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03/22/2025

Today’s blog

Lynn Murphy Mark

I can’t help myself…

As much as I have vowed not to let the political shenanigans get to me, I find myself failing this on a daily basis. Yesterday I was talking to the lady who cleans our house. She is from Mexico and we speak to each other in Spanish. I’m helping them with their daughter’s petition to get them green cards. Anyway, I was giving her an update on the case. The update soon morphed into a rant about how stupid this administration is. Although I am fairly fluent in Spanish, political ranting is not the language I learned in Mexico as a child. So I was speaking my version of Spanglish and getting more and more furious as I went along. She just nodded and listened politely.

Part of my rant used the word “odio”, which means “hate” in Spanish. I was going on about how much I hate this administration and certain individuals who are trying their best to ruin, not run, our country. I caught myself at one point, realizing this was not what she needed to hear from her legal representative. So I backpedaled as best I could, apologizing for exposing her to my “rabia”, my anger. She told me she is amazed by how many people are still on board with 47. These people include a number of her cousins living in California. She doesn’t talk to them anymore.

I think what troubles me the most is how quickly I shift from neutral into anger. I was on my way to Donna’s for movie night while NPR was featuring a disturbing story. This time it was about the Department of the Interior, the one that manages the most beautiful parts of our country. Layoffs have occurred and resulted in a load of preservation work not being done. Some staff had government credit cards to purchase small supplies needed to do the work. Now there is a one dollar limit on the cards, rendering them useless. So if you need a shovel to shore up a hiking trail, you have to go through reams of paperwork to get permission to buy one. How, I ask, is this improving efficiency?

By the time I got to Donna’s house I had to sit in the car for a few minutes and breathe deeply. Otherwise I would have ranted my way into her house and disturbed whatever peace she may have had. My friend Katie texted that she needs to take a break from the news presumably because it affects her blood pressure as well as her well-being. I have limited myself to one hour of MSNBC – the Rachel Maddow show. Some nights I might listen to a little bit of Lawrence O’Donnell, but that’s it.

Some months ago Katie put me on to a book called “Prophet Song” by Irish writer Paul Lynch. It won the Booker prize in 2023 and the prize stated, “Timely and unforgettable…it is a remarkable accomplishment for a novelist to capture the social and political anxieties of our moment so completely.” It is a very disturbing novel about the takeover of the Irish government by a secret and very dark group. It tells the story of people who suddenly are arrested and “disappeared”. Slowly, services that the public took for granted began to be dismantled and everyone’s standard of living plummeted. Families were deeply affected by the disappearance of their members. Not that long ago Katie and I agreed that “Prophet Song” is being lived out in our own country. Disturbing doesn’t quite cover how I feel about this.

I think what bothers me most is the amount of mental energy it takes for me to absorb the daily disregard of our most sacred protections. This morning I am contemplating joining a local Indivisible group, just to have opportunities to protest what is happening. I need to put my focus on the mid-term elections next year. As disappointed as I am in my own Democratic Party, I will not give up on it. Ever.