The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Will Rogers famously said back in the days when democracy was still in vogue: “I belong to no organized party; I am a Democrat.”

For some reason unclear to me, I got invited to emcee the Island Democratic fundraiser. Nobody asked me what my political affiliations were, maybe just assumed I wasn’t a card carrying Proud Boy or an Antifa member.  Coulda been a closet Maggot, pledging allegiance to the President in Exile.  Maybe they didn’t care, just a Big Tent for any of us fed up with the past few years of the Titanic starting to go down.  The S.S. America is taking on water now, listing to the right and looking for an iceberg chunking off in the fake climate change conspiracy.

Maybe some of us were hoping the highest court in the land would help to right this ship.  Well, they righted it all right.  Got rid of Roe v Wade after promising to abide by precedent, gave gun owners the freedom to carry concealed weapons about anywhere except maybe their own courtroom, finished off the separation of church and state, at least for Christian churches, not sure if other religions will fare so well, gutted the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases.  The black robed high priests finished off more than that.  They finished off their own credibility as neutral arbiters.  They claim to be Constitutionalists, meaning if the Founding Fathers didn’t mention it in the original text, there’s no basis for new interpretations.  You know, a couple centuries later.  Kind of hard to figure what they might have meant in regard to, oh, digital privacy, automatic weapons, birth control, cloning, artificial intelligence, global warming, all that new fangled stuff they didn’t quite anticipate back in the 1700’s.  No point trying to adjudicate anything that didn’t exist back then, I guess, just assume the Founders were clairvoyant.

When McConnell refused to consider Merrick Garland for Supreme Court Justice, saying it was too close to an election to let a sitting president nominate anyone, the Democrats howled, but … and this is typical … they rolled over for it.  They could have shut down Congress, they could have pushed the nomination over objections, they could have made a damn federal case of this completely bogus attempt by McConnell and his minions to subvert the Constitutional right of Obama to nominate the next Justice.  Steve Bannon once said that Democrats think these disputes are solved by a pillow fight.  Republicans bring a knife or a gun.

I don’t plan to go to the fundraiser with a knife or a gun.  But … I think it’s time for Democrats to fight back with more than a pillow.

Suppose for a minute or three that our President-in-Exile had managed to let those tourists with weapons through the metal detectors at the January 6^th ‘rally’ and suppose the Secret Service had obeyed his instructions to take him to the Capitol to lead his troops to the halls of Congress to stop the certification of Joe Biden to replace him.  Seems okay, right?  Like he said, those folks with assault rifles, Glock pistols and body armor weren’t there to hurt him.  Not sure who they were planning to hurt, but not him.  Let his people through!

And imagine that Mr. T had reached the Capitol to be with his people, maybe even picked up a flagstaff and helped break through the barricades and windows, might even have used a few wrestling tricks from the days of World Wrestling Smackdowns and taken out a few of those pesky Capitol police.  Good video.  Might turn it into some reality TV programming.  Ads, residuals, spinoffs, if nothing else, great viewing late night between presidential tweets.  Dramatic shots of the President leading his troops up the stairs, backing up those guards, demanding to be allowed into the room where the electoral votes would be certified.  “Hell, no,” you can hear him shouting, “not on my watch!”  Half the hall might erupt into cheers, half the others protesting demurely.

And suppose, somewhere down the corridors leading to Mike Pence’s offices, the Proud Boys —don’t you love the name! — find the Vice President exiting his office for a more secure location.  Hang him, the crowd cries, hang him high!  Hopefully somewhere there’s a security camera or two, capturing the melee of curious tourists overwhelming the Secret Service, capturing the glee of those same tourists hurrying Mike out to the gallows outside where the noose had been erected and maybe even the last words of the soon-to-be-disgraced second in command before being hoisted up, the rope placed around his neck and then the kicking legs, the gargling in his throat, the screams from his family who had followed the mob outside.

Imagine this had actually happened.  Imagine they had hanged Mike Pence with television cameras eagerly documenting the event, transmitting the lynching to millions of viewers witnessing the assault on the Capitol.  Is it hard?  Is it imaginable?  And if the President, now self-declared as winner of the 2020 election, had stepped outside to marvel at the sight of a swinging Mike Pence dangling above his happy MAGA followers, gave an impromptu acceptance speech and in passing mentioned that Mike had gotten exactly what was coming to him, would the country, would the red hat folks and the ‘tourists’, would the Oath Keepers and the Stop the Steal believers, would they have cheered?

