The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

In the Land of Equal Opportunity we all love a good success story, a pull-yourself-up-from-the bottom mythology, a rags-to-riches saga ready made for Netflix. Something to give hope to those without, dreams for the downtrodden, possibilities for the impoverished. Thank god for the Trumps! All you need to rise to the top in America is, well, frankly, to be born at the top. The Donald claims to be a self-made man, a brilliant deal-maker, a real estate developer without parallel. You could do the same … if you had a brain as big as his.

It should give us all hope. Start out with a few measly millions and you too could parlay that into even more millions. In fact you could do pretty well just investing in Treasury bonds and sitting back while the interest accrues year after compounding year. Try that with a car payment, rent due and a job that pays minimum wage. A job that year after year makes less as inflation eats up your earnings.

It’s a pretty myth, the bootstrap, Horation Alger story. Too bad it’s bogus. Check the ranking of America in the world when it comes to rising up in income. Sort of like checking our rank in health care. Or education. We can crow that we’re #1 but only if you don’t bother checking the statistics. What we’re #1 at is creating billionaires. The rest of you, good luck. Play the Lottery, pal, but if you think you’re going to start down near the bottom and end up with your very own Trump Tower, well, dream on if it gives you hope.

Ivanka thinks the poor should eat cake. Or Big Macs. She thinks socialism will kill the American Dream. She thinks she’s the poster babe for hard work and earned success. The rest of the folks who talk about raising minimum wage obviously want a free handout. If they could, they’d take welfare instead. Marie Antoinette couldn’t have said it better. The mobs are lazy, the mobs deserve what they get. The mobs just don’t have what it takes to be successful. On that last point, I have to agree.

Not being a particularly religious fellow myself, I can’t help but watch the ongoing Confession of the Catholic Church the way a passerby might hurry past a sidewalk suicide, trying to move quickly but casting a curious eye to the crime scene. If this were a national political party or a sports franchise, we might shake our heads at a cover-up of incredible proportions. And actually we do.

But … when it’s a religion, one that numbers between a billion and two billion people, the largest organized religion on the planet, it does make a person wonder What the Hell??? This week the Vatican and the Holy See are gathering to get to the bottom of this sorry state of affairs. Cardinals and bishops and priests, the entire bureaucracy of the Lord is in attendance for some soul searching and no doubt some final atonement, plenty of Hail Mary’s, no doubt, as recompense for sins committed. For years, for decades, for centuries these folks have conspired to protect child predators. They’ve moved wayward pedophile priests from parish to parish, covered up their sins – no, let’s call them crimes, okay? – and protected the guilty from their victims and the victims’ parents and family. They’ve paid billions from their coffers to compensate these people. And still they keep those records hidden or they destroy them or they never bothered in the first place. Protecting the good name of the church was paramount.

I give the Pope credit. A little, anyway. He’s slowly come around after some initial lapses in judgement. And who knows, maybe these holy men will see the error of their ways and wise up. But mostly I think they’ll make their public confession and absolve themselves. Forgiveness is divine, you bet, and I think it’s healthy for a person to forgive himself, learn from his mistakes and move on in a better direction. But when the entire cast forgives itself and declares absolution, not so much. Crimes were committed, crimes were covered up, crimes are going on now, and crimes need to be punished. Not by mumbling some Hail Mary’s, boys, but by jail time. Not by ponying up some pesos, but by a secular system of justice. And yeah, I know they’ve paid a terrible price in public relations, terrible, one they deserve. What kind of religion is this? What kind of monsters do this? What kind of criminals cover it up? And who would still worship at that altar?

Not being a religious fellow myself, I have no clue. Mostly I just want to hurry past this sidewalk scene, go take a hot shower and try to rid myself of the memory of this creepy horror. Someone else is going to have to cast stones. Vengeance, saith the Lord, is Mine. I’m going to leave it in Her Hands.

Lock him up! Lock him up!

