Dampening our Christmas Spirit

I turned on Chris Matthews and watched that show from about nine thirty to 10:15 or so.   He was mentioning how Donald Trump is basically a demagogue.  I remember when Judy used to think he was a demagogue.  He’d have all the people raise their right arms in salute in an almost Sieg Hail fashion.  They showed all the clips of Trump’s berading of the media.  He’s like an old fashioned “mob rule” type guy and he’s exactly the type of candidate the Electoral College was put in to try and screen out and assure such a “man of mob rule” would never come to power.  Maybe I’m not the only one who ran into a wall in trying to present the case against Donald Trump at their holiday gatherings.  I think liberals in general and Bernie Sanders supporters in particular ran into a buzz saw of media apathy, who only reported anything about Bernie Sanders when something bad happened.  They said that 37% plan to make politics a part of their family gathering this year.  Maybe you have all the points even mapped out in your mind.  Or maybe you wanted to talk about your accomplishments this year, and somehow that never occurred either.  Suddenly the obvious is now invisable.  People used to cringe at the very mention of a Trump presidency.  But they now suffer from "nose deafness" to mix a metaphor.   The stench no longer is noticable.  Mitt Romney thought Trump was a phoney, a fraud.  He spoke of Trump University being a fraud and a rip-off.   Curtis Mayfield says in a song that we’re all going to hell anyhow as of December of 1970.  Maybe he’s right.  The whole country is going to hell.  A lot of us thought the prospects of democratic Hillary coming in January would brighten our Christmas spirits and give us something to hope in for the new year.  Maybe you’re one of those people who have been victims of theft or violence or natural disaster this Christmas.  That dampens your spirits.  I mean when you have the Secretary of Defense being nicknamed “Mad Dog” with all these controversial quotations of his- - you really have to wonder where the country is headed.  Trump berates Hillary for her ties to Goldman Sachs and yet Trump nominates a Secretary of the Treasure from Goldman Sachs.  Could Trump get more hypocritical if he tried?  He says he’s going to slap on a 35% terrif if a company takes its business to Mexico and yet the opposite happens and Trump rewards the squeaky wheel and pads the profits of the already very wealthy and leaves the average taxpayer the responsibility to take up the slack.  Right now the Christmas party is going on here but I’m just not in the mood.  Bill has arrangements to eat in his room but I guess I’ll go down about five thirty and see what kind of food they have left over if everybody isn’t getting bored by an hour long video or something.  

This is Saturday December 3, 2016 and the family gathering wasn’t as good this year.  I got picked up at ten to eleven and we went down to Marie Calendar.  It had been cold in this room and I was amazed at how warm it had become outside, and it was warm in the car.  Elizabeth, Judy’s care-giver was in the car accompanying us today.  We conversed some.  When we got to the restaurant the rest of our party had not yet arrived.  Tim ran into traffic on the way to Mom’s.  I hardly said anything to Marie all day.  I asked Tim about the three E mails I sent him lately and he acknowledged receiving them but other than that had nothing to say about any of them.  That kind of took the air out of my balloon.  Wendy was unable to make it.  I bet you we would have talked about politics if Wendy was around.  There was absolutely no talk about politics except right as we were about to leave I asked Tim what he thought about the Carrier air conditioning thing.  The exchange was very brief.  We had garlic toast instead of the usual corn bread.   Coffee service was good and I had three full cups, which was a bit more than intended.  We talked about Mom’s health a lot and her stay at the hospital.  I ordered a “house salad” at a steep discount with my Ortega chicken sandwich.  They didn’t have zucchini and she told me I must have been thinking of some other restaurant.  “We’ve never sold zucchini here”.  Then why do I have such a distinct memory of reading it?  So I had the fries.  The salad filled me up so much I was unable to eat the second half sandwich so we put it in a box and took it home.  Tim says he had some meeting in Riverside at three.  (?)  He went to Mom’s place and we follow them there but we didn’t stay.  We started to park but then Elizabeth said she wasn’t really curious about seeing it so we left.  We had also talked about Judy’s health while she was in the hospital.  Now it seems that Judy had some physical therapy scheduled.  They took me home.  I also had two bran muffins with me and the Ortega burger and a green salad that Mom couldn’t eat.   When I got home I noticed almost immediately that a brand new package of socks had been stolen.  There were two packs of socks in the closet and now there was only one.  Naturally I opened it up and put those socks in the drawer before they got stolen too.  Then I noticed that my shirt had been buttoned wrong all day and nobody commented about it.  Maybe they were trying to save me from embarrassment.  We got here at two and I figured we wouldn’t get back until at least four.  I don’t feel in the Christmas spirit like going to the party tonight if they’re going to steal people’s stuff.  The thing if I had a funny preminission early this morning that something of mine would get stolen today.   Then I tried to push the thought out of my head.