On becoming a 21st century schizoid man...

The only thing that an autocrat needs to flourish is people willing to be lied to. It's as old as mankind. Our forefathers created a nation founded on universal principles. Their words favored neither color nor creed.  They understood the dangers. They understood the possibilities too. They also understood that the only real defense against tyranny is a well informed and armed populace.

The right thinking among us have learned to better pray. Our country has always been peril. If not from without than most certainly from within. The fringe will always be at the ragged edge of sanity. They sing a siren's song. Go right or go left, it does not matter which, both end in abyss. 

Our nation was designed to be pliant so that it would not break. The Right sees this as anathema to their agenda. They crave the solid distinctions of white against everything else. To them all else is taint and tincture. They want their memories renewed and recast in the light of their own image. Simply put, they want what never was. They crave the familiar distinctions. The ones they grew up with. The ones handed down from one generation to the next bereft of facts but packed with anecdotes and flags. Lots of flags.

The Left sees it differently and therein lies the rhubarb. It is true their fringe is dancing with some sort of Nirvana-esque notion of mankind in harmony with nature and itself. Yes and I have a business in supplying unicorns for such folk. In looking at both sides, it's my take that their adherents operate under the notion that they should reap benefits for their taxes. Not exactly a novel notion but it seems to be lost in the form presented to us. I mean, we SHOULD get a lot more for our money than street signs and promises by politicians, right?

The Left sees the Right as a bastion of bigotry, intolerance and patriarchy. The Right sees them as commies and fags. The Left sees the Right pressing an autocratic xenophobic agenda. The Right calls them commies and fags. The Left sees the Right's party of record diminishing in full retrograde toward a fiery end with an orange-haired idiot holding the reins. The Right calls the Left commies and fags. The Left points out that the Right's emperor is buck-ass naked. The Right flips the Left off and yells, "Prove it!"

If you sense a pattern then you're probably right. If you sense that I might be disaffected by the whole shebang, then you're more than right. You're right on.

God is a skeptic...

Otherwise why would "it" have thrown us a bone? He/she doesn't believe in us. It created us, right? The simple question for me that I proffered time and again in Sunday school was, "Why?" Why are we special? And for what? A pass to an eternity that any sane person would consider an absolute bore three days in? Oh look, it's manna for breakfast, lunch and FOREVER! Wait a minute, where's the pulled pork, Jesus? C'mon, that was so five centuries before you, man. Demon possession does not spoil the meat. Lemme at the grill, I'll show you. 

(Quick aside, I got spanked when I was ten and claimed I had no interest in a place without peanut butter. I felt Paradise was sorely out of touch with my needs even back then.)

Wait a minute, whadya mean we don't have to eat? What else is there? Rolling along 24K sidewalks on Segways singing "His" praises for ETERNITY? No friggin' way. There's gotta be more to the mystery than advertised. Otherwise this party is going nowhere and I'm not interested. Take your hymnal and your finely tuned deafness elsewhere. Have a nice eternity. I'm going where there's bacon. You can trust bacon way more than a priest. Just ask a choir boy.

That's how I think of religion. We're raised in it. Steeped in it. Redeemed by it. Absolved of our wickedness weekly when faithfully attendant and paying your 10%. Even the Good Book says you have to maintain in order to enjoy the fruits. And that was the source of my first rub in Sunday school. Salvation is supposed to be free but then there's the actual transaction between the stick of damnation and the dangled carrot of paradise. Wait, you said what? Oh that's gonna cost ya. Then the stick comes down and beats you and the carrot to a pulp. Like Job, just for shits and giggles.

That's just not me anymore. I've lived too long. Seen too much inside and out of the church walls to believe in a "just" God anymore. Like Mr. Palahniuk conjured so succinctly in his book about the existential threat of self awareness, Fight Club where the lead character clarifies, "God's a kid with an ant farm." Spot friggin on, that one. 

What's important is the person beside me. Be they friend or foe. They're what I'm about when in the world moment to moment. Being with that person or people listening and being present. What else is there? Life is either action or memory. Memories are paltry compared to the actual experiences but they do serve as way points marked along a trek. Memories also come in different denominations. Some are are like the rarest of jewels, sensual and soul stirring.

