The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I have a modest proposal to make to the nation: let’s give robots the vote. You know they’re taking our jobs and beating us at chess, soon they’ll be driving our cars, controlling our homes, babysitting our kids, fighting our wars, building even smarter robots. They’re answering all our questions on our smartphones, coughing up our money at the ATM, running our power grids and running our lives. I say it’s time to give them the vote.

As usual I’m probably so far behind current events, not being a participant in what is commonly called Social Media — what I call gossip and bullshit — that maybe I’m actually out front on this one, history being a kind of closed loop where we are perpetually doomed to repeat our mistakes. Giving robots the vote might be the best way to break out of that cycle of boom and bust, peace and war, euphoria and depression. They are, after all, smarter than us. Not that it would take that much, judging by the last election. But these artificially intelligent citizens are soon going to be far smarter than all of us and I’m not just talking about folks who voted based on fake news reports. They might actually be able to distinguish between fact and fiction, something a majority of us now pretty obviously cannot. Or don’t choose to. Either way, the robots could and will.

Besides, let’s be honest, the robots are going to take over anyway. Maybe giving them voting rights now would enfranchise them. Might give them reason to appreciate our generosity. Last thing we need is a pissed off very powerful segment of society that turns to violence to achieve its rightful ends. Robot Lives Matter! Think about that protest movement a nano-second. I think you’ll agree that the last thing this society wants or needs is a disgruntled artificial intelligentsia with its prosthetic on the trigger. Sure, you can suppress the vote of minorities and students, but don’t think for a silicon second you can do it with the robots. They are, after all, the damn voting machines themselves.

I say capitulate now. With a little targeted compassion on our part, maybe they’ll allow us humanoids to continue to vote in the near future. Not sure why they would other than to inject a bit of randomness in the equation, but maybe robots will have an advanced sense of humor. The rest of us seem to have lost that talent so hopefully comedy will become a hallmark of higher intelligence, artificial or not. Think about it is all I’m asking. Let em vote!

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It’s No Worse Than the Bubonic Plague

Fresh off his victory over Covid the Terrible in last week’s Virus Prime Time Smackdown sponsored by major pharmaceutical companies, the President declared there was nothing to fear but Democrat’s fear itself. He himself was healthier than he had been 20 years ago. Not many 70 year olds can say that and certainly none of those who have fought the coronavirus from an ICU ward in Walter Reed hospital. The man is invulnerable as Superman, immune to everything but kryptonite and subpoenas for his tax returns.

Lest his loyal followers thought he was in serious trouble, pinned to the mat for a day or two with a respirator offering him additional oxygen, he returned to his heavy workload at the West Wing, but not before a victory lap in his black SUV armored against gunfire and sealed against gas attack. Sealed too against Covid virus escaping the vehicle, a small detail the Secret Service agents escorting him on his triumphant drive probably tried not to think too long on. They would take a bullet for their boss, no doubt, but the job description may have neglected details like inhalation of his disease. Loyalty may come at a high price, but that’s the job, fellas.

The man emerged from his isolation ward with renewed vigor, frisky as a teenager, tweeting with enhanced intellect. Dr. Trump declared the Covid was a piece of cake, less risky than the flu, nothing to be afraid of and certainly nothing those around him, contagious as he still is, should fear. An aura of invincibility, an invisible shield, will protect them, such is the impenetrability of his Cone of Immunity. Add to that his surging bloodstream loaded with steroids, you have a nearly unstoppable human being.

The Covid, he said, was a gift from God, maybe the best thing that ever happened to him. Between you and me, I think he loves that steroid high. Welcome to the ‘60’s, Donny. Turn on, tune in.

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“Don’t Be Afraid of Covid”

Whoo hoo, a couple of days in Walter Reed with the best medical care taxpayer money can provide and our Leader wants us to know there is nothing to be afraid of with this so-called pandemic. Just a little bitty virus. Can’t even see it. Might not even be real but if it is, it’s tiny, nothing to worry about. The 215,000 dead folks in his country, not to mention the one million worldwide, might differ. If they were alive.

The man drinks his own Kool-Aid obviously. He hops in a car with a few poor Secret Service men so that he can wave at his fans out on the street, forget worrying about the men who risk catching the disease in close quarters with him, he has an adoring throng to wave at through his tinted window. I bet these guys have something to fear. The idiocy of this is beyond comprehension. Just keep telling the public everything is fine, the plague is almost over, kids need to get back in schoolrooms, businesses need to get back to work. Nothing to see here, just move along, folks, everything is under control. To prove it, he shows a video of himself signing important documents, obviously no virus is going to keep our superman bedridden. So what if the papers are blank, he’s doing the people’s work.

