Deify

PART ONE - JAN. 6, 2021

The following are statements of fact:

The President of the United States of America is disputing an election he lost by more than seven million votes.

The President of the United States of America and his legal team filed more than 60 lawsuits regarding this dispute. Almost all of those lawsuits were thrown out - by Republican- and Democrat-appointed judges alike - for a lack of evidence.

The President of the United States of America pressured political leaders in swing states to overturn the will of the people and award him their electoral votes. 

The President of the United States of America issued vague threats to those same leaders if they were not willing to grant his request.

The President of the United States of America was caught on tape doing the last two things in a conversation with Republican leaders in Georgia.

The youngest adult son of the President of the United States of America directly threatened leaders who oppose his father, stating, "Any senator or any congressman that does not - meaning on (the Republican) side - that does not fight tomorrow [Jan. 6], their political career is over because the MAGA movement is going nowhere."

The President of the United States of America held a rally at the Washington Ellipse Jan. 6 and encouraged attendees to march to the U.S. Capitol building, where he said he would join them.

The eldest son of the President of the United States of America said, at the aforementioned rally, "This gathering should send a message to them: This isn't (the GOP's) Republican Party anymore. This is Donald Trump's Republican Party."

The President of the United States of America said, later at that same rally, "If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."

The President of the United States of America returned to the White House while attendees of the Jan. 6  rally marched to the U.S. Capitol building.

November rain, pt.2

Nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain

Four years ago, I wrote. A week had passed since Donald Trump upset Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 presidential election. I wrote out of sadness and confusion over Trump's victory and fear of the unknown future a Trump presidency presented. Trump had already exhibited racist, xenophobic behavior and he had just won the right to the most powerful position in the world. 

Saturday morning - 10:28 am central time, to be specific - the Associated Press declared Joe Biden the winner in Pennsylvania, giving him 273 electoral votes and the title President-elect of the United States. So here I am, writing again. Let's forget, for a second, that a Biden administration isn't going to get anything done because professional obstructionist Mitch McConnell is going to do to Barack Obama's former vice president what he did to Obama himself. Let's forget that Biden won't move the country left in any meaningful way because he's a center-left Democrat who has no interest in listening to progressives. We can, and will, fight those battles another day.

On January 21, 2021, Donald Trump will be a private citizen again.

Now, as I type that, there is a small part of me that fears he will find a way to invalidate the choice of the American people through litigation or political corruption. There is fear he will do what he has done for four years and leverage every last ounce of his power as president and find a way to stay in the White House illegitimately.

Legal experts say he has no leg to stand on. Yesterday, I watched Republican election lawyer Benjamin Ginsburg confirm Trump's recount efforts, as well as his frivolous lawsuits, will likely fail. Many Republicans have decried Trump's baseless claims of voter fraud. Naturally, Trump sycophants Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham and Jim Jordan have joined the chorus of fraud, but I guess that's what job security affords someone.

Former president George W. Bush made a congratulatory statement today to the president-elect and went out of his way to confirm the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Bush is, by far, the most high-profile Republican to dispel Trump's claims of voter fraud.

Hopefully, that means my fears are unfounded and, on January 21, 2021, Donald Trump will roll out of bed a failed businessman and a failed former president.

The last four years have been exhausting. Donald Trump completely deconstructed the office. One of the few promises he kept was to run the government like a business. He certainly ran the country like one of his businesses, as he ran it right into the ground. His family was omnipresent, corruption ran rampant, anyone who was even remotely disloyal was removed, and Trump himself spent most his time either lying, tweeting or golfing. It was so deliciously perfect that Trump found out he had lost while on a golf course, once again neglecting the duties of his office while his reelection hung delicately in the balance.

It's been an emotional weekend. Twitter was full of videos of celebrations across the country and a lot of them got me choked up. CNN's Van Jones nearly broke down on live television out of sheer relief that the racist-in-chief had been voted out. As a white man, I don't know the stress minority Americans must have felt under Trump's presidency, but I could see its release in Jones and so many others online this weekend.

Hell, there were people around the world celebrating Trump's loss. Leading up to last week, the general sentiment I read from people outside the U.S. was, essentially: "What the hell is going on in your country?" And it was a valid question. As a nation, we stepped our toes right to the edge of the end of democracy. The next step forward would have seen us tumble off a cliff into an uncertain future, one that likely would have been even more divisive and severe than the first four years Trump was in office. More than 71 million Americans voted for that future, which is the clearest sign that we're still not sailing in smooth waters as a nation. 

