The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I had a cousin whose husband taught in an upscale private school outside of Chicago. Some of the parents hired him part time to do maintenance and lawn work on the weekends, no doubt tossing him crumbs to supplement the low salary he was paid to teach their debutantes. One of his benefactors, upon answering the front door when Fred first came to the job for hedge trimming, refused to talk to him, informing him brusquely that the ‘help’ were required to use the back door, then unceremoniously slammed the door in his face. Welcome to the caste system, American style!

Fred must have needed the money is all I could figure because he went to the back door, knocked once more, received m’lord’s instructions and went to work manicuring his hedges. I know what I would have done, but then, easy for me to say back then since I didn’t have a wife and a kid, a mortgage, car payments, credit card debt and the rest. But the story stuck with me. And not just because my cousin actually had been a New York debutante and was the daughter of a vice president of a national tobacco company. Maybe she understood the perks and privileges of the rich and famous, let her husband lick boots, that’s how it works.

I read today that Ivanka and Jared refused to let the Secret Service agents assigned for their protection use any of their six bathrooms in their upscale digs. For a time they had a porta-potty sitting out by the street for the ‘help’ to use during those long waits. Course, the neighbors took umbrage, probably what his and her majesty wanted after complaints that the Secret Service cars were taking up precious parking spaces in their tony neighborhood, so eventually the agents had to locate other bathroom spots, everything from knocking on neighbors’ doors to using nearby businesses to relieve themselves, then finally renting a latrine in a basement for 3000 bucks a months.

I know what I would have done, fertilized the Kushner’s flower beds, but then, I’m not a patriotic civil servant with a career at stake, am I? But … I am a little weary of this kind of snobby royalty totally lacking in any sense of noblesse oblige. Just like their papa, the guy who took a tour with the Secret Service in their SUV after testing positive for Covid. I think it’s time to show these folks the back door and ask them to use it on the way out. And don’t come back.

A few days after the storming of the Bastille, King Donald has barricaded himself in the bunker of the White House, no doubt rabidly occupied with binge-watching his favorite news channels hoping to gauge the pulse of a nation that watched with incredulity the spectacle of a President encouraging his minions to march to the Capitol and stop the certification of Biden. Some dare call it treason, some merely sedition, and most call it criminal. Even his pandering former Attorney General, picked to be his personal lawyer in the Justice Department, called it outrageous and said it was time to Go.

Social media has banned his tweets and rantings. Members of his own party are considering invoking the 25th amendment, the one that removes an incapacitated president from office, Congress is eyeing impeachment once more, Cabinet loyalists are resigning while major corporations are withdrawing funding and support for the legislators who backed the move to block counting the electoral college votes. The worm has turned. With less than two weeks remaining in his term the Donald is a cornered animal, dangerous to everyone and to himself. What he might do, nobody knows including the Donald. Nasty business, politics.

Let’s be honest here and quit sugarcoating this. Trump is batshit crazy. His narcissistic balloon that’s the size of the Hindenburg dirigible is about to go up in flames. The man is a menace. The folks who toadied up to him are abandoning ship now. Apparently, even for the most loyal, a line has been crossed. Up ahead, even they can see the signpost that reads Welcome to the Twilight Zone. For the rest of us, well, we can sit smugly watching the unraveling of this Administration, say I told ya so, but we all know those yahoos that rallied behind the Trumpster and scaled the Capitol battlements are a sizeable percentage of our neighbors and friends.

They want to smash government. They don’t care how. If they can’t do it at the ballot box, by god, they’ll do it with clubs. Trump may be hauled away in a strait jacket, jabbering like an amphetamine monkey, but these folks will still be here to warn each other of the Lizard People and the phony Covid. They could care less about facts or logic, those are worthless to them. The fall of Trump will just be another warning sign. The Apocalypse is nigh, the End is near. Insanity is contagious.

Somewhere deep in the bowels of the White House a caged animal paces back and forth, channel changer in clenched hands, howling for attention, howling for his twitter, howling hour after long hour. Imagine a prisoner held without food or water. It’s nothing, NOTHING, like the torture of this miserable creature denied access to Twitter where his every keystroke is available to millions of his minions. Hell has no fury like a Trump without tweets, bet your sweet biddy on that, buddy.

I feel for the man, I really do. No Geneva Convention can help him, no First Amendment will give him access to those lost and locked platforms, no Human Rights Watch will intervene. If this isn’t an enhanced interrogation technique, I don’t know what is beyond 24/7 rap music piped into his cell, drowning out Fox and Friends no matter how loud he turns the volume up on his big screen TV. If this is not torture, what is?

Well, maybe what we endured for the past 4 years. But shouldn’t that give us an enhanced empathy for what he must be going through down in his personal dungeon. The man’s oxygen is attention. He lives for the headline, the latest outrage, the gasps of disbelief. When the time comes for an accounting at the Pearly Gates, all those lies, all those illegal activities, all those attempts to undermine the Constitution will come back to haunt him, but for now, are we to be his judge and jury, no sympathy, no quality of mercy? Couldn’t we maybe let him on some right wing app for a few minutes, something to give him balm in his darkest hour of need? Oh, I know what you’re thinking, he separated parents from their children down at the border, why not give him a taste of that kind of horrendous severance, the man from his social media?

