The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

When I first came of voting age — we’re talking 1968 —the Viet Nam War was raging, the draft was mandatory, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King had been assassinated, the country was definitely polarized. At the time I thought the government needed overthrowing. The CIA was involved in coup plots worldwide, the FBI was keeping ‘enemy’ files, ‘tin soldiers and Nixon coming’, the country was on fire, cities were burning, campuses were rioting. Me and my armchair revolutionaries wanted change and we wanted it Now.

Fast forward more than a half century. Maybe not wiser, but I’m a lot older than I was then. The new mantra of move fast and break things, advocated by the Tech Boyz, doesn’t ring true to me anymore. It’s not like the USA is a broken despotic nation in need of radical rebooting. More to my liking these days is a policy of meddling at the margins, fixing those things that are in need of repair, leaving what does work the hell alone.

But that’s not what we’re seeing in the first 100 days of the new regime. Tinkering is out, chainsawing is the tool of the new architects. Behind some of their onslaught you can barely make out a strategy, something on the line of unfettered capitalism and the destruction of global interdependence. Get rid of burdensome regulations and pesky law firms, give corporations free rein and things will be better. If you have to circumvent Constitutional norms, so be it. If it takes an authoritarian leader to institute those changes, fine. These new radicals won’t say it out loud, but they definitely believe it: democracy doesn’t work.

So maybe the chickens have come home to roost for us 60’s activists. The government of MAGA and MUSK is the manifestation of our own paranoia long ago. Like the rich and privileged character in the Big Lebowski said to the Dude, “Your revolution is over, Mr. Lebowski. Condolences. The bums lost. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?”

I hear these folks loud and clear….

Luck’s a funny thing.  Some folks don’t much believe in it – or don’t want to – since they think they’re the Captains of their own Destiny.  Me, I’m easily seasick on the storm tossed waters of my life … so I put more faith in luck than my own crummy navigational skills.  I guess living on the South End had a lot to do with it.  You find yourself on an island on the edge of a continent, you think it’s a short walk before the next move is a wet one.  

I came when no one had heard of Camano, few people lived here and most of the cheap land was far down at the south end where I stumbled in one dark and stormy night.  Luck had pretty much run out, jobs were scarce and a bad marriage had foundered on the rocks thanks to the aforementioned maritime skills.
I bought a shack and 7 acres for the princely sum of $25,000, everything I had down, $225 a month for the next 15 years.  Sound cheap?  Well, I had a hard time meeting that mortgage the first few years.  But a funny thing happened on the way to the poorhouse.  Corny as an A.M. radio pop song, I fell in love, got married to my old sweetheart and fell in love too with my place, the South End and my life.  Lucky?  You bet!!

We take forks in the road all the time.  I know buddies who always wonder where the other road would’ve take them.  I don’t look back.  I don’t use the rearview mirror because it takes all my attention to drive the road I took, the one with the NEXT fork and the unexpected curve.  You ask me — and I know you didn’t —luck is part being ready for it.  It’s not a lottery ticket, it’s that small opening, that slim opportunity, that sudden chance that may not come twice, the one that veers up out of the headlights and offers, for those who are ready for it, a new game, a fresh start,  a brand new road.  Luck, I’ll admit this: it does take some skill.

You know, I grew up hearing it repeated as Gospel that government was way less efficient than the private sector.  I guess that’s why we’re hiring private contractors to fight our wars.  Why we want to pay corporations to run our schools, run our jails, maybe even  ramrod our fire and police departments.  They’ll naturally do a better job for way less money.
I’m no economist, but I need more than mantras to make me want to dismantle half of society by gutting and cutting government like it was a sacrificial cow on the altar of unbridled capitalism.  Wasn’t it GM and Ford and Chrysler, bastions, capitol B, of capitalism that just got bailed out by the federal government?  Not just bailed out, propped up, given CPR, put on life support,  brought back to life ….Oh, and brought back to profitability.

