Naturally fog rolls in on the morning when I have time to go out.

A mental weariness has set in today. It’s not so much dejection as a longing to stop thinking for awhile. I want climb inside a jar and screw the lid on behind me, sealing myself in. I want to spend the day playing Sims 4 and thinking about that instead of navigating the new rules of this new time.

Actually, what I really want is to walk casually into Le Beau Market, to stand at the deli ordering a Turkey Buttah sandwich and picking up a pack of dosa chips. I want to walk down Polk Street to the bay and the Maritime Museum, to go out onto the Maritime’s porch, look at the beach below it and see swimmers, children making sand castles and wading in the shallows. parents relaxing on towels and watching them.

I want to pass tourists chatting to each other in French, or German, or Spanish or Russian. I want to watch them taking pictures of Coit Tower or the Golden Gate. I want to give them directions to Chinatown, to recommend a restaurant or two, tell them about City Lights bookstore.

But most of all, I want to be able to live my life with politics and all is happening in Washington DC as a sort of background noise instead of a roar in my ears.

I love my country as I love my family, not because I think it is perfect but because it is mine. For better or for worse, it is what has shaped me and my life. I want what is best for it. That we will likely no longer be on the top of the heap after Trump is done with us does not keep me awake at night. Other western countries have been empires for awhile, stopped being empires, and survived it, even become better for what they lost. Spain, England, France, Germany…

But those Americans who have long despised the best part of what we are supposed to be — the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the First Amendment, the ability to change leadership without violence — are growing louder and more open in their eagerness to throw it all away with both hands. And they are the ones who are now pulling the levers of power.

I think what truly marked a turning point for me was something our Attorney General, William Barr, said this week. When he was asked about how he thought history would view the Justice Department decision to drop charges against a man who had pled guilty to colluding against his country with a foreign power, Barr said, “Well, history is written by the winners, so it largely depends on who’s writing the history.”

Barr does not merely imply here that the outcome of the election in November is a foregone conclusion. He implies that so is the outcome of the election after that and the one after that. I’m reminded of a passage from a recent book, The Order of the Day, by Eric Vuillard, which deals with the collusion of wealthy corporations in enabling Hitler’s rise. It describes a 1933 meeting between Nazi officials and various industrialists, in which the Nazis convinced them to finance Hitler’s rise to power. One of their major selling points was the possibility of those wealthy, powerful men not having to worry about the results of elections in the future.

There is growing doubt here about whether Trump will willingly leave office even if he loses by a landslide this November. I can remember a few similar doubts expressed about Nixon, but Nixon was not quite as open about egging on violence against those who opposed him. And as much as I hated Tricky Dick, I cannot imagine him, during a pandemic, acting in ways that seem calculated to kill as many Americans as possible.

I keep thinking of an old Annie Lennox song.

“…’cause when love is gone, there’s always justice,

and when justice is gone, there’s always force,“