All that matters, however, is that he's gone. He can kick and scream all he likes, but most of the country is either ignoring him or confirming he's completely full of shit. The healing officially began yesterday morning, but it began in earnest last night, when Joe Biden addressed the nation not as a former vice president, but as President-elect. 

For the first time since Biden left the White House as Obama's vice president, we will have a caring, thoughtful, bipartisan adult running our country. The racism, xenophobia, division and hatred will not magically disappear, but their most visible and powerful enabler will no longer be leading the free world. He will retreat to Mar-a-Lago full-time, no longer encumbered by the responsibilities of running the United States (not that he took the responsibility seriously in the first place). He will continue to tweet his nonsense long after he's been evicted from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Millions of blind devotees will continue to fight for populism and nationalism in the face of Americans who will look to make America great again by bringing love, inclusion, care and understanding back into the national discourse.

This weekend marks the beginning of our journey back to becoming the United States of America once again. We have a lot of work to do. But we finally have someone in the White House who wants to unite us and not divide us. We finally have someone who is going to look out for all Americans, not just the ones who voted for him. We finally have a responsible adult in office instead of a 70-something infant. 

Congratulations to our President-elect, Joe Biden. Congratulations to our Vice President-elect, Kamala Harris, the first woman, first Black man or woman, first Asian-American man or woman, and first child of immigrants to hold that position. You both have a mountain of work in front of you, but I look forward to everything you're bringing to our country and the leadership you will bring to a country badly in need of it.

This is America

31 dead. 51 injured. 24 hours.

The President, between rounds of golf in New Jersey this weekend, found it in his heart to send out his "thoughts and prayers" via Twitter before telling the world, "May God bless the memory of those who perished in Toledo" on Monday. God forbid he commit to memory the name of the actual Ohio city in which nine people were murdered early Sunday morning.

Swamp monster and Senate roadblock Mitch McConnell also tripped over himself, via Twitter, to offer up his "thoughts and prayers". McConnell, a spineless amoeba who has mastered the art of shutting down bills that would actually move our country forward, did his best to feign human emotion. Others probably offered their own "thoughts and prayers" despite being in a place to affect actual, real change.

Fuck "thoughts and prayers". It's a cop-out, a shrug emoji from people too self-absorbed and ignorant of the problems facing our nation to give a damn.

As of Sunday, there had been 251 mass shootings in America in 216 days. In 2019, 8,736 people have lost their lives because of a gun and 17,306 more have been injured. That's 40 dead and 80 injured every day. And our elected officials do nothing.

Let's not paint this as an issue with a simple resolution. It's complex as hell. It's multi-faceted. One action, decision or law will not fix it.

Start with the obvious: Renew the ban on assault rifles. I don't think it's a coincidence that the volume of these mass shootings increased significantly after the nationwide ban on assault rifles expired in 2004. The five deadliest mass shootings in American history, and seven of the 10 deadliest, have occurred since the expiration of the ban.

These rifles are almost always the weapon of choice for these shooters. The shooters in Las Vegas, Orlando, Sandy Hook, Stoneman Douglas, El Paso, and Dayton, among many others, all used assault-style rifles.

There is no need for a civilian to possess an assault rifle, at any time, under any circumstance. They're too dangerous. Our society has shown we cannot have them without lethal consequences. We move as fast as the slowest members of our society, and when it comes to guns, the slowest members of American society can't stop shooting innocent people.

A buyback program for assault-style rifles would be a good start. Incentivize current owners by paying them cash for every assault-style rifle they return. Give them a tax break or tax credit for returning the weapons. We could use some of the country's ludicrous military budget to give back to the gun owners in this country.

Banning assault rifles isn't enough. Many who oppose gun control legislation say these mass shootings are caused by mental health issues. So let's increase funding and research for treatment of those with mental health issues, especially for those with a history of violence and/or self-harm. Let's pay attention to the people on 8chan spouting hateful rhetoric or those who otherwise express their extreme frustration and anger online. Let's try to identify the people most likely to lash out with mass murder and stop these shootings before they happen.

Gun suicides are a major problem in this country as well. They have outnumbered gun homicides for years. Investing in mental health treatment will not only help potential mass murderers, but it will also help people especially susceptible to suicide.

That still isn't enough. We need to address the disenchanted people in this country. As a good friend of mine pointed out via social media this weekend, a disproportionate amount of these shooters express disillusionment with the state of American society. They figure out that the politicians they voted for sold them a lie. They realize the so-called "American Dream" isn't really available to all Americans. When they realize they're on the wrong side of that equation, they lash out.

