This writer just lost, literally, ‘The Love of my life’, an Angel I was married to for 33 years. There is nothing anyone can explain as to how deeply saddened one becomes at losing a lover, confidante, companion, sidekick, business partner, and best friend in an eight month span of the tortures and pain of the Big C. As her only 24/7 caregiver, the reader can imagine how she suffered from the bone cancer the lung cancer she carried within her hatched. I really don’t know, both emotionally and intellectually, if I will overcome this trauma.
That was the cycle: outright joy from finding a soul mate 34 years ago spinning into those past 240 days of a nightmare come alive.
Well, being a baby boomer I can look back to May of 1970, after Nixon (a moderate Republican compared to this Trump Regime) ordered the illegal bombing of Cambodia, and college students throughout the country went on strike. We demonstrated, and in my case at Brooklyn College in NYC, we shut down the school! Up until that point I had never thought much about Vietnam, and quite candidly, I stayed oblivious, due to my having that golden gift of a 2-S student draft deferment. While my neighbors were being sent over to ‘The Shit’ as the GIs called Nam, with some sent home in coffins, I got a pass. Not a fine thing to be proud of, looking back.
For thirty years up until 2000 I was in a cocoon politically. The reason was simple: The Two Party/One Party system was intact and not open for change. Clinton and the corporate Democratic Party were perhaps a hair width better than the Repugnatins as I called them. Both groups never met a fake war they didn’t like. When Ralph Nader ran on the Green Party ticket in 2000, I stopped sleepwalking and got involved. We worked for his campaign locally, and I met a few kindred spirits. Even though Nader lost at least there was a sign that there were citizens out there who saw the difference…
And look what happened children? First Bush Jr, or should I say Cheney 1, then Mr. ‘Hope and Change’, leading up to The Humpster, with a brief break for most likely the worst of them all: Lunchbox Joe. All creatures of the infamous Deep State, which The Humpster used to sucker the fools into MAGA WORLD. The Super Rich, who have controlled politics since the Stone Age, have bought most of the Democrats and 99% of the Repugnatins. Look how far down the rabbit hole our nation has fallen: A Neo-Fascist corporate-run government that is strangling us working stiffs with only about 6% of private sector labor in unions. The bosses really control everything now. Medicaid cuts that see less medical coverage and rural hospitals shutting down. High tariffs which are taxes on the necessities working stiffs and the indigent poor need. A new Hitler-inspired group of thugs with ICE badges and facemasks to hide their violence. Big Brother destroying a woman’s right to choose and a LBGTQ’s right for privacy. Need I go on?
The only recourse, as Chomsky would put it: “Hold your nose and vote for the Democrats.”
PA Farruggio
May 2026