Tomorrow at noon our second national four-year run of performative assholery officially begins. I say officially because, as anyone who has been awake for the last two months knows, the spiteful assholes have been out in full force since the election. Amurka is great again, let your hate flags fly.

I am of two minds about this second Trump administration. One part of my brain thinks (hopes?) that it will just be a noisier repeat of the last time. I actually retired from the government salt mines during that first fiasco, a few years earlier than I had intended, because I couldn’t stand the frustration any longer. My job required extensive travel, the destination and length of that travel was known as much as a year in advance. But the trumpkins ran everything so poorly that I often would not know until the morning of my travel, literally on my way to the airport, if the money for the trip was actually available. More than once I spent two weeks prepping for a trip that didn’t happen. I’m confident they will be every bit as incompetent, ineffective and just plain stupid as they were the first time. Which isn’t to say they won’t do some real, but fixable damage.

But the darker side of my brain wonders if this time around they will do permanent damage. Our national media just loves them some Trump. It makes their jobs so easy. All they have to do is translate the latest foolishness that falls out of his mouth into something vaguely resembling English, sit back and wait for the outrage clicks. But by merely transcribing the nuttery instead of calling it out, they give it an air of legitimacy that feeds the fever dreams of his angry followers. There are millions of them out there, and they are loud. It’s hard to guess — and scary to contemplate — how many are just braying jackasses like their leader, and how many are true believers ready to commit atrocities for a man who doesn’t really give two shits about anyone other than himself.

I’m a cishet white male. Other than my atheism, I’m among the most favored demographic of the radical right, but I’m still worried about what could happen in the next four years. If I were LGBTQ+ or Muslim or dark-skinned or even vaguely Messican looking, I would be keeping an INCH bag close to hand at all times.

Back when I worked maintenance in the government salt mines, if a piece of equipment or system malfunctioned, it was classified as an event. Most events were relatively minor, but they were still considered a bad thing, a data point that would show up in red on the morning spreadsheet, and require some form of restoration. And since restoration involves spending money, that could set off a wave of middle management e-mail chains and teleconferences reaching all the way to Washington, D.C. for a significant (costly) event. Recently, I had a bit of an event in my life. I’m still trying to figure out how significant it is, but it’s definitely knocked me back a step.

A couple of months ago I noticed occasional shortness of breath when I exerted myself. (I mean, more than usual for my old, fat ass.) I had been working pretty hard, doing demo work on an old house I bought to renovate, so at first I chalked it up to that and the fact that I had recently turned 60. I told myself maybe I needed to take it a little easier now. But it slowly got worse, and then I started feeling something right in the center of my chest. Not pain, just a very weird feeling, a lump-in-the-throat nervousness bordering on dread. It concerned me enough that I did something I despise doing. I got involved with the health care system.

My doctor ran a brief EKG test and saw no problems. She wrote me a prescription for heartburn medication and referred me to the cardiology department for a stress test. The cardiology department couldn’t get me in for almost two weeks, so I took the heartburn meds and waited.

It was not heartburn…

Things went downhill during that couple of weeks, with more and more shortness of breath, and the pressure in my chest turning to pain. Sharp pain. I knew, like the Warren Zevon song goes, my shit was fucked up. By the day of the stress test, I couldn’t walk a hundred feet without intense chest pain. I failed that test miserably, had to abort before I could get my heart rate up to the target. They gave me some nitroglycerin pills and scheduled a catheterization for two days later. The last couple of days before the catheterization were rough, constant chest pain, panting like a bulldog, with a wicked headache from the nitroglycerin. And the overwhelming feeling of dread was like nothing I have ever experienced. I went to sleep at night wondering if I would wake up.

Long story short, I have an inch-and-a-half long stent in my right coronary artery now. The cardiologist said the artery was 99% blocked, but during the minute or so he was using the angioplasty balloon to mash down the fat and stretch the artery out enough to place the stent, it was 100% blocked. And let me tell you, that hurts. It hurt for a few days afterward, and I can still feel exactly where it is in my chest. It’s not pain, just that lump-in-the-throat feeling of dread like I had in the beginning. I hope that feeling of dread goes away. It doesn’t help that I read the stent manufacturer’s patient information guide. It has a list of adverse events, in alphabetical order. The first one listed is abrupt stent closure. That sounds unpleasant.

I fucked up. Again. The company that was hosting my piddling little website jacked their prices way up, and I kept procrastinating about finding a new host. Long story short, I let my hosting contract expire and now I’m starting over. Again.

I think this is the third time I have lost the entire blog. Losing all my old posts this time didn’t bother me so much. I’m pretty sure there were a few gems in there, but it was mostly mundane meanderings and bitching about right wing politics. If it wasn’t for all the hassle and frustration of having to re-learn everything about getting the blog up and running again, it wouldn’t be a big deal at all.

I actually considered letting the place go dark for good, but I couldn’t do it. I’ve been flinging my random thoughts out onto the intertoobz for 16 years now, increasingly more sporadically, but I’m not ready to give it up yet.