Breaking up may be hard to do.
But growing up can be a real bitch.
Mostly because, as we head on down that highway of life, we find ourselves not only evolving physically and, ideally, mentally, but we inevitably find little pit stops along the ride, where the impressions, opinions, even beliefs that we form as children find themselves, often abruptly, sometimes even harshly, replaced by that most paradoxical, and not just a little annoying, unavoidable party crasher.
The truth.
Or, put less philosophically....
The facts.
Came across a fun list, the other day, of facts that play a large factor in seeing our childhood bubbles get popped.
The article, cleverly enough, is entitled "Things We Learn As Kids That Aren't Actually True."
Here's a little sampling of the aforementioned bubbles and, where necessary, the applicable bubble popping facts.
Just the facts, ma'am.
- Babies are delivered by storks---obviously, every one discovers, by around the age of seven or eight, that the whole charming stork story turns out to have been nothing more than a diabolical ruse to prevent having to explain to five year olds what Sheldon puritanically referred to as "coitus" and whatever impregnation might result. Of course, today, thanks to WeTV and pretty much everything Seth McFarlane has ever contributed to the culture, the whole stork thing is pretty much dead in the water before it ever takes flight in the first place. And those parents who still take a shot at it, most often, find that, again thanks to Seth and all things bearing a resemblance to all things Seth, those same five year olds react to Mommy and Daddy's stork saga with another skill kids are learning earlier and earlier in life....the eye roll.
- Christopher Columbus discovered America---in the olden days, shortly after kids learned to sing their ABC's, they were be-bopping that "in fourteen hundred and ninety two / Columbus sailed the ocean blue." Today, of course, not only has that little ditty long ago dropped off the Billboard Top 100, the whole sordid story of Columbus and his three ships has been rebooted to include the previously redacted, but irrefutably essential, details about, first, his being, not first, but, at best, second to find what would become the America in need of becoming great again, Leif Erickson being the discovery dude some 500 years before fourteen hundred and ninety two. Of course Chris' PR people now also have the daunting task of trying to spin the replacement of the friendly corn dinner shared with locals when he arrived myth with the less savory history of rape and pillage and murder that's a whole lot less ocean blue and whole lot more black and blue. Had all that come to light in the 1400's, even Kellyanne Conway would have had a hell of a time putting a twinkle on that turd.
- We have only five senses---as you will recall from your cherished, if not checkered, childhood, the conventional wisdom was that the human body has five, count em, five senses: smell, sight, taste, touch and hearing. Not to be confused, of course, with the seven words you can't say on television. Now, in the database of America 2019.0, science offers that we should be including hunger, balance, thirst and almost a dozen more "senses" to the list. And, again, that's senses, not to be confused with "sense" which, judging from what we smell, see, taste, touch and hear on TV, radio, social media and on any given election night, has now moved from the endangered species list to the big tally marked "extinct". The upside, of course, being that the next time you find yourself muttering "this makes no sense", the cause of your distress is easily answered. There is no sense.
- Coke and Pop Rocks will make your head explode---just a silly urban legend, mischievous myth. You might foam like a fool, but your cranium will remain complete. Word of caution, though, for relatively intelligent people in our audience....head explosion is not completely a myth and should be taken very seriously, the most frequent cause in current culture being exposed to any thing spoken, at any time, by the aforementioned Kellyanne Conway.
But, after doing a little research on the topic, I found one glaring omission from the ongoing list that included such revelation as Napoleon actually not being all that short, George Washington not actually having wooden teeth, Salem witches not actually being burned and, of course, that total buzzkill about Santa...no matter what shuck and jive Virginia naively bought...
One very disappointing and, at the same time, enlightening omission, as a matter of fact.
The truth. The whole truth.
Momentarily.
Chris Cillizza writes for CNN.com.
Here's the first few words of a piece recently published there.
"Here's a great headline for Donald Trump as he turns toward his 2020 re-election bid.: 'CNN Poll: Trump's approval rating on the economy hits a new high'. And the story which accompanies the poll numbers is equally good news for Trump....
"The result comes on the heels of the announcement that the US economy grew at a much better rate than expected in the first quarter, and Trump's performance on the economy becomes one of his prime selling points for next year's general election"
Cillizza's story goes on to compare and contrast the approval rating when the economy is factored in and the simple, unadorned approval rating.
The difference between the two is both obvious and predictable.
Regardless of what people think of the state of the union's financial condition, the overall approval of the state of the union in general is pretty much where it has been since Trump solemnly swore. Solemnly, maybe, but, clearly to everyone by now, not even close to seriously.
And forget about sincerely.
Three, sometimes four, out of ten people think Donald is the dude.