Who thinks we need to make America great again?  We’ve already done it….

Some of us layabouts at the Poker Parlor were trying to think up something special for an upcoming 4^th of July celebration.  We figured we got so many Vets down this way the Diner might as well declare itself a VFW South End Auxilliary.  And since most of them are vintage car guyz too, they could hold their own annual Independence Day Parade from Camano Head to the Elger Bay Store.  I, of course, wanted to just use these militiamen as an excuse to secede from the Island, but cooler heads prevailed.  As usual.

Two Toke Tom served in Viet Nam and now is pretty much anti- every war.  Jimmy Z, who’s old enough to be Tom’s old man, fought the Japanese in WW2.  Tom thinks Jimmy’s still fighting em and maybe so, but I notice Jimmy driving a Toyota pickup now even though he swore for 60 years he’d never buy a ‘Jap Car’.  Baghdad Bill fought in the second Iraq War and Big Larry just got back two years ago from Afghanistan.  Jerry spent a year in Korea and frostbit a couple of fingers he wishes he had back, but he still can play a mean guitar.  We even got Crazy Eddie who ‘liberated’ Grenada.  We’re missing Somalia and Panama and Bosnia, but with all the newcomers rolling in, we may cover those too eventually.

Sometimes the boyz argue among themselves about those wars and sacrifice and what patriotism really means at the Friday night poker game we’ve been running since 1986 down at the Marina and Bait Shop.  Two dollar limit on bets, no limit on alcohol.  The pots don’t do much damage, but single nettle Daddle Distillery moonshine sometimes does.  I sit in with these war-hardened patriots most Fridays and serve as their patsy and their sometime referee, the one who never served even in peacetime.  Or what Two Toke calls a draft dodging, student deferred, flag burning, Summer of Love hippie protester.  He takes great joy in telling me I would’ve loved the smell of napalm in the morning over there on the Delta.  Jimmy Z chimes in how his platoon could’ve won Viet Nam single-handed although Jimmy never once has told us one iota the hell that must have been Iwo Jima.  But he’s the one who puts a liver spotted hand on Bill’s arm whenever Bill gets overwhelmed by memories of buddies lost in the HumVee he was driving when it was blown off the road to the airport in Baghdad.

We’ve fought too many wars, I think, before realizing I’ve said it out loud.  I see by their pinched lips and averted eyes I won’t get an argument tonight.  Patriotism comes in all uniforms, even no uniform at all.  Big Larry finally breaks the swelling silence, pushes a handful of quarters into the pot and says, real quiet, “I’m willing to spend a couple bucks, Skeeter, to see if you got more than bluff in this hand.”  Grateful to change the subject, I say, “Name of the game, Big.  Read em and weep.”

Capitalism succeeds because it combines two primary drives in the human brain: greed and the urge NOT to work for someone else.  On the South End most of us tried our hands at employment but came up a little short.  Short of a work ethic, short of money, short of tolerance for a Boss.  So we did what most desperate, unemployed people do.  We started our own business.

Any good STARTING YOUR OWN CORPORATION FOR THE COMPLETE IDIOT book will tell you under-capitalization is the main harbinger of Failure in 90% of startups.  Obviously none of us down here bought the book, probably couldn’t afford it.  “It takes money to make money.”  Page 2, Chapter 1.  Folks just figure, I guess, they’ll buy a couple of yaks, breed em, then sell the little yaksters to a clamoring public.  They don’t really factor in the yak feed, the vet bills, the yak barn and the yak fences.  And they NEVER factor in the publicity campaign to create a viral fever for WANTING  or NEEDING a yak.  Maybe many yaks.

The other thing they don’t calculate in is how much work self-employment entails.  Without overtime.  Without benefits.  You’re supposed to trade off working for Cap’n. Bligh in return for slaving 80 hours a week for Mr. Wonderful, yourself.  Course Mr. Wonderful isn’t issuing paychecks at the beginning.  He has yak bills to pay before he pays himself and the debts are growing deeper than yak droppings out in the barnyard.

