Happy Solstice Everyone!

Hey everyone out in Progressive land – I wish you all the best for 2025 and hope you had a pleasant Winter Solstice!

As we move forward into 2025, we’re all going to have to stare the ugliness that comes with disinformation, rage and anti-woke sentiments.

Certainly a lot has happened for me in 2024, so much so that I’ve had to dial back on my regular blogging on Excited Delirium.

Some of you might be saying ‘that’s fine with me’. Let’s hope it a mere handful!

Even thought I had a truly wonderful year in 2024, I find myself looking at the political wreckage of the year and find myself wondering if there’s anything I can do.

With Trudeau teetering towards an earlier retirement than he probably would have liked (and he should), Canadians are faced with a mean-spirited ‘everything is broken and the Freedom Convoy is going to fix it’ pile of nonsense.

In Ontario, Doug Ford continues to steamroll his way through bike lanes, public properties and the world’s best farmlands in exchange for McMansions and parking lots.

We saw it evolve to our horror and dismay in the United States with the election of Elonia Musk, er, I mean Donald Trump to the White House. Seriously … WTF? Is that where our ‘democracy’ is at when a plutocrat and oligarch can usurp the most important democratic action that takes place in the world every four years (don’t try to tell me it’s not)?

What’s the world to do when it’s the hands of a ship of fools that hate everything and want to rip everything down?

I’m afraid of what will happen.

The Reagan years were all about expanding entitlements to the rich and reducing their taxes. That’s why we have the plutocracy that we do.

The Bush Jr. years were all about ending the separation of church and state with the US federal government and using tragedies like 9/11 to convince the world (especially rural America) that ‘they’ were coming to get them.

The Trump years will likely spell an end to so many rights, including the freedom of the press, just so that they can expand both of the above to a point where we’ll no longer be able to stop the train.

As Solstice comes and goes, it’s a reminder to see the days get brighter and to fight our ways against the darkness.

The question is … how?