READY SET…Sleep.

Warning. Rant first. Then couch and my Teddy Bear.

I am fucking exhausted.

I don’t know about you, but I feel as though I’m trying to recover from a four-year bender. I AM recovering from a four-year bender.

Better Medium writers than I am have discussed how recovering from Trump parallels being triggered all day, every day for five years. Five because, the campaign. Pussy-grabbing, lest we forget.

Yeah. We can relate.

Four fucking years of godawful abuse of the psyche, the heart, the mind, the soul. And beyond that the further assault by half the country’s choice to continue the abuse.

Like some kind of sick widespread Stockholm Syndrome. It’s a thing. We watched it. Still are, if those loving “HE’S OUR PATRIOT” tweets sending off Shit for Brains are any indication.

After the election, then the insurrection, then the Inauguration, then the insurrection deniers, enough already.

I just read a piece by a fellow Illumination writer which calls for forgiveness of the man who just left the White House and our country and many of us, AND our broken families, our dead loved ones, our busted incomes and lives in tatters.

NO.

NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO.

And because I would much rather, as I said before, let smarter writers than I am speak to this, please see:

From Dr. Bakari’s piece:

Forgiveness, as a virtue, leaves a metaphysical trail of tears and an invitation for intentional wrongdoers to harm. It is another outdated evolutionary script that deteriorates cultures rather than builds them up.

Sums it up neatly for me.

While Rosenna is specifically speaking to childhood sexual abuse here, I think her points are just as ringingly relevant to our current situation.

She writes:

A culture of forgiveness has given a clear message that if you want to harm someone, do it within familiar walls.

Which is, in a nutshell, precisely what we have done with our national cancer of white supremacy, home-grown terrorism and the rising crimes of hate.

Asking us to forgive this creature and his enablers is the same as the Congressional Republicans barking about UNITY after helping invite murderers into Congress.

After your sorry asses put a gallows on the hallowed ground of government? You want forgiveness, just like those stupid shitheel sorry asses expected that their Shitheel in Chief was gonna PARDON THEM? Like he CARED?

NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO.

Stop that stupid shit. Ya’ll only want forgiveness when your head is on the chopping block. When it’s a Black man’s or Black woman’s head, or god help us a Democrat or Liberal head, or worse, both, it’s drop the guillotine blade without a fair trial.

So no. NO forgiveness. NO. Not this time. Because as every Black writer I know and love has pointed out a thousand times, HOW QUICKLY we forget in America, how quickly we see horror, and like children at a haunted house can’t WAIT to see what’s next.

We have the attention span of a gnat fart in a wind tunnel, and as a result, nothing ever goddamn changes for people who have been keeping this place glued together at the seams.

This country needs justice.

This country needs personal responsibility.

We need to own our shit.

Why? Because, folks, as any Jack Catholic can tell you, that if all these murderers and rioters and seditionists gotta do is say, “Oh, we’re so sorrrry,” then just like Saturday morning Confession, you’re forgiven.

Say your Hail Marys and fuggedaboudit.

Then pop that cute white pointy-headed hat on over your pure white sheet, Billy Bob, and let’s go party down until we gotta say sorry next week.

NOPE, DOPE.

The party of personal responsibility brought us to the brink, and we still teeter there.

This country has been deeply traumatized. I am fucking exhausted, and I am fucking exhausted by exhortations to forgive.

We constantly, century after century, traumatize those citizens of color by choosing hate over them, by choosing to pat the White boys on the head while beating the shit out of Black folks, by choosing the KKK over the Congressional cleaning crew who had to mop up their shit and piss.

Forgive. REALLY?

Forgive my aging American ASS. My aging, thrice-decorated, military veteran ASS.

The one that understood that an oath is an oath even if a fucking OAF took it. Apparently we have a great many oafs in the military, the fire department, the police (nay, nay, say it isn’t so) and all through the halls of Congress.

I took an oath in 1973. Funny thing about that, I took it seriously. I didn’t somehow choose to honor only as it was convenient to me or my buddies.

Silly me.

If we cannot hold oath-breakers at the highest level of our government responsible, what are we going to forgive next, folks?

I’m fucking. Exhausted.

Getting my teddy bear, and I am taking a goddamned nap. I am going to need the rest, because what’s next is coming.