The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I can remember when the Fuller Brush salesman came clear down to the South End. My neighbor bought her cleaning supplies from him. Not so much because they were cheap; she just felt sort of sorry for the guy. Not so many traveling salesmen down our neck of the holler these days — other than religious salesmen. A dead profession, gone the way of tinkers, the wagoneers who sold pots and pans. I got neighbors who still sell pot, but not the pans.

The new Willy Lomans down here are selling on E-bay. They find an item cheap at the garage sales, snap a digital photo, paste a description and then folks bid on it from Utsalady to Hong Kong. It’s a testament to the mighty consumer instinct down here that we still have junk to sell after years of shipping goods off island over the internet. You’d think garages would be empty, sheds bare, grown kids’ bedrooms an echo chamber of only memories. I guess not.

Trouble is, WE shop on E-bay now. Used to be one UPS truck burning up gas past Elger Bay Store, delivering to the dot.com retirees. Now there’s a whole fleet, brown shirted, short pants boyz, always in a major hurry. Add to that the Amazon Prime deliveries, Fed Ex, the USPS one day deliveries, what you got here is a product stream day and night and Sundays too.

The guy I bought my shack from in ’77 was a mail order salesman. Kind of a scam back then mostly. Snake oil through the mail. Satisfaction guaranteed. Just pay the shipping and handling, some unspecified amount slightly less than what a new car costs. Late night TV still does this, probably where my shack salesman ended up if not jail or a church somewhere economically distressed. Seems like folks like to prey on the poor. That, or just pray with them.

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If you’re like me, and I bet you hope you’re not, you can scarcely keep up with the fast moving events in this witch hunt impeachment investigation. Seems like just yesterday we had that phone call with the Ukrainian president, Zorro or Zapruder or some Z, where Donald makes it clear there will be no military assistance to fight the Russians if he doesn’t get the goods on Biden and Biden’s kid. He figures, I guess, that the voters in 2020 will be so outraged over possible nepotism that they’ll re-elect him. Forget about the business dealings of Eric and Don Jr. all over the world. That’s totally different. They’re real biznessmen, that pair, bright as new pennies, no influence peddling on Daddy’s name, not with their brand of fiscal acumen.

And we won’t even mention emoluments or Jared and Ivanka. Good kids. Sharp, savvy, barely related to the President of the United States, surely not playing the Trump card for enterprises across the globe. But Biden, hoo boy, that Biden. What can you say? Benghazi maybe.

But no, there was no quid pro quo. No mention of that military assistance mandated by Congress. It was, if you recall, a perfect phone call. Perfect enough to sequester in a top secret data vault. But you can read the transcript, only slightly redacted, and imagine for yourself telephone perfection. Course, then came Rudy who admitted that yeah, they were asking for some help in our elections. Big deal, so what, it’s done all the time. Looking for corruption. Wanting a little help. You got a problem with that?

But of course Rudy turns out to be funneling money from foreign sources back into Trump’s election PACs, sort of illegal. A couple of his cronies were arrested fleeing the United States and now Rudy’s the target of the same investigation. Corruption, sometimes, is right up your nose. With a lawyer like Rudy, you don’t really need enemies. And now we have the spectacle of witnesses parading one after the other into the House Impeachment Investigation Hearings, pretty much incriminating the President for, yeah, quid pro quo. Not that you need it to prove a crime, asking for foreign assistance in the election should be enough.

Today Mulvaney said yeah, ok, there was a quid pro quo. Everybody does it, big deal, get over it. ‘Get over it’ was the part I liked best. Deny deny deny, attack attack attack attack, admit admit admit, then finally just turn the board over and say the game is over. What’re ya gonna do, impeach us? Sure, we’re crooks but everybody’s a crook. Everybody would do what we did. You’d be stupid not to.

Well, we wanted a so-called biznessman to run the country. What did you expect? Morality? Fair play? Adherence to some bullshit set of rules like the Constitution? C’mon, that’s an old playbook written by folks half of em you couldn’t name. You wanted change in the country. You wanted to tear down the government. You wanted to break some furniture. Okay, you got it. We can put the game board back on the table and play another round if you want. In a year we’ll get that chance. But the rules aren’t what you think and it’s definitely okay to cheat. Just not you.

