Is anyone reading this? No? Ok, well I’ll start posting again anyway.

So… I took an extended break from politics, social issues… the world because I felt like I needed some time to focus on my own mental health, my career and my family.   I can lose sight of the things that are most important to me, if I spend too much of my time an energy wringing my hands about the death of democracy.  I saw that happening and I unplugged.  Instead, I spent time in SciFi and fantasy reading and listening to audiobooks, trying to find joy in my work, and being present with my family.

But here we are in 2024 with another “most important election of my lifetime.”  Because let’s be honest 2008 was the most important election of my lifetime. That is until Trump and Hillary faced off in 2016, and that was the most important election of my lifetime.  Except, even then, few of us realized just how consequential that election would be.  It was easy to recognize that Trump was not a typical Republican candidate.  But did anyone really recognize that he was an existential threat to democracy?  I didn’t. Between 2016 and 2020 we learned how a narcissistic, wannabe strongman could begin eroding the centuries old democratic safeguards.  American democracy survived, but only just.  Which rendered 2020 the most important election of my lifetime.  Everything was on the line.  Every “most important” election was child’s play next to 2020.  Biden pulled it out, somehow the American dream (aspiration really) of democracy survived to fight another day, but not without blood, not without scars that will never heal.  We survived but not without sustaining the harshest injury, darkest bruise, worst scar that the American democratic experiment has sustained since the Civil War. 

It hasn’t been an easy 3.5 years.  It hasn’t necessarily been a successful 3.5 years.  There are reasonable arguments regarding Joe Biden’s performance as present.  But it has been 3.5 years where we did not need to worry that we were at imminent risk of devolving into tyranny. 

Yet, while I, like most Americans, sat complacently and enjoyed the benefits of something that resembled normalcy, the full-throated attack on democracy never stopped, it hardly even slowed.  Because of that, 2024 is now the most important election of my lifetime.  It is the most important election in the lifetime of anyone who is still above ground and breathing. 

So, with that in mind, I will start screaming into the void again.  I intend to rant and rave to whoever might bother to read this blog (Hi mom!).  I’ll write because, honestly, it’s the only thing I know how to do.  More honestly, it’s the only thing I have time to do.