way North, close to Morrisville. There’s a McDonald’s, a dry cleaner’s, a local Mexican chain. It rained all day. New roads – and these were new – look pewter in a storm. I got caught in it taking lunch at the Mexican. A white guy went by on bicycle. He was making laps. He was five years my junior. He looked like someone who was promised a whole lot and given a little less.

I talk to a biker who’s going to Ireland. Says it rains here, rains there, who gives a… His son’s getting married. Expensive wedding. I talked to another father who’s going to Paris. His son plays soccer international, has a game against a world-class club. Son’s 19, dropped out of college for this. Dad says he turns his friends down for parties, hasn’t had a drop of alcohol. Dad says he started a dream at 7 and now he kicks the ball. “That dedication is what I’m proud of, not the sport.”

She says she’s engaged, says her fiance’ works retail, says they’re worried but not too worried. A pretty couple, lip-locked under tip-cupped summer thunderstorms. Free like the runoff; small government.

Currently Reading: LaRose, Louise Erdrich

Support Relief for Family Suffering at the Border – RAICES DONATION CAMPAIGN

“Here beyond men’s judgments all covenants were brittle.” – Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

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Coffee Log, Day 106

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Cafe Pajaro Extra Dark Roast, Trader Joe’s Brand

The guy came in after three girls, nothing to do with each other. He was fifties. The girls were teenies. All four of them wore bright neon shirts. Blue looked good on him.

The girls fizzed, fussed, deposited a hundred cash. They drove in separate SUV’s and laughed in the parking lot.

The guy hung after, he hadn’t seen them, his mother was in the car, he had a purpose. At a different bank, they’d denied her withdrawal. She had a photo of a passport, they wouldn’t take it. The guy asked me if we could get it notarized. I said ‘probably,’ but that we’d have to see. He went back to grab her.

Outside, the girls titted and tatted in black SUV’s. There was nothing wrong with them except that they had no idea that there was nothing wrong with them. They watched the man, watched his mother, drove fast. No telling what they were thinking.

Inside, Mom shuffles. She’s got a cane but isn’t using it. My manager is in the lobby. He’s latino. He knows a hell of a lot more about banking than me. The old woman shuffles at me like I can help her. I point her to my manager. We’re all confused for a second. The man and the woman are black.

Socio-political plays like the cartoons inside of gum wrappers: a slight, a shrug, a simple mistake, a boundary between two things. They got their notary. The teens forgot a five-dollar bill by the deposit slips.

Currently Reading:
Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson

Fund the Coffee Log 🙂 – https://ko-fi.com/livesaywriting

‘So, Petvurt?’ the girl says, taking a pen from her hair and running it languidly down the columns of a large book. ‘Da, Pervert, so, here is. Passipotti. ‘ ‘She likes your passport, don’t give it to her, says Lubijova, ‘Give it to me. I know these people well, they are such bureaucrats. Now, dolling, tell me, how long do you keep?’ ‘Tomorrow,’ says the girl, ‘It registers with the police.” – Malcolm Bradbury

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