Are you going to eat that?
~Brooks Hatlen, to Andy Dufresne, the Shawshank Redemption
I was at work last night (I work in a kitchen at a casino) and I happened to be the trash guy last night. That's about as fun as it sounds. After I get done working I want to brush the crud out of my green fur, go home, crawl in my garbage can and go to sleep. Yes, it really is a job tailor made for Oscar the Grouch. It's also one of those jobs where one isn't assigned to a particular area. I was on this particular job for a number of years in my workplace because I'm one of the people who gets shit done instead of fucking off all night.
Along the way, I've observed a lot from the small-but-diverse slice of humanity that I work with.
Last night as I'm making one of my rounds I observed that the cooks for one of the restaurants were making up these burger patties that had big chunks of butter in the middle. I asked a couple of questions, got my answers and found out in the resulting back-and-forth that one of my co-workers wanted to eat one of these monstrosities. Me and the other guy from my department who was right there both thought the same things; Who'd want to eat such a thing, and how quickly would one have a heart attack after eating it? If I ate a burger like that, I'm quite sure that I'd find out I could rap (or at least beat-box rather well) with my behind. I say this as somebody who's worked consistently in various jobs in the food service business ranging from dishwasher to line cook and all the way up to manager in a cafeteria...the burger...and the idea of me eating it...are ridiculous.
Who would find such a plated monument to culinary excess appetizing? For the record the guy who wants to eat one is the young, socially awkward Libertarian on our shift. He has a good heart and an idealistic nature as people his age who take up such philosophies often do. So, I won't hold it against him...but I had to give him some shit about wanting to eat what sounds to me like Death on a plate, or as I had tentatively christened it "The Heart Attack." As I'm leaving the kitchen to go out to dump my trash the little old Japanese-American bakery lady (who'd heard the conversation) had to add that "Yes, you're right, that IS heart attack burger." So, I got to thinking about it. Why does this exist?
It exists because people's souls are empty, so they compensate by filling their bodies.
It exists because delayed gratification, let alone self denial, have become foreign concepts to many Americans. It exists because we have no problem with establishments like the one I work in throwing away enough food to feed a respectably-sized African village on a daily basis (although I'm pretty sure that Africans have more sense than to eat some of the kinds of food we serve.) Anyone familiar with the term MRE (Meals Rejected by the Enemy/Everyone/Ethiopia) and the culinary quality thereof can imagine what I mean when I say that I refer to the food we get in the break room as "Meals Rejected by the Customers."
It exists because we're Americans, Excess is what we DO, Excess is what we've become. Excess and the glorification of it for its own sake is why anybody at all in this country would vote for a man who feels the need to have a gold-plated toilet be something that he owns.
It wasn't always that way. Grandparents on both sides of my family were all children of the Depression, they taught me to not waste food. They taught me values and work ethics that I have always relied on. My religious views (including respect for other people's religions) and work ethics trend old-school small-c conservative. My social views? I'd have been a New Dealer if I'd been alive back then because that's what my grandparents (conservative Democrats and liberal/Rockefeller Republicans respectively) either were or understood the need for. Only in recent years have I come to fully appreciate all this, even as my body starts to break down and my health gets worse because of my own accidents and chemical and culinary misadventures and drinking and ridiculous behavior and sexual stupidity (and I was taught better than that) which could be ascribed to youthful dumb shit. Note the "Could" honestly the worst of it hit in my later mid-twenties after my own life had gone to shit not once, but twice and I'd gotten divorced AND the Divorce (from my Pentecostal religious nut ex-wife) had damned near made an Atheist of me.
Nothing wrong with Atheists, but I probably wouldn't be a good one.
I'm a stubborn son of a bitch, I tend to learn things the hard way. I've also tended to need something greater than myself to look to when things go sideways. and another human being just won't cut it. My own spiritual beliefs are thus a pretty agnostic form of Christianity.
So, yeah, while I'm not necessarily a Big-"c" conservative nor a Big-"l" liberal and I'm not sure if it's because of or in spite of my lack of conventional religion, I look with equal parts genuine alarm and unapologetic disdain at what American "Conservatism" has turned into.
Oh sure, we've always had nuts. We've always had greedy power-mad shitheads and old motherfuckers whose main, if not only, concern was staying in office, and/or staying in power. But, we're at the point now where it's either Far-right or Left, with no real middle of the road. We've reached the point where Republican Representatives and Senators are literally running away from their own constituents and where even moderate and sane Conservatives like David Brooks and Evan McMullin sound like liberals compared to Congress and Trump. A hell of a lot of Republican voters are having second thoughts (and worried about their health care, among other things) with many more about to be left behind...and what's the main thing Congressional Republicans seem to care about? Staying in power...
