Wednesday is my Friday
Here of late, that’s been the case as I’ve been working no more than two days in any given week, although not necessarily by choice. We’re into March and I’ve still not heard any updates on a waiver approval for fee basis, so it’s feeling more like it’s not coming. Given that my salary limit was higher than previously believed, I’m thinking we can still swing the house payoff by next Spring, so in the end, it won’t necessarily matter.
Today is apparently one of those days where I wake up about 3 hours earlier than planned and just can’t get back to sleep, so I give in and get up. There’s not much rhyme or reason to it, it happens randomly as far as I can tell. It’s usually preceded by a solid four-hour block of sleep or thereabouts, so it’s not like I didn’t sleep at all. I typically will lay there for another thirty or forty-five minutes before I decide to get up. I have the luxury of knowing I this is my last workday so today after work I can crash early or stay up late or whatever my body tells me it needs.
Part of my early wakefulness may be due to Super Tuesday results for the democratic primary and it’s starting to feel like 2016 all over again. Of all the candidates I can’t see any with the proven track record of Bernie Sanders, just as in the last election. Still, it’s feeling like we’re going to shoot ourselves in the foot (again) and present a candidate that will lose to Trump in the general. In a dramatic turnaround, Joe Biden, who had been coming in the third and fourth place in the early primaries and caucuses won South Carolina, and it appears he’s leapfrogged the entire field, turning this into a two-candidate race and gaining some considerable lead even on Bernie Sanders. Not all the results are in yet, but they called most states for him and so far I’ve only heard of a few for Bernie, although he did win California which is a big victory.
A big part of Biden’s momentum was built on winning SC and then having the entire DNC and corporate apparatus champion his cause, including getting two candidates to drop out and support him. The powers that be are doing everything they can to prevent a Sanders victory, and I just have lost all faith in the cognitive abilities of most Americans. People latch on to one criterion or two and ignore all the important issues that affect them directly. Biden is in the pockets of big business and has a track record of racism and misogyny in his past, whereas Sanders has been a champion of the common people his entire career. But with Biden, a lot of people still associate him with Obama and those singular details are enough to get his vote. That’s not a knock on Obama, I voted for him both times, but Biden isn’t Obama.
I’ve given significant donations to Bernie in both 2016 and this year as well, and I’m not giving up on him, but it’s starting to feel like the true powers that be in the world will do everything they can to stop a change to the status quo they have worked so hard to foster and protect. It’s a sad commentary and a reflection that we haven’t lived in a democracy or true representative republic in a long time. Might and money make right, and it appears they will consolidate their power even further in the years to come.
I made the mistake of mentioning it was election day to my patient yesterday, not thinking it was only significant for the democratic primaries. He immediately responded “something something TRUMP!!!!” and the look of fervor in his eyes was a little disturbing. I quickly changed the subject back to his exam, not intending to get into a political discussion, just trying to encourage people to participate in the process. He otherwise was a fairly rational and lucid person, although he did have that tendency I’ve seen in some Veterans of just going into a monologue about their issues and not responding to any direct questions unless you manually steer them the entire time. It’s absolutely his right (and one which he’s defended for all Americans) to vote as he sees fit, but I question how many Trump-supporting Veterans have truly considered all the issues as they affect them and their loved ones. He’s a proven draft dodger, misogynist, liar, thief, rapist, racist, and a malignant narcissist. The country and the world is burning down around us and things are only getting better for the ultra-rich, but the cult of personality is strong. Despite this, a significant portion of the electorate seems to base their entire vote on “these people over here disagree with me on this one issue, so let’s burn this fucker down and laugh at them in their misery”. I suppose it doesn’t matter that most of them will be sharing in the misery.
That’s about all the political discourse I want to include in my journal till the end of time, but it’s hard to completely disconnect from such significant issues. It’s a weird irony that our personal lives have generally gotten better every year, but this in large part despite the workings of the government. We’ve worked very hard for several decades to put ourselves in this particular situation, but I grieve for the future of our country and planet. The American people are letting things go to shit, and can’t be bothered to look up from their phones to notice the world is burning down around them.