The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Everyday, more Trump. Trump … Trump … Trump. A water torture of dripping tweets, outrageous declarations, petulant tantrums. Never ending. Constantly updated. And always more crazed. Yesterday he labeled the Danish Prime Minister a nasty woman for treating him badly by refusing to negotiate a real estate deal for Greenland. Then he canceled a state visit to the land of Hamlet. Kim Jong Un is busy across the Pacific testing intermediate missiles, but that’s no big deal, he tells the Japanese who are strangely troubled by their nuclear neighbor. The big deal was Greenland.

Now he’s calling himself the Chosen One in his dealings with China, the Lion of Judah and the King of Israel in the Middle East, the God-King here on earth. Let the nations of the planet tremble, he is the Second Coming. Irritate him and he will breathe fire on your people. Try to reason with him and he will raise your tariffs. If the entire world is plunged into a new recession, so be it. Mighty is his will and terrible is his wrath. He no longer has or needs advisors, so great is his intellect. He keeps an army of court jesters, mostly in cabinet posts, that he rages at, compliments, ignores and eventually fires. If and when he resorts to having them executed, his followers will cheer heartily.

These are the best of times, these are the worst of times, these are quintessentially Trump Times. Madness rules the Kingdom and all semblance of order has been banished. What does it matter if we are thrown into chaos, what we want, what we expect, what we seemingly demand are daily plot twists that hold our collective interests. Crazy? Not if it boosts the ratings. Insane? Not if every waking hour Trump holds our attention.

Some say we should invoke the 25th amendment. Remove the madman from office before he does more harm than what he has wrought already. You know and I do too, we’re the madmen, we’re the crazy, we’re the hopelessly insane. We tune in to this the way we hunger for a good catastrophe, TV cameras focused 24/7 on the dead, the victims, the carnage. And then we move on to the next mass killing, the next hurricane, the next flood, the next car pile-up, the coming pandemic, the future economic crash.

When life has become a reality show, you definitely need a good narrator.

Johnny the Hammer runs Piranha Brothers Construction with his partner Crazy Eddie. They fight tooth and nail, but for a time in those halcyon years when most of Seattle and half of California were migrating north like spawn crazed humpies, they had enough work that they could run a house or more each and stay out of each other’s hair. Well, at least Johnny had hair. Under his baseball cap, Eddie was bald and pale as an ostrich egg, although not near as smooth. More than a couple of times he’d been coldcocked by beams coming down on his noggin in mishaps and the result was he had permanent lumps in that hard skull of his that never subsided.

Johnny says that’s what makes Eddie so damn stupid — all the sense he ever had got knocked out of him early. Still, he builds a better house than Johnny and even though Johnny hates to admit it, he calls Eddie when some blueprint gets overly complicated or a fancy roof design’s flashing gives him too long a pause. Besides a magnetic attraction to toppling 6×6’s, Eddie’s got a head for details and complexity. Can’t read well, but he visualizes every stud and roughout as if he had a photo developing in the darkroom of his brain.

Johnny must’ve told this story a hundred times of Eddie getting all excited about the new shop that opened on the South End. Nails and More. This was back in the days when the two still could call themselves friends, still worked on one house at a time. If they had one to work on…. Eddie had been arguing with the counterman at the Lumber Yard over some charge he had questioned and, by god, he was ticked off by the end of the argument and eager for a new vendor. Any vendor. Even if it meant driving off island and paying cash.

One morning he took off mid-hammer stroke on the McMansion the Crosby’s of Palo Alto were having Piranha Bros. build on the bluffs of the west side and drove his one ton old Ford up toward Elger Bay Store where the sign he’d noticed that morning had finally seduced him with its siren call: NAILS AND MORE GRAND OPENING

He was hoping a little too hard the ‘MORE’ was lumber and possibly even some electric and plumbing.

Maybe it was too little coffee. Maybe too much. When he got inside the door and before his eyes could adjust from full sunlight, Sherri, the new owner, greeted him with a Come right on in, I’m Sherri and you’re my first customer and I’m not going to charge you for this visit. On the house!

Hoo boy, Eddie couldn’t believe his ears. Visions of free shingles, siding, 2×6’s, bandoliers of nails for his pneumatic —- all floated up like a Christmas in Camaloch. When his eyes finally adjusted, he realized his mistake. Couldn’t come right out and admit it, naturally, so Eddie, indeed, unwittingly became Sherri’s first customer. Full nail trim and cuticle treatment, but he passed on the ‘More’. “Gotta get back on the job,” he mumbled and fled into the sunlight.