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America’s mayor, once the toast of the town, is once again toast, probably the whole country. Rudy Rudy Rudy, where did you go so wrong? Toadie for Trump, what were you thinking? You were a federal prosecutor, did you think you could outsmart your colleagues? Trump hasn’t dumped you under the Greyhound yet, but trust me, in a day, maybe less, he won’t remember who you were. Sure, there are some photos of you two jibbering fools together, but hey, lots of folks have selfies with the Emperor. Usually with one of them wearing clothes, not both naked as orangutans.

The noose is tightening and the wolves are circling. Soon the canaries will be singing at the bottom of the mineshaft we call the White House, a dark dungeonous place these dreary days, walls closing in, the mirrors no longer saying he’s the fairest king of all. Former cabinet chiefs will soon respond to subpoenas, maybe hoping to clear themselves of wrongdoing, if not pathetic idiocy. Too late for redemption, but nobody wants to go to prison for lying under oath.

You can almost hear the knives being sharpened down in the White House kitchen from here. The Trump Brand, the one so carefully honed through false bravado and sheer chutzpah, will soon look more like cheap copper than gold, tarnished and pitted and ready for the trash heap of history. The man can re-start his own reality show on Fox when the blood is mopped up and he’ll get plenty of viewers, the same ones who think there’s nothing to see behind the Wizard’s curtain, who think impeachment is just a political game and crimes and misdemeanors just a leftist chant.

Trump is right about one thing: we used to shoot traitors. Whistleblowers, naw. Men who sold their country down the drain for money, you bet. The man will make his 30 pieces of silver and a lot more, welcome to it as far as I’m concerned. He gave us a lesson in government, in politics, in Machiavellian intrigue that was worth the price of admission. What he also showed us, at a terrible cost, was how much citizens in this country will sacrifice, in honor, morality, national security, to keep a thug in power. We won’t ever be as certain this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. That quaint notion has been forever erased.

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Even our holidays these days have become political footballs. Today is Columbus Day. But it’s also Indigenous Peoples Day. Kind of like Christmas also being Satan Day. Or Martin Luther King Day coupled with a David Duke Holiday. Keep both sides placated. It could be a trend for political correctness. Valentine’s Day could share time with, oh, Hate Yer Neighbor Day. Labor Day might have Welfare Day and July 4th (Independence Day) could link with Donald Trump Day.

Well, okay, maybe I’m taking this too far. Can’t we just celebrate Columbus landing on the New World, bringing the natives trinkets and smallpox, without turning it into a puny jubilee for the survivors? Next thing you know we’ll be taking down statues of old Christopher and lobbying against exploring Mars and Jupiter. Jeez, is nothing sacred?

We don’t want religious holidays, we don’t want politically sensitive holidays, we don’t want Confederate statues, we don’t want to step on anyone’s toes. I get it. I’m a bleeding heart. I just don’t want to make my holidays a total muddle. Keep it simple, stupid, that’s my life’s motto. Complexity? I don’t need no stinking complexity. Two names for one holiday? Don’t think so. The banks and the libraries will close up for two days. Or half a day for each. Or …? Well, who knows?

Columbus Day was kind of an odd holiday anyway. He didn’t land on the shores of the United States, did he? And he probably landed after the Vikings so why get all big headed about the second arrival. Indigenous Peoples Day? C’mon. Really? Which ones? All of them? Might as well have a People of the World Day.

Maybe we need to have a Commission look into this holiday thing, make some recommendations for brand new ones. Equinox Day would work for me, although I know some evangelicals would protest that it was kind of Druidy. I guess no matter what we choose to honor these days, there’s going to be backlash. So I’m recommending we just take 7 or 8 days, scatter them across the calendar and call them To Hell With It Day. And if you need to, couple it with To Heaven Day. Jeez.

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