The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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You live on the wild wild South End, you know the Long Arm of the Law isn’t all THAT lengthy and the Reach of Rome isn’t either. Frontier Justice is what we got, more often than not, although I’m not saying I’m an advocate. Me, I’m like most of us down here at the end of the county road —- I just want to be left in peace.

Dan the Woodcarvin Man is of the same mind, maybe more so. He got a new neighbor on the north side of his 5 acres, pretty much out of sight through a stand of woods, although with the new hound that came with the new couple, not exactly out of earshot. It drove him a little crazy all that incessant barking, and he spoke with the couple finally when it chased his cat up a tree and it took two days to get it to come back to terra firma. The wife flat out told him their dog never left the property and slammed the door behind her when she stomped back inside. Dan and the husband — he thought his name was Jesse — stood there in awkward silence. Until Jesse’s sweetheart stormed back out and told Jess to get his ass inside and Dan to get his off her property.

Robert Frost said good fences make good neighbors. He meant it ironically. A week after being thrown off their property, a gyppo with a chainsaw the size of a Ditch Witch rolled in and in an hour, half a dozen huge firs and cedars were kissing the ground, two on Dan’s fence and his property, one was even his own tree, a prized old cedar. The nice couple, when he mentioned it to them through a half open front door after he got home to discover the clearcut backyard, told him the tree in question was theirs and his fence was too. Woodcarvin Dan wanted to be Headcarvin Dan for a brainbusting moment or too, but murder, even down here, WILL bring the Law.

I’m not gonna tell you Dan’s a pacifist, but he doesn’t look for trouble either. He had the property surveyed to prove his claim, left the stakes ribboned and ran a new fence two feet inside those. A week later he received a court summons that informed him his neighbors were suing him for trespass, for threatening to kill their dog and for his surveyor’s trespassing as well. Dan hired a local lawyer, legal papers went back and forth with their attorney, they went to court and the judge ruled in Dan’s favor. So far he was only out $6000. Justice occasionally prevails, but it doesn’t come cheap.

Last I heard, Dan had gotten another legal letter from his neighbors’ lawyer, this time that he’d threatened to harm their kid. Dan’s never talked to the lad other than one time to ask him NOT to play in his pond. And the Neighborhood Association, according to Jesse’s wife, was going to file an insurance claim for their shed half on Dan’s property his fence runs into the middle of. Dan, nearly berserk and rapidly going broke, asked me for advice. Which tells you all you need to know about his state of exasperation and desperation.

Quit hiring attorneys, I said. Let them pay the legal fees. They’re bluffing, I said. They’re obviously insane. They’ll be bankrupt by the end of the year, the place will go on the market, they’ll move to a new place to torment someone else. Dan asked, “You really think so?” I said, “How the hell would I know, Dan?”

So Dan’s living in Paradise with the Neighbors from Hell, the Hitler Family. You tell me, so I can tell Dan, what’s he supposed to do? Maybe better fences might not make the neighbors better, but he wouldn’t have to look at them. I don’t think Dan wants to build the Wall of Jerusalem over there …. but he’s thinking about it.

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It should come as no great surprise to any of us that after the election primaries morphed into a clone of Survivors that the Presidency of the Donald would end up being an endless series of entertaining incidents. The cast, handpicked by the King of Apprentices, is wickedly delightful. Kellyanne and her beloved Alternate Facts, the best so far being the episode of the Bowling Green Massacre, never fails to impress an audience with her toothy mendacity. She’s the wicked witch of the west room. Steve — I’m no neo-Nazi, I just play one in the White House – Bannon, plays the Wizard of Odd to Trump’s scarecrow (I wish I had a heart). The alt-righteous Breitbart publisher doesn’t get many lines, but he writes the darkest scripts. Sean Spicer, the lovable boob who has to run the daily press conferences while defending his always chuckle-headed truth-avoiding boss, may have the hardest role, but … he shows up every day, Ed McMahon to Johnny but without the good natured laughtrack at his bad jokes. And the ever lovable telegenic Mr. Pence, hoping for the Impeachment episode as soon as possible while there’s still a government left to govern. Oh, let’s don’t forget Maryann to her Gilligan, the ever fashionable Melania, standing by her man despite all the crotch grabbing tell-tales. Fox News Channel runs this as news and entertainment, fair and balanced, but certainly nothing like the truth.

Today’s episode, a belly buster comedy, revolved around D.J’s daughter Ivanka’s clothing line being dropped from Nordstrom. Papa tweeted how unfair it all was, this capitalism disregard in regard to the Good Fairy Ivanka. So unfair! Especially when the family fortune rests on the Trump Brand and if some knee jerk retailer downgrades the Brand, well, that’s lost revenue. Proof, no doubt, there is really no conflict of interest that the nattering Democrats seem so worried about. The bizness of America, after all, is bizness. So great!

