America died for me on 11/5.

[Ocelot II]

40. I have become cynical in my old age, having realized over time

that America is not, and never was, Reagan's "shining city on a hill." We are not exceptional. We are not special. We are just a very large collection of humans who happen to live on a very large tract of land and have had to figure out how to live together on it and not kill each other. That's how countries work - some better than others. And humans, no matter where they live, can be really nasty creatures, something history should have taught us. We aren't exempt from history. We are just as capable of atrocity and oppression as anyone else. We pat ourselves on the back for America's "greatness," really meaning its prosperity, but the reality is that our prosperity depended in the first instance on stolen labor and stolen land - a fact that is conveniently forgotten when politicians bloviate about American exceptionalism.

So as I have become old and watched the successive American shitstorms of Vietnam, Watergate, gun violence, Iraq, and the Trump cult, my assumptions and my expectations have changed considerably. It does not surprise me all that much that almost half of us think it's OK to have a leader as degenerate and despicable as Trump, who in his dotage is now effectively controlled by a similarly despicable billionaire and a Russian despot. We are in for some strange and bad times. But the cool thing about being a cynic is that you are rarely disappointed. So while I wait for the excrement to impact the airfoils I will continue to enjoy the things I've always enjoyed: Music, art, all the beautiful things that people create even though people also suck; my friends, lakes and trees and birds and sunrises and sunsets, the fact that I'm still alive and kicking and still capable of hope. Cynicism isn't the same as despair.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.