And yet … aren’t we better than some Old Testament eye for an eye revenge, and yeah, I know, it’s one of his favorite passages in his favorite book, but c’mon, we shouldn’t let ourselves descend to that low a level. I know he thinks waterboarding was just fine and it would be easy to inflict the equivalent. But we’re evolved beings, not fighting dogs, not CIA rendition operatives. Although … I would wager a month’s salary he won’t make it to the Inauguration Day ceremony with anything like a semblance of sanity. Not that I’m proposing an office pool. Just sayng…

erless

Tough week for the forces of Good! The Great One, the anointed Leader who would bring the world back into the Light by leading his minions into the cavern of the Lizard People, the Capitol Building, instead drove home to watch the show on the television in his bunker. His troops scaled the battlements, broke down doors and penetrated the Halls of Darkness … only to find nobody had a plan. Not the capitol police and certainly not them. So much winning!

And worse! The twitter feed of their Anointed One was cut off at the neck. The President was banned from sending messages to his minions. What does this mean, the confused followers wondered. Some said the riots were the work of fake flag brearing Antifa soldiers, pretending to be the followers of the GodKing, but actually the footsoldiers of the Satanist pedophiles who feigned fear in the chambers of the evil, their goal to ultimately humiliate the President and delay the Storm, that day of reckoning when the deep state traitors are finally brought to their deserved desserts.

Trump had promised to reveal the Truth of the election frauds, not that his people needed proof. What they needed was the Plan. They needed him to mount his steed and ascend the steps in front of their angry legions. They needed a hero. They needed encouraging tweets. Once inside the bastions of iniquity, nobody knew what to do. Oh, sure, they stole a lectern and sat in Nancy I-eat-children- Pelosi’s desk. They scribbled some encouraging graffiti on the walls and busted up some furniture, strewed some file cabinet evidence of crimes against nature committed by the enemy pretending to cower in congressional chambers. But … what to do next? Did they miss the secret message? Did Donald give them a clue that they just didn’t decipher?

Or … whoa! Was this actually part of the Plan? Was this a ruse to make the evildoers rise up and try once more to impeach their Savior? Ho ho, wouldn’t that create a backlash out in the backwash?! The Lizard People might just have overplayed their hand! The Storm was coming after all! Inauguration Day might just be the promised reckoning. The imposter Biden would be revealed for the cannibal fraud he is, the socialist menace, the sick pederast who, once the Truth was known, would be the one who would be stepping down. Trump would ascend the podium, Trump would be President another term, possibly more. That must be the Plan! The Storm was coming and the Storm was coming soon! Bet your sweet tweet on that!

I only had one serious New Year’s Resolution this year. No, not to improve myself by reading more. Not to exercise more. Not to be kinder to my fellow man. Not to quit swearing, not to watch less TV, not to quit drinking, not to work harder, none of that stuff. No, my one and only resolution was to put politics in the rearview, stop being a news junkie, let the country take a nap with Sleepy Joe at the wheel now that Donald J. Trump was tossed on the ash heap of history, a pathetic little loser who would spend the remainder of his pathetic little life in courtrooms and hopefully in a jail cell where he could write his three volume memoirs with all the time in the world.

Four years of this spoiled brat of a man was plenty. Every day seven days a week four weeks a month twelve months a year for four long years the billionaire king intruded on my serenity like a roof leak dripping on my favorite things until they turned soggy and mildewed, drip drip drip until I thought I would lose my mind. The man lived to be in the spotlight. It was all he wanted. Me me me, wah wah wah, as incessant as a rash of poison ivy, scratch me scratch me scratch me til it bleeds and spreads and spreads some more. No end to it, just one outrage after another, mindless infuriating idiocy, the bleating of a baby who wants food all day and all night. It was as if insanity was forever knocking on the door of my head wanting in, wanting to use the bathroom, wanting to borrow the phone, wanting to eat my dinner, wanting to watch TV, let me in, let me in, let me in!

But he lost the election and for awhile that knocking on my door grew more distant. He seemed to have retreated to his rat cage in the back of the White House to nurse his grudge, refused to talk to reporters, maybe left the spotlight for awhile. My resolution seemed safe. No more Trump. No more stupid politics. The adults were back in charge. Sure, not nearly as exciting but hey, exactly what I needed for awhile. He could start his own TV talk show, okay by me, I wouldn’t be tuning in. Tweet your heart out, loser, I don’t have an account. Move down to Mar-a-Lago, it’s as far from the South End as anyplace in America, far far away, not even close to my radar.

No telling what the next few weeks bring. A call for the military to overturn the election? Make Jared ambassador to Mars? Call a few more governors or Secretary of States where he lost to Biden? Pack the Supreme Court with his Medal of Freedom recipients, folks like Rush Limbaugh and Jim Jordan? Buy Greenland? Attack Iran and nuke North Korea? Mandate no mask wearing? Arrest Sleepy Joe? Who knows? What I do know is my New Year’s Resolution is in shreds. It looks like a long year again. Maybe next New Year I’ll keep my vow….