Goodbye, My Love

My wife, Lauren, died on the 31st of July. I’m going through our house, rearranging things, throwing things out and putting things away, partly because whenever I see something of hers it brings up a host of memories that are overwealmingly painful . Of course I want to save many of her things. I’m putting many of them away in boxes, for a time I’ll be strong enough to endure seeing them again, and maybe even enjoy those memories.

As I look at each thing it takes me on a journey back down the years. And now, it makes me more than want to cry. It makes me want to crawl into a hole and die. I feel myself falling into a hole that goes down forever into darkness, and I’m too weary to even feel.
I don’t know why I feel the need to say these things. Everyone knows, everyone can imagine death and what it means. Why this need to unburden myself, by laying some part of this burden on someone else. It seems another cruel thing about death, this way that misery has of wanting company.

I have no answers for any of this, but only look forward to a time when every nuance of the past doesn’t bring with it some subtly different shade of pain.
Yet I also feel her spirit here, in this room, and I feel her benevolence, her kind energy, and that she doesn’t want me to grieve. Goodbye my Lauren, my wife, my life.

Brent Hightower

The Future of the Democratic Party

Before I post this I'll preface it by saying, "Yes, I'm voting for Biden!" Even though I strongly backed Sanders in the primary, I'm voting for Biden!

Assuming Democrats win the election, there will be two ways of thinking about how to go forward. One will be for Democrats to take the political center, and in so doing marginalize the Republican party as a fringe group, thus becoming the party of the majority.

The alternative will be to combat the radical right-wing agenda of the modern Republicans with an alternative vision, one that actively seeks to heal the deep inequities in American society through activist policies.

On the surface the first vision seems logical, but upon further scrutiny it falls apart altogether. The election of Trump itself is an indication of how profoundly disaffected Americans are with the status quo! If the Democrats become, by placing themselves in the center, apologists for the way things are, they will face swift political annihilation.

Our situation is very similar to that which Roosevelt faced in 1932. We should take his actions as the perfect model for how we face the current situation. Democrats must do nothing less then completely reverse the prevailing attitudes of the last 40 years. Only if Americans see a significant change in their personal fortunes, and the conditions of their communities, will Democrats prevail, even in the short run. If Democrats don't prevail we will likely face some new form of fascism.