And maybe my memory is slipping, but wasn’t it the banks, the mortgage companies, the credit firms who drove this country into the worst recession in more than half a century?  Maybe they were what?  Too efficient?  Too something, that’s for sure.

We complain about government but I don’t see the heads of  government agencies or departments pulling down multi-million dollar salaries with huge mega-bonuses and sweetdeal stock options.  I guess if we ran them like businesses, we’d inflate that executive pay by, oh, a hundred times or so.  See how that helps efficiency.  Sort of like paying military contractors way more than our military men and women — maybe why we take 10 years to lose wars now.

So before I wrapped myself in the American flag and started dismantling all our government departments and offer them up like railroad right of ways to the corporations, I’d follow the money a ways and see who exactly is going to profit from that supposed increased performance.  Call me cynical and paint a bullseye on my be-hind, but I suspect it’s some of the fellows in corner suites at the top of Wall Street skyscrapers.  Even if profits don’t  go up, they’ll get a nice bloated package, you bet.  Efficiently wrapped.

The Grinch That Stole America

The Orange Scrooge sitting in the White House recently acknowledged that the holidays this year would see some empty shelves due to his tariff plans. So what? he mused, the kids would only get 2 dolls, not the usual 30. If you can’t make sense of what he’s talking about, welcome to my world. Hang your stockings with care, there’s plenty of coal this coming Christmas. Looks like we’re all going to get the Naughty tag, those who haven’t been already been deported, sued or laid off. And if you’re expecting a miracle on 34th Street or Pennsylvania Avenue, get realistic. There’s a War on Christmas, all right, but not the one advertised for years by the right wing anti-woke crowd.

The Two Barbie President claims the weakness in the stock market since he announced world wide tariffs was actually the result of Biden’s policies. When the Market was going sky high under Sleepy Joe’s regime, he claimed it was due to his policies four years earlier. Cause and effect, like much of rational thinking, science or the obvious, really doesn’t crowd out much of Trump’s non-logical thinking. Happily, he has advisors who were chosen, not for expertise, but for flattery. Eight years ago we were introduced to Alternative Facts. Welcome to the Alternative Universe we now call America.

Russia was attacked by Ukraine. Palestinian protests against the slaughter in Gaza are anti-Semitic. Vaccines cause autism. Tariffs are good for the economy. NATO allies have been bleeding us dry. Immigrants are gang members, rapists and killers. Government is mostly a bunch of slackers, thieves and incompetents. Social Security is riddled with fraud and corruption. America is a bleak and broken country with only one man who can save it.

The Ghost of Christmas Future sits in his high tower. This is no happy family made-for-TV feel-good holiday movie. Scrooge learns no lessons in humility or charity. The Grinch is happy being the Grinch. Merry Christmas, One and All!

Wasn’t it Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote admiringly about self-reliance?  About two hundred years ago?  Well, I got some news for Ralph.  The world changed.  It got real small, Ralph, about the size of an I-phone, and nowadays you rely on IT, not on yourself.  I got friends who go to the grocery store to buy a couple of last minute items and they no more than get to Aisle #1 than they need to call the missus and see if she’d prefer the large size or the organic kind or a plastic jar not the glass one or exactly what kind of mustard?

I really don’t know what to make of this.  Do my buddies call across the house every morning to see what color socks they ought to wear today?  I mean, damn!  Make the decision!!  All by yourself.  Be brave.  Be bold.  Get the mustard YOU want.  Then live with the consequences!!!

We got GPS to help us NOT get lost.  We got Google to find us a quick answer to about anything.  We got Facebook to keep us abreast of our pals’ last 6 hours of late breaking activity.  We got internet shopping and Netflix movies and satellite TV.  We got e-mail and cellphone and twitter and text messaging.  We haven’t got one iota of time to make even a simple decision, you get right down to it.