So it’s little wonder us entrepreneur types, us Job Creators, us Captains of Industry, end up broke, disillusioned and depressed, our dreams shattered, our shacks mortgaged, our divorce rates sky high.

But!  By god, we’re South Enders and South Enders don’t quit!  Well, okay, we gave up on our capitalist fantasies of entrepreneurial riches.  But we stayed true to our vow never to work for the Man again, never to be a cog in the well-greased machinery of some #@*&!!^# company, no sir!  If we have to live poor, so be it.  If we have to live by our wits, even if that’s a SERIOUS disadvantage, okay.  And if anyone out there is looking for a very nice herd of cute yaks, I think we can help you with YOUR dream.

You live in a remote backwash like we do, you might think life is passing you by.  But even for those of us sitting still, the world keeps spinning.  Live long enough and you’ll have a book or two of stories, I guarantee you.  Even Little Billy.

Little Billy lives in the While-a-While trailer park that Ralph Wissmach set up back in the ‘70’s, not really zoned for it, but that was back when the South End was a little wilder and regulations were flaunted with impunity if not relish.  Ralph owned most of the single wides, hauled them in as rentals, then leased them PLUS added power and water surcharges.  If Ralph hadn’t acquired a ferocious taste for blended whiskies, he might have done okay, but he drank most of his rent money and neglected upkeep in the park.  By the turn of the century the While-a-While was a ghetto, tenants made payments only occasionally and the sheriff steered clear if possible.

Little Billy’s castle was the trailer at the end, leaning partly into the woods, curtains always drawn.  The adjoining trailer was vacant, curtains fluttering tattered out its broken window, allowing Billy even more privacy.  Cats by the dozen came in and out at Billy’s through a pet door he had cut into the fiberglass back door of his abode.  His neighbors saw more of the feline herd roaming the park than they did of Billy.

The Trouble began when the Carter brothers rolled in one windswept monsoonal day late in November, off-loaded their rust-eaten 4×4 trucks, then, over the next week, were joined by their kin and girlfriends until the trailer was wild with metal rock and constant fighting.  Strange cars and grungy people came night and day.  Billy kept an imperious silence through the next couple of months.  Except for the cats the Carter clan would’ve suspected his place abandoned.

Then, one drizzly night after New Years, the Carters decided to amuse themselves by shooting at Billy’s cats with a couple of .22’s.  By the time Billy stepped out on his rickety porch step, three of his felines were dead or bleeding next to the trailer.  Billy stood stock still, just a silhouette in the backlit doorway, and watched silently as Joel Carter, drunk on Jack Daniels, stoned on grass and cranked on meth, lifted his rifle to his lips and pretended to blow the smoke away.  Before he laughed and went back inside.

What went through Joel Carter’s empty head when Billy came knocking, nobody will ever know.  “Wuzzup, asshole?” he muttered to Little Billy who was standing on the porch with a .38 in one hand and a bleeding cat in the other.  When he saw the pistol, he smirked.  “What now, Wyatt?   We gonna shoot it out at the OK??”

Billy, apparently not much for light banter, put a slug in Carter’s kneecap, eliciting a howl that could be heard out to the highway.  He watched the backrooms of the trailer erupt into activity, the entire tribe now gathered and shrieking like deranged Banshees.  Billy held his gun up for silence and got it immediately.  Then he shot a writhing Joel Carter in the other leg, brought the weapon to his lips and in an ironic gesture lost on the assembled trailer trash, blew smoke off the end of the barrel.

In the novel that won’t be written, Billy might have driven off into the night, never to be heard from again.  But this being real life and not Hollywood, the sheriffs arrived 15 minutes later and took Billy away.  He gave no resistance and the only words anyone heard him speak were when they shoved his head down before he was put in the back seat of the cruiser.  “Someone needs to care for those cats.”

I was up at a farm on the North End recently and a couple of us homesteaders got to swapping chicken stories.  Roosters, mostly.    You think maybe chickens are silly little cacklers scratching up worms and grubs for dinner or they’re benign little birds dropping eggs for your breakfast, you haven’t been properly introduced to the male of the species.