Maybe you were bizzy working today and missed the Cohen testimony before the House. Lucky you! Anyone half interested in impromptu lessons in American Civics 101 that glued their eyeballs and ears to television cable coverage witnessed something we haven’t seen since the Watergate hearings back in the ‘70’s, not quite half a century ago. Nixon’s people were on the docket back then for some illegal search and seizures of political enemies. I was unemployed and so I spent an inordinate amount of time watching the daily investigation on live TV. Explosive stuff, all culminating in Nixon’s resignation. Even his own party drew a line in the sand and told him, step off or face impeachment. Nixon was no dummy. Mean as a viper, but not stupid. He stepped off.

What you saw today was just another example of Profiles in Courage. Not. The Trump party, terrified that their boy who holds an 85% approval rating from the GOP base, ignored any facts or evidence from the guy who was Donald’s personal attorney, his ‘fixer’, a man who now is singing like a canary on meth. They attacked his credibility, they attacked his personality, they attacked his ethics, they attacked his motives. All perfectly reasonable … unless you reject the corroborating evidence he brought to bear.

Not one of these brave Republicans confronted the evidence itself or offered refutation. No, easier to shoot the messenger. If you wanted a glimpse into what an impeachment hearing for high crimes and treason would look like, you got more than a peek, you got the spectacle of rats scurrying in a sinking ship, blaming the crew for catastrophic leakage. Cohen himself was contrite, apologetic for crimes against the nation, for supporting and abetting a con man, a fraud, a crook and a cheat. His closing statement was poignant and bittersweet from a man who had lost everything. His name, his wealth, his law practice, his family’s love, his respect and in a few days, his freedom. He had been blinded by the Trumpster and no doubt his own greed. He told the Republicans they were doing exactly what he had been doing and they would regret protecting a man who deserved no loyalty. He admonished them to cease and desist before it was too late. All this from the man who said he would take a bullet for his boss.

Apparently there are plenty more who would defend a crook and a con rather than their country just to stay in power. These men apparently are willing to take a slug for the boss and hopefully they get the chance.

Yowzir, it’s sure good to be back in the news flow, back to the vitriolic emails and trollers, back to the 2020 Election. Seems like just yesterday when the Trumpster was insulting all his opponents and no one except Steve Bannon thought he had a rapist’s chance in the world to win the primaries, much less the election of 2016. My my, how time’s change … and not necessarily for the better, despite making America great again.

I’m already on the receiving end of right wing (read: Russian) trolling factories. The Democratic candidates are socialists and communists, dangerous people advocating free college, Medicare for All, Green New Deals, free daycare, all those radical un-American plans and programs destined to make America losers again. They want to let criminal immigrants and massive drug shipments pour through our borders. They want to pay the indolent NOT to work. They want to expand welfare. They want to weaken our gun laws and allow terrorists free rein. They want to tax the rich, can you believe it?? They are crazy liberal whackos, that’s what they are! And they want to destroy this country!!

I’m not sure I’m ready for two more years of this PLUS Trump. I know, and you do too, all these proposals will make for interesting primary fodder and may even propel someone to the top of the ticket. But the depressing aspect of all this is that when legislation gets to Congress, the buck and the bill, as well as the hopes and dreams of the country, stop there. Maybe gridlock is what the Founding Fathers wanted. Maybe we should wish there were Founding Mothers. Course back then, they couldn’t vote. Democracy, kind of an ongoing experiment….

Lately you’ve probably started to realize what a fragile concept it is, this thing called Democracy. Sure, you can vote, maybe thinking your one vote is equal, say, to the NRA lobby or Big Pharma’s lobby or Hobby Lobby’s lobby, but wait a minute, your vote, if you’re in a less populated state that still gets two Senators, well, it counts a little more. And you might think in a Democracy your taxes might be fair and equal … but only if you’ve been living under a rock. You know the laws are written by the rich. You might even suspect the country is ruled by the wealthy, but if you say it out loud, you’re a socialist, an anti-capitalist, a left wing bomb thrower.

