Stop me if you've heard this one before.
The first step to solving a problem is admitting that there is one.
Okay, obviously, I wasn't serious about you stopping me.
As if, right?
But there's no getting around old Mr. Common Sense when it comes to the shop worn stock phrase that reinforces the irrefutable. You can't fix a hole in a tire until you find the hole. You can't roller skate in a buffalo herd. And you can't find the solution to a problem until you recognize and acknowledge that a problem exists in the first place.
Easy, and obvious, as that might sound, though, turns out too often to be much easier said than done.
Just ask Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Or Kellyanne Conway.
But today's sardonic soliloquy isn't directed at Harcourt Fenton Trump's women or the denial voodoo that they do so well.
It's about recognizing and acknowledging a much less recognized, yet much more symbolically important problem that diminishes us these days.
Diminishment discussed directly.
Something is wrong in America.
Well, now, there's a tagline for what could fill a couple of years worth of newscasts, talk shows and/or podcasts.
And that's not even exactly the same as those things that are wrong with America.
Although, that's an unnecessary splitting of hairs. Potato, patahto. Problem, problemo.
This particular wrong what is wrong in America came across my radar again the other day as I scrolled through the vast library of enlightenment, erudition, scholarly wisdom and savvy known as Facebook.
Yet another meme bob-bob-bobbing along on the sea of memes that share online space with pictures of people's lunch, videos of guys getting hit in the balls from one "hold my beer" activity or another and, of course, the "I know you are/but what am I?" tsunami that passes for political and/or philosophical discourse in the age of Donald John.
This particular meme bade one harken back to those thrilling days of yesteryear, assuming one considers 2005 a banner year for thrilling days. The meme was a picture of Barack Obama, complete with a quote most assuredly subliminally posted with a sense of "ah-ha!" about it.
"We simply cannot", Obama commented, "allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country."
Again. Ah-ha!
You don't have to be a star,baby, to be in my show. You don't have to say you love me, just be close at hand. And you don't have to be a Doctoral candidate with a 4.0 GPA to make a winning guess that whoever posted the meme was proudly endorsing concrete on the border which, by the way, is the much less known follow up to Connie Francis' big 1959 hit, Lipstick on Your Collar.
And, by the way, for those in the grandstands today who haven't evolved much past the LOL, IKR, SMH, LMFAO stages of development, GPA stands for Grade Point Average. Which is a classic term used in the process of an old ritual in society that was known as education. One of what we now refer to as the "lost arts", again, in this age of Donald John.
With a dollop of Betsy DeVos sprinkled conservatively on top. And you thought I was gonna say liberally. You silly.
So the Obama meme was obviously a shot taken at wall opponents by one of the very clever many who find some sense of inner satisfaction these days regularly exercising that unique, always entertaining, lobe of their brain that fires off the "but, what about" response.
"Well, today, Trump 'fill in the blank with whatever the transgression is at any given moment'.
"But...what about when Hillary 'fill in the blank with whatever Hillary quote or accusation from the golden oldies folder you got that you can make work'.
In place of Hillary, of course, you can substitute Bill, Biden, Bernie, Pelosi, Schumer, any of the remaining Democrats on the Supreme, Ocasio-Cortez (cue Ed Sullivan: 'for you young people out there tonight'), anyone remotely connected to show biz any time, some time ago or yet to come, that they drop their two cents in the pile, hell, you can even get ambitious and throw in a "but, what about when Millard Fillmore...?" if you can actually find something Fillmore did or said that makes it seem like he got away with shit that we libtard snowflakes just won't cut Donald any slack on.
The "but, what about", though, isn't the problem in America I've teased impishly, bordering on annoyingly, so far.
Hang in there. Getting closer.
While there was nothing particularly new or unique about the Obama immigration quote meme, it triggered a reminder for me of a conversation I had a couple of years ago during the Sunday talk radio show I was doing at the time.
Obama was still in office, Hillary was the presumptive Democratic nominee. And Donald was being written off as a political joke du jour whose days as a candidate, like the current list of indictments, were numbered.
Again. Ah-ha!
The topic on talk was guns. And one regular caller/listener who was convinced, beyond no only any reasonable doubt, but, to a moral certainty that it was only a matter of days, even minutes before Barack Obama was going to pull the start rope on a nationwide confiscation of guns.
I was momentarily inclined to say Obama was going to fire the starting pistol, but, I like to sprinkle the wit, not over-season the soup.
The assertion, actually more a suspicion, actually, more than that, a paranoia was, of course, nonsense. Was then. Is now.
If for no other reason, as I pointed out at the time in hopes of injecting both a little comfort and humor simultaneously, even if it was true and Obama launched a Federal Government Plan to confiscate weapons nationwide there were three words there that guaranteed that the attempt to do so would be an utter, undeniably fubar-ed failure.