Maybe you’ve heard the expression Cock of the Walk?  That’s these bad boys.  Vicious attackers of the unwary.  Aggressive, fearless birds that come at you with beak and spurs.  They’ll open you up before you can say chicken cacciatore.  And you’ll never turn your back on one again, trust me.

Well, we swapped a few whoppers before Professor Bob mentioned he’d been up to Darrington for the cockfights awhile back, a couple hundred Tarheels betting their moonshine earnings on birds bred for vicious violence.  When I first came to Camano Island, the cops were busy busting cockfighting rings in Stanwood and Gomorrah.  I know what you’re thinking: didn’t this sort of bloodsport die out in the 1800’s?  And the answer is apparently NO.  Down south where I grew up, they fight dogs in Dixie.  Yeah, it seems barbaric.  But … we still got boxing and now we got kickboxing.  And if you want mayhem, tune in some Sunday to NFL football.  They’ll study us someday like we were Romans, professional gladiators.  Only real difference is we figured how to make it profitable.

Maybe the cockfighters need to sell television rights. Line up some advertisers.  Sell beer and hotdogs.  Make it respectable for more than the Tarheels and a few UW professors.  On the other hand, maybe it wouldn’t generate a mass audience.  After all, we got politics now 24/7 if you like your violence vicious.  Course, maybe they should sell beer and peanuts and advertising rights.    Monday Night Congressional Cockfights.  Probably take a few months to balance the budget with the profits.  Think about it is all I’m asking.

My buddy Sam lives in a dilapidated house down by the newly opened Katmandu Kite Shop and no, it isn’t a kite store, it’s a recreational marijuana outlet.  Sam’s place is back in the nettled interior, down a dead end dirt road near the old trout pond that once held trout but got dredged back in the early ‘80’s on one debauched weekend that ended my trout fishing on the South End.

Sam’s been living the bachelor life since his wife left him.  She’d grown weary of the power being turned off for non-payment and the back taxes on the place reaching critical mass and since neither of them were willing to work, they played ‘chicken’ with each other, hoping the other would swerve first back into the job market.  No way was Sam going back to wage slavery so ultimately Bobbie packed her things, left a short and not-so-sweet note and headed back down to an old boyfriend in Eugene, Oregon who at least worked part-time driving schoolbus.

Sam says he never saw it coming.  I believe him, not because all the signs weren’t pointing inexorably toward a dissolution, but because Sam doesn’t have peripheral vision.  He would have to hit a sign head-on.  In fact, he didn’t find Bobbie’s kiss-off letter until four days after she left.  Which isn’t as myopic as you might think.  Sam  is a Hoarder.  His house is like one of those ant farms I had as a kid, nothing but tunnels, stuff stacked along the paths head high, trails leading to the bed or the bathroom or through the kitchen to the stove on one side, the fridge down a different path.

Bobbie kept the piles slightly more passable, but now that she’s gone, the tunnels have narrowed.  Nothing much gets thrown away, but stuff apparently is coming in constantly, at least by my observation after not seeing Sam for a few months.  The folks who dreamed up ‘planned obsolescence’ never counted on the Sams who keep the broken crap and live in their own midden.  Another year, I figure he’ll run out of room completely.  I don’t know how many Sams are out there, but I have to wonder if this isn’t why Sears, after a century, is going broke.

There is something seriously discordant about President-in-Exile Trump going to the conservative Christian Faith and Freedom Coalition to rail about the con artists running the Jan. 6^th hearings.  Me and Don both listened to them, but we heard differently the testimony regarding how Pence and his advisors prayed together before coming to the Capitol, then read their Bibles (which they apparently carry) to find strength and solace during the assault on the chambers.  Don Sr. had cursed Pence earlier, calling him a wimp and a pussy, but he felt no embarrassment addressing the evangelical right to denounce his Vice President, one of their own faith but maybe not their own freedom, whatever the moniker means to them.  Honestly, I’m boggled by the disconnect.  One man is fervently religious, the other is fervently not.  Can’t these yahoos tell the difference???

Well, as one who is more than a bit distrustful of religion, all religions, it only confirms my prejudice.  I would want my church or synagogue or mosque to be able to recognize a phony, a sinner, a man without scruples or morals or the sense god gave a donkey, as the charlatan he is.  But no, apparently that is a bridge too far for them.  He gave them a Supreme Court that will soon outlaw abortions and protect us citizens’ right to own and carry military assault weapons.  And hopefully they think that Court will rule that religion and government can mix all it wants.  So long as it’s the Christian religion, at least theirs.

