The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The Grinch That Stole America

The Orange Scrooge sitting in the White House recently acknowledged that the holidays this year would see some empty shelves due to his tariff plans. So what? he mused, the kids would only get 2 dolls, not the usual 30. If you can’t make sense of what he’s talking about, welcome to my world. Hang your stockings with care, there’s plenty of coal this coming Christmas. Looks like we’re all going to get the Naughty tag, those who haven’t been already been deported, sued or laid off. And if you’re expecting a miracle on 34th Street or Pennsylvania Avenue, get realistic. There’s a War on Christmas, all right, but not the one advertised for years by the right wing anti-woke crowd.

The Two Barbie President claims the weakness in the stock market since he announced world wide tariffs was actually the result of Biden’s policies. When the Market was going sky high under Sleepy Joe’s regime, he claimed it was due to his policies four years earlier. Cause and effect, like much of rational thinking, science or the obvious, really doesn’t crowd out much of Trump’s non-logical thinking. Happily, he has advisors who were chosen, not for expertise, but for flattery. Eight years ago we were introduced to Alternative Facts. Welcome to the Alternative Universe we now call America.

Russia was attacked by Ukraine. Palestinian protests against the slaughter in Gaza are anti-Semitic. Vaccines cause autism. Tariffs are good for the economy. NATO allies have been bleeding us dry. Immigrants are gang members, rapists and killers. Government is mostly a bunch of slackers, thieves and incompetents. Social Security is riddled with fraud and corruption. America is a bleak and broken country with only one man who can save it.

The Ghost of Christmas Future sits in his high tower. This is no happy family made-for-TV feel-good holiday movie. Scrooge learns no lessons in humility or charity. The Grinch is happy being the Grinch. Merry Christmas, One and All!

Wasn’t it Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote admiringly about self-reliance?  About two hundred years ago?  Well, I got some news for Ralph.  The world changed.  It got real small, Ralph, about the size of an I-phone, and nowadays you rely on IT, not on yourself.  I got friends who go to the grocery store to buy a couple of last minute items and they no more than get to Aisle #1 than they need to call the missus and see if she’d prefer the large size or the organic kind or a plastic jar not the glass one or exactly what kind of mustard?

I really don’t know what to make of this.  Do my buddies call across the house every morning to see what color socks they ought to wear today?  I mean, damn!  Make the decision!!  All by yourself.  Be brave.  Be bold.  Get the mustard YOU want.  Then live with the consequences!!!

We got GPS to help us NOT get lost.  We got Google to find us a quick answer to about anything.  We got Facebook to keep us abreast of our pals’ last 6 hours of late breaking activity.  We got internet shopping and Netflix movies and satellite TV.  We got e-mail and cellphone and twitter and text messaging.  We haven’t got one iota of time to make even a simple decision, you get right down to it.

Poor sorry Ralph Waldo.  He might’ve been stuck sorting it out solo, but we’re linked up, digitally connected, nano seconds from somebody else’s answer to any question we got.  And we got plenty of questions.  Just none we’re willing to answer by ourselves.  We need confirmation, we need a social network, we want to know if our friends will approve, if they bought that product, if they liked that movie, if they’re going to that restaurant.

Ralph probably ate his hot dogs without mustard, is my guess.  Too much trouble deciding.  Besides, if you google it up, the supermarket hadn’t been invented…..  Don’t believe me, cellphone a buddy and ask them.

Down here in the hoary valleys of the South End, we represent a striking cross-section of Trump’s America, meaning, the Have vs Have Not Society where Income Inequality prowls the hollers or hides behind gated security fences. I’ve got neighbors who live in mold-spored single-wides slowly rotting into the weeds living just a stone’s throw from Microsoft executives buying million dollar bluff homes as weekend vacation retreats. I used to think this diversity was healthy. I don’t mind rubbing shoulders with the fabulously rich any more than I do my fellow unemployed.

But lately the trend is decidedly against the poor. Rents are skyrocketing, jobs are scarce to non-existent, cost of living is going up, the rich keep getting richer and the rest, good luck to ya. Wages never budge upward but CEO pay is astronomical. The Great Recession didn’t hurt the wealthy. Wall Street got bailed out but not the poor. Even the Democrats abandoned the working stiff in favor of the middle class while they courted the corporate elite.

