Category: Tuesday Post

Zeitgeist 3/16/26

I guess I could subtitle this one “Trans in 2026”

We’re about 5 days out from the Equinox. It’s raining pretty good out my window. A few days ago, the aspect of the world was whiteness everywhere, and right now the whiteness is almost gone, being replaced by a muddy grey/brown/green, like bad color blending.

My sweetie is planning to make soda bread today and guinness stew tomorrow. Soda bread is OK, but the sweetness and strong caraway flavor is not something that I look forward to the way she does. I do love me some guinness stew, though, and the soda bread will go with it just fine.

The world continues to be a rolling disaster, and it’s not particularly “slow-rolling,” though the pace could pick up significantly, if certain people aren’t stopped. On that note, there’s building speculation that Bibi Netanyahu is dead, although there’s no confirmation of that other than the worrying “proof of life” videos that are clearly AI fakes.

There are two genocides going on in the Israeli sphere, both funded by the US, both intended to clear the way for Israeli expansion. There’s a third major conflict in the area – the bombing and proposed invasion of Iran – also funded on the US credit card, and adding to the depletion of US weapons stores. China and Russia have aligned behind Iran, as the US has aligned with Israel. The major powers are in opposition and things are escalating quickly. It feels like both a cliché and an understatement to say that this situation is not sustainable. But TPTB are certainly hoping to maintain the awfulness.

Domestically, we are in the midst of midterm primary election season, with a deeply unpopular President who wants nothing more than to be an authoritarian monarch in the style of Vladimir Putin or even Kim Jong Un holding sway and openly plotting to steal the upcoming elections.

The espablishment opposition party is not resisting nearly hard enough. Even the wannabe dictator has remarked on it. He thought his takeover was going to be a lot harder than it has been. The street-level response has been fierce, if entirely nonviolent opposition. That opposition hasn’t got the power to make changes on its own, but it is slowing down the fascists significantly, making itself heard on the streets, if not in the oligarch-controlled mass media. The real victory so far is that people continue to resist and to hope for better.

The anti-ICE and No Kings protests are keeping me alive right now, in more ways than one. As the fascists continue to scapegoat not only immigrants but also trans folk like me, it’s very stressful to watch what’s happening in the world, and yet I can’t look away. I spend a considerable amount of mental energy thinking about ways to flee the country, but if I’m being honest, I have to acknowledge that moving from here would be very difficult.

I suppose I’m gambling that ICE won’t make it this far. Or that being trans won’t be made a crime in Massachusetts and that I’ll be protected here. But whatever happens, I can’t predict now, everything beyond the horizon seems shrouded.

Steve Hackett – Beyond the Shrouded Horizon

Surprisingly gorgeous, atmospheric rock album

Beyond the Shrouded Horizon was released in 2011 on Inside Out music. It’s Steve Hackett’s twenty-first album.

I love all of the ways this record is its own thing, and yet harkens back to Hackett’s history. It’s very “boomer,” sometimes astoundingly old-fashioned but somehow beautiful even in its most cornball moments.

“Waking to Life” has a harmonic minor motif that’s very nice. I love that he has Eastern European connections in this music.

There are other essays into varied musical styles – The bluesy rock of Prairie Angel and Catwalk, the dense harmonies of Looking for Fantasy – but the central feeling here is mystical, in the same way that blue-hour motif reflected in both the title and the cover photo is.

insert from my copy

One reason this CD appeals is that Karen, my wife, also likes it. She asks me what I’m playing when I put it on, which she doesn’t do for a lot of the music I’m listening to these days. I think she would like Renaissance, which I’m about to start a deep dive into, although she’s aware of Annie Haslam. I think Annie is folk-adjacent enough to appear on her radar.

I love folk too, but I have really felt pulled towards prog and high-energy rock music for the last little while. I think that may have to do with the state of the world. I think i’m hungry for warrior energy, and metal and prog seem to have that energy more than most music.

I do understand “warrrior” energy as “boy music” which I resist on a personal level. I wrestle with that idea a bit, since I prefer to signify on the female side generally, but I feel like this is a time when fighting is the most necessary thing for a world citizen to be ready for.

But a warrior has to be fighting for something, and beauty seems like one of the best things one can fight for. Beyond the shrouded horizon, there may be more beauty to come. I hope there is. But we have to get there.

In the meantime, find beauty where you can.

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Americans Are Pissed

Don’t piss it all away…

I heard a guy with an English accent
Use the word “pissed” in the American sense.
No one else noticed.

He was talking to Americans
And Americans certainly know
What it means to be pissed.

A prominent example of an American being pissed. Note the red hat.

We are pissed. We all are.
So much of the time
And for every imaginable reason.

