time for a new party

It was only early March when the Super Tuesday coup saw Joe Biden, the candidate who hardly bothered to campaign, magically sweep up rival candidates, votes, and endorsements. Then, suddenly we were all caught up in the pandemic vortex, and a month later Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign.

The pandemic commanded our full attention, also raising a lot of questions about leadership, policies, healthcare, economics, rights, freedom.

In that context, we still gather a simmering steam towards November.

We have had ample opportunity to watch Trump and his cohorts at the helm. We’ve seen the Dems in action, too, repeatedly turning their backs on the working populace they supposedly champion. We even occasionally get glimpses of the presumptive nominee, Biden, giving a shout-out from his basement.

This is the man the establishment Dems somehow expect people to line up for? Who puts up a candidate for whom there is zero energy in the electorate? A candidate clearly coping with cognitive decline. A candidate with a predilection for hair sniffing. A candidate who must carry around the baggage of his own track record and lies even before the contest really begins.

The Trump campaign lately put up a website sadly featuring Biden’s difficulties in parody. Truth Over Facts derives its name from a Biden quote. And it is laugh out loud stuff. It was inevitable. But if you’re going to point the ‘for shame’ finger at anyone, point it at the Dems who have foisted this man onto the presidential stage.

One can’t help but wonder if the deliberate intent of the Super Tuesday coup was specifically to get Trump re-elected. They swept the popular agenda and grass roots candidate off the table and installed an unfit candidate with a dysfunctional neoliberal agenda – to the extent that he has one at all.

One cannot even bother to blame Bernie Sanders’ voters for the next Trump win — the Dems engineered this situation with brute force. Lesser-of-two-evilism notwithstanding, there’s a percentage of those voters that have DemExited for good now that they’ve been pushed over the cliff.

I don’t think the Dems will lose any sleep over it though. As we have seen with their pandemic priorities, the Dems are perfectly fine with their Republican agenda. They don’t even bother playing Good Cop Bad Cop anymore. In fact, at this point, it’s not so much that we have Red and Blue factions. Nope, we just have one party, may as well be Purple.

We deserve better than this. The planet deserves better than this.

It’s time for a new party to come to the forefront. One that doesn’t just give lip service to the working and broader populace while doing the bidding of the one percent. The Movement for a People’s Party launched in the wake of the 2016 election, and it is gaining momentum. Maybe the Green Party will be part of the ultimate equation. It’s a wave that looks surfable.

If we don’t have a revolution first, I think we’ll see a People’s Party take center stage for 2024. Then, we might really have something worth voting for. Sadly, it’s not really clear we can afford to wait that long.

“nothing changes until something moves”

Yes. I am one of those people who believes in making New Year’s Resolutions – really, positive resolutions of any kind at any time. Running, among other things, has taught me in a very practical way the importance of goal setting. It’s a very good thing to have a calendar with your upcoming expectations on it – the miles you’ll cover, the core workouts, the race you’ll run. Then, you know what you have to do in a day to get to your goal, and the satisfaction of checking things off. Ultimately, you have your accomplishment in hand. Then, of course, you set a new goal. And it all feels very good.

So it is in other areas of life. And there are a number of important areas in my life that desperately need attention, certainly some goals are worthy here. In fact, I have been flying in the clouds for quite some time, and I need to pop out where the sun is shining. I must.

Today is my prelude to that new year of goals and their pursuit. I will attempt to blog the journey, because art, writing – really, creativity of all flavors – is part of that path.  Hence, I give you Verulomar – my little land of exploration and selfhood discoveries.

The name is just a reminder to me of the big points on the path. They include …..

But, ooh, wait, it is scary to write these things down, to commit to doing them. In the end, after all, the commitment is to myself, and I believe that is what makes it so difficult. Precisely why I will commit to doing them. I am learning self-compassion.

So, yes, I will be good to myself this year with:

• A willingness to explore new ways to love myself and others.

• License to create any which way I can whether it’s writing, or pen and ink, or textiles.

• A return to the nutrient-rich, simple diet I love.

• A renewed commitment to running and other exercise.

So my blog name is sort of an abbreviation of the mantra. Verulomar – wherein ‘ve’ reminds me of nutrition and my fave VEggies. ‘Ru’ reminds me of running. ‘Lom’ reminds me to love – myself and others. And ‘ar’ reminds me of art and creativity.

And I am setting some very practical smaller goals to make sure I reach the big ones. Because part of the problem with flying aimlessly around in the clouds is that it is so hard to make yourself pull back on the controls and aim higher. For. Whatever. Reason. (wink)