The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I love a good hypocrite as much as the next fellow. Show me a man who hollers bloody murder about the damn guvmint, Big Brother, state overreach and I’ll show you a yahoo who wants laws that prevent minorities from voting, women from getting abortions, mandates against mask mandates and laws to keep history from being taught unless it toes the jingoist line. My favorite, and believe me, it’s hard to pick among all these, is the latest out of Texas that bans abortions after 6 weeks, a timeline that insures the woman hasn’t even realized she’s pregnant yet. Pregnancies from rape or incest, doesn’t matter to the Lone Star state.

And better … Texas wants your neighbor to do the snitching. Even offers up to 10,000 dollars for a successful private lawsuit to convict that woman, or anybody who might be helping her, in a court of law. In Orwell’s 1984 it was the neighbor and the friend who ratted out Winston, the luckless protagonist of the book. That would be true of Eastern Germany in the Cold War. Turn citizen against citizen. Who needs a camera in every house and apartment when your neighbor can keep an eye on your comings and goings. Not even Orwell imagined a reward bounty for this. Only Texas. And now, of course, the Supreme Court.

I guess these persons’ idea of freedom isn’t necessarily mine. These folks’ idea of democracy isn’t necessarily mine. I doubt the Taliban would pay a bounty as reward for informants, but they might. If they had the money. Texas, I’m guessing, would rather spend theirs on abortion rewards than health care or education. Give them a few more legislative sessions, after they’re done ramming through voter suppression laws, and they’ll probably make birth control pills a felony too. Use a condom, go to jail. Maybe charge the store that sold them with criminal charges too. And don’t forget the stockholders in the condom company. Possibly the stock exchange as well. If all else fails for these Texan Big Brothers, they just passed a law that lets you carry a handgun, concealed or open carry, without a license. Citizens can not only act as law enforcement, they can be their own judge and jury. Texas, the pro-life state. If you survive Covid.

So maybe you read about the self-proclaimed shaman who claimed to have boiled bear urine that inadvertently started the fires in California’s national forests. If not, you must be getting all your news from the National Enquirer and Qanon, the rest just not believable. In which case you know that those fires were started by Jews using lasers from outer space. Me, I’m just trying to keep myself tethered to the planet these days now that logic and science are relegated to the dustbin of history. Another few months of Covid deniers and I might be boiling bear urine myself.

Although … I’m not really certain how you obtain bear urine. Seems like a dangerous undertaking and if you were capable of getting samples for distilling, you’d think building a safe fire might be child’s play. Course, I don’t know how shamans operate, maybe fire is a bridge too far. This particular witch doctor was carrying CO2 canisters and lighters plus a leafy material that no doubt was an herbal potion, but she couldn’t get a fire started, she said, so she just drank the bear urine without purifying it, then got her corporeal body entangled in brush and had to call the fire department to extricate her. Maybe not the best shaman you’ve come across, but then, how many do you really know?

I’m really glad I’m not one of the folks whose home was incinerated started by a shaman practicing bear urine distillation. An act of God, okay, but not some stoned pyro boiling bat heads and eye of newt. Some guy tailgated me for miles today going into town, then, just as we crested a small hill, ignored the no pass lines and aimed his Honda right at a line of cars at least six or seven deep, trying to shoot by me, so that all of us headed for the shoulders to let him rocket past. Ten miles later I’m still right behind him, lives risked for no speedier arrival in Stanwoodopolis. I suppose he might think too he has magical powers. All I can figure is he drank the bear urine too. I’m hoping this isn’t going viral. At least until they announce on Fox News that it’s a cure for Covid and traffic gridlock. Pity the poor bears….

Every morning I walk downhill to my mailbox to pick up our two newspapers which I read over coffee back at the house, no doubt an anachronistic habit now that the so-called news is deemed phony. I notice most of its critics still believe the sports page and think ball scores, etc. are factual so I guess it’s only politics, science and the rest that are suspect. Me, I still trust the newspapers to be mostly true and if there’s a bias, well, I like to think I’m smart enough to notice, make allowance and still get a sense of what’s going on out there in the world beyond our driveway.

Today I read about a German laboratory where they’re toilet training cows. Faux news, you ask? A partisan article intended to disparage one of our NATO partners? Or worse, a GOP fueled call-to-arms to prevent government mandates that would require farmers in the Land of the Free to potty train their Herefords? Now, I’m not really sure what these German scientists were trying to accomplish. Maybe those Cow Pampers were costing them a fortune or possibly the point was to have the buggers poop somewhere away from streams and lakes to avoid fecal runoff. Although, the article mentioned that these potty-trainers were only working on #1 at this point, not #2.