The bomb throwers are running for President this election. I don’t know if they’ll win the primaries and I don’t know if they can win the election. But at least they’re raising some issues. If you think America was made great, again, well, you probably aren’t looking for changes. If you think we got some serious problems, you might roll the dice. If you think it’ll make much difference once Congress debates, well, I got some choice real estate here on the South End you might want to consider buying. But I am glad that some real choices are being floated, not slogans, not MAGA, not just insults and pejoratives. They may not fly, but I’m willing to find out.

If you’re like me – and I know you hope to God you’re not – you have a computer hooked up somewhere in your house that’s connected by something called a ‘server’ (which is a misnomer of the first order) that interfaces with the outside world. All the outside world. So when something glitches, something mysterious and possibly malignant, suddenly turns the machine into your worst enemy, you really don’t have a clue. You are cut off, banished, exiled to the darkness of your now very small, confined world. All your contacts, all your data, all your emails, your precious Facebook friends, Instagram pals — they’re no longer in reach. And the horror? Yeah, they may be gone forever.

What you realize in these dark moments is that we are dependent on technologies outside our ability to comprehend, much less repair. And when things go haywire, who ya gonna call? My computer started acting funny when we got home from vacation. New icons appeared on the monitor, response times were different than before, functions behaved in new and unusual manners, messages appeared that seemed more ominous than informational. At first I thought my machine was letting me know, the way my old dog Gonzo used to, it didn’t appreciate being left behind. But as it persisted, I entertained conspiratorial suspicions that Microsoft was pulling levers behind the screen, changing browsers, forcing me to use its own search engines, probably threatening me with a Total Shutdown if I did not acquiesce to its changes.

I know, this sounds paranoid and crazy. Until my email stopped working. I could receive email, but that was it. No outgoing, no deletions, no forwarding, just reception. I half expected a ransom note: Use Bing or We Will Kill Your Monitor, You Have Two Days, Daddle!!! Do Not Contact Any Authorities or the Screen Dies!! We Are Watching!!

Of course they’re watching. What, am I an idiot? I know what I’ve brought into my house. I’ve brought Big Brother in to babysit the kids. To babysit me!! It knows all my secrets, all my desires, all my shopping list. It knows how to blackmail me without screwing up my email, but for now, it has my email by the throat. Tomorrow, it may disable photoshop. Next day, Word. It can reduce me to a prehistoric food gatherer, naked down from the trees, jibbering chimpanzee-like as I search for nuts. Or a clue.

So far the clues are nothing but dead ends. I can get messages from the Outer World, but that’s it. Communication is over. I can hear but talking is done. If you get this, call Microsoft. Tell them I capitulate. Ask them what they want from me and explain I will do whatever is required. Hopefully you can still send me an email. If not, save yourself.

I’m a huge believer that where you live makes all the difference in how you look at the world. I know, maybe it seems obvious to most of us, but then again, part of the reason to travel and explore other places is to give us a glimpse into how another environment might shape our lives. It isn’t just the terrain, or the light, or the cold, or the vistas, it’s how we relate to them. Some folks might thrive in our Pacific Northwest mist and fog and grey days, but others might prefer a Big Sky, lots of sun, hard cold winter winds and think this is where they belong. Maybe days of equatorial temperatures, no delineated seasons, 12 hours of light and dark 365 days a year might be what they desire. I left the snows and frigid temperatures of Wisconsin with my tail between my legs. What doesn’t kill you, I figured, might, at the very least, give you frostbite and an irresistible urge to hibernate four months of the year.

But the point is, you want to find that place that feels like Home, smells like Home, sounds like Home, whatever home is to you. The last day of our trip to New Mexico we wandered with our former neighbor into the hills where Georgia O’Keefe made her home after an early career in New York. Big difference, the canyons of the Big Apple to those under a Big Sky. She chose the wide open spaces, a vast view, a terrain of red rock escarpments and thunderstorms she could see coming across the valley for miles. Maybe she even liked the pitiless summer sun, the hot dessicating winds and four seasons that each were challenging in very different ways. Her paintings became spare as the semi-arid land she adopted and life distilled down to essences.

