The War on Acronyms and Life as We Knew It

 

Dear you,

The first month of 2025 ends, a wild ride already. Our reinstated president wields power, but some pushback has stalled some of his worst efforts.  However, note I write "some". While we do what we can to resist, the strange just rolls and rolls. Weather: see shot above of snowfall covering my pool in Seagrove Beach. Yes, global warming causes extremes like this. Snow in the Panhandle of Florida. Crimes: mass roundups of undocumented peoples, many, many we know to have no criminal records. Perhaps a shoplifting charge. This, in America.  Woes: recent air disaster at the DC airport and lost souls. Yes, the leader of what was once a free world took a few minutes to act sad (while sporting the white eye rings of the recently spray-tanned or bed-tanned) before he launched into an attack on democrats, blaming DEI for the disaster.

DEI. Diversity, equity and inclusion agendas not only shredded but now absurdly blamed for accidents. And there are other acronyms the right is all fired up about. They passionately act to erase FEMA, FDA, FDIC, CRT, etc. The list goes on.  All they need to do is drop an "enemy" acronym on the plates of their hungry supporters and oh, how they eat it up. Truth matters not, neither do beauty or poetic longings for what was good as well as what is possible. The change we are living is, no matter how much we gird ourselves with stoic acceptance, feeling quite unacceptable. Something feels very, very wrong.

Contemporary novelist, story-teller, professional nurse, Jeanne Ray's narrator/protagonist of Eat Cake reflects on ruptures and rumbles in her life, shifting tides of the not-expected, and counsels herself about wishing for "previous perfection".  She realizes: "Life was not a static experience.  We should not expect things to remain the same." 

Absolutely.  But it is hard when what leaves us, that sometimes precious sameness, is so good, so sweet, and perhaps so forever gone. Gone, a decent and dignified chief executive. Gone, a rational and humane conservative class. Gone, a fairly predictable climate. Gone, debates about sane policy decisions; instead we have a war on acronyms.

What letter clusters will they come for next? TGIF (thank god it's Friday), YOLO (you only live once), STFU (shut the fuck up), or WWJD (what would Jesus do?)? Even the latter irks them, considering all his lessons of mercy, forgiveness, his stands against greed and lies.

Here we are, in the worst kind of non-static situation. But we can still hope. And never give up (NGU). 

I end with that acronym, NGU. 

Ever present and woke, Joyce

PS - don't let the bastards grind you down.