Meanwhile, even their own voters are getting pissed off...
The rest of us are going to have to start finding ways to work with those people, to allay their constant, often unfounded fears (or as I keep telling people, turn off the damn TV) before we end up in the position of having a competent, focused, intelligent autocrat taking over who isn't obsessed with how he looks to the media and his personal popularity. Like I've said before, Trump is in the position of being very unpopular and looking like a weak autocrat...and few things have a shorter lifespan than an unpopular and weak autocrat.
But, once the Trump mess is over with (and I don't have any idea how, at the rate he's going, he's expecting to serve a full term) we'll likely have to deal with the Pence mess and/or the Ryan mess. In both cases, those guys are a lot more conventional/predictable and thus easier to oppose, and I don't see either as inspiring the same kind of fanaticism that Trump does, but still each caters to different, solidly entrenched aspects of the Republican Party (Fundamentalist Christianity and Ayn Randism respectively) and each one would likely have their own strong base...which would likely be stronger, or at least smarter, than Trump Supporters, and probably not the flash-in-the-pan that Trumpism is likely to be. I can't help but notice that Milo Yiannopolous appears to have dropped off the face of the earth...and minus Bannon, many of the alt-right Nazis have done the same.
It's not just reaching out to the other side that's going to be needed. We've got to come up with somebody that's worth following and likely somebody new or at least not that high up on the seniority list...kind of like how things worked out with Obama, in point of fact. It's not like the other side hasn't made it easier. One by one, the right-wingers have conceded belief in a decent environment, civil society, common decency, facts, reality, patriotism, policy, truth and even standard conservative traits like religiosity and support for the military to the other side, as if they are irrelevant.
Maybe they are, if you're one of those people who thinks giving the rest of the world a giant middle finger out of hate and rage is some kind of wonderful thing. I've seen videos of these Trump rallies where people act as if being able to express hate or say racial slurs is the greatest thing ever...and so far as I know such things haven't been socially acceptable for at least as long as I've been alive. Yeah, the crowds are getting smaller, have been for a while. But, the fact that this garbage ever appealed to anybody in this day and age should give people pause and cause us all to re-think some things.
For fuck's sake, as another friend of mine pointed out at around six this morning "Fox News is engaging in rampant self-abuse (i.e. Masturbation) because the President used the words "Radical Islamic Terrorism" in a sentence. He then added that this is apparently code for brown people. I pointed out that there are plenty of white Muslims out there...
He remarked that I'd have to turn off my brain if I wanted to think like these people do...
And that's it, right there, isn't it?
I've said more than once that when this is over we might have to send a lot of these people back to school, and bring back the ass whuppin' too. 'Cause if I acted like that, that's what I'd expect to get even today.
We might have to go 'old-school' in some other ways too.
There's a lot of people who have qualities that might appeal to displaced conservatives feeling buyer's remorse: conservatives like former CIA agent Evan McMullin might be able to be recruited, people like Senator Tammy Duckworth (Army Veteran) or Rev. William Barber (African American Pastor) or even unaffiliated but well-known people like Jesse Ventura or Mark Cuban. If I were the Democratic leadership, I'd be making an effort to reach out to and recruit moderate and sane conservatives, and to promote Democrats with the type of qualities that right-wingers say they want to have in terms of leadership. The Democrats themselves are in a position where (Bullshit-ass, Man's Approval-seeking Evangelicals and Melania Trump's leading the Lord's Prayer aside) at the rate this is going, give it a few more weeks or months of this crap and they'll be able to claim religion (as well as religious tolerance) as a defining value...while a lot of people are already wondering just what the values of the Republican Party even are anymore, aside from money and staying in office.
Damn it, we can do better.
The Republicans are basically in the same position the Democrats were in 20 years ago, but without the ability to coast on popularity.
We have some real problems in our society these days, up to and including that a lot of people have fallen through the cracks and even more are being marginalized and of course the leadership either doesn't care or is actively encouraging this crap. The golden toilets, heart attack burgers and in many ways even Trump's traveling clown show are nothing more than a distraction from that. The real problem we have right now is Congress, that can be a pretty damned local issue. If we don't find a way to impeach Trump, we may have a revolution in this country. Once that happens, this country is probably going to fly apart like the old Soviet Union did.
If you want to stop that, put down the cheeseburger, turn off the TV, and go outside into the unseasonable climate change weather and get to work.
I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days. ~Franklin Delano Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, 1933.
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