Over there on the other side
Of the big drink,”pissed” means “drunk.”
Being pissed is something you do to yourself.

But what are Americans drinking
That makes us so angry?
I answer that question all the time.

We swim in righteous dudgeon.
We ride a high horse as we wade through the river.
We vote our values.

Apparently, one of those values is revenge.
Another is the fear of being wrong.
But the greatest value is property.

You can own all the things
If you buy them in installments.
The things you own also own you.

Don’t piss it all away, some say.
If piss has no value,
Does that mean it’s free?

Like life in the USA is free?
Or bought with borrowed money?
Or rented, like beer and coffee?

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Babtists

My sense of right and wrong is well developed and is based in justice, not in following the second-hand pronouncements of a god that I no longer believe exists.

I was raised in Southern Baptist churches. Every moment of my young life I felt like an outsider. The Baptists helped with that. Inside me was the hard truth that every day, I secretly wished I was a girl. I heard over and over again from the churchy people in my family, who insisted (without knowing what was true of me, because I kept that secret buried deep inside) that people with sin in their hearts were bound for Hell, and that femininity in a male was a sickness and a sin.

I was presented with a choice. And my choice was to embrace my whole self: to be a good person, and to let the idea that I was inherently evil go, instead of internalizing the self-hatred I had been raised to. Every positive step I’ve taken since then has led to a larger worldview and a stronger sense of myself in the larger context.

My sense of right and wrong is well developed and is based in justice, not in following the second-hand pronouncements of a god that I no longer believe exists. This is not to say that I have not been a little shit at times in my life. I have. I acknowledge that I have made mistakes, as everyone does, and I continue to try to move forward and choose to take good action for myself and those I love as best I can.

But the Southern Baptist Council, the governing body of the churches I attended as a child, continues to dehumanize and marginalize people, and continues to believe that its views should rule this country and hold dominion over this world. At the 2024 Southern Baptist Convention, attendees voted to actively oppose Obergefeld, to exclude from membership any church with a female pastor, and to keep the SBC’s financials from being made public, thereby confirming their ideology as toxic.

Of course, they also have this effed up resolution, dated June 1st, 2014, that permanently separates me from the ideology of much of my family: On Transgender Identity, which is contradictory and hateful on a profound level. They claim that “we love our transgender neighbors” and in the same document resolve to “oppose all cultural efforts to validate claims to transgender identity,” rendering the whole document nonsensical and branding themselves once again as hypocrites.

And that’s at the heart of my exit from that religion and from the positive regard of much of my family.

not my family, not my church

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Intentional Cruelty

Why Are There Now Concentration Camps in the US?

Recently, I read that there are 70,000 people being held in ICE detention centers around the country, and that there have been over 1,000 human rights complaints lodged against ICE in the last year. At least 30 people have died in ICE custody in that amount of time.

What is it about the makeup of human beings that allows us to be horrible to each other? Big imaginations with no bounds on them? Our vision bigger than our hearts? Can it be that we just… can imagine enjoying being that cruel?

Eastern Roman mozaic depicting the Sermon on the Mount, located in Ravenna

It strikes me that the people who enjoy torturing others are the people with the least amount of imagination. They have parameters for acceptability, but somehow those parameters include… torturing, killing, creating human misery. Why? You won’t be surprised, I hope, to hear that I haven’t got any answers: only questions.

Lately, the name Phineas Gage has come to mind quite a bit for me. You might remember him from your Psych 101 course. He’s the railroad worker who got into a terrible accident in which a railroad spike was driven through a region in his brain. The story goes that he recovered, but was a changed person: cruel, violent, always angry! whereas before the accident he was kind and even generous.

Think about John Fetterman, who had been a well-thought-of Berniecrat, but who had a massive stroke during his Senate campaign. Now he’s the most conservative member of the Democratic caucus. Is it possible that conservatism comes about as a result of brain trauma? I’m sure that’s a vast oversimplification, but it’s something that I think about. Fetterman is far from my only example.

I’m sure you can come up with examples of people who were kind at some younger phase of life, but who later fundamentally changed. Maybe you can pinpoint when something changed for them? Not always, I’m sure, but I imagine that, like me, you know of certain marks in one personal history or another.

And I’m not suggesting that the only reason that people become reactionary and harshly conservative is neurological. But maybe it plays a role.

Also, why do so many of the people who are creating all of this cruelty claim to be Christians? How can the followers of the guy who proclaimed The Beatitudes be so far from those principles? And being far from those principles, how can they expect us to follow them into their depravity? why do they demand it with the ferocity that they do?

I’m flummoxed: desperate to find some answers and a path forward.

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