Poor sorry Ralph Waldo.  He might’ve been stuck sorting it out solo, but we’re linked up, digitally connected, nano seconds from somebody else’s answer to any question we got.  And we got plenty of questions.  Just none we’re willing to answer by ourselves.  We need confirmation, we need a social network, we want to know if our friends will approve, if they bought that product, if they liked that movie, if they’re going to that restaurant.

Ralph probably ate his hot dogs without mustard, is my guess.  Too much trouble deciding.  Besides, if you google it up, the supermarket hadn’t been invented…..  Don’t believe me, cellphone a buddy and ask them.

Down here in the hoary valleys of the South End, we represent a striking cross-section of Trump’s America, meaning, the Have vs Have Not Society where Income Inequality prowls the hollers or hides behind gated security fences. I’ve got neighbors who live in mold-spored single-wides slowly rotting into the weeds living just a stone’s throw from Microsoft executives buying million dollar bluff homes as weekend vacation retreats. I used to think this diversity was healthy. I don’t mind rubbing shoulders with the fabulously rich any more than I do my fellow unemployed.

But lately the trend is decidedly against the poor. Rents are skyrocketing, jobs are scarce to non-existent, cost of living is going up, the rich keep getting richer and the rest, good luck to ya. Wages never budge upward but CEO pay is astronomical. The Great Recession didn’t hurt the wealthy. Wall Street got bailed out but not the poor. Even the Democrats abandoned the working stiff in favor of the middle class while they courted the corporate elite.

Capitalism never guaranteed income equity and now in the 21st Century, democracies around the globe are embracing right wing populism. Fascism is back in style and it’s popular, governments and corporate interests hand in hand. Karl Marx wasn’t too far off in his analysis, just his solution.

My neighbors aren’t particularly political and insofar as economic analysis goes, they’re happy so long as they can manage the monthly credit card minimum. One of my pals has a bumper sticker that reads: TRUMP: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. He’s living in a travel trailer. If Trump is the solution, god help him.

America was spozed to be the Land of Equal Opportunity. But folks can see now it’s not. They’re being left in the dust of the digital age and corporate hegemony, they’ll never get ahead, they’ll never share in the Facebook dividends — and they’re pissed. They’ll vote for anyone who pretends to care about their plight, a Trump, a Mussolini, a Duterte. They’ll listen to their lies and they’ll find out too late they’ve been duped. So will the rich. Trump serves their needs for the short term, we’ll see what Apple and Google think when the coup d’etat is a fait accompli.

Resistance, I hope, is not futile. The issue to fight for is income inequality. We’re seeing what unchecked capitalism leads to and sadly, we ain’t seen nothin yet.

A friend of mine just wrote to say she might have discovered she has a heretofore unknown brother, discovered, apparently through the wonders of DNA analysis. He is either her half brother or the son of her father’s brothers, the result, she says of a one night stand in some hick town in Arizona with his mother who until he was 11 thought was his sister. Yeah, I’m confused too. To make the story all the more interesting, his mother is African American. Of course I’m interested in selling the movie rights…

There are studies that show between 10 and 30% of us may not have the right dad when we send those father’s day cards. This is a testament to the infidelity of the American Mom whose libido may have been vastly underestimated. I had a buddy, a white guy, who had a black kid. Kind of a surprise at the birth, but like he said, the mizzus got drunk at a party one night and hey, these things happen, but he was going to raise the kid, someone else’s genetically, his by choice. Gotta say, I was impressed. If you met his wife, you’d never guess her wild side judging by her mousey disposition.

Another buddy of mine got a knock on his door one day a few years back and found his old paramour of even further back darkening his doorway with her son in tow. He’d had a fling with her when she was 15, picked her up in a park, took her home and carried on an affair for a week or two. Yeah, I know what statutory rape is. He did too, but it didn’t stop him. So now the chickens were flying home to roost. My pal, being the distrustful sort, decided to call her bluff, especially since the kid was pretty dark like his mom and didn’t show much Caucasian. And because she wanted money. Turned out the boy wasn’t his after all. I don’t know if he gave her some money anyway, but I hope he did.