You may well be asking yourself the same question as I was. No, not whether or not the Germans will be building bovine port-a-potties soon, but why I’m reading about this tomfoolery in the first place even if it is semi-scientific. After all, it’s not some sort of breakthrough in the quest for animal crappers, bovine bathrooms, equestrian lavatories or barnyard etiquette. Unless, of course, the damn government with its burdensome regulations is planning to mandate poop scooping for farm animals. Save a lot of hefty garbage bags to have the beasts just kindly move to the edge of the field where the latrines are waiting. Science, a powerful tool in the hands of homo sapiens!! At least for the Believers.

If you thought work was scarce as chicken teeth down here on the slothful South End, you probably figured Covid wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference, meaning, you and me were wrong. Parents with kids who stayed home and learned virtually, well, virtually nothing, good luck finding child care. Every store has a HELP WANTED sign out, permanently. Clerks, bus drivers, bartenders, waitresses, hair dressers, all of them work awhile then quit, low pay, hassles with the anti-vaxx, anti-mask crowd, no one to take care of the kids at home, good unemployment benefits, all of the above.

Melissa Jurgenson, an old friend of mine from back when we both first moved here in the Paleolithic and did odd jobs to keep us from going back to the hell that drove us to the far reaches of civilization, just took a job clerking at the South End Camano Convenience Store, a FOR SALE sign out front on the highway, not probably a smart ‘career’ move. The current owner pays two bucks more than minimum, quite a few bucks less than a living wage and nowhere near what would qualify as fair payment for the grief she takes from customers who blame her for the trampling on their right to infect whoever they damn well please.

But her husband Frank – a guy I met the first visit who grunted at our introduction, grabbed a beer (my beer actually) out of the fridge, demanded to know when dinner would be ready before retreating to his room and slamming the door – well, Frank holds the purse strings. Says she can’t handle money. Says she’ll have to work for the meager things she wants to buy. Says she’s lucky to have a fiscal genius like himself. I, of course, say Gee, Melissa, it’s the 21st Century and Frank is just a little behind the times, if not actually prehistoric.

But … love, or what passes for it on the hoary South End, has no pride, just like the song says. I guess if this were a better world we’d all have great jobs, good salaries, nice bosses and spouses who treat us as equals and share the good times as well as the hard times. Melissa made her choice, stayed on the South End, raised their three kids and now probably wonders, ringing up a pack of Camels and a six pack of beer for a tourist who thinks maybe this is Paradise, when exactly did she stop thinking it is …?

If you think it’s depressing thinking about climate change, polar bear extinctions, massive flooding, killer heat waves, famine, new diseases, melting glaciers, water wars and millions of refugees fleeing their uninhabitable countries, think how the kids must feel. I’m in my 70’s, probably not going to see the worst of what’s coming, easy to pull the covers up and go back to sleep. With all the cynicism accumulated over those decades, I don’t see much hope we’ll all make the sacrifices necessary to prevent this planetary greenhouse from becoming a steaming hotbox of scarcely imaginable nightmares.

Pity the kids. We mutter about existential threat and they hear the runaway train barreling down the tracks straight at them with no way off. Thanks, Mom, thanks, Dad. Thanks for not making any sacrifices. Don’t bother turning down the thermostat, don’t buy an electric car, don’t stop burning coal in those power plants, don’t do anything that might inconvenience you. Just stick your head in the burning sand and pretend you’ll be okay, you’ll be fine. Like the bumper sticker on the 40 foot RV reads, WE’RE SPENDING OUR GRANDKIDS’ INHERITANCE. There’s a chuckle for the next generation.

Sacrifice? It’s not a word in the Boomer lexicon. We got ours and nobody is going to take it away from us. Vote for carbon taxes? You gotta be kidding me. Vote for saving the planet? Not if it cuts into our savings. Half of us just figure it’s too late to bring the CO2 down, too late to save the polar bears, too late to keep the global temperatures from rising every year, just turn on a rerun of the Simpsons and pop a beer. Vote for a Neanderthal like Trump. What, me worry? Worst case, we’ll move somewhere with a nice climate, at least for a few years.

And besides, we got advanced science working on solutions. Over our heads, but hey, good chance these egghead A Eye guys will turn the world thermostat down, forget this gloom and doom drumbeat, we’ve got folks working on this. Not that we want to fund them. But … gee, a little seed money, they’ll figure out a way to monetize it. Look at Facebook. Look at Google. Check out Amazon during the commercial break. Little startups, now kings of the universe. And I mean universe.

No, the kids will be okay. You know, if we just stop scaring them with all this pessimism.

I am not a crook. Course he was. I never had sex with that girl. Course he did. I never asked for a quid pro quo from that Ukrainian president. Actually, yes, right there on the phone transcripts. We are not partisan hacks. Okay, then why make a speech introduced by Mitch McConnell at the McConnell Center in Louisville, Kentucky? Same partisan hack who kept Obama from filling an empty Supreme Court vacancy, that McConnell.

