Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between.
Must have coffee.
The happy place.
Somewhere in this once great country there’s a woman farmer smiling on a pasture with her cows. She calls it her happy place and there she can enjoy life after having voted for TFG. This is rural America, also known as the flyover part of it, and it’s been there all along.
Looking at that one happy farmer with her cows on her land makes you think she’s just a simple woman, happy with the little things in life. Her world stops where her farm ends or barely extends to her general store where she buys soap and fertilizer and all is well in it. She doesn’t look like a nazi or a racist or anything like that. She’s just enjoying her day with her cows. And she smiles. It’s her happy place.
She was probably one of those “one bullet ballot” voters, or whatever they call it, who just selected who she wanted for president and didn’t care much about the rest. Or maybe she did and thinks keeping it all R down ballot will make her place an even happier one. Either way, our warnings and our hope didn’t reach her and if they did they were quickly dismissed as a threat to her cows. She’s probably a devout Christian and as such expects God to sort us out after the purge.
That’s wishful thinking on my part as it implies she’s aware of what’s coming. Most likely she’s not. Just as she is oblivious to how more expensive her soap and her fertilizer will soon become but then she will probably blame that “Muslim black guy” who was president and pray to her God to help her white president save her and her cows. And when they don’t she will just blame all the “Blacks” and the “Mexicans” who seem to hate her. And her cows. Do not fuck with her happy place.
She is the poster child of Republican America; all you have to do is replace her farm with a suburban house and her cows with a couple of big ass trucks. That’s the happy place for them. It stops at its boundaries and is secured by attack dogs and lots of guns, preferably semiautomatic. It became painfully obvious our great country is not made for you and me but for them only. At least in their minds. Hence the “once” great.
Of course there are deeper roots to this and of course it was racism, misogyny and ignorance combined with the apathy of so many who just don’t believe in elections anymore. But it was also this, and perhaps mostly this: the happy places these people live in without a care in the world, where ignorance is still bliss.
Outside, families will be torn apart, brown people will be put in camps, women will die in the dark, the written word will become government sanctioned but none of that matters in those happy places across America where God will provide as long as there’s a Republican in the White House. Or so the local pastor says. I thought America had a chance this time but I was wrong.
Our happy place is too big for comprehension compared to their enclosed little ones. There’s too many of us but that only makes things worse, apparently, and when their happy places turn to shit they will blame us for it and double down on their Bible thumping and maybe buy more guns. This shows us that hoping their happy places go up in smoke is not the answer, apart from being wrong to wish for.
All we can do is make way for change regardless of their happiness. To create a world big enough and inclusive enough for everyone, even that woman and her cows, not because of her but in spite of her. And perhaps stop worrying about how that will affect her happy place. After all, I am sure God will provide for her. Honestly I reached a point where I don’t really care if it will of not. A point where I couldn’t care less about that woman or her cows.
I realize it’s a dark place to be. Call it my alternative to her happy place. One her happy place created for me. But here I am and here I will stay until such time when I can find a little happiness of my own again. And maybe then I will give a fuck or two about those cows. Not sure about the woman. I don’t think I can ever forgive or care for her ever again.
Peace.
