April 10, 2017…. Day 81
Gorsuch became the 113th Supreme Court justice today. It was hard to even see it and hear about it and know about it.
There was a femicide murder-suicide at a grade school in San Bernadino. A couple of kids caught bullets meant for their teacher. Her husband killed her and then killed himself. It’s not really news. It’s just America being America. Men killing women and people shooting up grade schools.
For an hour or two this morning, there was a State Department press briefing listed on the C-Span schedule for the day. It would have been the first since March 23. At around 11:30 am ET, the listing quietly disappeared and did not reappear. No State Department briefing still.
Sean Spicer did his first on-camera press briefing for a week. We’re getting used to the Spicerisms and the way this administration plays house. But hearing him talk about Syria was a whole new level of … astonishing. It’s plain as day for anyone to see. They simply do not know what they’re doing. They just have no idea whatsoever. This bellicosity, and the Navy ships moving toward the Korean peninsula, and different pieces of the administration out of sync with each other, rattling different sabers to different rhythms–well, all this has made me retreat inside a shell more than before. And I am ashamed because I know we need to keep up the resistance on the local front. But I’m reaching a saturation point.
I listened to political podcasts all day. I learned a lot about the health care system, tax reform possibilities, China, Syria, and Gorsuch. I learned a lot, but I’m not sure what for. That podcast S-Town has me thinking about declensionism and obsessiveness. I’m keeping myself at a fever pitch of learning and awareness all day, and then chronicling and scrapbooking a fraction of it here as a self-soothing mechanism before bed. But that all doesn’t add up to helping the situation.
At times like these, i have to remind myself that I am giving monthly donations to various organizations–donations large enough to stretch the bounds of what my budget can handle and supersede my retirement saving efforts. So hopefully I”m helping to pay some lawyers and scientists and journalists to do stuff.
Here are the questions reporters asked Sean Spicer today (recommended):