The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The Chinese government is worried about their impressionable young people. Decadence has spread from the West to their once secretive and sequestered society and the communists in charge see this as an existential threat. Video games for the kids can only be used three hours a week. In America that would cause rioting in the schools. Our precious small fry probably game more than three hours a day. You know, when they’re not on social media. Myself, I suspect the Chinese might be onto something, but hey, freedom means you’re welcome to addict yourself to video or Facebook or Qanon, your mind, your choice.

Now they want to ban effeminate sissy males from appearing on state approved television. What this means, exactly, is anybody’s guess. But I’m expecting an edict from on high to come down any day to ban macho women from the boob tube too. Don’t want those gaming deprived impressionable youth slipping into transgender mode. Not when the Sleeping Tiger is finally coming out of its millennia snooze. No sir, they need hot blooded males and gender approved females for the Silk Road future they envision, not some mincing Chinese samurai that look like Korean pop song idols wearing make-up and cross dressing, no telling if they’re male or female or something in between. Geez, what’s next, government sponsored sex changes?

Chairman Xi is flexing some he-man biceps these days, even mandated teaching his political philosophies in schools. That little red book of Mao, fuggetaboutit, there’s a new dictator in town, kids, the Chairman of Everything and he expects some respect, not some Western adolescent lip from drug addled brats spoiled by their decadent Netflix addicted parents. Spare the teachings, lose the child, something like that.

He wants Marxism taught from kindergarten to high school. Not sure how Karl would feel about the new and improved Chinese communism, maybe not what he had in mind, but if video games are the opiates of the masses now, he might approve cutting down on Resident Evil’s online viewing. A few more sequels and he might even let the populace practice religion an hour a week. Well, maybe not the Uighurs.

We left Afghanistan last night with our tails between our legs. Twenty years, two trillion dollars, thousands of lives, tens of thousands of casualties. The President is taking heat from all quarters that the exit strategy was too little too late, botched completely, so friends and foe alike proclaim. But not me. The man was the only one with the guts to pull us out of there. Was it a mess at the end? Oh yeah, it was a chaotic reprise of Saigon. Could it have been handled more adroitly? Personally, I doubt it. Course, I’m not a military strategist.

The military strategists had twenty years to figure out Afghanistan so don’t talk to me about screwed up exits. We had two decades of slow motion screw-ups. By the end Trump negotiated with the Taliban without even bothering to bring in the Afghan government. We’ll be leaving May 1st, he said, and then swapped out the hundreds of Taliban fighters held in custody, no doubt plenty of them waiting at the airport for the last days of the war. There’s plenty of blame to go around so sure, blame the guy who finally said enough is really enough. It was a hopeless cause and where that two trillion dollars went, your guess is as good as mine.

What I know is that we didn’t spend it on curing cancer. We didn’t spend it on health care. We didn’t use it to shrink down income inequality. We weren’t spending it on better schools or education. We didn’t build up our infrastructure, fix our bridges, bring the internet to rural communities. Hell, I don’t know, maybe we could’ve used that money to make America great again, why not???

Most of the critics of the exit really just want to stay there, keep a garrison or three, protect the women the Taliban treat like dogs, bring some kind of democracy to their war torn country that essentially is engaged in a civil war. They would spend another two trillion, hire contractors like Blackwater and Eric Prince, sell armaments and keep the military industrial complex fat and happy because, well, it costs plenty to keep an empire running.

So when you hear folks say we just don’t have the money to fix some of our own problems, might cause debt, might cause runaway inflation, might have to raise taxes, tell them Sleepy Joe just saved you a couple trillion on an endless wasted war. Not bad, Joe, not bad at all.

My mama told me, way more than a few times: Go to College. The first time she told me that was after a buddy and myself made a deal with our neighbor to pull two of his stumps, I think for $10 a stump. Not being professional stump pullers – actually these were our first stump jobs – we had no idea how long it might take to dig around an old maple tree, whack off its roots with axes and hatchets, put a come-a-long on the thing and haul it out. Like pulling a giant tooth, how hard could it be?

Two days later, blisters on both our hands, we finally disgorged the monster stump. Nothing to it! Course, we had the other one to do and now we knew – and dreaded – the work ahead of us. But a contract was a contract, a handshake a handshake, even for us 15 year olds. So much for our summer vacation. Our neighbor gave us each 10 bucks and no tip, no bonus, no thank you. Four days of hard labor. My mother, on the other hand, had a tip waiting for me at home.

“What do you think you made an hour?” she wanted to know. “Not much,” I said, pretty bummed and very tired. I figured a quarter an hour. And yeah, don’t say it, I know a quarter was worth more in 1965.

My mom asked if I had any idea how much my father made an hour. Actually, I didn’t, not a clue, but I hazarded ‘fifty cents?” Mom, well, let’s just say she didn’t have the greatest sense of humor, especially not wise-ass son humor, so she cut right to her Lesson of the Day, told me he made 50 times what I just made, all because – and here was the crux – He Went to College.

Now, I didn’t tell her I’d eventually have my own stump removal company, hire a hundred kids to pull them, franchise the whole she-bang and become a millionaire when the stock went public. I just put my head down and said. “I got it Mom.” I did go to college but ended up working stump pulling wages at various dead end jobs before becoming a starving artist.

Today I was at an oral surgeon seeing about yanking a tooth too far gone for a root canal and crown. My doc came in, said hello, snapped on some blue exam gloves, looked in my pie hole and said make an appointment at the desk for an extraction while you’re paying for this exam. At most, 5 minutes. The bill came to $100. If you’re as expert at math as me, a college graduate, that comes to $1200 an hour.

So okay, Mom, happy now??

I’m laying bets most of you were pretty weary of four long years of nearly incessant Trump Trump Trump. Maybe thought, oh boy, we get a little peace and quiet. After a year and a half of Covid Covid Covid, maybe not…. Now we got Kabul Kabul Kabul, another Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi. One thing about the internet, repetition is good, just hammer it and hammer it and yammer it some more until that migraine keeps any joy in life at arm’s reach.

Course, get ready for Climate Change. Every flood, every tropical storm, every heat wave, every drought, every wildfire, every sneeze, every everything, we will be inundated by a tsunami of apocalyptic warnings, ominous predictions, dystopian scenarios and future catastrophes.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree, this is the Existential Threat of our lifetime. Donald J. Trump, not so much. Covid, unless it morphs into a flesh-eating monster, not either. Afghanistan, c’mon, just another foreign policy misadventure we’ll forget as fast as Grenada. But the oceans acidifying, desertification spreading, coastal cities swamped, insects dying off, extinctions expanding, the tundra melting, pretty soon the drumbeat will look like the pathetic palliatives they are. You care what Kim Kardashian wore last week on the Riviera when millions of refugees are fleeing collapsed societies?

Okay, quite a few will care. Hell, quite a few would vote for Trump a second time, anything to keep from facing Hard Reality. Covid? Doesn’t really exist. Climate Change? Don’t make them laugh. But … a change, like Dylan said, it’s a’comin’. Probably a little late and a dollar short. Well, trillions of dollars short.

I wish I was more optimistic, I really do. Happy Trump’s gone, happy we left Afghanistan, happy I got a vaccination or two for Covid. But hard times are coming. And just between us girls, what Kim K is wearing, or not wearing, this season isn’t going to stop the glaciers from melting, but it does make my heart grow a few degrees colder.