The chasm between the haves and have-nots is growing by the day in America, and something needs to change. American citizens all want better for themselves, and many of the disenchanted Americans who were exploited and thrown aside by the system in place were the ones who voted Trump into the White House three years ago. He, and every other politician in Washington, needs to step up and start doing their part to improve the day-to-day lives of our poorest and most neglected American brothers and sisters.

That still isn't enough. News outlets need to stop naming these shooters. We know the names of the kids who shot up Columbine, the guy who opened fire at a music festival in Las Vegas, the person who walked into a church and killed nine people in Charleston. Those names live in our memories because those are the people cable news and major newspapers focus upon. They deify the monsters instead of shunning them. And the next wave of mass shooters - the ones suffering from severe mental illness, the angriest of the disenchanted American citizens, the racists and xenophobes encouraged by Donald Trump's rhetoric - are paying attention. Maybe they're not planning something today, but they've seen what violence can do for them and they've banked it for a rainy day.

That still isn't enough. We need to address domestic terrorism.

Let's take a look at the seven most deadly mass shootings to have happened since 2004: Las Vegas, Orlando, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Sutherland Springs, El Paso, and Stoneman Douglas. That's 231 deaths, enough to fill more than four NFL rosters. All seven shooters were American citizens. Six of the seven shooters were born in the United States. Five were white.

In fact, there have been 18 mass shootings in the last 25 years that have claimed 10 or more lives. Two such attacks, San Bernardino and Columbine, had two shooters. All 20 of those shooters were legal residents of the United States. Twelve were white.

We hear countless cries of the threat Muslim terrorists pose to America. How often do terrorists from Muslim countries actually commit acts of terror stateside? Since the September 11 attacks, there have been multiple terrorist attacks connected to Middle Eastern terrorism. Only three perpetrators were not U.S. citizens at the time of their attacks. Some were, in fact, Muslim, but some were atheists. Many were Christians.

White nationalism is a major problem in America. White nationalists have become the most threatening terrorist group in this country, led and empowered by the 45th President of the United States. Five white men, all of whom either actively supported Donald Trump or spoke with similarly racist, xenophobic rhetoric, have taken 10 or more lives with a gun since Trump took office in January 2017.

That is no coincidence. The Tweeter-in-Chief needs to stop with the divisive, racist, xenophobic, nationalistic language he is using with increased frequency. There is no politician in this country guiltier of building up false hope in an unattainable American dream than Donald Trump. He won in 2016 on the backs of the disenfranchised voters in America who were left behind by the current system. He hasn't done a damn thing for any of them since. He has blamed immigrants, Democrats, and anyone who opposes him. His message is of division and hatred. He aims to Make America White Again, empowering people like the El Paso shooter to take matters into their own hands.

Solving one of these issues alone won't eradicate mass violence. We need to fix them all. Then, and only then, will children in this country start to feel safe at school. Then, and only then, will we be able to enjoy a night out at a dance club or a trip to the department store without looking over our shoulders.

Renew the assault weapons ban. Outlaw bump stocks and high-capacity magazines nationwide. Increase funding for mental health treatment, especially for high-risk people and those with a history of violence. Give more to the people who are disenchanted and left behind by society. Tell the nationalist demagogue in the White House to stop fanning the flames of hate in this country and, for the love of God, get him off Twitter. Hold politicians accountable in the voting booth when they don't fulfill their promises.

We're so much better than this. It's about time we show it.

Attention attention

Music permeates every aspect of my life ... including this blog.

The name and design of this page pay homage to the famous New York City punk and blues club, CBGB. Every entry's title is also the title of a song ... except the first one. That's from Monty Python. And although this is only the fourth post on this page, one of those prior entries spoke on the depth of feeling musicians' deaths have had on me.

In that piece - written on the day of Chris Cornell's passing - I said that music saved my life. It did. That manifests itself in the form of certain records that will always have a special place in my heart (and, soon enough, on my body in tattoo form) because of the profound effect they had on me.

Korn has a prominent place on the list, and is basically grandfathered onto my list of all-time favorite bands because of that. "Follow the Leader" was the first-ever CD I owned. Their next record, "Issues", helped me through a lot of the pointed bullying I endured following the Columbine shootings. The rag doll tattooed on my left side was directly inspired by the record's cover art.

(My tattoos are my story. Everything is there for a reason.)

