The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Give me your Anglo-Saxons, your moneyed few, your cuddled masses yearning to invest, the pampered rich of your teeming shore. Send these, the Christian, righteous free to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Well, what did you expect when we voted in a playboy billionaire TV reality show huckster? You thought maybe a compassionate conservative? A thousand points of light? You figured this narcissistic braggart liar would reach down to the poor, the huddled masses here and beyond? Did you actually buy what he was selling? You think maybe immigrants would be the new Apprentice?

What he’s selling is a country that prefers whites over people of color, men over women, rich over poor, the powerful over the weak. He’s not interested in equality. Or democracy. Or the rule of law. He’s promoting the law of the jungle, dog eat dog, lie through your teeth, attack those who disagree with you. He’s Old White School, through and through. His vision for America is a sea to shining sea with Trump Towers stretching to the farthest horizon. Gold is his color, not purple mountains majesty. He’s unread, he’s undisciplined, he’s mean as a junkyard Doberman. He’s a racist, a misogynist, an elitist, a greedy little leech and he’s good, very good, at self-promotion. He may not fool all of the people all of the time, but he’s hoodwinked enough to get himself elected dictator of America.

He promotes conspiracy theories, dismisses science and facts, mocks anyone who gets in the way of his reflection in his mind’s mirror. He is without policy, without ideas, without thoughtful analysis, without much of anything outside the narrow range of his greed and his ambition. He claims to be the Master of the Deal, he purports to be one of the richest men in the world, he brags that his brain is one of the biggest. He admires dictators and thugs.

But in truth, as if anyone can handle the truth anymore, he’s a cheap thug, a fraud and a phony, a man who declares bankruptcy then brags at the savings, a rich guy who wouldn’t want you to see his balance sheet, a high stakes gambler with someone else’s money and a politician without a clue.

They say a country gets the leader it deserves. What a wretched state of affairs….

Fat shaming is apparently back in vogue judging by Trump’s mockery of a man he thought was protesting him. Told him he had a serious weight problem and pointed him out to the mob in Manchester. Told him to start exercising.

I guess it’s ironic the guy turned out to be an ardent Trump supporter. Didn’t even bother the fellow that his idol had called him out for obesity. Melania is running that anti-bullying program, but apparently it hasn’t done much to curb her charming husband’s propensity for everything from racist tweets to fat shaming. Charity starts in the home apparently.

What interested me about this latest episode from the Bully Pulpit wasn’t the act itself but the victim’s response. He loves his Trump. Best thing that’s happened to this country, he claimed to a Fox interviewer. Digest that for a nano second or three. He’s just been called a Fattie by the most powerful man in the world, his President, the guy who claims to be unifying the citizens of this country, the same country he’s making Great Again, and he’s unfazed by being singled out for ridicule and shame before an audience of thousands, soon to be millions. Doesn’t alter his opinion one little bit, no sir, who cares if the powerful use their office to reach down to the little man and kick him in the teeth.

If you wonder, as I do, why this creep of a President isn’t despised, much less dropping in support, well, here’s a peek into the folks who vote for a despot. Some people love the idea of a boot on the neck of their enemies. And apparently they need someone to tell them who their enemies are. Hillary’s a crook, says the guy who won’t show his tax returns. Send those four foreign looking women back where they came from, says the fellow whose wife and family are here on bogus visas. Everybody look at that fat slob up in the top row of this auditorium, cries the man in the big suit. Exercise, buddy, shouts the sedentary fuhrer. Notice how that Muslim woman (who was a Gold Star mother) isn’t allowed to speak, growls the guy who evaded the draft with phony bone spurs. It’s enough to make an intelligent person weep.

Fascism looks a lot like this, you ask me and I know you didn’t. It’s not just the guy with the megaphone and the daily threats and continuous insults. It’s the people who will stick with him. Even after he attacks them or what they once held dear. That may be the serious weight problem and it has nothing to do with obesity.

If you were the King of the Deal Makers, the Top Gun real estate developer in the entire bloody world, a man who could sell hot dogs at a PETA convention, you too might be looking for the next great challenge. He’s already been a reality TV star. He pandered his way into being THE rich playboy jetsetter of New York City. Oh, and he became President of the United States….

What’s the next act for a man whose self-esteem needs a constant fuel supply? Sure, he could declare war on Iran or bomb the bejabbers out of the Taliban. He can start up the nuclear arms war again. He could even drive the country into a recession with enough time to declare victory when the economy started back up. But that’s not enough! Any pedestrian president could do that. What he needs is a Blockbuster. He needs the equivalent of a moon landing. He needs, in short, something biglier than anyone ever imagined. Ever dreamed even.

