In The Middle..‪.‬ Andrew Laurence Hingston

This is bringing me down. I have been drifting downward for a while (weeks?). I have lots of worries and they are starting to get to me. Is Trump a worry?  A little bit, yes. As far as away as I am, and as long as I have been away, America still matters to me. It matters especially when my other country (UK) seems to have also lost it way. I need to go for a walk.

Today is the day that the US House of Representatives will vote to Impeach Donald Trump for a second time. 

This week the USA suffered a constitutional crisis that is still ongoing. And I was given further evidence of my wife's very poor judgement. I mention the former, and spend some time on the latter.

Mike Pence has signed on with the 11 oe twelve lunatic Senators to overturn the electoral college. Hey, what else can happen?

The 2020 American Presidential election ended on 3 November. Enough of the votes had been counted by 7 November that electoral experts declared the winner to be Joe Biden. As the counting (and in several cases recounting) moved forward, Biden's lead in the popular vote increased to the point that today I believe the difference between Biden and Trump is roughly eight million votes.  More importantly, the difference in Electoral College votes is 306 for Biden and 232 for Trump. The winner is the one who achieves 270 Electoral votes. Biden is the clear winner.

But the Trumpers aren't quitting.  The loss of some 55 legal cases across several states has not been enough to make them quit. A 9-0 Supreme Court decision (in fact, a humiliating dismissal) has not been enough to make them quit. The Rule of Law has now been stretched to breaking. Last night Trumpers fought with Anti-Trumpers on the streets of several American cities. People were hurt. 

Trump is not a political figure. He's a cult leader. 

I think it's time to hope that America finds someone with the selfless courage and moral clarity to put a stop to this lunacy.

This Buddhist concept ultimately means: we are all in this together. We are all responsible. Everything matters. It can be parsed and simplified as, to quote the Buddhist Nun Pema Chodron has put it: [There is] No Escape.

Donald Trump held one of his MAGA superspreader rallies in Georgia last night. I was sleeping in Poznań. Somehow there are connections. We may not see them; we may never see them. But somehow each of us bears some nuanced responsibility for Trump, for Brexit, for the Law and Justice party in Poland. There isn't anything that escapes being connected to everything else, and there isn't anything that escapes being connected to us. 

The term is actually dependent origination, sometimes set out as dependent co-origination. Co-dependent Origination is just a tip of the hat to co-dependence.