As for my personal beliefs, I defer to the epic, the big picture in minor detail. My heirs can sift through the detritus for worth and value. I'll be onto the next thing whatever it is. The afterlife must be okay because the dead haven't bothered to come back with pictures or an updated brochure and besides, the living don't really want to know anyway.

Where do they find these people?

I've lived long enough to see one president assassinated, one fall from grace and hold up double peace signs before departing on Marine 1 for obscurity. Then saw his second in-command exonerate him while stumbling through his one term. Then a submariner peanut farmer who built houses for poor people (with his own tools), the great and fallible yet always entertaining Ronnie Reagan and then Clinton getting impeached for getting his brass polished in the oval office while on the clock. Talk about multitasking! Then came Dubya. Okay maybe we should table his tenure for different tirade. 

After that we came up for air, embraced the angels of our better nature and put a mulatto in the big chair. A place where no blackish man had gone before. Except maybe to fix a squeak or a tear in the upholstery. We did ourselves proud. We did good. Those that hate him still hate him for actually being way better than they expected.

Then came Trump. He who parlayed bloviation into political gold. Who knew? C'mon, I'm not always the brightest bulb in the fixture but really? What am I missing? These people make shit up about so much so often that you'd better not stand close for fear of being covered in it yourself. Now that the law has caught up with this asshole, his minions are doubling down with righteous indignation beating their breasts and blaming the very system they created. Go figure.

One ass-hat whose name rhymes with Sebastian Gorka had the temerity (he has a camel-back full of the stuff) to take offense at a direct question about the evidence presented at Trump's arraignment. Rather than answer the question he began berating the journalist even questioning their language skills, "You don't speak English, do you? Obviously you don't because you haven't heard a word I said." 

Which was nothing more than a feckless diversionary tactic. Knowing that, the reporter kept calm and let Gorka blather on about weaponized injustice like a pimple-face kid that memorized a brochure for the John Birch Society. If you can't answer honestly, call the questioner mean and stupid and a homo brain and promise to have them beat up. One thing's for certain he is definitely invited to the Trump Towering Inferno Christmas party this year. Rudi will not be invited. Unless he brings his own liquor!

I have it on Q authority they're trying out some new uniform designs for the future. Gorka's will no doubt invoke a Himmler-esque Darth Vader vibe paired with Goering's jodhpurs and jack boots. Either way, you just know it'll have one of those long zippers up the back so he can make a quick costume change. 

Just in case

Friends are always welcome

 Me and the missus, we did it. Turned away from all rabid factions. Covid had it's way with us too and we're still here. For sure some did not make it. Some fell for other reasons altogether. Heart attack, cancer, self-inflicted or whatever. Half of those that died of Covid had already succumbed to ignorance and suspicion long before the virus took them. Their reward was choking to death on what they didn't know. Instead, what they believed was ill suited for warding off contagion. Their faith may have been bigger than a mustard seed but the thing that killed them was microscopic. Strychnine would've been kinder.

We've gotten good at making all of our own meals now. Spend time dreaming of better days ahead. Together. Yes, we'll have two to go, please. Everything has to be portable. We're lightening the ship. Collections put up for auction, extras made scarce, if it hasn't been used in a year, hell, a decade, sell it, give it or Goodwill it! Lighter and nimbler is the aim. 

A hovel on a mountain is the goal. Some place off the beaten. Defensible. It's something we've talked about for years. A cabin in the woods. One with a view or set back in the trees near a brook with trout. Up past where the gravel ends. Down the red clay made hard by us and the neighbors and a scheduled road-grader. Up and up up up then around then down again till where the gravel picks up again. Up one more time then leveling out, you arrive at the gate. 

We are here. We heard your tires crunching gravel. Saw your approach on the critter cams. We're here waiting. Punch the code and come on up. Put it in park and set the brake. Just in case. There's good bourbon and comfort inside. Hurry in, a storm's coming.