I guess these DNA tests are great for exploring the family tree. Personally, I’m okay letting Dad be Dad. I don’t need to be sending multiple father’s day cards every damn year….

A few days ago Donald Trump told an interviewer that he wouldn’t mind if the rich, including himself, paid a little more in taxes. Keep in mind that this is the billionaire who paid zero income tax in 10 of the 15 years before becoming president. In 2017 he paid $750. In 2020 he paid no tax. I suspect most of us who paid that kind of tax wouldn’t mind a small increase either. I know I wouldn’t. Of course a few days later he reversed himself, saying a tax on the wealthy would give the rich a reason to leave the country. Some loss, I say. What, we’d lose a few thousand dollars here and there, maybe lose nothing some years?

Raise taxes on the rich? C’mon, who do you think runs this country, who do you think makes the laws, who do you think you’re kidding? What you’re watching these first 100 days is a graduate level course in how to balance the budget and still give the wealthiest a tax break they think they so richly deserve. Slash the government, fire its workers, eliminate programs for the poor, maybe even gut Medicaid, strip a bit of the safety nets, sure, why not balance it on the backs of those who can least afford it? And while we’re at it, let’s lay some stiff tariffs on every nation on earth, maybe generate revenue there, so what if the price of groceries and consumer goods goes up a little, just a minor pain on the poor for long term gain later. Right? Right??

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Trust me, the rich don’t mean that to apply to themselves. The President is having a soiree for all those who buy his meme cybercurrencies. He’s selling Bibles and tennis shoes, perfumes and steaks, he’s selling out everyone but his rich friends. Conflict of interest? Don’t make us laugh. This is the Gilded Age. Like the man said before pulling back on one tariff plan that had sent the stock market reeling, it’s a great time to Buy. Hint to all you poor folks: jump in the Market now, the water is great.

Mind the sharks, though….

Clyde stopped by our place yesterday, wanted to know if I wanted some wood flooring. Clyde’s notorious for scrounging lumber — beams, 2×4’s, plywood, chopped off rafters and joists full of nails — he takes it all, he and his partner Fred. They’re true South Enders, no building parts are too unworthy for future projects. No oddly shaped root or burled tree trunk couldn’t be imagined as a trellis or a doorway or a garden gate. Their greenhouse/apartment is a testament to homesteader ingenuity, from the recycled plumbing for a radiant heat floor to the gnarly limbs of a cedar tree that frame a window made from sliding glass door panels. The roof is raftered with bridge beams and salvaged lumber, all covered with earth and plantings, a green ecosystem.

So when Clyde asks if I want some wood flooring, red lights go off and a siren shrieks deep down in my hippocampus. “You don’t want it yourself?” I ask, meaning, what’s wrong with this flooring if you boyz are turning it down? Clyde avows how they don’t need flooring and anyway, it’s all mismatched remnants. Like they don’t have mismatched remnants from one end of their property to the next??? “Use em for furniture,” I advise. “I took my leftovers and made cabinets and bookcases, banjos, hell, it’s hardwood.”

“We’re jammed up,” Clyde says sadly. “Stuff we got now is getting powder post beetles. We couldn’t use it all in the rest of our lifetimes.” Which is true! They’re beyond Scroungers now, heading toward Hoarders. It’s a fine line, I know, and only a packrat like myself who’s scrounged most of his life is qualified to define the slip from Collector to Psychopathology. Clyde, I diagnosed, had stepped back from the Abyss. Enough was finally enough. Clutter was one thing, tunnels to the kitchen and bathroom quite another.

No mas! There comes a time when a sane man knows implicitly to STOP. Before it’s too late. Before madness descends like a dark curtain blotting light and reason.

Today I picked up 10 boxes of hardwood flooring, enough to lift the front end of my truck. No, I don’t really need flooring. But, you never know, right? Now if I can just figure out where to store all this wood until I need it….