He needs to buy Greenland. Trump Tower right there at the foot of the melting glaciers. Couple more years and room for a 36 hole golf course. A resort for the ages. Ice-a-Lago! And yeah, I know the Danes don’t want to sell it, but they’re dealing with the guy who wrote the book on the Art of the Deal. Okay, okay, he didn’t write it, a man he hired wrote it, but nevertheless …. If the dude who drove casinos into bankruptcy and still has his name on hotels around the world with backing from major fiduciary firms, if that hombre can’t pull off the real estate deal of the century, I ask you, who can?

All that land, think of it, slowly melting off into the oceans, leaving behind acreage for condos, hotels, stripmalls, industrial areas, military bases, an entire country open to naked plundering. And what better country to do the plundering than the Yew Ess Aye. For all we know there might be coal under those mountains of ice. We’ll bring it back, yes we will, yes we can. Greenland will be green once again. Greenback of dollar, if nothing else. Give the man four more years, he’ll buy Antarctica too!

We all live in La-La Land, a mystical place where anything can be true, even total opposites. Facts grow on magical bean stalks and everything is fair and balanced. Even if it’s not. The President went to El Paso and Dayton this week, not, he made clear, for photo ops, but for visiting the victims of two mass murderers. Course, he made a video of him with the staff of the hospitals, claimed the victims warmly received him, probably helped in their healing process. It turns out the victims wouldn’t let him near them. Not one in that El Paso hospital would allow him in their room. If they survive, you know who’ll take credit for their rapid and complete recovery.

The best brag by the Healer, even better than boasting about the size of his crowds in El Paso vs. Beto’s, was the photo op of him with the kid of deceased parents shot to death, giving the thumbs up and smirking that self-satisfied grin of his. If you were grieving over a heinous crime like this, dozens dead, victims fighting for their lives in rooms nearby, wouldn’t this guy have the words of comfort to unite us all, to speak to us of healing and remembrance, to offer up sympathy? Well, maybe not. Bullies aren’t really admired for those traits and this bully lives in his own mirror.

We’ve moved so far from distasteful with this guy, we might as well root for our food, grunt around the nightly burnbarrels then shelter down in cardboard boxes behind the abandoned big box stores. If you don’t feel like a refugee yourself yet, you aren’t paying attention. “I think my rhetoric … brings people together,” Trump said before visiting Ohio and Texas. His critics are “political people … trying to make points.”

Thumbs up, Big Guy! Smile for the camera! And you want another four years???
Tr

Well, it’s that time of year for Going Back to School sales, outfit the kids with notebooks and pencils, calculators and wardrobes, oh, and don’t forget the Kevlar backpacks. This year’s fashion statement comes with bullet proof fabric, available in hot colors, extra pockets, maybe room for all those books PLUS a first aid kit. Tourniquets, of course!

I don’t know if you’ve been in a school lately. Alarms, security guards, locked doors, notices at the entry for all visitors to check into the office immediately, cameras, drills for intruder alerts, everything but razor wire around the perimeter. Although I was just in Yakima, WA and saw an elementary school which did have razor wire surrounding it. Some communities want teachers to carry guns, some probably want the kids to carry em too. I don’t understand either why the tots are stressed.

The more modern schools, meaning the ones with money, are hiring high tech outfits to monitor Facebook and social media, eavesdrop on cellphones, run an algorithm or a million to determine potential mayhem from maladjusted students, forget about privacy rights, they have the safety of the entire school at risk. Big Brother is now the School Board and the Principal is the Warden.

Now we have Kevlar backpacks. That should reassure the children. Maybe use a frontpack too. And wear military grade steel helmets. I’m pretty sure I’m getting a clear picture of what kind of education our youngsters are getting these days. I remember duck and cover drills for atomic attacks in third grade down in Georgia not too many miles from Cuba missile sites. Get under your desk and hope the blast isn’t real close. Fear is a great teacher, you bet.

Schools must feel like war zones now. Barricades, blast barriers, security details, lockdowns. I assume they still teach math and science, but I suspect the real education isn’t readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmitic, it’s Dread. Course, to be fair, I always dreaded school and we didn’t even have mass murderers lurking in the hallways. Just bullies.

Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the least racist one of all?

Well now, let’s see… is it Adolph Hitler? Could it be Pol Pot? What about David Duke? Maybe George Wallace? Hmm, tough call. But wait! I think it has to be Donald J. Trump! At least D.J. thinks so. And with that very big brain he has and an IQ right off the charts, he must be right. Oh, I know, he called the Mexican immigrants rapists and carriers of disease, criminals and gang members. But that isn’t racist if it’s true, is it?

And okay, he has a bit of a bias against Muslims. Mostly terrorists, but hey, he’s against their religion, not their race. Different, right? Doesn’t make him a racist, just a religionist … or something like that. Okay, he told those 4 Congresswomen to go back where they came from, maybe he didn’t know they were women of color. Being color blind, how would he know?? Those folks down in Charlottesville, all he meant was there were good folks on both sides. White supremacists and those who don’t like Nazis. Why pick sides? We got a big tent Republican Party now, no need to exclude folks for their beliefs.

