The Banality of Evil, Groundhog Day Edition

I'm sitting in Sola coffee shop in north Raleigh.  At a table near me are two semi-stylish business-casual white guys.

I catch a mention of church, this or that church with X thousand worshipers.  So I figure these guys are preachers or evangelists, church planters.

Then I hear a reference to crisis pregnancy centers. 

In other words, these are misogynist rat bastards.  Warlocks in shepherds' clothing.  Their business is to browbeat young women into not having abortions. 

It was probably about two years ago that I was sitting in Helios coffee shop, downtown, near the state capitol.  I was overhearing a group of suit-wearing types discussing lobbying strategy.  Eventually I realized they were out-of-state operatives who'd flown in on behalf of the charter school industry.  I.e. infiltrators, saboteurs, dedicated to destroying public education, to hollowing out the schools my children attend. 

Different flavors of poison in different parts of town.

Election 2016: The Hokey-Pokey

They caucused their asses off in Iowa yesterday.  Whatever that means -- bundling up and trudging out to the local VFW hall to play some amalgam of Red Rover and the Hokey-Pokey.  There's probably some arcane system of hand signals adapted from livestock auctions.  I don't quite understand it, but the pundits assure me, the Iowa Caucuses are essential to America's greatness and to our presidential politics being a true test of leadership.

For my job I've been moving to a new office the last few days, a.k.a. filling boxes with unsorted scraps of my notes, work-related and not.  Numerous blog posts that died a-borning.  I spied one yesterday in which I was expecting Hillary Clinton to have a smooth ride to the nomination.  This time around, unlike Hillary v. Barack in 2008, it would not be a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party.  (I guess I jotted these notes about the time Bernie Sanders announced for the presidential race.)

Whoops!  I guess the soul of the Dems is always up for grabs.  A new crop of youngsters has emerged to fill the leftier-than-thou wing where I used to sit.  It's Bernie Sanders or nothing for them.  Better Donald Trump should win the White House than let DINO Hillary take us back to the days when AOL was riding high and Bill Cosby was America's Dad.

It really never is easy where Hillary is concerned.  She's cursed.  Maybe not fatally cursed, to the extent of being unelectable in the general.  But eternally haunted. 

Listen, I like Bernie.  I expect I'll be voting for him when our state's primary comes around.  But the imperative is for the Democratic candidate to win in November, whoever that candidate is.  I figured a Bernie vote would be a message vote, intended to pull Hillary to the left.  Now, is it simply a Bernie vote?  I'm not sure what to root for in the primary; a number of bad scenarios present themselves. 

The shit on the Republican side is so crazy, I don't see how they get their act together by fall.  But I fear their knack for ignoring inconvenient realities, joined to their sharklike sense for blood in the water. 

So the forecast is for nine months of anxiety, distrusting the media, and distrusting my own instincts.