Capitalism never guaranteed income equity and now in the 21st Century, democracies around the globe are embracing right wing populism. Fascism is back in style and it’s popular, governments and corporate interests hand in hand. Karl Marx wasn’t too far off in his analysis, just his solution.

My neighbors aren’t particularly political and insofar as economic analysis goes, they’re happy so long as they can manage the monthly credit card minimum. One of my pals has a bumper sticker that reads: TRUMP: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. He’s living in a travel trailer. If Trump is the solution, god help him.

America was spozed to be the Land of Equal Opportunity. But folks can see now it’s not. They’re being left in the dust of the digital age and corporate hegemony, they’ll never get ahead, they’ll never share in the Facebook dividends — and they’re pissed. They’ll vote for anyone who pretends to care about their plight, a Trump, a Mussolini, a Duterte. They’ll listen to their lies and they’ll find out too late they’ve been duped. So will the rich. Trump serves their needs for the short term, we’ll see what Apple and Google think when the coup d’etat is a fait accompli.

Resistance, I hope, is not futile. The issue to fight for is income inequality. We’re seeing what unchecked capitalism leads to and sadly, we ain’t seen nothin yet.

A friend of mine just wrote to say she might have discovered she has a heretofore unknown brother, discovered, apparently through the wonders of DNA analysis. He is either her half brother or the son of her father’s brothers, the result, she says of a one night stand in some hick town in Arizona with his mother who until he was 11 thought was his sister. Yeah, I’m confused too. To make the story all the more interesting, his mother is African American. Of course I’m interested in selling the movie rights…

There are studies that show between 10 and 30% of us may not have the right dad when we send those father’s day cards. This is a testament to the infidelity of the American Mom whose libido may have been vastly underestimated. I had a buddy, a white guy, who had a black kid. Kind of a surprise at the birth, but like he said, the mizzus got drunk at a party one night and hey, these things happen, but he was going to raise the kid, someone else’s genetically, his by choice. Gotta say, I was impressed. If you met his wife, you’d never guess her wild side judging by her mousey disposition.

Another buddy of mine got a knock on his door one day a few years back and found his old paramour of even further back darkening his doorway with her son in tow. He’d had a fling with her when she was 15, picked her up in a park, took her home and carried on an affair for a week or two. Yeah, I know what statutory rape is. He did too, but it didn’t stop him. So now the chickens were flying home to roost. My pal, being the distrustful sort, decided to call her bluff, especially since the kid was pretty dark like his mom and didn’t show much Caucasian. And because she wanted money. Turned out the boy wasn’t his after all. I don’t know if he gave her some money anyway, but I hope he did.

I guess these DNA tests are great for exploring the family tree. Personally, I’m okay letting Dad be Dad. I don’t need to be sending multiple father’s day cards every damn year….

A few days ago Donald Trump told an interviewer that he wouldn’t mind if the rich, including himself, paid a little more in taxes. Keep in mind that this is the billionaire who paid zero income tax in 10 of the 15 years before becoming president. In 2017 he paid $750. In 2020 he paid no tax. I suspect most of us who paid that kind of tax wouldn’t mind a small increase either. I know I wouldn’t. Of course a few days later he reversed himself, saying a tax on the wealthy would give the rich a reason to leave the country. Some loss, I say. What, we’d lose a few thousand dollars here and there, maybe lose nothing some years?

Raise taxes on the rich? C’mon, who do you think runs this country, who do you think makes the laws, who do you think you’re kidding? What you’re watching these first 100 days is a graduate level course in how to balance the budget and still give the wealthiest a tax break they think they so richly deserve. Slash the government, fire its workers, eliminate programs for the poor, maybe even gut Medicaid, strip a bit of the safety nets, sure, why not balance it on the backs of those who can least afford it? And while we’re at it, let’s lay some stiff tariffs on every nation on earth, maybe generate revenue there, so what if the price of groceries and consumer goods goes up a little, just a minor pain on the poor for long term gain later. Right? Right??

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Trust me, the rich don’t mean that to apply to themselves. The President is having a soiree for all those who buy his meme cybercurrencies. He’s selling Bibles and tennis shoes, perfumes and steaks, he’s selling out everyone but his rich friends. Conflict of interest? Don’t make us laugh. This is the Gilded Age. Like the man said before pulling back on one tariff plan that had sent the stock market reeling, it’s a great time to Buy. Hint to all you poor folks: jump in the Market now, the water is great.

Mind the sharks, though….