So what if he called Baltimore a rat-infested mess? Just means he doesn’t love rats, not black folks. And this week he blamed the white supremacists in the same tweet he blamed liberal protestors and the mayor of Toledo, does that sound like a racist? Sure, he questioned Obama’s birth place? So what, he just wanted to see a birth certificate. And okay, when they produced one from Hawaii, he probably didn’t realize Hawaii had been part of the United States. History isn’t his strong suit, but … does that make him a racist?

The man is the least prejudiced man in America, at least White America. Not a racist bone in his big Mac super-sized body, near as anybody can prove. He pretty much dislikes everybody equally. I gotta tell ya, though, if Mr. T is the least racist guy in the country, and I think by now you’ll agree with that fact, I feel like turning myself into the NAACP as a thought criminal. If I’m more racist than this guy, I’m definitely a danger to myself and the neighbors. I don’t want to speak for you, but I think we both know we ought to join the KKK and quit kidding ourselves.

You got to love the Republican Party, the one they themselves like to refer to as the Party of Lincoln, the Grand Old Party. Old, for sure; grand, not so much … unless you mean grandfather. Lincoln? Lincoln would roll over in his grave. The last black guy in the House of Reps just announced he won’t run next term. You could almost hear the applause from out here on the West Coast. Time for the token black to hit the road, return the club to an all white country club set once again. Making America Great Again, yah shure, you betcha.

Me, I’m old and I’m a white guy. Angry too a lot of the time. But I don’t think returning to pre-Civil Rights is going to make this country great again. I guess it’s only a matter of time before the dogwhistles become Jim Crow attacks. Racism never really went away, forget Obama being elected. It’s part of our national DNA and slavery is part of our history, shameful and inexcusable, I don’t care what the cultural norms were for the times. Send em back!? What, in slave ships?

I’m not sure where I stand on reparations, but I’m pretty sure where I stand on racism in this country. And I’m very sure what I think of this President’s pivot toward racial insults, dogwhistles and a nod to the so-called ‘Base’ who wouldn’t recognize a racist if he had a noose in his hand for the next lynching. The Confederacy never really died and slavery didn’t exactly end. You don’t think so, go down to rural Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, check out the indentured servitude still there, ask around about the local KKK, see who runs the county, the city, maybe the entire state. Tell me then who owns who.

The Republicans who enable this, the white boyz who avert their eyes and quiet their disagreement over every tweet and bully baiting, welcome to the time when the Reichstag let the Jews be stigmatized, then singled out, then gassed. Blame Hitler, sure, but the others stood silent, afraid of losing office or power, but never afraid of losing their morality, eventually their souls. No, I don’t think Donald plans to set up camps. I don’t even think he plans to send em back. He just wants to win another four years of narcissistic spotlight, and if playing the race card works, Mr. T will stoop to conquer.

Naw, guns don’t kill people, insanity and hatred kills people. Or in the words of one Ohio state representative, trans and gays were the real culprits in this weekend’s mayhem and mass murder. One Congressman claimed it was video games. Another pointed the finger at drag queens and marijuana. Former Arkansas Governor and Fox Gadfly Mike Huckabee says it’s a lack of thoughts and prayers. Me, I’m gonna go out on a long limb here, call me crazy, call me gay, call me an atheist, dress me in women’s clothes, and say it was guns. Yup, I think it was guns.

I grew up with Roy Rogers, cowboys and Indians, shoot-em-ups, all those wild west westerns where a 6 shooter kept the crooks from taking over everything but Boot Hill. I’ve owned guns, still do. I’ve hunted squirrels and rabbits and deer until I got in touch with my touchy-feely side and couldn’t do it anymore. I still kill crab but I don’t need a gun to do it. Touchy-feeliness only goes so far and I draw the line on Dungeness.

And trust me, I don’t have the solution to gun violence in America. There are more guns than people and there are people who like their guns better than they like other people. I just don’t think they ought to use their guns on the folks they don’t like. But now we got assault rifles, military weapons, more firepower than the police. We got folks like my bipolar buddy, Fast Freddy, who flew back to his home state on his last visit to buy a titanium .44 pistol and an AR-15 assault rifle. He was more manic than an amphetamine monkey but the gun shop sold him both. Something wrong with that picture if you’d seen Freddy at the height of his departure from lithium. Only picked up 32 times by the local police on his long trek out to our place. They knew he was off his rocker, I bet the gun store clerk did too.

Happiness may be a warm gun to some, but there are plenty of families who would beg to differ. Suicides, spousal killings, mass murders, accidental shootings. Gee, you think we should do something about this?