Somehow, methinks she doth protest too much. The Supremes, she cites as evidence for convincing us they’re not political hacks, have underlying judicial philosophies. Ah, bet you forgot that, didn’t you? They’re not ruling about abortion from some religious, partisan bias, they’re working under Originalism. Can’t find it in the Constitution, can’t okay it in 2021. The Framers wanted to keep the country in eternal stasis. Wise men, these Framers. Far seeing visionaries.

Gimme a break, Amy. Donald J. Trump didn’t ram your nomination through in record time because he thought you were a fair and impartial judge, he ran you through because your name was on the approved list of nominees handed to him by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank only slightly left of the Proud Boys. The sheer fact that you made your public denial of judicial bias right after letting the Texas anti-abortion bill take effect, well, c’mon, your Honor, you didn’t notice Mitch smiling that turtle smirk from Louisville to Houston? Maybe you didn’t read the part in the Constitution that mentions a sitting President making nominations for your job. Before your time, I know.

So I guess we’re in good hands with you and Clarence and the rest of the gang, no hidden biases there, just thorough and impartial reading of a few centuries old document, interpreted by … Wait, not interpreted, really, just scrutinized factually. Channeling old Tom Jefferson. Partisan hackery? Ask Amy Phoney Barrett, she’s got the original news.

1. Do you believe the Bible commands you not to take vaccines?

2. Does God (or Allah or Buddha or the Quaker Oats man) make it a sin to inject foreign substances (other than horse de-wormer) into your body?

3. If you had to choose between saving the life of your grandparents or fighting for the freedom to fly a Confederate flag, which would you pick?

4. Are you more afraid of Dr. Fauci than the wrath of God?

5. Do you believe the Covid vaccinations are really a conspiracy to put tracking devices in you?

6. Do you think the smallpox scar on your arm is actually a Mark of the Beast?

7. Will you take ‘Q’ as your Lord and Savior? How about ‘P’ and Z’?

8. Is Tucker Carlson a prophet, yes or maybe?

9. Do you believe your faith will protect you from Covid or do you think Covid is a hoax?

10. If you answered Yes to any of the above, welcome to the Ministry of Naysayers. Your exemption will be in the mail along with a certificate of secret society membership. Please follow us on Facebook. And good health will follow!

Well, sir, it is a miracle, a MIRACLE! I tell ya, how religion has come to the unvaccinated. Now that the Governor of our fair state and the President of our In God We Trust country have mandated Covid shots for all government workers, suddenly the filings for personal exemptions have surged faster than the plague caseload itself. Cops, firefighters, social service workers, bus drivers, even nurses and doctors, all those folks who, for whatever reason before, ignored the pleas to please get a vaccination, please wear a mask, please maintain social distancing, now are petitioning the State or their employers to exempt them for … wait for it … religious reasons. Please, Mr. President, don’t make me take that inoculation. My religion opposes vaccines.

Somewhere in their Bibles or their Quran or maybe their Book of Mormon , there’s an admonition, probably punishable by eternal damnation, against injecting alien substances into their inviolable and holy selves. Nothing, probably, against horse dewormer, but a vaccine, no way! Against the will of God, an affront to Allah. Get back, Beelzebub!! The road to salvation is not littered with empty syringes, but the road to Hell must be, that much is certain.

Personally, now that I’ve befouled my mortal coil with god only knows what alien substances, I can’t, for the life of me, understand this antipathy for an immunity to a disease that has killed two thirds of a million of us and sickened more than 40 million, some who will suffer long term effects. If polio or smallpox made a resurgence, or some new flesh eating monstrous disease suddenly appeared, is this the response we would expect? Maybe Covid isn’t scary enough. Maybe the sight of strangers struggling to breathe on ventilators isn’t frightening to these folks. Maybe they haven’t had a relative die yet in an overloaded hospital, no visitors allowed, just a lonely isolated death. Maybe their imaginations can’t quite conjure that vision. Or … they just don’t give a damn. Maybe they need an Ebola virus that devours flesh and turns it putrid, something so godawful not even their religious beliefs would stop them from taking whatever nano-tracking, magnetizing, pregnancy ending vaccine was offered.

I give up understanding these people, I really do. And I won’t waste breath reasoning with them. I don’t think you can. So it’s fine with me to mandate getting a shot or getting fired, go work for Burger King. Be all right with me if clinics and hospitals refused to give these suddenly devout yahoos entry. You folks plugged our ICU’s, filled our wards, kept others from getting the care they need. Harsh, I know, and we won’t do that,but don’t ask for a religious exemption and don’t expect to get one. Your religion is a little thin and a bit newfound. Mine says respect life. And here’s one last piece of advice for you who have found holiness at this late date: Trumpism isn’t a religion. Probably just the opposite.