The other seven, sometimes six, are thinking they'd like to vote Donald off the island.
In November next year, for sure.
Later today, if at all possible.
One of the challenges, at this point in the space/time continuum, in talking about Trump, at all, is trying to avoid falling into the same old riffs about the same old shit that we've been riffing and shitting since the day that Donald solemnly, but not seriously, or sincerely, swore.
Put simply, there's only so many ways, and times, one can say "the house is on fire" before it becomes clear that the conversation should have long ago moved on to something along the lines of "a) shut up b) grab a hose..."
Because, also at this point in the space/time continuum, we, the people, both the people who think Donald is the dude and those who would not only vote him off the island today if at all possible but would break the Internet donating to the Go Fund Me page devoted to paying his moving expenses, all know all we need to know about Donald.
There's nothing new coming. What we see is what we get.
And what we get is who, and what, he is.
To paraphrase Sam Cooke, "change ain't gonna come.....you know it won't..."
Sure, there's surely prosecutable tax returns and how much of America has he sold to Putin and how does he continue to eat junk food and not experience an IMax 3D coronary thrombosis, but those are just little bullet points, even bits of trivia that aren't going to ever influence the quick summation.
Love him, leave him, adore him, hate him, genuflect and declare him dude, light a dozen candles, couple dozen tiki torches and send him sailing away, he is what he is.
Petty. Infantile. Abusive. Dishonest. Dishonorable. Ignorant. Pea-brained. Sociopathic. Narcissist.
Dissing his physical appearance, though, would be a cheap shot. Although the comedic temptation screams out to do something with calling attention to him not being in "tippy top" shape.
And here's a thing.
At this point in the aforementioned space/time continuum, dissing Donald misses the point.
Which will bring us back to do-re-mi...but, mostly, you.
If you happen to be one of those three or four people who think Donald is the dude.
In large measure, because of two words that onomatopoetically create a yuuge distraction to the real dilemma.
Booming. Economy.
And their kissin' cousins.
Low unemployment.
New jobs.
Yeah.
Never mind the buzzkill realization that the "wave of new jobs" consists, largely, of low paying, service type jobs. Meaning for every three new jobs, there's only one person benefiting because that one person has to work those three jobs just to stay afloat on the ocean of MAGA paradise.
But, yeah.
New jobs.
Whup comma big.
Under ordinary circumstances, the whup would, indeed, be big. And worthy of both praise and appreciation.
I started to use the word "normal" there in place of "ordinary", but it genuinely seems like "normal" has been filed away in the same folder with the word "sense".
Current circumstances are neither normal nor ordinary.
And, full disclosure, this isn't the first time I've boarded this particular train of thought. Memory serves, last time it left the station, I livened up the chit chat in the club car with a little old time religion.
Matthew 16:26.
"...for what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world...and forfeits his soul?..."
For the parable/metaphor challenged amongst us, here's a translation.
"....for what will (America) profit if (it) has a booming economy...and (loses its democracy, allowing it to crumble and tumble into irreparable rubble)?".....
The Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan is on life support, if not already clinically dead and gone.
The United States Senate, at this writing, under the sycophantic allegiance to the King, of Mitch McConnell is an means to serve the ends of Mitch McConnell, disguised as the ends of Donald Trump....America's needs have been taken off the to-do list.
America's relationships, friendships and, more critically, alliances with neighbor nations have been diminished, seriously, if not irreparably, damaged...crashed against the rocks because a spoiled man-child with no nautical experience whatsoever is steering the ship of state.....afflicted with an often fatal combination of character flaws....the inability to have a clue about steering the ship...and the ego that won't allow him to listen to anyone who knows how.....
America's fundamental, and foundational, institutions are under attack....the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, the district, regional and state courts, the Constitutionally guaranteed free press and other media, including news organizations, radio and television programs and none of those attacks....none....are coming from foreign enemies....they are all coming from the spoiled man-child who has never known a day in his life where he didn't think of himself as infallible.
And....just like that, the same old riffs on the same old shit about the entire psychology textbook waiting to be written in human form named Donald John Trump.
But none of that seems to matter.
Because of two words that three, sometimes four, out of ten people hold up as reason, cause, excuse, rationalization, even justification for ignoring the huge pile of shit sitting smack dab in the middle of what they see to be a magnificent banquet table.
Booming.
Economy.
One glaring omission from that list of things that we learn as kids that aren't actually true.
Money isn't everything.
Yeah. Turns out....that's not true at all.
Turns out....it is everything.
At least in three, sometimes four, even, at times, five out of ten houses in America 2019.
Soul? We don't need no stinking soul.
What kind of profit is there in that?
Cue Randy Newman.
It's money that matters / hear what I say
It's money that matters / in the U.S.A.
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