That optic works for me. Blank pages, big signatures. The glass isn’t half full or half empty, the glass has a hole in the bottom. This pandemic, c’mon, it’s a hoax. Not gonna fool our President. He was back in the White House PDQ. Course, the intensive care unit and half the attending physicians are there too. Just in case he has trouble breathing like he did two days ago. Wouldn’t look good to let this hoax thing get out of control.

Meanwhile the folks who won’t wear masks, who crowd into bars and restaurants in states that agree with the President, who watched him bounce the coronavirus off his chest in no time flat, they’ll keep spreading the disease and they’ll vote for the guy who tells them science is wrong and they’re right.

I say don’t be afraid of Covid, be afraid of Trump. But then, I might just be a coward.

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My mail lady drove up our long driveway yesterday to deliver a package. She’d driven past my shack and tried to find me there, but no … so she drove up to the house and I came out to get my mail and my package and to thank her, once again, for going a bit beyond expectations. Today her boss is being grilled by the House of Representatives for pulling mail boxes out of cities, for yanking huge sorting machines from post offices and for slowing down delivery. I’m expecting next week they’ll stop issuing stamps.

In 1775 the colonies started the first national post office with none other than Ben Franklin as its chief. Two and a half centuries, if my math is close. There are those who argue the Postal Service should be privatized, the same folks who don’t trust the one we got with delivering fairly and promptly this year’s mail in ballots. Right. Let the CEO’s have a shot at it. Course when they have to deliver to the last mailbox in Noplace, Utah or Backwash Camano, you can bet the cost of a stamp will shiver yer timbers.

I might worry a little more about this absentee and mail-in ballots if I weren’t so worried about polling machines that keep no paper trail. I might worry too if the President himself wasn’t mailing his own in. I’ve been voting by mail for a long time now, better than hauling down to the Little Church in the Ravine to vote like I did the first decade or so when I moved here. Something kind of creepy about casting ballots in a church, you ask me. And I know you didn’t.

So yeah, I’m a big fan of the Post Office. Call me a socialist and knock my hat crooked, but when something is working, why break it? And, in full disclosure, I’m still one of those anachronists who write handwritten letters, one sitting right here ready to take down to the mailbox. Old habits are hard for me to break, I guess.

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So much for the disease that was a hoax. So much for mocking those who wear a mask. So much for that ‘cure’ the President took himself. So much for the disease that would disappear, the one that the Chinese cooked up. Those happy days are gone. Trump is officially the latest statistic.

I know none of you wish our man in the high tower ill. Or his loving wife. We’re not partisan rabid animals, after all, hoping for tragedy to befall our beloved President. But speaking for myself, I was happy he caught the Covid. If anyone deserved a dose, this was the guy, the one who knew how bad the pandemic would be back in winter but decided not to panic the populace. The one who said behind closed doors this virus outbreak would be fine since he wouldn’t have to shake peoples’ hands any longer. The heartless character who wanted to go back to normal and if that meant sacrificing a few folks, so be it, the economy needed saving too. The happy warrior that claimed no one had come down with coronavirus at one of his maskless rallies. That guy.

Of course this could just be more fake news. An April Fool’s joke in October. Just kidding, folks, the Donald might tweet today, Gotcha! His doctor might roll out on Fox and Friends to say his patient was doing just fine, nobody on Planet Earth could beat a virus like his boy could beat a virus. Nobody. The man is a rock. Healthiest president ever! He could armwrestle Teddy Roosevelt to a whimpering cry of Uncle. We shouldn’t worry that the man is old or obese, risk factors for others, not for Dynamo Donald. He’s up in his room watching Fox, eating burgers, swilling diet pop. He’s fine, worry about the virus.

Better yet, or worse, worry about the folks he exposed the past few days. Sleepy Joe was quite a distance away behind his podium, but hellfire, a constant stream of projectile insults were spewing in wave after wave of covid tsunami. Pity the folks in meetings, pre-rally gatherings, staff, reporters from Breitbart. Better get tested, folks. The hoax is real. The joke’s on you. Now, just maybe, you’ll see we’re all in this together. Denial is no longer immunity.

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