That pesky, sneaky government of ours! All we wanted to do was have a rally, a legal constitutional demonstration for Justice for J6, all our people who were unjustly arrested January 6th for, well, merely being tourists. Peaceful tourists interested in visiting the Capitol Building and possibly the Senate chambers who got caught up in that police riot thing and later dragged in by the goons from the Justice Department who want everyone to believe Trump lost the election when we all know it was rigged from the start.

Now, thanks to our network of social media, we find out the government, the damn Feds, have set a trap for us. Go to the Capitol and we’ll be arrested on trumped up charges, no pun intended, hauled into their kangaroo court system and end up in some black hole like Guantanamo. Well, forget that! We’re not stupid, we’re patriots, and if we have to stay away from our own protest down in D.C., by god, that’s what we’ll do. Let the commie cops eat that! Nobody there to arrest, just more wasted government money.

No way we’re going to walk into that Capitol Building asking for Pelosi’s autograph. Last time we knocked politely at the Senate chambers asking to come in to watch the proceedings, they assassinated that poor woman, whatshername, who is a martyr to tourism, peaceful tourism, and the government tells us the murder was justified. You think we’re dumb enough to come in and ask to watch our Congress in action, maybe knock politely on those closed doors again? I don’t think so. Even the Proud Boys decided to stay as far away from this trap as possible and they’re not the brightest bunch. But don’t get me wrong, they’re on the Right Side, same as us, just a little more volatile. Not that I blame them but we all have to be careful now.

If we were smart we’d go down to D.C. with Black Lives Matter signs. They don’t mind them rioting all over the country, no sir, but us white folks, they shoot us like they shot that poor woman, what the hell was her name, pretty much minding her own business, just wanting to listen to her representatives there in the Congress. You think they’d have killed her if she was a minority? No way, they’d have let her and her posse right in the door, even held it open for them, hi, glad you folks came, take a seat anywhere. White lives don’t matter to the government, I can tell you that much.

Hell no we’re not going to march into their trap. We’re going to be smart this time, wait for the word to come down from Qanon or Tucker Carlson when it’s okay to protest this illegitimate government of ours. We know how to wait. Been doing it with this vaccination conspiracy and we’ll keep on doing it. We’re not stupid, I can tell you that right now, tell you that again if I have to. We’re not falling into any traps. No way!

Mike Pence said today, following Joe Biden’s speech about mandating all federal workers and employees in large businesses be vaccinated, that it was unlike anything he’d ever heard, total government overreach, damn that Joe Biden, who, apparently, isn’t as sleepy as once thought. This from the man who was as quiet as Clarence Thomas when Mike was Vice President to the Mouth. Politics, I know, are rough and tumble. So we can maybe forgive him for small hyperbole. Or, in my case, maybe not.

I don’t understand these latter day Trumpian Republicans, I really don’t. We have a resurgent pandemic and all they can offer for national solutions is … well, really, nothing. No masks, no vaccinations, no lockdowns, no school closures, just Business as Usual, as if businesses must survive even as they spread the disease. Open the beaches, put on the mega-concerts, play football, run the assembly lines, bag those groceries, carry on without masks or vaccines, don’t tread on my freedom!! Freedom to choose, they cry, but not when Texas wants to take away Choice down in the Lone Star state. You want to end your pregnancy, no way, girl, you don’t get a choice down there. They won’t wear a mask to prevent spreading an airborne disease, no sir, but they want control of your body. Pro-life, they call it. Pro-death, more like it when they mandate against vaccinations and masks.

Sleepy Joe said enough is enough. Patience is wearing thin. Obviously the naysayers aren’t going to wear a mask, they’re not going to get a shot, they’re not going to do much of anything to help the nation get a handle on this Covid epidemic, just let the hospitals overload, let the kids bring the variant home to ma and pa and the grandparents, let this thing kill a few more hundred thousand of us and maybe mutate to something even more virulent. I’m living in the Dark Ages here in medieval America, that much is obvious. Just take a horse de-wormer, you’ll be okay. Snake oil? Sure, take a double dose, you’ll be bullet proof.

I just lived through four years of Trump, NewsMax, Fox, Qanon, the oddest weirdness I ever want to live through again. If you thought this was a fine tonic to the liberal Hollywood, pro-choice, pro-vaxx, pro-mask, Black Lives Matter, LGBT, climate change believers, well, what can I say? You’ve got all the news you need. But don’t, no sir, do not tell us it’s unlike anything you’ve ever heard. Because for the past four years it’s all been nothing but crazy talk.