"Untouchables", the album that came out nearly three years later, became the first record to leave a permanent impression on me. Without going into too much detail, it's safe to say that album helped me through, arguably, the darkest part of my life.

There were some other records that left their mark, too. "Jar of Flies" still might be my favorite record of all-time. "The Sound of Madness" played a big part in my life, and would probably be immortalized in tattoo form if I didn't have a bunch of black birds on me already.

But it had been a while since those records came around. "The Sound of Madness" came out 10 years ago (!) and while there have been some really good records put out since then, none of them really changed the proverbial game for me.

Well, that changed about three months ago.

I came back from a vacation in Mexico in mid-April (to 25 fucking inches of snow, thank you not at all, Mother Nature) and I never really seemed to recover from the post-vacation blues. I figured I'd bounce back and be fine, but I kept falling deeper into ... something. April turned to May, and I wasn't getting better. Maybe a new record would do the trick, I thought.

It's damn near impossible to buy a CD in a store in 2018. Now I know how people back in the day felt when they were trying to buy vinyl or cassette tapes. Thanks to our society's aversion to hard copies of music, I had to order Shinedown's new record online and have it shipped to me. (First-world problems, right?) After much consternation, I finally had new music in my hands, in CD form, as the first week of May began.

Little did I know I was going to get my ass kicked.

For those unfamiliar, Attention Attention, written in large part by lead singer Brent Smith and bassist Eric Bass, is a concept album about someone battling addiction and depression. Smith has a history of alcoholism in his family, and battled the addiction himself, while Bass has fought depression for years.

I was not ready for this record.

Looking back, I think this was the catalyst for me to face a reality I'd been fighting and ignoring for years: I'm not wired like everyone else. There were plenty of things going on in my life this May, all contributing in some way to my downturn, but I reached my breaking point. Music had always been able to pull me out of these nosedives before, and I tried like hell to convince myself this was no different. After a week or so of listening to the record, though, I had to put it back in the case and into my car's center console. I just couldn't take it.

Not long after that, I lost it. Everything that been weighing on my mind, everything I had been dealing with, for days or for years, came pouring out. 

So I did my research and made an appointment with a therapist. I was excited. I was nervous. I was scared of what I'd find. I was scared it wouldn't help. But I knew it was a step I had to take if I had any chance of turning myself around. I had spent all of my adult life fighting the world all by myself, feeling like my problems would just be a burden. I've made it this far, I'd tell myself. Why should this time be any different?

Well, it was different. I'm a pretty resilient guy, but I'm only one person, and I can only do so much by myself. I walked into my first therapy session guarded but optimistic. My first hour was spent talking about myself - my history, my relationships, my life - and, for some reason, I already felt a little better. I had a long way to go, but this was the start to therapy that I needed.

In my third session, my therapist gave me news that changed the way I saw everything. She told me that I suffer from dysthymia, also known as persistent depressive disorder, and general anxiety disorder. Since then, I've found out I also have a touch of ADHD, but it might be brought about by my anxiety.

The specific diagnoses didn't really change anything about how I saw myself. What changed was knowing that the problems I was having, the feelings I was feeling, weren't "just in my head", that the nameless demons in the back of my mind not only had a name, but there was a way to fight them. And now, with the help of someone trained in doing so, I was armed and able to fight back.

About this same time, I decided to crack open my center console again and throw the new Shinedown record on. It had been a while, and a lot had changed. So I gave it a fresh listen. And, holy shit, did it sound like a completely different record.

If you're inclined to do so, you can go to YouTube and see the guys in Shinedown talk about what each song on the record means. I, of course, am inclined to watch such videos. It helped me understand exactly what parts of the journey through mental illness they were singing about in each track.

Throughout the 20 or so minutes I spent watching the collection of videos, I saw myself traveling the same path as the subject of Attention Attention. "Black Soul" is about confronting yourself and what's right in front of you. That really happened for me when I had my breakdowns. "Pyro" is a self-critique of sorts, where the subject of the record asks why they are the way they are. I had been there more times than I care to remember, but this time, it was an honest question I was asking myself, free of self-pity and self-destruction.

"Monsters", my favorite song on the album, is the answer: the monsters are real. I heard this song through two very different filters each time I listened through the album from start to finish. At first, it was a gut punch. Deep down, I knew something wasn't right, but this song reminded me of all that weighed me down and made me feel I'd never get out from under it all. The second time around, though, it was almost empowering. Yes, my monsters are real, but for the first time in my life, I knew how to fight them.

