He Should Have Popped Him One

Well, we’re seeing the natural progression of having a political party spend the past ten (30?) years demonizing their opposition. A raft of what is being assumed to be functional explosives have been mailed to a host of Democratic or perceived Democratic figures. And we have a president who still doesn’t take any ownership of the power of his comments. I’m not sure he’s even made a comment condemning this terrorism, instead just retweeting something his vice president posted. Instead, of course, he’s blaming the media. Throwing more fuel on the fire to tacitly encourage more extremism. Like sending explosives through the USPS.

What this brings me back to is the GOP primaries a couple of years ago. Ted Cruz is feeling some heat in Texas and he’s crawled back to Trump asking for help. For anyone who does’t remember, Trump publicly savaged Cruz’s wife, attacking her appearance. Trump also accused Cruz’s father of being implicated in the Kennedy assassination. And Cruz’s response was…as far as I can tell it was to drop out of the contest.

it makes me think about what we are supposed to do when confronted with bullies. With people who  decide to act way outside the norms of our society in a way that invites chaos and violence, who abuse our unwillingness to physically confront them to allow themselves to behave as horribly as they desire. Regardless of how much the GOP wants to bang the drum about how unsafe our society is, it’s actually safer now than it has been in a long time. Compared to the 70s, 80s, and 90s we are living in a veritable wonderland of safety where the likelihood of being a victim of physical violence is actually pretty low.

But then we have people like Trump.

Which makes me ask this question: should Ted Cruz have walked over to Trump during a debate and just punched him in the mouth a couple of times? I’m not advocating physical violence as a first resort, not by any means. But even Jesus got physical at times. He didn’t have a polite conversation with the money lenders. Trump had attacked Cruz’s wife. He had attacked his father. I don’t remember him immediately apologizing for it, he probably threw a meaningless apology out after Cruz dropped out, but nothing at the time.

At some point you have to stand up to bullies. You can’t always walk away, you can’t always appeal to a higher power to remedy the situation. This doesn’t always justify physical violence, but I’m not sure it’s something that should also be automatically off the table.

And the hell of it is that I think it would have helped Cruz in going after the nomination. A Democrat wouldn’t have been able to get away with it, but a Republican from Texas who had seen his family brazenly disrespected? Yeah, I think punching Trump in the face might have been able to be spun in Cruz’s favor. Maybe it’s crazy, but within the environment of the Republican primary, with that group of people involved, a physical confrontation might just be okay in a way it wouldn’t be okay with the Democrats.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a product of a different time and place. I would have liked Cruz more for standing up for his wife and family like that, though. And I think people who behave like Trump, without remorse or tact, simply have it coming.

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three weeks of misery

So, I’ve been sick. Spent a lot of the past three or so weeks (maybe just a straight up month) sleeping throughout the day and desperately flailing at enough competance to get the kids to and from school and to put something resembling food on the table at the appropriate times.

The past couple of days have been the first moments in awhile that I’ve felt anything close to normal again. I still get tired quite a bit quicker than normal. My ears are still kinda…funny. And I still wake up with some gunk in my eyes. But I don’t feel like hell has been unleashed on my head and maggots have nested in my chest and throat. Goes to show how subjective “better” can be, I guess.

What I’m working on now is simple motivation. I know I have things to do, but I’m having a hard time moving on them. Part of it is just getting bogged down in trying to get the house back to normal. A month of what amounts to neglect tends to add up. It’s not pretty. It’s hard to tackle with any sort of enthusiasm because it doesn’t appear to ever end. It just…goes.

Beyond that I have a ton of work on the actual physical house to do. Something I was beginning to dig into again when I got sick, what with both kids being in school and suddenly having the bulk of my weekdays opened up.

I was also trying to start a walking regimen. trying to.

 

Alright, it’s not three days later. Because life. I’ve continued to feel better but the walking thing hasn’t been able to get going. The kid’s school schedules have had some weird fluctuations with starting/ending times because of test taking and what not. We have family in for a couple of days. At this point I’ll just take the feeling better and run with it, though.