Time to Chill

A Year of Crazy

So I was minding my own business, trying to limp my way to life's finish line, and bang... as if I didn't have enough problems of my own we elected a "racist troll" to be our president, the democrat opposition decided to spend their time screaming about the fact that he's a racist troll so they can win the midterm elections so they can.... be in power again?... not suck as bad as a racist troll?... show how morally superior they are by electing a fill in inspiring rock star politician here  hand picked insider as president? How about a plan? For jobs? For the climate? For education? Nah, but we can be just like Republicans but not as mean. Speaking of the the Republicans, it seems they have used the cover provided by the "racist troll" we call President to effectively destroy the New Deal. Well pending the reconciliation of the house and the senate versions of the tax bill. In an unprecedented show of heavy lifting, gamesmanship, dishonesty and spite they will destroy the New Deal, the basic contract we have had with our government, then replace it with...wait for it...nothing. Almost 75 years of old people getting health care and small pensions, uppity minorities voting and expecting equal protection under the law, woman becoming a growing force in our workplaces, political life, and academia, all swept aside and replaced with...nothing. Come on Republicans, you've had 75 years of stewing about poor people getting food and shelter and middle-class people having health care and social security to think up something better and the best you can do is a massive tax cut to corporations supplemented with poison pills to destroy every entitlement programs that average folks have been paying into their whole working lives. Also as a cherry on top of 2017's shit sundae Nazis/racists are a thing again...What? I know PC culture is annoying, but our answer to a bunch of over excited collage freshman is to bring back Nazis? Don't get me started. Wait, wait, wait! I almost forgot, seems that we also have this problem with huge numbers of powerful men proving to be sexist assholes. Not a surprise...well maybe the shear number of assaults that involve masturbating is a little surprising...sure, like being a Nazis and dick picks, masturbation seems like something you would do in private, but it's good to be the king, right? Whoa, time to take a breath.

To be clear this does not prove there is a patriarchy so much as prove the world is full of assholes.

So why chill? If we soak up enough news it seems like we are collectively heading to hell in a hand basket. Psst... pick any day in history, look as long and hard as you can at all of the soul crushingly horrible things humans did to each other and you will find that we have been going to hell in a hand basket since Cain bashed in Ables head with a rock and God gave us a massive time-out so we could evolve into better people. That was 3 or 4 million years and a ton of evolving ago so  if we are going to hell in a hand basket we should either be there by now, or maybe, just maybe, we're on a completely different journey. I'm going out on a limb here, and I know I am luckier than most, but since in the last 24 hours I have had  hot and delicious pizza, ice cold beer, a relaxing hot shower, access to indoor toilets, Netflix+Hulu, a car that starts, ice cream (mmm... ice cream!), a well lighted clean health club to work off all those calories from all those goodies (1rst world problems much?)...I could go on but you see my point right?...not a hand basket.

...or at least a hand basket with fluffy kittens.

So why chill? Maybe Netflix does have "Stranger Things","Orange is the New Black", "Daredevil" and both endings to"How I met Your Mother"(I like the one where the Mom lives), but Bub! you just admitted that the world is a horrible place where our fellow citizens are ready to kill each other, our political parties have no vision, or worse their vision involves grinding us into paste, and the media comes at us hard with this stuff not to enlighten us or help us to answers but to sell beer and ice cream. Fair enough, but this is why you have to chill. Every moment of your lives you make choices about what happens next. So maybe you get pot roast instead of meat loaf for dinner, or you cuddle on the couch instead of having wild monkey sex in the shower, perhaps you finally give your corduroy suit to Goodwill (God I loved that suit), or maybe you reach a once in a lifetime crossroads and it's time to wrestle the Devil for his fiddle. This is that time(for the fiddle thing, I'm not giving up the suit).

No, no, no...time to chill, time to man up (or lady up if you must defy my gender stereotypes despite the fact that I'm old and I use "man up" for brevity because my old guy brain sees "man up" as a clear call to arms that should be understood as such across generations and not as a micro-aggression affirming the need to perpetuate the patriarchy at the expense of women... cis-up? human up? people up?...who am I kidding? "man-up" was just a lazy word choice, but this whole digression was a full blown aggression, micro is for wieners, against people that nitpick my lazy word choices to hijack my moral high ground despite the fact that we are on the same side), time to come together and redirect our reality in new and improved directions. (this entire paragraph was brought to you by the just chill and stop destroying easy targets on your own side coalition #just chill#word mistakes do not a monster make).

The amuck Nazis, the powerful men with their dicks out, the Dickensian meltdown of the Republican party, the morally bankrupt idea less Democratic party and yes our President the troll offer us a clear contrast, a laser like focus on the rot that has pervaded our country, our world, our lives. Sure it's scary that everything  happening on the news is a confusing jumble of policies, ideas, and habits that most of us find appalling, but it's better on the news, in the public eye, than the corridors of power or the smoke filled rooms at the good old boys club. The best way to get rid of rot and mildew is sunlight and 2017 was a nova above what is going wrong.