And, if nothing else, it's just a damn good song.

"Evolve" is pretty self-explanatory. "Get Up" is about setting out on a positive path, and is about as empowering as it gets on this record. It wraps up so much of what I was feeling, what I feel to this day, and everything in between. To pull out a couple lyrics:

Guess you might say I'm a little intense
I'm on the bright side of being hellbent
So, take it from me you're not the only one
Who can't see straight

If you were ever in doubt
Don't sell yourself short, you might be bulletproof
Hard to move mountains when you're paralyzed
But you gotta try

'Cause I believe you can be whatever
And I agree you can do much better
Trust me

And, of course, there's the spoken bridge, which was so spot-on that it made me laugh the first time I heard it after starting therapy:

Yeah, I don't know why I never talk about it. I guess that's probably part of the problem.

The album ends with "Brilliant", which sees our subject coming out the other side a better human being, not free of their problems, but free of the weight that was holding them down and preventing them from living the life they deserved.

Over the course of about six weeks, the same album was my albatross and my buoy. It poured gas on the fire that was burning me down, and added fuel to the fire that drove me to be a better me. Therapy has been a huge part of that, but it has also been a great reminder that the tools I used to help myself in the past - music and writing - are still here to help me in the future.

So we arrive at the lede, buried under more than 1,600 words of my life over the past 12 weeks or so: Therapy is great. Talking to a professional is therapy. Music is therapy, at least for me. So is writing, which is why I'm here.

Whatever your therapy is, use it. Live it.

And whether you're a friend or a stranger reading this, know that talking to someone isn't a sign of weakness. It's a sign of strength. I know what the depths of depression look and feel like. I've been there more times than I care to recall. The hard days never go away completely, but you learn how to get through them without feeling like the bottom is falling out. It's a ton of work. Holy shit, is it a lot of work. But it's all worth it. Every last fucking bit. Life is pretty rad, and even though your demons might be tough, they're not tougher than you.

I know I have a long road ahead of me. There are days I come home exhausted, not because work was tough, but because so much of my energy was spent shifting my mind from the bad places it goes to the good places it should be. It's a ton of work, but the old cliche says nothing worth having in life comes easy.

Goodnight America

When it comes to my sports fandom, soccer is fairly new to the party. I've been watching American football as long as I can remember, and I became heavily invested in baseball and basketball during my adolescence.

I remember watching Italy beat France in the 2006 World Cup final, a game widely remembered for Zinedine Zidane's headbutt of Marco Materazzi near the end of extra time. My intrigue with the beautiful game had grown significantly, but it would be almost two more years before I would make a full dive into the sport.

As I do with all decisions significant and quasi-significant - admittedly, my definition of a significant decision is different than most - I parsed out all the details before settling on Chelsea FC as my club team. It was a bit of a labored decision (my old friend, Michael, can confirm) but, in the end, it was a choice I made, free of any outside influence.

I didn't choose to be born in America, but like most American soccer fans, I fell in love with the U.S. men's and women's national teams. Cheering for the USWNT has been about as easy as it gets in sports. The women's team has won three World Cups, four Olympic gold medals and seven Gold Cups since the team played its first competitive match in 1985.

Rooting for Chelsea hasn't been as fruitful, but it's been pretty great. Chelsea have won three of the last eight Premier League titles, and have been in the running for most others. The 2011-12 domestic campaign was not excellent (Chelsea finished sixth) but the Blues won the Champions League that year, erasing all other shortcomings. The only real disaster was the 2015-16 season, in which Chelsea finished tenth, their lowest league finish in two decades.

None of that compares to what happened Tuesday night. For the first time as a soccer fan, I had my sporting heart truly broken.

The USMNT had World Cup qualification in their hands. It would have been the Stars and Stripes' eighth consecutive appearance in the sporting world's biggest tournament. All they had to do was beat Trinidad & Tobago, the 99th-ranked team in the world, a team which had amassed all of three points through nine matches in the final round of qualifying.

Hell, even a draw would almost certainly do the trick. At worst, a draw would have left the Yanks fourth, forcing them into an intercontinental playoff with Australia next month. That's certainly no small task - the Socceroos are not slouches by any stretch of the imagination. But all of this was irrelevant. The Americans had the minnows of the Hex playing a B squad in a match that meant nothing to them. This was a slam dunk.

