This will hopefully be one of the last, if not the last politically cynical posts I pen. After spending four days in a mindfulness/awareness retreat recently, I re-realized that my core isn’t negative in the least. I knew this. I operate from a place of idealism and hope. But this campaign season has chipped away at that core. I have no illusions that these GOP men aren’t human or don’t have flaws.

But good Lord–Really?

And to think, at one time I was actually a leader in the Young Republicans in my old stomping grounds. This year, since Jeb Bush walked away (say what you like, I was actually ready to support him and consider moving more to the moderately conservative place of yesteryear), the character, the tone, the substance and the players scare the hell out of me. One in particular has me greatly confused. I actually reached a point where I was convinced I just wasn’t smart enough, or in touch enough, or patriotic enough to realize he might just be right. Not.

Each day–up until even the last few with the War-of-Wives shit, I am convinced that this animal has created and deployed Twitter Fairy Dust and has created an almost zombie following that rationalizes his absurdity in the name of being “great again.” In the most ironic of twists, seven (7) of my friends/colleagues in the last 3 days have written me to express first hand that they are walking away from this guy. He has more interest in picking on Ted Cruz’s wife (careful…she would kick has ass on all fronts and is a class act) than speaking about the world’s challenges with terror from any other point than declaring all muslims as probable terrorists. Just another in the latest of uninformed and myopic lunacy. My journal entry of a few weeks ago was therapeutic. Please try and not be offended if you support this guy. This was just my expression and opinion. I am not on a track to change minds. Again, the fairy dust is already in the neurologic system and likely can’t be reversed on logic or moral conscience alone 🙂

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Trumpinol: revealing the hidden evidence of crimes against humanity (or at least Constitutional intent).

It was Super Tuesday (the first one). Kind of reminds me of “Super-Sizing.” Adding more bad to an already bad thing that eventually clogs the blood flow and the wellness of an otherwise health-seeking miracle of a thing. And it happens from a point of will…of choice…a seemingly robotic and mindless auto-response fashioned by sound bites and media crack doses of empty and provocative rhetoric. But, it works!

As I sit and attempt to dialogue with healthcare strategy consultants over dinner, I can’t help but check my phone that is pegged to politico.com. With each moment, my heart sinks further and my mind clouds as if in a nightmare I keep thinking I might wake from. Then again, why? Maybe its time.

But there is evidence. Let’s explore, class. Circumstantial evidence can be a good thing to come along, especially if a crime isn’t solved in the first 48 hours. It can reveal the source of vile acts and bad judgement.

I have this love of—no, perhaps an obsession with—true crime channels. Investigation Discovery and Crime & Investigation Network are my favorites. Great detective and forensic work often reveals what criminals attempt to cover.

One of the many tools in forensics work is this spray. Curiously simple, but entirely revealing. Luminol. According to Wikipedia, mixed with a little garnish of my own, the following definition is offered to the common folks, like me:

Luminol: Forensic investigators use Luminol to detect trace amounts of blood at crime scenes, as it reacts with the iron in hemoglobin. Biologists use it in cellular assays to detect copper, iron, and cyanides, [xenophobia, character forgery, Constitutional contempt, and, and bad manners].

Being a lifelong idealist and amateur silver-lining chaser, I try and find SOMETHING in most bad situations. In perhaps the strangest and most ironic political twist, the current histrionics and calculated oration of the leading republican candidate for the great office of President is likely to have at least one unexpected “value.” Like Luminol, the positions and “plain talk” have ignited largely dormant, albeit restless sentiment. Lurid as it is.

The pseudo-nationalism commanding so much attention would fit more in a Game of Thrones episode than in today’s world. I am shocked and almost numb at the flood of ignorance that suggests that if we build and fortify “The Wall” and keep out the undesirables (anyone lacking a Judeo-Christian position or isn’t white enough or doesn’t always win or hasn’t been captured in war, or is a woman, or has a mental or physical challenge, or…fill in he blank) that all will be fine and we will return to being “great again.” I’m at a loss over this man who seemed to wake up from some cryogenic state from the first Ice Age to grunt and bully club his way to 36% of one party’s constituency that finally has found its long lost quasi-arian voice. He is proxy for tucked away emotions of fear and anger over encroachment of the life they believe was intended by the Constitutional founders.

Oh, the irony again. Our founders would have loved the diversity of thought and look and dress and language and collective patriotism. The current stage of commentary energizes the ethnocentric base and and appeals to the equally anxious base that feel valuing diversity is synonymous with “politically correct.” This actually speaks more to their ignorance and intolerance than to their humanitarian or constitutional wisdom.

I have friends, dear friends, who do not hold nationalistic ideals and who do not have a prejudiced bone in their body that are supporting the reality star and real estate tycoon. They are good people. And, they genuinely believe that his derisive “plain talk” is good for us. They feel his “anti-establishment” (the most trendy, and entirely inaccurate term applied this election, self proclaimed by virtually every candidate) speech represents them, like a preacher who seems to be speaking directly to you as you sit passively and then nervously in the pew.

I have moved through the stages of political grief.

(1)Denial began when I first saw evidence of folks taking this man seriously. Followed by the (2)anger over his shocking and divisive words and attacks. I then entered the next stage of (3)bargaining with the political gods, those deceased and those remaining, hoping their influence could somehow create a an exposé of his entire self not matching a word of his newfound conservatism. They acquiesced, mesmerized by the unprecedented gamesmanship that is the RNC. Then, as support grew and the hate spewed and the children fought in the political sandbox, (4)depression sat in. It remains. It carries through and is handing off to the final stage of (5)acceptance that this might actually happen. Perhaps it is time.

Wait. I almost gave in to the fairy dust. I will vote. I won’t use the pitiful “I’m not even going to vote” cop out. I will dialogue. It is my right. It is my privilege.

I need a glass of wine and a hammock.