More cleaning power than every chemical Proctor and Gamble ever made.

The vast majority of us don't like Nazis, sexist assholes, gutless business as usual democrats, merciless compassion less thieving republicans, or our troll of a president. So now is when we choose. It's not going to be easy. We might not even be successful. The world has tumbled back into darkness many times in the past, but never before have the vermin infesting our society been exposed to so much light. That's why they are all fighting so hard, lying so much, ramming legislation through in the dark of night; they know that unless they shut off the lights they will be done. You think we're going to hell in a hand basket? I think it's time to beat the devil and play some sweet, sweet music because in the end we have the power.

Even the cosmos know we're here, we're worried about a few scurvy men?

By the way the special election in Alabama is happening today. "You mean  the election where Jesus freak, pedophile twice dismissed judge Roy Moore has a good chance of going to the Senate"? Yes I do. Plenty of sunshine on that one but it looks like it might not be enough. So what? Who said things were going to be easy? I said chill out and use the fact that the lights are on to make changes. Roy Moore is going to be the poster boy for the Republican party for years to come. The vast majority of Americans think he is vile. How's that going to work out for the Republicans? Maybe you get Alabama but what about all those purple states out there? Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada? Places your troll president squeezed to a victory in 2016? If the picture gallery includes a selfie of Roy Moore, a blow up of W's "mission accomplished" carrier photo op, a slide show of Trump being a horrible person maybe people start to "get" you. So maybe you independent voters can link up with the growing discontented democrat majority and the Republicans that still have a soul and we can win this thing, change this thing at least until the next thing. I do love God's sense of humor. Bone cancer is a laugh riot.

So? Even terrible things can? might? cause positive change. No promises, but there are more of us than there are of them. We can still make the world a better place, or at least have wild monkey sex in a corduroy suit after some fine pot roast.

New Direction/Same Old Crap

I have to confess that I didn't think I would be doing this anymore. Do we ever really need another voice in the scrum? Another soul bellowing "Listen to me!" mixed among the vast number of voices brought to you by the inter-webs and the electronic media only to be ignored as lies or delusion unless that voice confirms everything you already believe? Seems like a waste of time and energy, and where will it take us? Either we all get angrier and angrier until we go to war with ourselves, or we all come to believe the same things, give in to entropy, and end as a species. Worse, what about babies? If we  let enough time pass with everyone believing that only there own stuff is real eventually babies (who only believe in "feed me!" and "I've shit myself, clean me") will be our default setting for reality. So as funny as it would be to see you all in your diapers finally getting the world that you are willing to believe in I guess I should at least try to push things in my own odd way so that you'll  push back against me enough, shake your own thinking enough to maybe make a little chink in your world view armor. I don't want to change your mind, I want "you" to change "your" mind💩, or at least touch it up with a wet nap and maybe a little baby oil.

The only way Ted Cruz becomes president.

So I haven't blogged in over a year, why? Well partly because I didn't want to be just another narcissist blowhard trying to delude himself  into thinking he was important in a completely random universe. Fine. I also got tired of howling at the wind. For years I published this thing until I was getting a couple hundred hits whenever I would spew but I got exactly zero feed back. Not even someone calling me a left wing boot licker, or a white privileged mansplaner. Nothing does a man more proud than feeling like he's an idiot child who gets his crayon drawings on the fridge so he'll just go away. Turns out we narcissists don't just want to hear our own voices, we want to hear other voices telling us how smart we are. The cherry on the cake was my Mom and FOX news. She never went full on right wing on me, which would have been OK, rather she would  binge watch FOX news until she had convinced her self that the world was one lit match away from that final big bonfire.

...and I want all the words that rhyme with orange.

 I would talk her down every week only to call the next Sunday and listen to her start up all over again. We did that dance right up until the week she died. So bless you FOX news for scaring the crap out of my Mom for the last three years of her life. What made me feel the lowest though was, being a reasonable as I could, with no sugar coating the random cruelty of reality, getting her to believe that getting up every morning  was an awesome thing to do. my whole point of blogging was to remind everyone that getting one more day was the best gift ever even if things weren't perfect. The there I was in real life, with someone that I loved, and I talked, and I reasoned, and I never lied, but instead of embracing her final years she simply decided to die. Ignore the Doctors, refuse to eat, self medicate, quit. A three year suicide tends to cause a bit of collateral damage and when she was done I felt about as voiceless as I ever had in my whole life.

Surprisingly trite and unfunny in real life.

