Daylight Saving Time has taken another powder. Good. I agree with all of the chatter about getting rid of the time changes. I disagree with the suggestion that we STAY on Daylight Saving Time. We tried it once. You know what happened? People died! These days, hyperbole is everywhere with great pronouncements of looming huge, terrible things but this isn’t hyperbole and I’m not guessing. People died. Many of them were kids. Lovely, right? Staying on DST sent kids to school in the very dark during winter. Some got hit by cars driven by people who couldn’t see them. (Supporters pointed out there were fewer accidents in the afternoons.)

Americans don’t live by the sun anymore. We live by the clock. If you have to be a work at a certain time, it takes a certain amount of time to get ready and get there, and you want a certain amount of sleep, you calculate the clock, not the sun – and that’s how most Americans live these days.

Oh, well. I suppose this is all just howling at the moon. The United States has become, more than any other thing, adept at stupidity. We seem always to gravitate toward whichever is the stupidest idea, no matter the subject. ‘Idiocracy,’ writ large. It’s the conservative way and the cons are in charge now…

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Isn’t it exciting, living through the death throes of a once-great nation? Not ‘exciting’ in a good way, of course. ‘Agitating’ might be a better word. It’s really quite a shame. To tell you the truth, I’m lost in a morass of “It can’t happen here” even as it happens here. It’s going to be hard, listening to the cons gloat as they savor their stolen “victories.” By now it’s clear to every thinking person that the cons aren’t listening to anybody bringing facts or evidence. All they want is the “win” – at any cost. It has long been clear, though, the ‘cost’ will be the Republic and listening to them cheer the death of a once-great nation is going to be a challenge. They would tell you I’m wrong, of course. They’ll be able to show a bunch of slickly produced opinion pieces that “prove” all is well and on the up and up but every one of them will be wrong. I’ve never seen a con opinion piece that doesn’t have some error somewhere. Con positions depend on “errors.”

I’m a fan of vindication and there will likely be some small satisfaction as the policies they defended so blindly come home to haunt them. It will be like the guy on the Titanic who knew the ship was in trouble – tried to tell everybody, in fact – watching the other passengers toss the ice around playfully, only to fall into panic as they finally realize, far too late, that the ship is in trouble. Sure, vindication…but since we’re all going down with the ship, it will be short-lived.

Cons love to prattle on about people of color living on the government dime but do you know who lives off the government even more? Red states! White people in red states. Particularly red states in the deep south. Cons and MAGA supporters. They’re going to be surprised to find themselves living with no lifelines, no safety net. They don’t believe it will happen to them any more than I thought it could happen here. But it did happen here and it will happen to them.

I’m not sure I believe all the hype about civil war or battles or revolutions. I know we should fight back. Sooner or later, we the people will have no choice but to fight back. But, as a group, we’ll avoid it as long as possible. The cons will inflict one insult to the system after another and people will get angrier and angrier but actually taking up arms and start killing people? That takes a major push for most. Something far more devastating than, “We stole your government.”

You can skim history at every other nation that failed, falling into authoritarian dictatorship. Look at the photos of the people. If you look closely at the forced throngs of “cheering” people, it’s common to see people in the crowds openly crying, knowing they’ve lost something special. But mostly, they just keep a low profile, hoping to wait it out. They hope, vainly, that some miracle will occur to deliver them. It doesn’t come, though. Still, they don’t actually fight back. People will put up with a LOT for their own reasons. The bloodshed comes later but it comes. We were warned by JFK. Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.

I think the part the bothers me the most, in the immediate, will be watching the dumbass take possession of the country, a free man. When the cons complete their coup, he wins. He didn’t have to clear his criminal name. He only had to run out the clock until the Congress could be seized by ideologues. That should be complete this coming Tuesday. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to like living in the conservative fever-dream. They think they’re embarking on a new Utopia. They think all kinds of stupid things.

California has a ballot initiative on this year’s mid-term ballot, Proposition 1. Prop 1 is being sold to the people of the state as ensconcing a woman’s right to choose and to control her own body into the state constitution, thereby ensuring reproductive control of a woman’s body to the woman who owns the body. But Federal law supersedes state law. Misogynist red states have had anti-abortion laws on their books for decades. Those laws simply couldn’t be implemented while the Federal government protected women’s rights. They became “trigger laws” that became active only after the activist Kangaroos made their ideological choice. That one-time protection will now become a detriment. The con Feds won’t allow states to decide for themselves. (Cons never really believed in states rights anyway…)

The next logical step, I’m guessing, is for the country to fragment. I don’t just mean ideologically. That has largely happened already. I mean literally. Nor do I suspect it will happen quickly. As I say, most people don’t stand up. They put their collective heads down. But I do, honestly, think the only remaining opportunity to protect progress is for California – and other thinking states – to secede from the conservative fever dream and make a go of it on their own.

I’ll tell you this: California is a “donor state.” California provides the money all those red-state cons take from the government every year. California doesn’t need the Federal government nearly as much as the Federal government needs California…