Day of the Legendary Duress, 42nd of Autumn, 526 M.E. (Deneb): I missed posting to this blog yesterday for the first  time in over three years. Odd. Not odd that I missed a day, but off that I managed to go over three years, well over 1,000 days, posting something every single day.

For the record, I slept in late, and then spent way more time writing on the sports blog about the Georgia-Alabama game than I expected. My daughter had invited me over to her house for dinner last night, and it was past midnight by the time I got home. It was, by then, too late to post, and beside I realized I had nothing to say.   

Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day! Since the holiday falls on the second Monday of October in the traditional Gregorian calendar, and therefore on different numbered days of the month each year, it doesn't translate to my New Revised Universal Solar Calendar. This year it falls on the Day of the Legendary Duress, but last year it fell on Channel of the Distance. Next year it falls on Conflict of the Hosts. Madness.

Regardless of whatever calendar you follow, we're 22 days away from the midterm elections. I have dire premonitions we're mere weeks away from a tidal wave of civil unrest and paramilitary suppression the likes of which this country hasn't seen since the Civil War. A collapse of the American experiment in democracy.  

All indications are we're heading for a Blue Wave takeover of Congress, the Senate, and many state governments. That's a good thing. But all indications show our megalomaniacal, narcissistic, and deluded President psychologically can't and won't accept losing control of the House and Senate to the opposition party. He will not allow himself to become reportable and have to answer to an equal branch of government. He previously tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election by dirty political tricks (fake electors, etc.), litigation, and finally by brute mob force. 

Now he has his own private, well-armed militia (ICE), and his black-out drunk Secretary of Defense has purged the Armed Forces of anyone without total and unquestioning loyalty to the Stable Genius' administration or who even possibly be inclined to resist an illegal order. When (not if) the election results favor the Democratic Party, the Stable Genius will declare the results a fraud - "fixed," "rigged" (by who?), and "fake news." He'll have armed forces seize ballot boxes and election results, declare the losers of races to be the actual winners, and refuse to let the actual election results be released to the public. 

People of course will protest and the government will respond with brute force the way they did in 2020 to the Georgia Floyd protests in Minneapolis, D.C. and elsewhere. But this crackdown will be national in scale, the protests will be larger and more violent, and the suppression even more brutal. In short, there will be blood on the streets. People will die.         

It may finally come down to whether or not the Democratic Governors of blue states can mobilize state guards to protect the ballots from the federal troops - in other words, literal civil war, pitting state militia against federal militia. Most governors probably can't or won't mobilize troops, and those few that do will likely face the full force of the U.S. military in opposition to their actions. While the constitution forbids the domestic use of the U.S. Military against American citizens, the Stable Genius has already said he's "allowed" to do it and besides, he believes he can do whatever he wants. Meanwhile, I doubt his Secretary of Defense can even spell the word "constitution."

I sincerely hope I'm wrong, but I can't see this country beyond the next three weeks in anything other than a state of violent conflict. I'm a pacifist and besides too old and too weak to take to the streets and fight, so therefore I'll probably be amongst the first wave of those killed. 

If my failing heart doesn't take me out first. Impermanence is swift.