I have never cried at work. Never. In all my years at all my jobs with all of the assholes I’ve known, not once have I ever let someone make me cry. I’ve been upset, of course, and so angry that I began to shake uncontrollably, but crying has never been an option. Not at work. Once I cried when I got into my car to leave work, but in my defense, my boss was a sociopath and I was probably on my period.

While neither is true of this job, yesterday I came very close to LOSING MY GODDAMN MIND when I realized that the majority of my co-workers are either lazy or incompetent, that neither of those types are likely to change, and that skill-wise, I am losing so many steps at this company that seems content to sit in the technological dark for the rest of its days.

I realize that I am employed and the pay is okay, but I do not want to stay there forever, and I worry that I’ll have to because if I ever got to be considered at another company, surely someone would realize how many far back I’d traveled in terms of knowing what the fuck I’m doing with business-standard computer systems. Standard to every company but mine, which, judging by its use of and refusal to create or store digitally its paper, seems thrilled to further the destruction of forests at an impressive rate.

But like I said, I am employed. I am not temporarily unemployed (the cute word for it is “furlough”) like some of my friends in government, friends who had nothing to do with the epic fuckery going on in House of Representatives right now but, as anyone who has ever worked for a bunch of irresponsible, power-tripping assholes know, they are entirely dependent upon people who care nothing for them. And it’s always the really frivolous things that go in a government shutdown, isn’t it? National parks. Public healthcare (including many services for veterans). Fucking NASA.

Do you know how much this defines the word “madness?” And how absurd and stupid and embarrassing this is? Because, I mean, basically:

I’d never argue that partisanship is a good thing because I’m not a dumbass, but also I’d never argue that anything else is likely because I am not a simpleton who quit reading after the first chapter of my remedial American History book. But this is pretty much what is happening: in the looming face of economic ruin that affects the vast majority of Americans, the Republican party is stamping its feet because it doesn’t believe that poor people, women, gays who get married or a whole host of other people should have the same rights to healthcare offered by their employers (or, in some cases, simply affordable healthcare paid by anyone out of their own pockets). Why? I don’t fucking know why. I have never known why. I have never known why a gigantic faction of the American political system has expressed an urge to return to the fucking Dark Ages in every way possible while still enjoying the spoils of ill-gotten wealth for themselves. I cannot understand it and I’m pretty sure that it will never make sense to me, because, as I mentioned before, I am neither a dumbass nor a simpleton. Nor a fucking monster, I should add, which is more than I can say for anyone who made the decision to shut down the American government because they’re not getting everything their way.

It’s as if the Republican House are the exact people who stopped reading after chapter 1, who cheated and TA-fucked their ways through poli-sci classes, who go home to houses full of wives and daughters with no rights over their own reproductive systems, content in the knowledge that they have fought off the poor for another day. And who cares if Yosemite is closed. Who cares if millions of people go without a paycheck. Who cares if this guy who fought in World War 2 can’t get a fucking meal three days a week or see a physician about his pain? None of that matters.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.