Damn them!

 A friend of mine was scammed but good last week.  She's an older woman, a recent widow, and although she hasn't been financially ruined, this is scary for her.  She feels very alone as she navigates replacing her computer and credit cards, opening and closing accounts, filing reports, dealing with the aftermath of having naively let someone into her computer.  She is embarrassed that she was caught, of course, but she's from a time when people were more trusting and had reason to be.

And they know that, these fucking thieves.  That's why elders are targeted.  We're not as familiar, not as comfortable with the digital world, of course, but even more so because we still want to believe that it's possible to trust someone.  And that belief is used against us as though it were a flaw instead of a beautiful way to behave.  

Sometimes it feels as though this country has been ruined, and I often fear the ruination might be permanent.  Empires rise and fall all through history, and this is probably what it looks like when the erosion has begun.  People are so angry, so careless about hurting one another.  The gap between who has and who wants is widening palpably.  I blame Trump for a lot of this dysfunction and madness, but he didn't create it.  He and Fox have simply found all sorts of ways to stir it up, give it a spotlight and a megaphone.  There have always been scammers and there probably always will be, although their access to victims has been exponentially enhanced by the digital age.  But there is an underlying sickness in this country which Trump has exposed and which all this scamming is a symptom of.

I guess the US has to be humbled eventually.  We can't keep striding around the world in our hobnailed boots, taking what we want, ignoring poverty and starvation, propping up dictators.  We were founded on genocide and slavery, the root rot that is showing up now in the failing of so many of our systems and projects and laws.  I sure do miss Obama.  I miss my Mom.  I miss optimism.  I miss the assumption of decency in others.