The End of Something

There’s almost certainly no one reading this. It’s my first post on a blog that I’m not even sure I’m going to keep writing. To anyone who is somehow reading this: welcome. Also, how did you find it? I didn’t tell anyone about it yet, not even my wife.

What is The Derelict Press?

I was looking to get back into some light blogging, the name “The Derelict Press” came to me, and I liked the sound of it. Plus, we can all acknowledge that the Press doesn’t do it’s job very well and that they are Derelict in their duties. And also somehow the domain name thederelictpress.com was still available. A lot of things had to fall into place to make this happen is what I’m saying, so in some ways this is a miracle. This blog is a miracle, even if this ends up being the only post I ever write.

What I do with this remains to be seen. If we’re all lucky it will be thought-provoking and insightful, but I also hope it’s funny. At least eventually.

It won’t be topical. Not really. I don’t want to get into the weeds of the Topic of the Day, or even of the Week. I’m going to wait to write about things until I’ve sat with them for a minute. But it’s not like I can ignore the news entirely, or pretend that the Trump Cabal in Washington, DC, does not exist. That will take up more space than I’d like, but it is what’s happening in America for the foreseeable future, like it or not.

It does feel like we’ve reached the end of something with Trump back in the presidency.

It’s not unlike the feeling of January 6th, which also felt like the end of something, but until the last few days I’ve struggled to articulate the difference.

January 6, 2021, was the end of the idea that America was a cohesive place, with something binding us together, even if no one was quite sure what that was, or had seen any evidence of it for decades. We all just assumed it was there. Was it Grandma & apple pie? Maybe it was McDonald’s, or the American car industry. Baseball? No, probably Football at this point…

But on the day Trump assembled his violent mob to attack the US Capitol to overturn an election he lost, that assumption went out the window, much like Mike Pence very nearly did. It became obvious that there wasn’t actually anything holding us together. The very idea of Reality itself was now up for negotiation. America might still exist, but it doesn’t really exist in the way we all thought it did.

If the U.S. got in a war with another country tomorrow, how many Americans would have to think about what side they’re on? Probably a lot more than would have five years ago. If San Francisco got bombed by China, are we sure that Trump wouldn’t go on TV minutes later to suggest that maybe California deserved it? I’m not.

Welp, this post is already longer than I wanted it to be. Still not sure I have any idea what format this will take going forward. It’s a fluid process, I suppose. Are you laughing yet?? I’ll get to the jokes next time, perhaps. See you in a week, or two, or whatever.

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