Speaking of being bitten by the 'black dog',,,

Mike Vanderboegh has written several times on his blog of late that he is being hounded by "the black dog." The term is an old expression that is used to denote depression or being in an emotional funk. I know the feeling. I have struggled with it greatly of late but never said anything about it.

Most of the time people struggle with the black dog for good reason. Mike, for example, has struggled with severe health issues over the last two years, including cancer, life threatening surgery, and treatments. That is enough to put anyone in an emotional funk.

In my case, I have tried as best I could to describe to you my travails concerning my eyes. Although we finally got rid of this last bout with inflammation, the struggle with the underlying disease process is ongoing and has not subsided one bit. This means that from time to time I will be hit with eye inflammation, since the inflammatory condition that besets me is ongoing. The struggle with my eyes has been going on, on and off, for six years. Imagine yourself having to undergo extensive eye exams and procedures for six years, sometimes two or three times per year. And then imagine being told by your eye specialist that it was a good thing you got intense treatment when you did, because if you had ignored it you would probably be blind by now.

That in itself is enough to plunge a person into some significant depression.

And then I look ahead to the future, and what do I see? If the eyes finally become immune to the inflammatory process after years of treatments and surgery, that in no way addresses the rest of it. This stuff could set up shop in any organ it chooses -- lungs, heart, pancreas, liver, kidneys, bladder, reproductive organs, and the like. Is this what I have to look forward to next?

I am also discouraged that the eye specialist told me last week that he thinks we ought to wait for the surgery until late next year, IF the inflammation stays out of my eyes. Well, I was ready to go ahead and get the surgery behind me. But now we are on a holding pattern yet again.

And then I look at what once was a great nation, and I see nothing on the horizon but pain, woe, oppression, and slavery to the centralized government leviathan. My fellow citizens as a whole seem to want to head in this direction in spite of their anger and protests. Why would I say that? Because they keep sending back to Congress the likes of Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Gerold Nadler, Corine Brown, Sheila Jackson Lee, Bernie Sanders, Patrick Leahy, Mary Landrieu, Mark Pryor, and a ton of other collectivist Marxists who believe in government sanctioned theft. They want to reach into my pockets and take my money against my will in order to give to people that I don't want to have it. I don't want to pay for your healthcare. I don't want to make my hard earned money so government can take it and give it to you, enabling you to get an abortion at Planned Parenthood. If you want an abortion, YOU pay for it. And if Planned Parenthood wants to do abortions, let them use their own money instead of taking mine in the form of subsidies. I don't want my taxes subsidizing Planned Parenthood.

But this is not even the half of it. Criminals now run the prison that is known as the federal government. I don't want a single nickel of my money going to them. I don't want to subsidize the IRS that turns around and retaliates against me because I am a conservative. I don't want a dime of my money going to the ATF that sent our guns to cartel drug criminals in Mexico but opposes the right of American citizens to keep and bear arms. I don't want a government that is so sensitive to criticism going after my free speech rights because I call them vermin, roaches, thugs, liars, and pieces of human garbage. They ARE all of these things. So live with it. And live with my forcing you to hear the truth about yourselves. After all, I pay your salaries, and you work for ME.

Sure, we can keep on trying to change things through the ballot box. But do you honestly think that is going to change anything? Your fellow citizens in Frisco are going to keep sending Vermin Pelosi back to Congress, year after year. California is going to continue to make a bee line toward Communism. So is New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois, and Colorado. And most of the citizens in those areas leap with glee over it.

So no, I do not have much to celebrate. I am grumpy, grouchy, and difficult. I don't have much hope for the country outside an all out civil war to TAKE back what the "progressives" stole from us. And even then I am not sure it would work. So yes, I am held in the grip of the black dog. And from this vantage point at present, I have good reason to be.