Are you suffering from political nostalgia?

Are you suffering from political nostalgia? Was your dipnetting or berry picking interrupted this week by the Republican Convention? Do you long for the days where the inexperienced candidate with narcissistic qualities and a private email problem was wrapped into one person — Sarah Palin?

Does it seem strange to you that David Duke, a white nationalist, Holocaust-denying, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan thinks the time is perfect for him to run for U.S. Senate instead of secretly folding white hoods and watching episodes of Archie Bunker in an actual bunker?

Are you still saying “All Lives Matter” when you have seen an unarmed behavioral therapist trying to help an autistic man, lay on the ground with his hands up, get shot by the police?

Does a wall on the north side of Texas sound like a good idea when you hear a rape victim was jailed for a month after she left the courtroom and refused to testify against the convicted serial rapist who had raped her?

Remember when mass shootings were “breaking news” and not just a regularly occurring news story with location and body count changes?

It seems bad. It seems worse than before. It seems like George W. Bush, smiling and dancing at a funeral for fallen police officers, was not really that inappropriate.

My local public radio station played speeches live from the RNC in Cleveland this week. Normally our little Kachemak Bay radio station is salted with tide tables and weather reports. I brace myself a little bit for the Bush Lines – radio messages for people without phones. See, “Rose and Dawson” send each other love notes over the radio and they are so Hallmarky I’m rooting for them to break up or get better writers.

Hearing Rudy Giuliani, the patron saint of 9/11, who had apparently washed down a few Adderalls with a Red Bull, was pretty rough on my delicate dial. I suppose listening rather than watching saved me from the distraction of Donald Trump waving his tiny hands about. NPR’s commentators were pathetic in trying to be fair and balanced about the vitriolic hate speech and plagiarized passages. Convention enthusiasts struggled with the question, “When did America stop being great?”

Dear Alaskans, I feel like we are watching a train wreck and can’t look away. The bigger problem is, we are viewing it from the track. I keep hearing people say they can’t wait for the election to be over. Really? That light ahead in the tunnel? It’s actually the train coming, not the other side. I’ve tried to channel my inner Molly Ivins and come up with something really clever to make myself feel better.

It feels like democracy has gone the way of climate change. There have been those screaming in the political wilderness a la John The Baptist, that we’re at a tipping point! Hear the voice of Scottie tell Capt. Kirk, “She can’t take much more of this, Captain!” Gerrymandering, election engineering, voter suppression, corporate money influence, media manipulation and vote flipping are all part of the seven seals peeling away to the apocalyptic implosion of our political system.

It feels like the world has gone mad. It’s felt like that to much of the world for a long time, and we seem to be catching up in the wrong direction. I’m struggling to stay plugged in with the intention to change the things I can’t accept. I realize there’s a Serenity Prayer that deals with acceptance, but I’m not ready to accept the demise of our country in order to find some short-term pocket of peace while looking at a pink sunset and listening to sea otters crack clams. Oh, it’s tempting to tune out of the chaos and into my favorite channel I call “On The Porch Television.”

You’re reading a pep talk to myself. I was reminded this week that when I was born, the Vietnam War was raging and America was still trying to pull itself together after the public executions of President John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert Kennedy. Shortly afterward, the Kent State massacre and the Watergate break-ins occurred. The obvious difference to our dealing with chaos now versus then, were people like journalists Walter Cronkite, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and a few years before them, Edward R. Murrow.

This is the “buck up, little camper” part of my rant. Demand more from the media, which only create content to sell advertisement. They have no mandate to inform. If you don’t see it, stop watching. Demand more from the politicos. They need us to elect them, not visa versa. And for the love of all that is holy, don’t miss the pink sunsets. They help take care of that part of you that doesn’t want to give up.

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