Let me assume for a South End minute that we actually do have the right to bear arms. I can’t keep a rocket launcher. I’m not supposed to have an automatic weapon. So is it such a far reach that we could outlaw — I know, I know, only the outlaws — assault rifles and military weapons? Maybe put some restrictions on dum-dum and armor-piercing ammo? The answer, if you’re not an NRA true believer, is fundamentally yes. Nobody’s taking ALL your damn guns, Bubba. Keep more than one by all means.

But sometime, somewhere in this fairy land we call America, we have to face the fact that blood is in the streets, in a community near yours, and people are dying, families are devastated, the carnage is real. And here’s some news for my Republican apologists. It ain’t the trans, it isn’t the gays, it isn’t violent video games, it isn’t insanity and hatred pulling that trigger. And no, Mike, it’s not a paucity of prayers. It’s guns. Wake up and smell the cordite.

The rigor mortis tortoise, I heard someone call Moscow Mitch the other day. I’m not really a fan of 3rd grade name calling, but I gotta say, what’s good for the goose is certainly good for the gander. Back when Obama got word from Comey and the Deep Staters in the FBI, he came to Mitch to see if they could, in a bipartisan way, make the case to the American Public that our election was under assault by the Kremlin. Mitch, always a good patriot, said hell no, he’d play any move by Obama to warn the states that their voting booths were potentially being compromised, as a favor to Hillary and the Democrats. This, from the guy who refused to bring Obama’s Supreme Court nominee to the Senate floor. Patriotism? You be the judge.

Now it’s turnabout and I say fair play. Bill after bill to protect voting credibility get shot down by Moscow Mitch. Mueller’s only sign of life at the last hearing was an animated pronouncement that the Russians and probably other state actors were still attempting to manipulate our votes here in the Yew Ess Aye. This from the guy who only said yes, no, could you repeat the question or that’s in the report. He made it clear the electoral process was Under Siege. Everyone in that committee room wanted to cry out He’s Alive! Everyone in D.C., maybe, except McConnell.

Now, to be totally fair, I don’t think Mitch is a Russian asset. I think he’s a guy who would do anything to stay in power and to exert that power and if anything got in his way, God help them. He will violate the Constitution, he will say and do anything no matter how hypocritical, he will sacrifice the good of the country for himself and his party. Does that make him a Russian asset? No, but the Russians must love him anyway.

And the Republicans must too. But … let’s be clear here, the tide will turn and some election in the future, the Republicans will be at the wrong end of the barrel. Nobody wins Russian Roulette, not if they play long enough. Except maybe the Russians….

This past weekend I drove upriver into the foothills east of Bellingham to visit my old friend from the Seattle days when we were both young and drove bus to the same elementary school. She and her biker beau had built a cabin on the Nooksack and I had even helped put up the roof. Funny how we both ended up living in shacks far off the beaten path, but then again, probably why we were friends in the first place.

Melinda lived in my ghetto house for a few months, about the time I hit the road for the island but before the house was sold. She came with her golden lab and I left with Dr. Gonzo, the fiercest dog I ever met and the beast that kept our larcenous neighbors from acting on their urges in regard to breaking and entering the two years or so I lived there. I didn’t bother locking doors back then, not with Gonzo on the inside.

But we left and Melinda stayed. She was mid-bath one afternoon when she heard a crash down below the upstairs bathroom and heard voices yelling at her lab which had started barking wildly. So she grabbed a bathrobe and scooted downstairs and out the front door while the intruders were helping themselves in the back to whatever they could find, not much in that house, trust me. Her plan was to barefoot it over to the hospital catty-corner, find a phone and call the police.

Which is exactly what she did. But when she headed back outside, a nurse asked her where she thought she was going. Home, Melinda told her. And the nurse, shaking her head, called a couple of orderlies to prevent that from happening. You aren’t going anywhere, she told Melinda, except back to your room. Now, what Melinda didn’t realize in her haste to get to a phone, was she’d flown into the cuckoo’s nest, the psych unit of Providence Hospital and there was no way the good custodians of the mentally ill were going to allow her to just waltz out of there barefoot in her bathrobe.

She tried explaining there was a robbery underway back at her house across the street, she told them how two intruders had hurled a potted plant at her dog on the stairs, she even mentioned she had been in the tub, why she was dressed in a bathrobe and no shoes. But these folks had heard it all before, they weren’t falling for that old line. No, ma’am, you need to get back to your room. Probably need an extra couple of sedatives.

Well, in the end Melinda finally convinced them she wasn’t totally crazy — and if you knew Melinda, you’d know how hard that would be — and by the time she got herself released from the mental ward the police were at the house and the thieves were long gone. Nothing much was stolen, not too much damage done, her dog was okay and the only thing hurt was maybe her pride. I brought the ferocious Dr. Gonzo back down to prevent repeat psych ward incarcerations and shortly after got the house sold. You ever wonder why I left the city, and Melinda too, maybe that was exactly why….