A New Day

[H2O Man]

“Our training pushes us to develop a new set of instincts: instead of reacting to danger with a fight-or-flight adrenaline rush, we’re trained to respond unemotionally by immediately prioritizing threats and methodically seeking to defuse them. We go from wanting to bolt for the exit to wanting to engage and understand what’s going wrong, then fix”
”
Chris Hadfield (An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth)


Saturday's rally felt somehow differently to me. I have attended other ones starting in late spring through the summer months, with an ever-changing group of old friends and associates. A psychiatrist, social workers, professors, retired law enforcement, carpenters, electricians, retired military, and a couple of nurses. I've known several for over sixty years. Most of us are grandparents.

We have participated in rallies in two places in the wilderness of rural, upstate New York. It is not a region known for a strong Democratic Party. In my county, for example, there are more registered republicans, then independents, than Democrats. The same holds true for the two other counties our group comes from. It is accurate to say that relatively few Democrats win elections in this region, be it for local, state, or federal office. The last seven times I am familiar with were those when I ran the campaigns, back when I was younger and had a lot more energy. But there have been a few more in recent years that I know of.

In the past, those attending the rallies we attended seemed – to me – to recognize that this administration was purposely destroying the social fabric and trampling the Constitution. At one, we were but two blocks away from ICE taking a family away. The crowd's mood – again, my opinion – was largely, “Someone needs to do something to stop this threat.”

Now, we know that there are four responses to threats: freeze, flight, fawn, or fight. It seemed clear to me that no one at Saturday's rally was frozen in fear, running away, or pretending they admire the enemy. People were not looking outside of the rally for the source of power required to do battle with the maga beast. We are not going to engage on the battle fields our enemy picks, or use the tactics these lying scumbags attempt to attribute to us.

Among others, a good local Democratic Party politician spoke. Now, this wasn't a party rally. While my group are all registered Democrats, we all have a lot more family and friends who are independents. Most of the older of these were members of our party in years gone by, but think the party leadership tends to represent something different than it used to. I suggested to one old friend he could protest Reagan invading Grenada on Saturday if he wanted to join us.

He responded by noting that those who had spoken out against the horrors in Gaza were not popular with the heads of the Democratic Party leading up to the 2016 elections. He noted that there are still sticks in the mud who blame people of conscience for the loss to the felon, despite the fact today it appears they were right. The system that put the felon in office twice, he said, is the same system running things now.

This is just my opinion, based upon the rally that I was at, and likely in every rally, big and small, that people recognize that has some merit. But in my opinion, it isn't a valid reason to leave the party. More, the game has changed in an important way. There are more registered independents than Democrats, and we outnumber republicans nationally. All of the Democrats I am friends with have values closer to the independents at the rally than, say, that traitor Andrew Cuomo.

I saw an interview with that dehydrated snake skin yesterday. He said there is a “civil war” within the Democratic Party. No there isn't. You got humiliated in the primary. You are a sore sport. Democrats recognize you as a sex offender. Some of us are aware of your domestic abuse of Kerry. Our party doesn't hide such things to protect dehydrated snake skins. We shed them to promote new growth in the party.

As Bob Marley sang, “Make way for the positive day …. 'cause it's a new day, new time, new feeling, said it's a new sign.”