Federal. Government. Plan.
But, at the time, as now, what occurred to me wasn't about the possibility or impossibility of a nationwide weapons confiscation.
Any more than seeing a fifteen year old Obama quote plastered on a 2019 Facebook page had me thinking that Obama was a hypocrite, or not, there would be a wall, or there wouldn't or Hillary should be locked up.
That last one had nothing to do with the train of thought we were riding there, but, I like to throw the MAGA's a bone every now and then and that one always gets their hearts racing and their red caps tossed in the air in jubilant anticipation.
Yee. Haw. Make America Great Again.
Here's the thing.
And the thing is about extremes.
We, the people, for the most part, allowing for the wack job, dimwit, half wit, half-assed segment of any population populated with human beings, profess to be turned off by the idea of extremism.
I've never had a conversation with anyone who firmly voices their support of anyone who can be correctly described as an extremist. "Anyone", there, of course, excludes the wack job, dimwit, half wit, half-assed segment of any population populated with human beings.
And 'bout 70% of the talk radio audience these days, give or take.
Whether the word extreme is followed by the word conservative or liberal, left or right, we hem and haw and churn and chatter and piss and moan about the "right wing" this and the "left wing" that, but we all, like it or not, admit it or not, live most of the moments of the day of our lives in the middle.
Sure, okay, be a hard ass stickler already. A little right of middle or a little left of middle.
But middle.
Here's a fun random thought. Walking along a busy highway, the safest place to be is way to the left or way to the right.
And the middle, of course, is where you're most likely to get dead.
Don't know why that crossed my mind just now. My irony switch is probably just stuck in the on position again.
So, sorry, Barry Goldwater, you once upon a time paragon of conservative values, "extremism...." in any usage is, in fact, a vice. Google it. It's inspirational oratory from a politician at a time in history when you could say inspirational and politician in the same sentence and not feel like you were hacking up a hairball.
So, let's agree for the moment that we meet in the middle.
But we don't think in the middle.
We think in extremes.
It doesn't occur to those in fear that all their guns will be pried from their fingers long before those fingers are cold and/or dead that there's something very useful and beneficial to be found in the middle between taking all the guns away from everybody and letting everyone have any damn number of any damn gun any damn time they want them for whatever damn reason which, by the way, just happens to be nobody's damn business.
Well, damn.
And it never occurs to those who have bought the snake oil mixed with cement sales pitch that a wall is the be all/end all solution to the immigration issue that there are a dozen, a hundred, a thousand, keep on extrapolatin' there, kids, alternatives that could more effectively and more efficiently deal with that very real issue.
Not to mention more economically, by the way.
Again. Ah-ha!
Nope. It's gotta be a wall. Or it will be an invasion of pillagers, plunderers and rapists.
It's gotta be all guns, all the time. Or it will end up no guns, no how, no way, Jose.'
That Jose' thing would have been a lot more clever if it had been in the wall thing, but, these things don't always just fall into place. Those of you who think this commentary business is a cake walk need to step off and do some homework.
Common sense, common cause, even common decency all lie and live in or around the middle of this life we share.
But we think in extremes.
Left. Or right. Conservative. Or Liberal.
Everything. Or nothing.
My way. Or the highway.
Fer us. Or agin' us.
And that brings us to the originally mentioned "something wrong" in America.
Wrong song.
Star Spangled Banner? Land of the free and home of the brave? Here and there, maybe, from time to time, these days, but overall, currently anyway, not so much, no.
America The Beautiful? And crown thy good with...brotherhood? Really? That's what you're gonna come at me with? That's a negatory, good buddy. I would refer you to the current high level acceptance of our more Neo-Nazi participants.
Very fine people.
Even "This Is My Country" comes up a skosh short on the patriotic hit parade.
"...this is my country / grandest on Earth..."
Ask the 100 million Americans who voted the other way two years ago. Ask the 74% of the population that, up until a few months ago, wasn't rock solid sure just exactly what impeach really involved, but are now practically qualified to teach a course on it...not to mention ready to see it happen.
Ask any of the non-adversary nations in the rest of the world how grand they see America to be at the moment.
Yeah. That song is recycle bin bound, too.
The current politics of pain, like kidney stones, will pass. Or kill us. Either way, check that off the list.
What remains, though, is what's wrong with America.
So much, too much, of its population isn't interested in discussing, debating, implementing or even acknowledging the existence of moderation, co-operation, compromise.
Left. Or right. Conservative. Or Liberal.
Everything. Or nothing.
My way. Or the highway.
Fer us. Or agin' us.
It's what's wrong with America.
And what's wrong in America?
Like I said...wrong song.
Turns out there's one that fits to a T.
"All...Or Nothing At All"
There you go.
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