You may have caught Liza Featherstone's piece, "If Joe Biden Moves Left, You Can Thank The Left," in Jacobin dated three days ago.

It Ain't Gonna Get No Better, Cuz

The twins' cousin would always respond to political or economic complaints with the response, "It ain't gonna get no better, Cuz". And sure enough, I don't think it will. Biden will fulfill another local saying IMO, "it's better than it was when it was so bad". Unfortunately it won't be good, just less bad (maybe). This piece lays the situation out well.

There is an intense effort in the Democratic Party-aligned media to present the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as a fundamental turning point in American politics.

No doubt there is immense relief among millions in the US and around the world to see the fascist Trump leave Washington, two weeks after he spurred on an insurrection aimed at stopping the congressional certification of Biden’s victory.

But with the transfer of the White House from the Republicans to the Democrats, it is necessary to counter illusions about what this government will or even can do. Its actions will be determined by the interests of the ruling class under conditions of an unprecedented social, economic and global crisis. However, efforts are underway to chloroform the public about the realities of the procapitalist, imperialist politics of the Biden administration and the catastrophic economic and social conditions under which it begins.

...and the empire keeps rolling along

I've been thinking about how demoralized most of us are. Frankly that is completely logical given current realities. I feel discouraged, powerless, frustrated, boxed in. I don't think the actual left in this country has disappeared, but we are scattered. I am exhausted by being outraged, finished with dwelling on that. I'm also finished with being cynical. Spending my time and energy that way feels a waste and a dead end road.

Welcome to all you visual artists.
Thought I would send out an appeal
to share your opticals and or
aural scapes.

Here's mine...
visited a solar farm under construction
near where I work. On Navy land. A good use
of taxpayers expense.

You’ll decide, of course. (smile)

‘DOJ Now Says There Was No Plot to Kill Elected Officials; Fevered reporting about efforts to abduct and even kill members of Congress and the vice president are without foundation, the Justice Department admitted, after prosecutors falsely asserted such a plot in court’, Joe Lauria,  January 18, 2021, consortiumnews.com

Joseph Campbell and the Myth of the Hero's Journey

We explore the relationship between mythology and the unconscious, and look at the monomyth Joseph Campbell called the myth of the hero's journey.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces (highlights reading)

“The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form - all symbolizations, all divinities: a realization of the ineluctable void.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces