The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

My President doesn’t really read anything other than ‘news’ articles about himself. Mostly he watches TV, news stations whose talking heads talk about him. In reverent tones. Far as anyone knows he doesn’t listen to music, doesn’t dance, doesn’t sing or play an instrument, doesn’t write much of anything beyond a florid signature, doesn’t paint or mess with art. What art he appreciates is anyone’s guess. My guess is the only art hanging in the penthouse of the Trump Tower would be a full size mirror. In a gold frame, of course.

Maybe I’m being ungenerous. Nobody has to read literature, no one is required to listen to music, you don’t have to appreciate art to be a full human being. I know a few South Enders like that and they’re plenty happy to go to work, come home and watch ESPN sports without becoming narcissistic cretins. They just don’t care much about the arts. C’est la vie.

But they didn’t fire the Director of the nation’s premier Art Center and any of the Board Members he felt were too Woke. The man with zero aesthetic appreciation just put himself in charge of the Kennedy Center making himself the Czar of Culture in America.

Apparently Trump isn’t content to wage war with his own government. Isn’t content to make enemies of the press. Doesn’t mind alienating neighboring countries or allies. Is willing to denigrate the leader of Ukraine, call him a dictator and accuse him publicly of starting the war with Russia. Seems to be open to alliances with true dictators who have traditionally been our enemies. And with malice toward all, now he needs to co-opt the Arts too??

My friends who voted for him think he’s the businessman this country needs, a billionaire who’ll bring back the Gilded Age, who’s transactional, meaning he sees the world as a zero-sum game, everything through the lens of profit and loss, money, goods, relationships. The Art of the Deal and only the deal. A gold toilet is the throne for this kind of thinking. But a full size mirror is not art, merely a narrow two dimensional reflection of a small one dimensional man, the last man on earth who should be the Czar of Culture.

When I was young and heading off to college, Humanities were still an honorable degree. History, Art, Philosophy, Music, Literature — you could get a diploma even if your chances of getting a job were slim to none. I guess I was more interested in getting an education than a career because I took a double major in the humanities at the Univ. of Wisconsin in Madison, a time when the Vietnam riots were in full swing, a different education altogether.

Jump 50 years into the future, a half century — the trend now is to downsize or eliminate the Humanities, the argument being that high tuition costs DEMAND degrees with maximum employment potential and a salary to pay off the huge student debt. Bizness degrees, I.T., engineering, high tech — that’s where universities and community colleges are funneling their students. Microsoft and Amazon, Google and Facebook, the billionaires of Silicon Valley, they’re all driving the pilot-less train into a brave new future of automation, artificial intelligence, drones and a wired world. The Digital Age is rapidly replacing the Industrial Era, leaving the Romantic Era beneath deep sediment. Who needs poetry when you can program the next generation of androids to write a ditty?

We call the Humanities humanities because we’re exploring just that, the qualities that make us human and not machine, an altogether necessary endeavor in this next evolution of mankind. It is more than alarming to watch the diminution of the Humanities at the same time humans are inexorably merging into their own technology. As an artist, I’ve never been one to argue that we’re the saviors of the culture, the Sensitive Ones, the Visionaries. I may have been wrong. More worrisome now — we may be canaries in the mine.

You can hang this over the Main Hall of Trump University: Ignorance is Bliss! Maybe you thought another term for the Chancellor would be tuition-free, why not enroll in advanced coursework in Economics from the professor who has declared bankruptcy six times? Of course, if you have been considering bankruptcy, this would definitely be required credits. If not, there’s plenty other advanced coursework for those who care to learn at the knee of a renowned businessman. Bible Studies 101, Tennis Shoe Sales for the Complete Novice, Baseball Cap Politics, Tax Evasion PhD, Legal Tips from the Roy Cohn Files, Emoluments for the Politician, Stock Market Manipulation and Inside Trading, Tariff Calculations and Deferred Tariffs — all in all, plenty of classes whether you signed up or not.

But tuition free? Better think again. If you thought the price of eggs would be going down or inflation would be tamed in the first week of the University reopening its doors, you missed last term’s featured study in Hyperbole, Prevarication and Doubling Down. Not to worry, that class will be offered this term as well. Nevertheless, the cost to you, the consumer, will be enormous. Price you pay for that Bliss poster over the entrance.

The Chancellor has offered us students a front row seat on the workings of a global economy. His required reading, Art of the Deal, should have made it abundantly clear that all negotiations must have a clear winner, a zero-sum gain. If we have a balance of trade deficit, we are losers. (This will definitely be a question on the final exam you are required to sit through.) There is no such thing as soft power. Aid to foreign countries in expectation of their appreciation is a fallacy and has been curtailed as of Immediately. Tariffs will be imposed on … well, every country on the planet, even those without import or export potential. The math is simplified, the balance is in our favor, foreign investments will flock to our shores, the future will be beautiful, more beautiful than it’s ever been before.

Don’t even think about asking for a return on your non-tuition. The semester runs four years and if you think the first few months were eye-popping, hang on to your seats, the best courses are coming up fast. Recession 101 will begin shortly. Advanced Trade War may have already begun. Tax Cuts for the 1% will be required coursework. Medicaid Roll Slashing, IRS Defunding, Social Security Fraud, so much to look forward to. Textbooks are not required, in case you were wondering, but you will be expected to pay for them.

When I ask my MAGA buddies what it is they like about the guy they voted for, they invariably say they want a biznessman in charge. They don’t care one pronoun about Woke stuff, DEI stuff, touch-feely B.S. — they want a capitalist, a captain of industry, a corporate magnate to steer the ship of state. They couldn’t care less if he’s been bankrupt a few times. They don’t give a damn if he left his contractors holding the bag. They don’t mind that he’s a chronic liar, a convicted felon, an egotistical womanizer or … well, much of anything, really, beyond the fact that he’s a billionaire. It goes without saying, without analysis, that if he’s filthy rich, he must be a savvy entrepreneur, exactly what this country needs.

The wealthy just want a fellow 1%’er to lower their taxes, get rid of burdensome regulations, cut the government down to size and protect their interests. The bizness of America, they will gladly tell you, is bizness, pure and simple. If they get richer, if more of us get rich, the money will trickle down to everyone. Sure, they’ll get more but fair is fair. Government needs to get out of their way!

A good biznessman, most folks will tell you, hires excellent people to surround him. Experts. Professionals. Trump gets rid of these people because they aren’t Yes Men. His people, sycophants all, are there to do his bidding and to flatter him endlessly. He is, he thinks, the smartest guy in any room. He listens to his gut. That right there is his genius.

This week he put blanket tariffs on nearly every country on earth, even some with no populations unless you count penguins or migrating birds. The price of nearly every imported product will be going up. Inflation will go up. A recession will be coming up too, more than likely now, if not, worse case, a full blown world Depression. The Dow and the S&P and the NASDAQ plunged, his advisors are calling each other morons and worse, the real bizness CEO’s are running around social media with hair-on-fire five alarm incredulity.

And my buddies are now desperate to get their retirement money out of the stock market which is a roller coaster ride every day. We’re going to find out soon if we elected a biznessman. Or just a tennis shoe salesman with dreams of grandeur.

The desert is a menacing place, I don’t care if you’re a native or a moss-backed tourist on safari to the dive taverns of Arizona with names like Jackass or Burro or Sidewinder. The boyz and me were hunting beer down in the flashflood washes and arroyos from Phoenix to Prescott. We’re old hands at this beerhunting, having gone every year for 30 years. We know the drill. Walk to the bars, do not drive. Drink, if not responsibly, at least semi-moderately. Eat. Even if it’s greasy bar food, put something in your belly to soak up alcohol. Try to maintain a modicum of control. Do not disturb the snakes or the natives, especially the venomous ones. The point is to hunt with passion, but also to bring ourselves back alive.

We made reservations in Bisbee a short walk from the historic Silver Dollar Hotel and other weathered historic taverns, but … our fellow slayer in Phoenix had asked his son and his son-in-law, confirmed golfers, along on the Hunt. These boys, nice guys in their 40’s with wives and two children each, decided to cancel our reservations and make them adjacent to the golf course in Prescott they intended to tame. None of the grizzled and seasoned Hunters had a say, but being get-along go-along yahoos, we acquiesced with subdued mutterings. In hindsight, we did not offer the sage counsel professional Hunters should have offered these tenderfeet.

The first warning sign was when they pulled their vehicles into a bar back in the hinterlands that had yet to open but did so in 5 minutes. While we sipped coffee, they threw down shots. Obviously the kids thought they were young and invulnerable. Beer? Not for them. They opted for the hard stuff. It took three or four roadhouses to wind our way up the canyon to our basecamp. By then they were feeling no pain and the day was young. Day two, they had tee times while we hiked the cacti lined trails nearby. They were throwing down shots for breakfast. Midafternoon we rendezvoused at the Palace Hotel, one of the ten best historic bars in America, downtown Prescott. Jerry was dragged in like a dead buck between the other two, blacked out from one and a half bottles of tequila. They laid him into a chair where he slumped from his wounds, unconscious but alive. We ordered another round of beers.

Hunting is not all that difficult if done correctly. Done with disrespect for the Rules, it is a nasty business and leads to all manner of vicious and unforeseen mayhem. By the end of the second night we had turned what should have been an exotic beer hunt into a morass of criminality, fear and abject self-loathing. The police finally intervened, pulling a carload of cocky amateurs onto the shoulder, hauling the intoxicated driver to jail and impounding the car. At three in the morning we went to retrieve our contrite fellow Hunter at the hoosegow. At eight we received a call that the Mex’s wife was in a Seattle hospital, under induced coma, intubated and possibly dying of what appeared to be opioid overdose. By noon we were driving him to the Phoenix airport. A definite chill had settled over the Hunters.

We’re back now and so far no lives have been lost. Next year, count on it, we’ll hunt in the Cascades once again, trespassing on the dam access patrolled by Homeland Security since Nine Eleven who threaten us or crossing the dangerously rotten old bridge high above the Cle Elum River to get back to our cabin. We won’t be inviting the kids. They can drink at home.