Where you live shapes your perceptions. More so for those of us who live in the actual, not virtual, world. Maybe not so much for the thermostatically pampered, but even so, a little. New Mexico was a panoramic sweep of mountain ranges, red rock canyons, arid lands, volcanic scree, a country shaped by elements that relentlessly carve and sculpt, erode and tunnel through what is mostly wilderness. It’s a primal place with the occasional ruins where others barely clung to the cliffs and disappeared when the droughts lasted too long. You see a few signs, petroglyphs left, signifying who knows what. It’s a place for the imagination to expand, for myths to be written, for dreams to be caught. I admit to feeling the power of the place. But it never felt like home. And home is where we’re headed.

Usually it’s sad to call it quits on a vacation, but … not this trip. If we can make it home without being killed or caught, I will gladly call this a successful trip. Currently we’re parked in the Observation Deck of the Albuquirky Airport a mere 3 hours before our flight, that’s how snakebit we felt after missing our plane on the way down. ‘Better early than never’, isn’t that the expression.

Naturally the temperature here today will finally break past the 40’s and hit 60. We’ll get home to freezing rain. That pretty much sums up the trip, at least from a meteorological standpoint, maybe not the fairest metric. After all, we had plenty of sun to balance out the snow, the wind, the freezing temperatures. It is, after all, winter in the Sunbelt too. Or as my man Trump would crow, ‘Where’s your global warming now, Mr. Daddle?’

And so it’s back to politics as usual in a country run by an imbecile surrounded by sycophants admiring his invisible raiment. For over a week down here that was all left behind, no little relief for us moron-weary travelers, a nice respite from talking heads and apparently the start of a very long 2020 election with so many hats thrown into the ring, it makes my modest collection look paltry. And who knows, maybe I’ll change my mind and throw one of mine in too. It’s like a Demolition Derby, whatever jalopy is still moving after countless bashes and wrecks will be declared the ‘winner’ before being hauled off to some wretched salvage yard, its radiator still steaming and engine oil dripping on a red hot muffler.

D.C. seems a world away from New Mexico, at least in the Outback if not Santa Fe and Albuquerque. We have to go home now and check for frozen pipes. Politics has to take a backseat when the living is hard. And for a lot of New Mexico, the living is hard indeed. Hasta la vista.

Lately there has been some serious speculation that D.J. Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Japan’s Prime Minister. Of course mostly it’s a rumor started by Trump himself, but it does give you some insight into the man’s modesty. If it were true, no doubt he would be in fairly serious competition with Assad of Syria and Putin of Russia, but as you know by now from repetitious self-advertising, the man is a Winner, a legend in his own mind.

Why not? We live in a topsy-turvy world now and if you think the Peace Prize is out of his reach, think again. After all, he stopped that imminent war with North Korea he threatened to start. And if the planet isn’t safer after pulling out of the Iran Treaty, he doubled down by pulling out of the IMF missile treaty too. His automaton Vice President just boasted to the Europeans that because D.J. was bullying them into paying more for NATO, it made him the Leader of the Free World. So what if nobody applauded. At least they didn’t laugh.

Me, I’m expecting an announcement any day that D.J. was also nominated for the Physics Prize. The Stockholm committee will reason that anyone who can call into question the laws of science must be a force to be reckoned with. And while they’re at it, maybe nominate him for the Literature Prize for elevating the Tweet to an artform for generations to come. Wouldn’t surprise me either if they awarded him the prize for Economics too, a leader who took the voodoo out of economics and brought zombie finance back to life, waging tariff wars and renegotiating existing pacts and returning us to nationalism when the rest of the world is recklessly moving toward globalism.