American center back Omar Gonzalez scored the first goal of the match, just 17 minutes after the opening whistle. Unfortunately, Gonzalez put the ball into his own net after a pathetic clearance attempt was shanked and floated over goalkeeper Tim Howard's outstretched hand. The Soca Warriors would add a second 20 minutes later, thanks to a wonder strike by T&T defender Alvin Jones.

Christian Pulisic, the 19-year-old wunderkind currently starring for German Bundesliga leaders Borussia Dortmund, couldn't save the Americans as he so often has. Clint Dempsey, playing in what will almost certainly now be his final meaningful game for the United States, tried valiantly to give Pulisic the assistance he rarely had in recent months.

It was all too late. Trinidad & Tobago won 2-1, and coupled with results in the other two matches, that loss eliminated the Americans from World Cup qualifying.

Typing it makes me sick all over again. I want to shake myself awake from this footballing nightmare. But I can't, because it's reality. There will be 32 footballing nations in Russia next summer. Some of them will be powerhouses, like Brazil, Spain, and the defending world champions from Germany. Some have never made it to the knockout round, like Iran. Some have never been on the big stage at all, like Iceland.

None of those 32 teams, however, will be from the United States of America. It's incomprehensible right now. The reasons why this happened are innumerable, and will be discussed in another piece I will post on my Medium page in the near future. None of those reasons will lessen the sting of missing out on the World Cup.

Now, I know most of you reading this aren't intimately acquainted with the beautiful game. (I'll save my rant about why you need to pick a team for another time, but I did write a handy guide to picking an EPL team in August. Head over to my Medium page to check it out.) The comparison I'm about to make might trigger some awful feelings from a couple years ago.

While I was planning this post, I wanted to find a way to relate this to my friends and family, most of whom couldn't care less about soccer. It took me a while, but I found a suitable comparison. Please don't hate me for bringing this up.

Watching the U.S. decimate Panama (whose victory Tuesday propelled them into third place in the Hex, and to their first-ever World Cup) last Friday, and subsequently watching the Americans shit the bed Tuesday night in Couva, was like a 96-hour version of the 2014 NFC Championship Game between the Packers and Seahawks.

The win against Panama was the first 55 minutes or so of that game, assuming you're a Packers fan. Your team dominated the run of play, and seemed destined for the biggest competition on offer. Attaining the goal at hand was all but a formality. The players felt it, the fans felt it, and the commentators felt it.

The loss to T&T was the last five minutes and overtime. It was an unexpected, unfathomable result when your team's ultimate goal was just millimeters from grasp. Your heart was ripped out and thrown on the floor in front of you, left bare for everyone to see.

Instead of happening over the course of about half an hour, this gut punching lasted more than 120 minutes. And instead of waiting eight months for a shot at redemption, the Americans need to wait four years.

So here we are, the Americans left to pick up the pieces of a shattered, embarrassing attempt to qualify for a tournament we've made with ease in years past. We'll say goodbye to Tim Howard and Clint Dempsey, not from afar in Russia, but in a meaningless friendly played on American soil. We'll be forced to cheer on secondary teams, selected for various reasons. We'll watch as our confederation is represented by either three or four teams (depending on the outcome of the playoff), none of which will wear the Stars and Stripes.

As so many fans often do, I have a secondary rooting interest linked to my lineage. Luckily for me, that team is pretty damn good, and I'll be cheering on in hopes that Germany can repeat as world champions. Should I be so lucky, my tertiary team, Sweden (also linked to my lineage), may make it to Russia as well. Their inclusion is also dependent on a two-legged playoff.

In years past, I've been able to root for the Yanks and Die Mannschaft simultaneously. It just won't be the same without the United States scrapping their way to points against the world's elite on the biggest state in international soccer.

Say hello 2 heaven

Ain't nothing quite as sad as watching your heroes die.

Broken grammar aside, Waylon Jennings had it right. The invincible superheroes of our childhood weren't invincible after all, a lesson we seem to learn with increasing frequency these days. In my case, and in the case of the thousands of other people whose lives are consumed by music, many of my heroes met their demise much earlier than they should have.

Our latest reminder came this morning.

The internet homepage on my work computer is MSN.com, so I see the morning headlines before I punch in for the day. I usually scan the headlines before I start my work, and this morning, I saw a link that said, "Grunge rocker dies". Naturally, this piqued my interest, so I hovered over the link to see the full headline.

"Representative - Chris Cornell has died at age 52"

Gut punch.

