Trumpocracy

Trumpocracy. Holy crap. That moment when David Frum retweets your status and suddenly your notifications are blowing up.

I’m two days removed from my position at the Chamber where I definitely felt a very strong pull to remain as neutral and non-political as possible so as to not offend anyone I deal with professionally—and then I tweet one little comment and get amplified like crazycakes.

Hmmm, what’s the Universe trying to tell me? 

LONG LONG LONG time ago when I first started blogging, I did a lot of political ranting. I was a member of a R.I.N.O. (Republicans in Name Only) blogging group. During the 2004 election a reporter with PRI (Public Radio International) wanted to interview me as a “moderate Republican woman supporting Bush.” (I declined the interview, like I mentioned above I’ve always been very cautious about being too vocal about my opinions with the fear people associate my personal views with my professional position and worked at the United Way of Buffalo and Erie County at the time.)

20 years after I registered to vote I left the Republican Party in 2012. I held out longer than I thought because I always wanted to have a voice locally in the primaries, but I just had enough. ENOUGH with partisan politics on all sides. I considered registering as a Libertarian but chose to just be unaffiliated with any party.

This comes from a person who made scrapbooks of the 1988 presidential election in Middle School (for fun, disclaimer I was a DOLE supporter and even made up a parody commercial stealing from the DOLE pineapple empire that went “I got a feeling 88’s the year—-the perfect vacation from Reagan is Dole.“) and went on to study Political Science and Law and read the David Frum book “Dead Right” for fun and had a subscription in her early 20s NOT to Glamour or Cosmopolitan magazine but to the D.C. newspaper Roll Call and National Review & Reason, not being affiliated with a party is a big deal.  I lived and breathed politics…(and dated two Alex P. Keaton types in my life, my first boyfriend in H.S. and D.C. John. ) Suddenly, for my own sanity and well-being, I had to step away.

Too much. Overload.

Now when I search my blog archives for “BUSH” — 27 garden posts come up first.

Hee hee. Oh how times have changed.

ALL THIS SAID. I mentioned yesterday new goals for the month. READ MORE BOOKS. I finished a fiction book last night – Music of Chance by Paul Auster and I started the non-fiction book Trumpocracy by David Frum. And I innocently sent out that one tweet and BAM!

Instead of just dealing with the pain of reliving the 2016 election, I’m encouraged and inspired to share political thoughts (perhaps) once again (outside of Twitter that is, I’m pretty active on Twitter with what I feel, just have been very censored with my blog and Facebook in the past.)

Is the circle of life taking me back to my blogging roots? Sharing WNY events and my opinions on current events? Only time will tell.

My quick take: For anyone paying attention to the news of our world nothing in this book will come as a shock. However it is a terrifying reminder of how we got to where we are—the present state of affairs and possible consequences of the future. I think I got whiplash from shaking my head in disgust over and over and over again. That said, important read. I highly recommend. Painful reminder, but a necessary one.