So Not the Summer of Love.

Dear you,

Meet Mark Lombardo (above), candidate for congress, Florida District 1.  I am feeling some love for this man. Nice smile. No Gaetzy creepy vibes.  Hmmm.  Yes, I am definitely feeling some love and I could use some since my love-stash is  running low. But more about Mark later.  First:

Breaking news, New York Times, "The suspected gunman who tried to breach the FBI's Cincinnati field office on Thursday morning is now in a cornfield and surrounded, officials said."

Gee. I wonder who motivated this "patriot" attack?  Trump. Furious over the legal and warranted search of his Florida palace, Donald is once again inciting his minions to violence.  That poor guy in the cornfield.  He is done.  Was it worth it?  I'm thinking the red-right is going to pretend it never happened.  Minutes ago, one dude on Twitter called the event a HOAX, staged to make the MAGAs look bad. That didn't take long.

Our situation, dicey at best, is much more precarious today than yesterday.  It will be more precarious tomorrow.  Are there any Republicans, excluding Cheney and a few others who have already been purged, who aren't afraid of the former POTUS?  Is there anybody in that party who can deprogram millions of Americans willing to lie and die for him?  Who in the GOP actually gives a shit about Cornfield Man?  Someone must. I am looking for them. I am looking for a few sane, honorable Republicans.  Maybe, just maybe,  I found one. Once again, meet Mark Lombardo. Consider this from floridapolitics.com, a few days ago:

"Mark Lombardo is ramping up his assault on incumbent U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz as the Marine Corps veteran and former FedEx executive attempts to unseat the controversial incumbent in Florida’s 1st Congressional District.

“Matt Gaetz is a liar who doesn’t respect women, generates falsehoods, promotes conspiracy theories, uses gimmicks to get TV airtime, and baits voters with racist and anti-gay siren calls,” Lombardo said in a prepared statement.

“Matt Gaetz is a hypocrite and nothing but a me-first, professional politician who entangled himself in a child sex-trafficking investigation and then sought a pardon for ‘any and all’ crimes to keep himself out of jail. It’s not surprising he used his campaign donors’ money to pay pedophile Jeffery Epstein’s attorney.”

Well, well. Matt has a challenger here in Florida, District 1. And a Republican at that. The Dem challenger will be Margaret Schiller. However, if Lombardo wins the upcoming FL Republican primary and ousts #RapeyMcForhead, I might vote for Mark.  It's gotten that bad.  Lombardo is no friend to progressive agendas, but he's better than Gaetz. Besides, Schiller has no shot. Lombardo does. But . . . wait. Damn. After a quick check of Lombardo's website, I discover he wants to drill baby drill everywhere, reopen pipelines, give border crossing immigrants no shot at citizenship, and (drum roll please) he is on Governor DeSantis' Anti-Woke train.  Well, at least I was amused by some of his Gaetz shade.  He called Matt a "drama queen". Ugly stuff, these primaries.  Conservatives are calling each other drama queens. Knives are drawn; fangs bared. Indeed, this is so not the summer of love.  And I thought last summer was bad.

I looked back at some summer 2021's journal entries to refresh my memory.  Yep, pretty bad.  I raged about the fall of Kabul and the death of the last White Rhino on Earth.  I was locked in Covid caution mode and bitched about vaccine resistors who screamed "my body, my choice".  I worried about the abortion bans in Texas signaling the end of Roe V. Wade.  Fast forward to now, this August, 2022, all that sorrow remains. Just add the possible end of American Democracy, threats of civil war, the actual end of reproductive rights in big chunks of our nation, and, of course,  #Ukraine.  Astonishing.

Here's something else from that 2021 journal that caught my attention:

After Summer -

Autumn/Winter

Comes again -

The Earth still

Tilts-

This way and that, causing

what we call seasons -

For a brief time -

This version of

The expected -

Carries on . . . 

(I have no shame when it comes to journal poetics.  Yes, I brazenly try to copy Emily Dickinson's mechanics and form.)  Today, I revise the above with 2022 in mind:

During Summer -

We wonder if

Autumn/Winter

Comes Again - 

The Earth, I hear,

Is spinning 

Faster -

Faster than ever, causing

what we call baseline anxiety -

Our former versions of

The expected - 

Slip away . . .

Carrying on morphs to slipping away.  Considering then and now, I guess things can only get better. It is still early August.  Plenty of time to turn things around.

We hope.

Buena suerte, everyone.

Joyce