Things Just Don’t Feel Normal

This sums up 2016 pretty well.

Things don’t feel normal.  Unless unfettered bullshit is the new normal, which based on my unscientific survey of my social media feeds, it may be.  My disinterest in wading into the digital fray makes me wonder if I’m done with Facebook, and maybe social media in general.  There’s far too much going wrong, seemingly on a daily basis, for me to rationally digest.  Heck, I still haven’t got- and may never get- my head around the fact that we (actually some of you) elected Donald Trump as President of the United States of America.  It all seems remote, and reality-TVish now, but just wait.  It’s going to be a clown show, and all of us are going to pay the price.

So maybe the thing to do is pull back a bit, and see how it goes.  If the hordes of gullibles who elected an unqualified, petulant billionaire simply because he isn’t Hillary Clinton continue to bathe in cognitive dissonance after he turns on them (it’s hard to imagine how the slate of characters above are going to line up in support of the working man) and makes American foreign policy look like an Idiocracy outtake, we’ll know all is lost.  If enough people veer back towards logic and facts, maybe there’s a chance for something better than disaster.

Meanwhile, things that were once constant continue shifting.  Temperatures and tempers rise, combatants skirmish and then retreat to their corners.  Science takes a backseat to ideology.  It looks bleak, but it’s not yet full-on terrifying.  Like a filtered sky at the crossroads of thunderstorm and tornado, it could go either way.  My grandmother told us to listen for the sound of a train.  If you hear one coming, head for the storm cellar.

I’m listening.  At the moment, all I hear for sure are some coyotes out in the woods.  A few early fireworks off in the distance, getting ready to usher in a new and maybe better year.  A lonesome cow out in the pasture, wondering what mysteries the future holds.