Three things pretty much guaranteed to prove exhausting.
Running uphill with a backpack full of rocks.
Keeping up with an average two year old, throw in hyperactivity and it's a done deal.
Talking politics.
For that matter, in the days of Donald, the mere mention of politics has become enough to send a sizable number, if not majority, of people head shaking, eye rolling and/or sigh generating themselves as far away from the eye of whatever dust storm disguised as discussion blows in their direction.
In at least one sense, that reaction and the accompanying behavior, is unfortunate.
Because while its understandable that those things in life that wear us down, wear us out or simply just turn us off are naturally the first things we are inclined to want to avoid.
The problem with avoiding things that need to be addressed, though, is that avoiding those things simply allows them to continue....if not flourish.
Very often and, again, these days, just like a tumor, politics can be harmful, even fatal, if ignored for too long.
All that is necessary for evil to flourish and all those other poetic perspectives on this mortal experience we share for eighty years, give or take.
Still, human beings, and, again, these days, American human beings in particular, by nature, have a tendency to, if only unconsciously, adopt and live by a credo that combines the most self serving bits of several life axioms and/or idioms.
"Live and let live"....meet..."let George do it."
Especially when the "it", in whatever form, format or circumstance is involved, is something that comes up on the to-do list under the heading "chores" as opposed to the column labled "recreations".
If it seems like the implication here is that America, in the year of whatever deity you profess 2019, is a nation in the grip of historically prolific laziness, self gratification or just good old fashioned textbook narcissism, then allow me an opportunity to clarify.
There's no implication intended whatsoever. What's being said here is that America, in the year of whatever deity you profess 2019, is a nation in the grip of historically prolific laziness, self gratification or just good old fashioned textbook narcissism.
The one asterisk offered here is that, just as with everything else in life, the only thing that is absolute (besides the proverbial death and taxes) is that there are no absolutes.
Which is by way of conceding, even celebrating, that there are still people in America who understand the value of, and subscribe to the theory that a life well lived is lived in the spirit of, a roll up your sleeves, grab a hammer and get busy building this much needed barn mindset.
Debates on specific numbers are best left to statisticians and Donald, who knows pretty much everything there is to know about anything being discussed at any given time (just ask him), but I'd put my staggeringly yuuge tax refund this year up against your staggeringly yuuge tax refund this year that the various and sundry balances that affect us all shake out pretty much like this at the moment.
Republicans are a majority of the Senate.
Democrats are a majority of the House.
Lazy, self gratifying narcissists are,if only by a percentage point or two, a majority of the nation.
As well as being a majority of those who hear "Hail To The Chief" played for them every time they show up at a fancy dinner.
Meanwhile, back to exhaustion.
While our national psyche, not to mention processes, can easily be seen as complicated beyond simple understanding, the fact is, that sometimes, actually more often than you might think, the root reason for, and/or cause of, things is not at all beyond simple understanding.
They are, in fact, as simple as simple ever gets.
The root reason for, and/or cause of, the aforementioned national epidemic of exhaustion.....just ahead.
Stephen Miller is a little rat weasel who needs to be punched in the side of the head until he runs sobbing back to his mommy.
His "official" title, in the WeTV dark comedy/satire/reality show thinly and cheaply disguised as a presidential administration, is "presidential advisor".
Here's a quick hits list of the shiniest jewels on his resume'.
Helped write the stirring, inspirational call to unity and brotherhood commonly referred to as Trump's Inaugural address.
Chief architect of the Trump immigration fubar (calling it a policy insults the intelligence of even those whose bright red cap is the centerpiece of their wardrobe).
Primary advocate of the methodology tearing migrant children from their parents and handing them over to God knows what, God knows where for God knows how long.
Is a loud, shrill, slimy and often heard voice filling the air and airwaves with claims about widespread voter fraud.
Wait. Sorry. Apologies. That should read filling the air and airwaves with moronic, totally unsubstantiated, if not totally fabricated, bullshit claims about widespread voter fraud.
And, a while back, in the early months of this WeTV dark comedy/satire/reality show thinly and cheaply disguised as a presidential administration, had this to publicly spew when a judge had the audacity to essentially tell Stevie's boss to step off.
".....the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned."
Okay. First, calling Miller a presidential advisor is like calling Goering or Goebbels "executive directors of the Final Solution".
But the lampooning Nazi reference is not only, like so much of our thematic today, wearying to the point of heavy sighing, it's not particularly applicable.
Goering and Goebbels and their Death Star Emperor had a vision and a plan and the stones to damn the torpedoes and surge full speed ahead, dropping the bombs, kicking the tires, lighting the fires and gassing up the ovens like genocide was an Olympic event.
Not that there's anything that isn't horrifically and obscenely wrong with that.
Miller, meanwhile, and his wanna be Caesar in a clown car, are like a really, really badly executed shot at a late night comedy sketch.
Throw in some silly walking and a big mackerel with which Donald smacks Stephen in the face and you're talking Monty Python.
Fifth rate Monty Python.
Apologies to the gentlemen of Python.
But all of this is, first, not the opening salvo of an extended bombing run on Stephen Miller or even yet another inevitable sixty megaton sortie on Trump, for all the good yet another sixty megatons of ka-boom will do.
This is about that root reason for, and cause of, the exhaustion so, so many are feeling in the America of 2019.
And Stephen Miller just happened to be the mole that first popped up today in the Whack-A-Mole that is the day to day, these days, in the year of whatever deity you profess 2019 America.
There are many more. Many, many more.
Cue Mr. T.