In his speech to the assembled holy, he testified that he would, if elected Fuhrer once more, pardon those patriots who were convicted of rioting in the Capitol.  The man is nothing if not an unrepentant criminal.  Of course he would pardon these insurrectionists, they were there to do his bidding.  He’ll pardon all the crooks, probably give them a job in his White House staff.  If Rudy Giuliani could be his attorney without embarrassment, bring on LaPierre from the NRA to be his Attorney General.  The hogs are at the trough, dinner is served.

I remember watching the Watergate hearings pretty much every day back in the heydays of Nixon and his happy crew of ‘plumbers’.  Riveting stuff on my small TV.  An entire nation watched the hearings and when the secret tape recordings Tricky Dick kept under his desk came to light, well, this was more entertaining than any prime time cliff hanger mystery.  Times change, I guess, and now the Congressional hearings to determine the culpability of Donald J. Trump’s role in instigating the riots of January 6^th are only watched by about a quarter of the public and only a quarter of us even follow the proceedings at all.

I guess we’re more interested in the Kardashians than what is looking more and more like a planned coup by the President to stay in power at any cost.  A coup, I would argue, that is still ongoing what with the Prez-in-Exile campaigning for MAGATS from sea to rising sea.  He’s raised 250 million dollars to stop the steal but mostly he’s raised 250 million dollars for Donald Trump.  There is no PAC for a Stop the Steal.  The man is nothing if not the world’s greatest con artist. And apparently there are plenty of suckers who would vote for him one more time.

A new poll today found that more than half of Republicans and more than half of Democrats think America will ‘cease to be a democracy’ in the future.  Happy days for Trump supporters, not so much for the rest of us.  But hey, why bother watching those Congressional hearings when the country is probably going down the toilet anyway?  So what if they can prove that Trump was actively promoting the insurrection?  Maybe he really thought the election was stolen.  Maybe he’s not a conspirator himself, just a deluded greedy narcissistic opportunist, mostly crazy but not culpable by reason of insanity.

I don’t know if the country will survive this treasonous monster.  I doubt the Dep’t. of Justice will bring charges to an ex-or exiled-President.  No man is above  the law, we keep hearing, but some men simply change the laws.

I thought I’d seen the bottom of the political pickle barrel with Nixon and the Watergate revelations, a President and his henchmen breaking into the opposition’s headquarters, then covering it up.  Nixon, crook that he was, was shamed into leaving office before he was impeached and convicted.  Eventually even the GOP cut him loose, convincing him he could go out on two feet or be dragged out by his nose.  Tricky Dick didn’t need a Weatherman to see which way the hurricane was blowing.

The January 6 hearings are slowly unraveling the plot to overturn the government, something Nixon would never have considered.  He just wanted to use dirty tricks to win, not conspire in a coup and a takeover.  Donald J. Trump is no Nixon.  Donald J. Trump is a criminal.  Piece by piece, the witch hunters have found their sorceress and uncovered his evil scheme.  When he heard that the mob he directed toward the Capitol was threatening to hang Mike Pence, he merely shrugged, suggesting that maybe that was what his VP deserved.  Ponder that a minute or 60.  The President of the United States unconcerned that a riotous mob might actually lynch Mike Pence, Vice President.  Maybe exactly what he deserved.  Roll that around on your tongue awhile.  Then consider what he told his second in command a few hours earlier, that he was weak, he was a wimp, he was a pussy.  Probably hanging was what he deserved.

Imagine for another minute or more the What If.  What if the mob had actually gotten hold of Mike the Wimp and hauled him out to the gallows, hoisted him up to the noose and with dozens of televison cameras and GoPros and countless cellphone videos recording the murder, hung him by his neck for America to watch.  Would half of us have agreed with his boss, the guy who wouldn’t declare Trump the winner of the election he’d lost, that he had it coming?  I suspect a lot of folks would have declared justice served.  That, I think, is the America we have become.  Those rioters in the Capitol building might well be the true face of a goodly portion of this country.

The question I have is this:  who are the real witch hunters?