THE DEEPEST FEELING OF RELIEF

     I was a SCUBA diver for a while. Which means that I had a PADI card and a NAUI card, which would allow me to rent tanks or fill my own. There were a couple of guys who oversaw my development, once I had been licensed. 
     One day after a dive I asked Andy, "What do you do when you have to pee. You can't just unsnap your wetsuit top and pull down the bottoms."
     "Pee," he replied laconically, "it will warm you in chilly waters and the water is flushed from your suit." 

Practical advise from an experienced diver. We were diving in about 60 feet of water off Sheraton Black Rock when the urge hit. We had just arrived at the floor and would be here maybe fifteen  minutes, which would allow us  the two decompression stops on our way up. The point of greatest stress had finally arrived. The incontinental divide. I cannot express the complete sense of relief that enveloped me. I was instantly warm, enveloped in an amniotic cacoon from my waist and moving down the legs. I was transported to my infancy, relieved here in this salt-water haven, surrounded by the awe of nature. I was a fetus in the womb of the world and I was learning.
     I had not thought of this for many decades, until today, January 6, 2021. The day Mitch McConnell lost his Majority Leader status. I had been tense these last weeks since everyone but trumpies witnessed the electoral win, both Electoral College, and popular vote, of Joseph Biden and Vice President Kamela Harris. Two run-off votes would be held January 5, in the old south state that had once been led by a governor who was known, by his golden axehandle pins commemorating the axe-handle he used to keep blacks out of his diner. That man was Lester Maddox, and he has had a long and sinister affect on Southern politics. He was a Dixiecrat, in that far-off time. A renegade Democrat, the party having long since pushed those southern Democrats into a cave where they would be out of sight if not out of mind. The Democrats needed to win both of those contests to have a 50/50 split in the Senate. That split would allow the Vice-president to preside over the body. Mitch McConnell would be merely the minority leader of the Senate. A woman, with a color he would prefer not to ackowledge, would now be the deciding vote. 
     When I awoke on Jan. 6, Rafeal Warnock had been called as the first black Senator from Georgia. Mere hours later John Osoff would be called the winner. The Democrats had broke the Republican stranglehold in the Senate. Appointees would be confirmed, legislation would be passed. There could now be a deeper investigation, should the leadership wish to add that to the volumes of trump chicanery. Not since that time on that dive off of Sheraton Black Rock, had I experienced that complete relaxation that overcame me. I didn't feel any warmer, but I was dryer. And I was happy. For a while. I still hate Republicans. They should have acted long ago to prevent this. Long ago, when Donald Trump was a reality TV star famous for firing people. Really, that was his schtick, firing people. But now we can feel just a tiny bit more in control of our lives.
     And then all hell broke loose. A right-wing insurrection broke out on Capitol Hill, and across from the Whitehouse, at Lafayette Park in our nation's capitol. The purpose of this armed mob of Duck Dynesty characters from Central Casting was to "stop the steal", the steal that republicans were unable to pull off in the November 3rd election. The very election where some 60 court appeals were made and turned down for lack of merit. Where even the Supreme Court, freshly packed by trump with slightly tarnished-but still fervent, conservatives, refused to consider. That steal. There were screen-shots of people wearing trump items posing with a wooden sign, split longitudinally, from Speaker Pelosi's office, one carrying a congressmans rostrum, another with mail taken from Speaker Pelosi's desk, even dressed like some aggrieved native-American in paint and horned head-dress. And pictures of Capitol police taking selfies and Senator Hawley giving the clenched fist salute.
     I'm all clenched up again. And I'm pissed off! Again. No more that brief feeling of euphoria. SHEESH.

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