Cornell, who fronted Seattle powerhouse Soundgarden and rock supergroup Audioslave, was blessed with the one of the most powerful and underappreciated voices in music. Listen to his acoustic cover of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean", his backing vocals on Temple of the Dog's "Hunger Strike", his lead on Soundgarden's "The Day I Tried To Live" or Audioslave's "Be Yourself" - they're incredible. Few musicians who mourn Cornell's passing today were in reaching distance of his immense vocal talents.

Cornell's passing made Soundgarden the third of the "Big Four" Seattle bands to lose their lead singer to an untimely death. Sadly, at 52, Cornell was the oldest of the three to pass, and by a wide margin. Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, who died in April 1994, was only 27. Layne Staley of Alice in Chains, who died eight years to the day after Cobain, was 34.

I was nine when Cobain died. My age, coupled with my grandmother's death two months later, left me with no memory of Cobain's death. My grief was elsewhere, and my awareness of the music world was largely non-existent at that age.

Staley's death, however, was completely different. I vividly remember where I was when I learned of Staley's passing: Fifth hour drafting class with Mr. McCarthy, junior year of high school. It was one of the days my friends and I had control of the radio, so the local rock station was on. The DJ announced Staley's death, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Staley has been my favorite vocalist for years and years, and his loss was the first musician's death to really affect me emotionally.

For people like me, and the people who consume and process music like I do, losing one of your favorite musicians is like losing a friend. That might sound ridiculous, because these musicians have real family and real friends who are suffering an immense loss. Though fans like me never have the chance to really know these men and women, it nevertheless leaves an irreplaceable hole in our lives. Staley never met me, but he was my friend. He was there for me more times than he could ever know, and has been since his passing in 2002.

In truth, I still miss him to this day. One of the best moments in my long history of attending concerts was having the privilege of seeing Alice in Chains play "Nutshell" - my favorite song of all-time and a "Layne song" if there ever was one. My thoughts went to Staley, and the hundreds and hundreds of times I'd listened to that song. I had goosebumps that night.

When I was skimming Facebook at lunchtime, I came across a post from the official account of the band Kyng. (If you haven't heard them, or heard of them, go YouTube them. Like, right now. This post isn't going anywhere.) The post, which isn't signed, was likely written by lead singer Eddie Veliz, who talks about the impact Cornell had on him as a songwriter, musician and vocalist. The hurt in Veliz's words reminded me of how I felt when Staley died 15 years ago. I wanted to reach through the computer and give Veliz a hug, because that's all I wanted when I felt those feelings.

I've been told, on more occasions than I can remember, that I take music too seriously. The people who say that don't realize music saved my life, got me through many of my hardest moments, and was always my friend when I felt like I didn't have any. I'm certainly not the only person who can say that and, unfortunately, I'm not famous enough to pay the favor forward. Watching those capable of doing so either a) pass away, or b) struggle through the loss of their own heroes, is a stark reminder that those heroes really are human beings, and not invincible forces of nature.

While the grief we feel as fans pales in comparison to the grief of family and friends, it is nonetheless still grief. As The Ringer's Rob Harvilla said in his piece eulogizing Cornell, "Listening to those ... songs today is not a very pleasant experience. It hurts. But it's also the only thing that helps."

Harvilla is spot-on. The moment I read of Cornell's passing, I threw my earbuds in and played the aforementioned "Billie Jean" cover. I spent the day listening to Cornell's work in Audioslave, Soundgarden and Temple of the Dog, just as I listened to "Freedom '90" last Christmas, "Purple Rain" last April, and "Heroes" last January.

It hurts to play these songs on the day we learn of our fallen heroes' passing, but it's a reminder that a piece of them will always be with us.

That makes these tough days hurt a little less.

November rain

The last seven days have been the ugliest in recent memory.

Presidential elections are always emotionally charged. This one felt just feels different, though. President Obama’s election and re-election were emotional, but those elections went my way. I’ve supported (and defended) President Obama since the 2008 primaries, so it’s been a good eight-plus years for me. Maybe those who voted for our President-elect feel now what I felt in 2008 … and vice versa. I don’t really know.

What I do know is that politics have become pejorative. I’ve been called a liberal, with the same tone ex-girlfriends have called me a jerk, more times than I can accurately recall. The term libtard has been thrown at me on more than a few occasions. A couple weeks ago, I was called a cuck for the first time. I’m sure there are liberals who treat conservatives the same way, but these are the experiences I can report.

The battle lines have been drawn. Centrism is going the way of the dodo. Crossing the aisle, once seen as admirable and respectable, is now looked upon with disgust.

