The good news is that the Senator Mitch McConnell standstill will end.  Legislation will move.  As promised by their leader, the Republicans attempted to shut down government for all eight years of the Obama administration.  They succeeded in doing so for all but the first two years.

Even if I do not like what passes, I will enjoy the legislature doing something.  I believe that most citizens conflate the legislature with the administration.  President Obama took most all of the blame for government problems when, in fact, most were caused by the Republicans who controlled both the House and the Senate and attempted to thwart any policy put forth by the White House.  Now that the Republicans own the government lock, stock, and barrel, the voters will have to blame  problems on the GOP.  They will have to stop criticizing and legislate.

I also think that the underlying smoldering racism that the Republicans created when they took the South in 1968 after the Democrats were blamed for the advances in Civil Rights under Lyndon Johnson came to a head during the Obama years.  Now the pimple is popped.  Republican racism will be be out in the open.  Hiding a problem is not healthy.  Democrats are seen as soft on welfare.  The Republicans will be forced to show what has never been addressed: lingering racism.  The passage of Civil Rights reforms was a giant step but white criticism of African-Americans and Hispanics will now show itself more clearly in how the Republicans govern.

Passing laws and uncovering racial tension could be good in the long run.  What worries me is that Trump has never worked in the public sector for others.  His business is private.  I do not think he will be able to work well in the public sphere.  He has the equivalent of a board to answer to now.

His policies in regard to privatizing education, eliminating progress on the environment, and expanding nuclear arms could put the United States into the kind of jeopardy it faced going back to WW II.  Our imperfect democratic system has spoken and I am so worried that I wake up in the wee hours of the morning with dark thoughts.  I predict that within six months a considerable backlash to Trump will develop and the country will move back toward a more moderate center.

Today’s weather is mostly sunny with a high near 70.  As usual I took Sun for a walk.  Being Christmas, I took advantage of the low traffic volume and walked up Ragin Lane to Fewell Park.  Not a person was stirring.  Sun and I had the entire park to ourselves.   We circled through Fewell Estates and came home to do a few chores.

I started a ham baking in anticipation of Elle’s arrival tomorrow.  We are spending Christmas alone but Elle flies into Charlotte at about 5 A.M. tomorrow and flies out on New Year’s day at about 6:30 A.M.  Chris and his family will come to visit on Tuesday, December 27.  I will add a turkey to the ham for our lunch that day.

To keep myself out of the doldrums on this beautiful day, I went for a bicycle ride, though peddling is hard on my neck.  I rode down Ebenezer Road to turn off on Grady Drive to see the lights that Nita and I had seen last night.  Except for a lady and two matched white dogs I saw no one which led me to Cherry Road and Rock Hill Homes.  I wanted to see some kids playing with Christmas toys.

My total people count jumped to 21 as I weaved in an out of Rock Hill Homes’ curving streets.  For sure I saw close to 10 children engaged in play.  The three young teens playing basketball in the street would not acknowledge my greeting but they were young and black.  An old guy like me must have seemed strange.  Just after passing them I saw a girl of about ten with a new bicycle.  Her brother, I suppose, was driving his radio controlled car under it on the sidewalk.

I liked best seeing the kid about 14 self-consciously playing with a drone toy.  He turned away to keep it going or to be cool but I felt I knew he was enjoying seeing the contraption rising in the sky even if he was supposed to be too big to enjoy such a toy. Find my way out I came across the sound of Latin music booming from a Chevy Tahoe with all doors opened. In the doorway of the block home a few feet away I saw a young man talking to a women.  I hoped it was his sister or young wife and that they were admiring the sound quality.  I could hear the music a block away as I saw two young girls running away from two small dogs impending their walk toward their mother who was on her phone.

I turned into Shadow Brook subdivision to finish out my ride and saw four people walking in the distance.  Catching up to them, I confirmed my suspicion: Frank and Linda Stewart were out walking with their daughter and her husband.  I walked and talked with them for awhile.  Seeing other people outside cheers me.