Then came Trump. I don't want to blog about Trump. I don't want to blog about Trump supporters. They are not the reason we are in out current mess(which is ugly as messes often are, but is no worse than most of recorded history. World War 2? The Depression?Disco?), so I am only going to say this once: Trump is a bloviating, undereducated, racist asshole that somehow had the street smarts to game the system after inheriting tens of millions of dollars from his slum lord father. If you voted for him for president you know what you did; either you agreed with all the profoundly awful things he is on tape saying, or you so hate the left that you allowed the buffoonish false moral equivalencies fostered by the mainstream media about Hillary Clinton mitigate the vile things Trump says(on camera). Before you come at me with all your... "but Hillary" BS I will tell you that the rest of this blog will be me tearing Hilary and the liberals apart just not about made up shit(Yes made up shit!). Hilary did not murder people, Benghazi was poorly handled but 7 or 8 Republican investigations gave us nothing criminal and republicans were the ones that cut the funding for embassy security in the first place, the e-mail scandal ditto, she did not kill Vince Foster, the Clinton Foundation was absolutely based on pay for access which is how every politician ever funds their foundation and while ethically lame is really no different than the people in the Bush administration allowing the industries they came from to formulate the environmental regulations the people in the Bush administration would return to in the private sector( the swamp is deep and wide and both parties wallow in it as has President cheeto by his own on film words),Whitewater was a failed land deal that cost people other than the Clintons their investment but it wasn't illegal(Trump people? Offended?Really?really?). Welcome to the American dream.

Who are those folks in the mirror?

I don't want to tool too hard on my Hilliary peeps since I worked for her in NH, but seriously, how long are we going to play the business as usual game in this country when business as usual seems to be a steady erosion of the rights and benefits that people my grandparents age fought (&died) for. The right want the new deal dead, dead, dead. This is not a secret. The liberals think that in order to win elections they have to be more like the right. Anyone want to guess at likely outcomes as far as working people are concerned? So we end up with this horrible "two sides of the same coin" narrative rammed up our asses by the media and embraced by everyone that wants to win elections. "We're not too far right, we're not too far left" we're just more competent than the other guys. Shenanigans. The republican party are a bunch of evil dicks that think you are gorging at the government trough while victimized billionaires suffer tax+class warfare.
 

The business of 'merica is business.

The democrats are gutless wieners smugly clinging to identity politics because it lets them feel good about themselves instead of actually legislating. I actually like the democrats but when I called them gutless wieners it reminded me to use this picture.

OK policy wonk what is your... oh never mind.

A perfect picture of why Hilliary was a crappy candidate. Arrogant, tone deaf and privileged to be the anointed one to break the glass ceiling she ended up with state department e-mails on the computer of the biggest screw-up in the last 30 years of the democratic party.

 She was quoted as saying she had to duck sniper fire.

She was quoted as saying she was named after Edmund Hillary

She spit this out despite the fact that Pennsylvania and Ohio were swing states.

She smug slapped my Mom with this one. I was there when it happened and if you think I'm being a little dramatic for Mom it was like a gut punch. Just that tone... you knew... Loser!

She was married to and a strong supporter of Bill Clinton who I dare one feminist to look me in the eye and tell me he was not as crass as Trump or that the power differential between him and Monica Lewinsky would not be considered sexual harassment on every college campus in this country. His crimes were not her crimes, but her crime was silence.

Speaking of crimes she sat in a completely safe democrat senate set with the most famous name in the senate at that time other than Kennedy when she added her support to W's repulsive murder spree in Iraq.

Voted for the Patriot Act too.

It's the little things. Little things that let otherwise pretty decent people to vote for incompetent racist gasbags. Since 1947 the GATT treaty has slowly morphed into the WTO, the world was declared flat by the no-skin in the game editorial wizards at the NY Times, NAFTA passed under Bill C and in certain regions of this country jobs have just vanished into the ether while a quarter of a century of the status quo has not brought them anything but food stamps. Hillary is the status quo just like Repub loser Jeb Bush. Not two sides of the same coin, but both status quo. We have to purge ourselves of the faux royalty that rots our system. Especially when the last 15 years have been about how crappy business as usual is.

A long time insider neck deep if free trade (something I have come to believe that a world full of poor people ultimately needs), identity politics(something that needs persistence, education, enforcement and time instead of more legislation), smugly knowing it was her turn, and 28 years of her every word and action smeared across the national stage made her, made you, a sitting duck in an outsider election. She would have been a better choice for a competent president than the rest of the field but to ignore just how damaged a candidate she was makes you fools. Trump voters wanted something.  The hypocritical voters of small government wanted something. Trump said 'Yes', Hillary said "blah, blah, blah".  

And she almost won anyway. Not because most of you charged out of the gate sure she deserved it but because people like me, people trained in futility since 1972, people that know you have to be able to sail a ship before you pick a destination, worked for her, voted for her all the while thinking... eye roll..."Here we go again".

Oh yeah 30,000,000 people that did not bother to vote; you suck. Repeat after me, "They are not all the same","Your vote does matter","Things do change". The 2016 federal budget was 3,688,000,000 dollars. If you think a figure like that does not need to be watched carefully you are as dumb as a box of rocks...no box of rocks is too kind, sorry.