Drowning

The political and moral onslaught on our country has many of us feeling like we’re drowning. How to keep our heads and souls above water?

Welcome to another installment of Life Its Ownself. I offer insight, analysis and context on Texas and national politics, as well as entertaining stories of life its ownself in the Lone Star State. If you like what you read, please 1) smash the Like button at the bottom of this installment, 2) subscribe to this newsletter, and 3) tell your 1,000 best friends to read and subscribe. Also, feel free to comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

But first, your moment of Zen … Nightfall over Marathon, Texas, Monday, February 17, 2025.

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Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Quote of the Day:

“When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.”

- Lin Yutang

Donald Trump was inaugurated as the nation’s 47^th President four weeks ago yesterday. I thought it was going to be bad, but I must admit I did not think it would be this bad, this quickly. I am reeling from my own failure of imagination – I thought his inherent laziness and incompetence would slow things down or divert them into the ditch. Neither seems to be happening. The norm-stretching and lawlessness just unspools from the administration day by day.

It feels like we’re drowning in his malignancy.

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Several years ago, my friend Maria gave me a framed print of the magnificent painting El Perro (The Dog) by Francisco Goya. Maria was born and raised in Spain but by then had lived in the United States for half her life. She never, though, lost her love for the art and culture of her native land. I was truly humbled by her gift, which she gave me on the occasion of the passing of my super-dog and boon companion, Xena. I placed the print in my library and frequently gazed upon it. I admired it for depicting a dog, and for the context in which she gave it to me. But my understanding of the painting’s history and meaning have deepened recently.

El Perro is one of Goya’s Black Paintings, a series of paintings that chronicle Goya’s descent into depression and madness during the period between 1819 and 1823. The paintings are housed in the magnificent Prado in Madrid. El Perro is among the most recognizable of the paintings, and its placard indicates the dog is in distress, quite literally, drowning. (The painting is sometimes called El Perro Semihundido, or the Half-Drowned Dog.)

I have been a fan of dgos all my life, and have owned a few extraordinary ones . I can think of few things that would cause me more anguish than watching a helpless dog — whether mine or another’s — drown. And so the painting has taken on a new salience for me, and a new relevance.

I have been contemplating that image a lot recently. I moved its location in my house so I can see it more often and easily. It speaks to me of the current moment – overwhelming, horrifying, even deadly. The mixture of grievous wrong and my own feelings of helplessness has grown more pronounced in each of the last four weeks.

Consider some of the most recent assaults on our democracy within just the last couple weeks:

• The confirmations of Russell Vought, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to important Cabinet positions in spite of their manifest anti-qualifications and corruption;

• Trump’s straight-faced propsal for ethnic cleansing and real estate development in Gaza;

• The ongoing dismantling of the US Agency for International Development and the shutdown of vital programs (famine relief, disease prevention) it administers around the world;

• The executive order to “disappear” some migrants to an expnnded detention facility Guantanamo Bay, separated from family and legal counsel;

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (that phrase is outrageous enough) announcement last week that a) the U.S. will pretty much leave Ukraine to the depredations of Vladimir Putin, and b) come to think of it, that will also be U.S. policy re the whole of Europe;

• The demand by Elon and his Teenage Mutant Incel Turtles to get into the IRS database and look at YOUR tax returns,^[1] in the name of government efficiency or somesuch nonsense;

• The Thursday Night Massacre at the Department of Justice;

And the list goes on. In fact, it is nigh impossible to keep up with all the attacks on the Constitution and our system of government. The daily assault on the pillars of our society – citizenship, equality, legal rights, due process, the 80-year old international order and our place in it – is, first of all, exhausting, and intentionally so. The goal is to overwhelm our ability to comprehend and react – to drown us in the gradual, then quick, undoing of our constitutional republic.

That is why I have not published anything in three weeks. By the time I’d researched and gathered my thoughts on, say, birthright citizernship, USAID was being illegally dismantled. And so on through DOJ firings, Treasury Department financial databases, illegal “buyout” offers for federal employees, etc.

It’s. been overwhelming, I confess. So I took a little break. But I realize that, to whatever extent I wish to write about and comment on the tidal waves now crashing over us, I had best be getting about it.

The good news is, the pushback is starting, both in the courts and in the streets, (One can only wish that the Congress would perform its policymaking and oversight duties.) Judges have put a temporary halt to some of Trump’s most outrageous efforts, and more cases are winding their way through the courts. Vice President J.D. Vance (R-Sellout) has complained that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” which begs that question, “Are these actions ‘legitimate’?”

And yesterday, “Not My President’s Day” rallies were held around the country including in Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin. These were especially inspiring to me, as the media has been pushing a narrative that Trump has “broken the American Left.”

Not yet, apparently. And that is good news for our country.

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^[1] I know that many of you are thinking, “Well, Elon is just trying to weed out fraud. He would never use the IRS database, or the Social Security database, should anyone be stupid enough to give him access to them, to do anything that would affect me.” Send me a postcard from the gulag, numbnutz.