While they’re at it, maybe they’ll rethink the name, Nobel Prize. Trump Prize. Has a nice ring to it. And instead of handing out the awards, maybe they could have the nominees compete, then one by one, be eliminated. A little more interesting than just handing out the medals, don’tcha think? Plus, the advertising revenues would be huge. Might have to add a few categories to hold public interest, but it’s about time to freshen up a stale contest. Prize in Demagoguery is my pick. And I have someone in mind already. The rest are fired!

After 15 minutes of trying to log on to the computer at the motel we’re staying at, with no control over the mouse’s pointer, I finally gave up. But as you know, if you know me at all, I do not readily admit defeat to the gods of technology and if I did, I would beat that mouse to a plastic death so that neither of us would win. So I engaged my Holmesian power of rational deduction and returned minutes later to the unheated side room by the motel’s front door they amusingly labeled BUSINESS CENTER, no doubt because not only did it have a computer and a monitor and the aforementioned mousey, it had a bench too. For those waiting their turn? And … I brought a newspaper. I know what you’re thinking, but then you’re not Sherlock.

Course, really, neither am I. But I put the newspaper under the mouse (I did not roll it up and beat the bastard with it like a bad puppy) and voila, I had complete mastery of the machine. The Business Center desk was glass and my theory was the mouse needed an opaque surface. You Republicans should ignore this kind of reasoning and just assume the first attempt was either a bald-faced lie or the second just blind luck. I mentioned this to the day clerk, wondering mildly if anyone else had reported mouse malfunction and if so, perhaps he might consider, oh, one of those mousey pads. My guess is he doesn’t give a good goddamn and anyone who doesn’t travel with a laptop or a smartphone deserves a refrigerated alcove with a mouse that refuses commands. My second guess (theory) is that I might be the only person in the months or years who has used that computer and my Day Guy probably is disappointed I actually worked around their ploy in this Land of Entrapment we call New Mexico.

More worrisome, he and his chain motel employer may exact some kind of revenge. After all, they set up the Business Center fully intending to keep its usage to the bare minimum. I did notice next day no mouse pad had appeared since my most generous advice. Not exactly proof, but a strong suggestion of truthiness. Next up: how a certain motel has conspired with laptop manufacturers to encourage sales to the laptopless.

Stay tuned. I’m on the case.

Must be Day 5, maybe 6. Hell, it might be same day as yesterday. We hit Las Cruces and headed north into the White Sands missile testing grounds, a vast stretch of wasteland the government is more than welcome to despoil any way it wants. Although … we did stop at White Sands National Monument to hike in the backcountry, an eerie undulating dunescape of blisteringly white fine sand, an immaculate Sahara with mountains in the distance where you trek across trail-less miles. It was sunny and it was warm. Okay, it was 57 degrees, but hey, a shirt was all we needed. Compared to eskimo parkas the first part of this trip.

A few hours later and we’re up in the mountains, Ruicondo, a ski village that needs no further description other than it sprawls everywhere, starts down at the highway with the usual motels, casinos and gas stations, then expands upward in all directions, covering Sierra Blanca with more lodging, restaurants, golf courses, ski shops, gear rental, galleries, yoga classes, aromatherapy salons, just about anything an upscale skier might want, like some spreading virus escaped from a bio-real estate office.

After a dinner at a Chinese joint (don’t ask) we’re back now in the fabulous Ruicondo Mountain Inn, apparently party central for the young crowd going to the casino to hear the legendary country folks singer … whose name not only eludes me, but rung no bells of recognition when I saw it on the casino electronic billboard.

Thought I’d try the hotel computer. Which was turned off but the nice night manager flipped a switch hidden in a lower cabinet and I attempted to log on. Only to get a message that this version of Windows 7 was an illegal copy and did I want to purchase a legitimate one? Now, this hotel isn’t the Hilton but it’s not Motel 5 and a half either. You might expect them to purchase Windows 10 and possibly a monitor not made by Mattell. Then again, judging by the icons loaded onto the screen, this was probably a thrift store purchase. Like I said earlier — and my nice night manager reiterated — nobody uses these contraptions anymore, not with personal devices everyone but me carries.

Message received. But trust me, none were outgoing.