I guess the folks who voted for this guy are getting their money’s worth and better yet,they don’t even have to subscribe to the Trump Network to get the entire series on Netflix or Amazon, it just downloads hourly, tweet after tweet, a regurgitation of injured pride and cock of the walk crowing. So bad! So beautiful! We’re living in a reality TV show now, the audience as the voter, the audience as the public, the audience as captured viewer. All sponsored by the Trump Brand! So lucrative! But wait! If you act now, they’ll send you another tweet, just pay shipping and handling. Honest truth!

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I was just reading that Amazon has 30,000 non-human employees, what we proletariat call robots. In 2014 Facebook acquired Whatsapp whose worth was 22 billion dollars. The messaging firm had a total of 55 human employees, not that I think they were profit-sharing with them. Google, whose worth is more than most country’s G.D.P., has 60,000 workers compared to GM (worth a tenth of Google) which has 215,000. And you can bet your 401-K GM is on the forefront of automation.

Trump can talk about bringing back the coal mining jobs til the cows come home again, but if anybody thinks employment is going to go up in the land of the digitized, home of the android, they need to adjust their meds. Go ahead and bring those factories back to America’s fruited plain, but don’t expect them to hire us humans. That dream left with the Industrial Age. The discontent from the folks who watched their jobs outsourced to China, Mexico and the robots, well, that resentment is only going to get worse. And the income inequality too.

This is Future Shock rearing its ugly orange head. This is the future roaring up in our rearview way closer than it appears, ready to roar past, curves or not. The folks who think we can close the barn door and wall off the borders, they either need to stop smoking whacky tobaccy or start. Pulling the covers over our heads isn’t really the brightest color in the crayon box. I know, folks are worried about global warming and immigration issues, minimum wage and Black Lives Matter, transgender rights and gun control, abortion restrictions and prayer in the schools. All worthy causes and reasons for concern, granted. But when half the population is thrown out of work, when the 1% who own the wealth become the overlords who wall themselves in armed compounds and patrol the perimeter with drones to protect their largesse from the peasants who suspect injustice is being done to them and their odds of winning the Lottery are actually worse than they ever dreamed, well, all those other issues will take a backseat to the bonfires that light up the purpled mountains majesty.

Like the song sez, the jobs are gone boyz … and they ain’t comin back. And if you think Trump is scary, get ready for what’s coming when people who aren’t stockholders in those companies worth billions with 55 employees can’t feed their families. You might just change your mind about gun control.

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These are tough times in the Land of the Rich, Home of the Corporation. And you know as well as me, when times get tough, the tough huddle up with their tax lawyers. My newly minted president doesn’t pay taxes and claims that because he doesn’t, it proves how smart he is. The dishonest media wants him to show them his tax statements, maybe see where his money is actually coming from over there in Russia. The dishonest media distorts his real position on those Russian hacks and his refusal to believe the good Moscovites would stoop so low as to feed Wikileaks the Democratic National Committee’s e-mails. So what if even the right wing Republicans believe the dishonest media, someone has to stand firm in his convictions, or at least his gut instinct.

My mother would have washed our mouths out with soap, but those were vicious times when the rod was never spared and the child was seldom lost. Even if the child ended up beating his own kids. A few days ago that seem like months Mr. T was made President of these not so United States, proving once again that democracy is a work in progress and maybe not a permanent state of affairs. For those of you who think that placing our trust in a racist, thin-skinned bully best known for self-promotion is tantamount to a trainwreck, let me say that folks who were fed up with Wall Street shenanigans and lost jobs in these globalized times threw the dice. My liberal pals who think Bernie might have won or maybe Joe Biden, okay, maybe, but the Donald fed off the fury and resentment of folks who think the immigrants have stolen their jobs, that blacks are welfare cheats, that homosexuals are going to hell in a hurry, that transsexuals are bathroom predators, that both political parties are beholden to Big Money, that a woman, particularly a Clinton, was unfit for office and that it was high time to shake things up.

Well, we’ll see, won’t we? If those folks pinned their hopes on a vicious clown, well, we’re all in for a wild ride. If some of their anger was misdirected, okay, maybe the next election they’ll try some other crazy experiment. You know, like fairer tax laws or single payer health care. But don’t bet your 401-K on it. People still vote their pocketbooks and until the rich learn they don’t need to accumulate every last dime and nickel and Lincoln penny and to hell with the lazy poor, you can expect pitchfork politics to continue. Even the 1% might regret this much excessive greed when the guillotines get rolled into the public squares.

Meanwhile, let’s hope the dishonest media isn’t cowed by all this bluster and bullying. If nobody is checking on facts, Big Brother has already won. And the rich will only get richer. God only knows, they need the money.

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