"A whole lotta mo".
So many, in fact, that it's.......
...yes....exhausting.
But that's what it is.
Not why it is.
And here's that root reason and/or cause.
The dictionary defines the word "having or showing a great lack of intelligence or common sense".
An America that is long on selfies and short on time to waste on boring pursuits like knowledge and insight whittles that eleven words down to a handy, user friendly single six letter snap.
Stupid.
Grammatically speaking, of course, when applied to the "root reason/cause of" thing we're going for here, the correct usage would be "stupidity"
But "stupid" sells it.
And that's three less letters that have to be bothered with before we can get back to loving to hate to love Jon Snow.
The temptation, and suspicion, at this point, is that we're now going to meander down the path of put downs and intelligence insulting, one side assuming repeated lambastings of MAGA's as stupid, the other side assuming repeated lambastings of MAGA's because of their assumed stupidity in being MAGA's in the first place.
But that's a lot of lambasting with very little benefit to show for it.
Because, as I mentioned earlier, some times root reasons for, and/or causes of, are as simple as simple ever gets.
Yes, the positions that Miller takes on important social, cultural, even life changing issues are extreme, harsh and, arguably, abhorrent.
But, simply put, the real transgression here is that they are stupid.
Because they don't work. They never have worked. And they never will work.
There is no argument to be made in which evil cannot be proven to be an inevitable factor ever present in the human experience.
But, to this moment, there is no history yet written in which that evil, or any evil, has not been ultimately overcome.
Even through the generations behind us, in which good men actually did do nothing where something could have been done, here we are, in the year 2019, still climbing every mountain, fording every stream, following every rainbow.
And not necessarily because of the theoretically unsinkable human spirit.
Perhaps, it's simply a matter of spiritual physics.
You can push a basketball down into a swimming pool and hold it down with all your strength for as long as you can endure. You can even attempt to sit on it, again, for as long as you endure. But until, and unless, you put a massive hole in that ball, in essence, massively wound it, it's going to bob back up and rise through the surface once again.
Again. And again.
Every.
Time.
Putting, or taking, someone...or a group....or a nation....or an entire race...down as a means to an end or even the end itself.....
....is making the mistake of thinking, for a single second, that they will be kept down in the end.
Given what we know of mankind and mankind's history, to date, that's a silly mistake to make.
One might even rightly offer that it's a stupid mistake.
In the case of one of history's latest lackeys, Stephen Miller's stupidity is that he's cocky, confident and convinced that his head butts are going to readily succeed at bringing down the barn.
Yo, Stevie.
Barn knows better.
Really, dude. Do you not understand how stupid what you're doing is?
Sorry. Look who I'm asking. And look who you're pimping for.
My bad. Or stupid, as the case may be.
Once the "stupid principle" is applied (and we need a catchier, more practical label here, because "stupid principle" is from that same problematic word basket as visiting the Hoover and being told by the dam guide that we're going to take the dam tour and you should save your dam questions till the end).....once applied, it becomes fairly simple to see how stupidity and futility have a tighter lock on each other than Jamie and Cersei.
Giving big tax breaks to the very rich and indifferently sticking it to the middle and lower classes. Not that it can't happen because it just did...and has before. But the end result is always, sooner or late, some form of taxpayer rebellion whether it's tossing crates of tea in a harbor...or tossing reckless office holders out of office on their under-taxed asses.
Trying to turn the population, as a whole, against the free press. Even though, until Donald, you had to practically go back to a time where Lin Manuel Miranda would have been inspired to write to hear the extreme stupidity of splashing "real enemy of the people" in the direction of journalists, the population, again, as a whole, understands the reality that without the sunlight that a free press shines on the day to day of life in America and the world, real, life changing, even life ending damage would fester and grow in the darkness. Thinking otherwise might be more common than usual these days. But not any less stupid.
Undermining, disrespecting, even calling for the dismantling of foundational American institutions like the intelligence agencies....the FBI......the....wait for it.....entire judicial system? All of the red capped, flag waving, cult like Imhotep devoted to Donald voice chanting approval notwithstanding, the very large lion's share (make that bald eagle share) of everyday, this is our country Americans are just as respectful, and protective, of our foundationals as they are our flag. Over the past two hundred years, millions of Americans have come together and millions of American lives have been freely given to prevent foreign nations from destroying the foundations of this nation. What special level of stupid do you have to be to think, for a second, that more than many millions of Americans wouldn't energize, and then some, to prevent that very destruction from an enemy within?
And so it goes. And so it would go.
Einstein once satirically defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time".
One safely bets that were Albert relatively around these days, he would be doing a contemporary re-boot to substitute the word "insanity" with the word "stupidity".
By the way, quick awareness check.....while lackeys like Miller and Bannon and Conway and Huckabee Sanders and Hannity and Curly, Moe and Larry might be "jump off a cliff if you asked me" sycophants aboard the Trump train, the not so great and way less than powerful Oz himself has no interest, intention or plan to actually commit, or accomplish, any of the assaults he blusters, taunts and tweets.
Dude's cashing in on riding the train for as long the tracks last. And thirty seconds before the huge log pile in the center finally shows up, guess who will already be helicoptered out like a tenth rate Bond villain in a tenth rate Bond film.
Ernst Stavro Blowhard.
But, many, if not most, of you reading this right now already know that don't you?
Of course you do.
Because you're not stupid.
And, on top of that, you, like me and a lot, a whole lot, of us are tired.
Of course you are.
Stupidity is exhausting.
No comments:
Post a Comment