When I write these stories, I always start with a title and then go rom there. The title is a reflection of what is on my mind and what resonates and sounds “catchy”. Having written 2,400 such stories over the past six and a half years, I have stumbled onto the same title more often than I care to admit. It’s a bit like seeing the edge of your imagination when it happens, but I rally back quickly and modify the title so that there isn’t a duplication. Sometimes I cheat by adding a word like the other day when I started with “Letting Go” and adjusted to “Letting Go Again”. I didn’t even bother looking back on my old “Letting Go” post because I was fairly sure it was not really on the same topic, but just a catch-phrase that resonates with my emotions. When it’s not so easy to modify the title, I find something new, but then have to edit my story to make that title work properly (mostly at the start and end of the story, where I tie the title in so that readers connect to the sentiment as crisply as possible). The fun part of the process is that I get two times to make adjustments. If it is a recent duplication, my writing app won’t let me title the story since it is holding the prior story in its “recent” file. The final check is when I am done and filing a copy into my story file on Dropbox. There I have to be careful because all it does is ask me if I want to replace my prior draft (it doesn’t know if this is a draft or final). That’s why I never file a partially completed story because it would totally screw up this failsafe system. So, as I write “Turning Tides”, all I know is that it is not a recent title I have used and I get to finish this story before learning if I wrote something with that title several years ago. See how exciting my life is?
So, why am I thinking about the tides and why do I wonder if I have thought about it before? The tides I am discussing are the tides of the cultural , socioeconomic and political waters of our nation. We are at what I would call ebb tide. I’m no mariner (pun intended), but ebb tide refers to the period when the tide is falling or receding – when the water level is decreasing and moving away from the shore. It’s one of the two main phases in the tidal cycle, the other being flood tide (when water levels rise and move toward shore). During ebb tide, water flows away from the shore toward the ocean, water levels gradually decrease, areas that were underwater become exposed, and what is left is sometimes a bad smell. Yes, ebb tide can sometimes cause noticeable smells along shorelines. When the tide recedes, it exposes areas that were previously underwater, which can lead to several smell-producing phenomena like exposed mudflats and tidal flats can emit a distinctive, often sulfurous odor from decomposing organic matter and anaerobic bacteria that produce hydrogen sulfide gas. There can be stranded seaweed, algae, and other marine plants that begin to dry out and decompose in the air, creating their own characteristic smells along with marine organisms like small fish, crustaceans, or mollusks that become trapped in tide pools and can decompose and contribute to odors. In areas with pollution or wastewater runoff, low tide can expose and concentrate these materials, intensifying any associated smells In healthy marine environments, the smell is often described as briny or like “sea air,” while in areas with more decomposition, rot or pollution, it might be more unpleasant. I find the analogy of ebb tide to be the perfect description of what is happening in our country at this moment.
The thing about tides are that they are a natural phenomenon that just happen twice a day as the moon and earth interact. That’s my way of saying that under normal and “healthy” conditions, an ebb tide is perfectly reasonable in a cyclical way, but when in “unhealthy” conditions of decomposition, rot and pollution, they are a nasty thing that produce a great deal of knock-on problems that make life miserable. The only good news is that nature insures that as unpleasant as they are, they will end and the tide will turn and come back in to wash away the stench. Is that metaphor even the slightest bit vague? I think not.
The three things that put me in a tide turning frame of mind all happened yesterday and you probably already know about all three. First, there was the special elections in Florida for the two Congressional seats vacated by Matt Gaetz and Mike Waltz. As we know, Gaetz was one of the worst examples of the ebb tide rot (child sex trafficking and statutory rape as well as general disruption of Congress) and at least even Republicans found him too offensive to stand. Waltz is, of course, the current embattled National Security Advisor who’s primary qualification was a distinguished four-year active duty stint with the Army Special Forces. He is one of the most incompetent and unqualified members of the Trump Administration and has proven so with his recent high-profile national security breaches. Those two seats in Florida’s heretofore solid Trump country saw noteworthy swings away from Trump in the special elections yesterday. Was that due to Gaetz or Walsh or just general disillusionment on the part of the electorate for the radical Trump agenda?
The second and even more notable shift yesterday occurred in my old home state of Wisconsin, where the electorate overwhelmingly voted in a new state Supreme Court justice (Susan Crawford of Chippewas Falls). I lived for four years in Wisconsin when my mother got her graduate degree at the uber-liberal University of Wisconsin Madison campus. I love the fact that Crawford is from Chippewa Falls, a city in Wisconsin that appears in various references across literature, media, and popular culture including where Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) is from in Titanic, as well as exemplifying small-town charm with historical significance in the upper Midwest region, making it an occasional reference point in stories set in Wisconsin or those featuring characters from the American Midwest. And here’s the thing…she won despite a full bore push from Elon Musk, who invested over $25 million in her opponent to save Wisconsin from having its gerrymandered pro-Republican electoral map rescinded. This was a huge spiritual win for the anti-Musk/Trump crowd.
The third and most poignant event was Cory Booker’s 25 hour and 5 minute uninterrupted and content-rich speech on the Senate floor. This broke the 21-hour record by Ted Cruz in 2013 and the 24-hour 1957 speech by Storm Thurmond in his anti-civil rights efforts. The Booker speech was about what he called a “moral moment” in direct protest of the policies and actions of Donald Trump in his blatant attempts to dismantle American democracy as we have known it. We have all worried that we are losing Congress as a check and balance against Trump. Trump has already worked to undermine Congress by ordering the dismantling of agencies and programs mandated and funded by Congress and then ignoring the attempts by the judiciary to forestall or reverse his actions. What Booker was doing was reminding us all as Americans that there is a reason why we have prospered for most of two hundred and forty years, through high and low tides. That reason is that we have followed the construct of the Constitution and the checks and balances that exist to prevent the decomposition, rot and pollution of our society by power-hungry and greedy forces like those of Trump and Musk.
We have been here before, but perhaps this time the tide has turned for good and we can wash away all that is causing this stench across our great land.