Blue and red used to come together to make purple. That’s also becoming a thing of the past, as nobody bothers to understand anyone anymore. People don’t listen – they just wait to speak their opinion, oftentimes stating their opinion as unimpeachable fact. The most important part of effective communication is listening (shut up, comm degree) but waiting to talk, or hearing out the other person so you can impose your opinion as superior, isn’t a form of effective listening.

Social media, and, more specifically, Facebook, has become the epicenter of this behavior. (I'm not the only one who feels this way: https://theringer.com/social-media-echo-chamber-2016-election-facebook-twitter-b433df38a4cb#.u18x56jwb) Users can post literally anything and sell it as factual news. Sources don’t matter, nor do the unabashed leaning of sites like Breitbart, Addicting Info, Patriot News, Dead State, or the myriad other decidedly biased sites. It is human nature for people to find information that supports their beliefs, but that shouldn’t excuse them from finding factual information that backs up their points of view. Screaming conflicting opinions at one another is a veritable pissing contest in which nobody wins.

I saw a good number of Facebook users claim liberals/Clinton supporters were being immature, overreacting and/or being sore losers because they were sad/hurt/upset/angry about the results of the Presidential election. Many of those users never bothered to ask why, never thought to ask for more information to paint a clearer picture of this sadness/anger/whatever. Those users appeared to feel the need to express their moral superiority, to let viewers of their timeline know that their way was the right way, and if you didn’t see it that way, you needed to get your priorities straightened out.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak for me. So, if you’re one of those people who posted something like that last week, here’s the explanation you never asked for.

As a white male, my life isn’t going to be very difficult these next four years. I can still get married, I still have access to the health care I need, and I don’t have to worry about police violence or religious persecution because of how I look. But I am in the minority. When Donald Trump, champion of racism, divisiveness, xenophobia and misogyny, won the Electoral College last week, my thoughts didn’t immediately go to me.  They went to my gay friends, whose existing marriages are in jeopardy, and whose future marriages may not come to be in the next four years, because our President-elect sees their relationship as an ugly abomination instead of the beautiful relationship it really is. They went to my non-Christian friends, who will be ostracized even further, if recent events are any indication. They went to the Hispanic people in this country, who are not rapists and degenerates, as our President-elect has said, but integral members of our diverse American society. They went to the Muslim population in this country, who are subject to intense hatred and, now, a potential unequivocal ban because their religious practices are the same as a minute percentage of Muslims who have committed acts of terror in the name of Islam. (Spoiler alert: Plenty of Christians have killed in the name of God, too. The problem is extremism, not religion.)

We’re not upset because we didn’t get our way. We’re upset because a champion of racism, divisiveness, xenophobia and misogyny got his, and because our loved ones are going to pay the price.

Removing myself as an active member of the Facebook community was the first step in moving forward. I’ll be around every now and again – there’s a good chance you’ve found this page because of the link I posted on Facebook – but, for the foreseeable future, my Facebook page is a means of pimping my other blog (the link can be found to the right of this post) and remaining in contact with friends I do not regularly speak with.

The next step is writing this. I’ve always been better in front of a keyboard than I am in front of an physical audience.

So, how do I reconcile my frustrations with our society – the violence, the racism, the tribalism – with my desire to move forward, both as a person and as a citizen of a country I'm deeply disappointed with? I don’t know.

I do know that communication in our society appears to be broken. It’s not broken beyond repair, though. We need to listen – really, actually listen – to each other. We need to empathize. We need to be patient. We need to focus on our similarities instead of our differences. That goes for everyone: liberal, conservative, and everyone in between. It applies to me, and it applies to you.

My political posts won’t go away forever. When I believe strongly in a cause, I will tweet and hashtag it. When I’m upset by news I read, I will tweet and hashtag it. It’s a means of venting my feelings, and hoping to find someone out there who feels the same way.

There has been some good to come out of this election cycle. All the negative feelings I had built up led me to research and identify my place in the political world. I did this so I could properly support the candidates that will best represent me. I also did this so I could get out and volunteer for the right candidate(s). Bitching on Facebook or Twitter isn’t activism – it’s just bitching. I used to do it, and the last week helped me realize that doing so is like sitting in a rocking chair: It’s something to do, but it doesn’t get me anywhere.

Maybe becoming active instead of passive in the political arena is the first step for me to reconcile my feelings with the state of this country. I’m sure there’s plenty more to do, but the first step is the most important one.

And, hell ... if all else fails, we'll always have Joe Biden memes.