Eddie dated Sherri for awhile that year and it was remarked upon by all the Piranha Bros.’ crews how, despite the cuts and callouses, Eddie’s hands were as immaculately manicured as a golf course green. Course, never in his presence.

When the Board of the South End Senior Center met last month at what was the old Tyee Grange Hall, now the SESC, members were caught off-guard when Brenda Bodice, the newly elected President, proposed changing the name. “We need to make this a Big Tent,” she argued strenuously in the face of what she assumed would be a recalcitrant Board. “We have to expand the Mission,” she cried, waving her half full paper Starbucks cup the way a general would hoist his sword atop his horse. In fact it looked as if Brenda might stand on her chair the more animated she became.

“Aw, Brenda,” Jim Swenson, newly elected Vice President and current highest volume realtor up at Windy Rear’s last remaining office on the island after closing satellite offices this past month, “we argue this chestnut every new President. New name, same game, you ask me. What’re you proposing we call it anyway, the Senile Center and hope we draw the dementia crowd?” From his perch near the back door, Jerry Cook guffawed. Maybe, he chortled, we could play Jeopardy with them, see who can remember the clue long enough to hit the buzzer.

Mandy Van Horne, whose mother had just been diagnosed with Alzheimers, scolded him. “Instead of making fun of the afflicted, Jerry, maybe you could button it up and give your humor a rest. I think it’s tired.” Jerry started to mouth off once more but thought better of it. Mandy was not a woman you want to offend. Her ex-husband Wally could tell you some terrifying stories if you needed proof.

“We need to draw a younger crowd,” Brenda forged forward. “Half our membership is dead or will be soon. Same as what happened to the Tyee Grange. You have to give the kids a reason to come down and they’re sure not coming down to a Senior Center for bingo night if they’re not seniors. Is that hard to understand?”

Elizabeth Aalmgren wondered what they would want to do with kids anyway. ‘We going to bring in rap bands?” she asked sarcastically. Brenda, not about to be dissuaded easily, said, “We can figure that out once we get a new name. I don’t know, Liz, maybe some music for the younger crowd isn’t a bad idea. They sure aren’t coming to hear the South End String Band play old time fiddle songs from two centuries ago, I know that.”

“What about calling us just The Center,” Jerry said. “Easy to remember.” Mandy threw him a glare and Jerry immediately threw up his hands. “I didn’t mean it to be funny, Mandy. Sorry, geez, don’t take it the wrong way.”

Phil from Whidbey Bank suggested Tyee Center. Donna from Albertson’s Funeral Home thought Community Center would be neutral enough. Jim Swenson declared he didn’t want to change the name at all, think of all those stationary changes, addresses, email accounts, “c’mon, it would be a total headache. Plus, think of the history. We been the South End Senior Center for twenty-five years. Why change it now?”

The meeting lasted an extra half hour until Phil said he needed to get home to watch the latest installment of some show he recommended to everyone, in its 3rd season and a little late to start. Jim wanted out too so he proposed renaming themselves the South End Center. Phil seconded it, Brenda grumbled, Elizabeth said let’s do it and Jerry voted yes too, motion passed, meeting adjourned. Brenda turned out the lights, locked the doors and walked to her car in the dark parking lot. Rap bands, she was thinking she’d have to look into that. Somebody down at the high school must know a few….

Give me your Anglo-Saxons, your moneyed few, your cuddled masses yearning to invest, the pampered rich of your teeming shore. Send these, the Christian, righteous free to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Well, what did you expect when we voted in a playboy billionaire TV reality show huckster? You thought maybe a compassionate conservative? A thousand points of light? You figured this narcissistic braggart liar would reach down to the poor, the huddled masses here and beyond? Did you actually buy what he was selling? You think maybe immigrants would be the new Apprentice?

What he’s selling is a country that prefers whites over people of color, men over women, rich over poor, the powerful over the weak. He’s not interested in equality. Or democracy. Or the rule of law. He’s promoting the law of the jungle, dog eat dog, lie through your teeth, attack those who disagree with you. He’s Old White School, through and through. His vision for America is a sea to shining sea with Trump Towers stretching to the farthest horizon. Gold is his color, not purple mountains majesty. He’s unread, he’s undisciplined, he’s mean as a junkyard Doberman. He’s a racist, a misogynist, an elitist, a greedy little leech and he’s good, very good, at self-promotion. He may not fool all of the people all of the time, but he’s hoodwinked enough to get himself elected dictator of America.

He promotes conspiracy theories, dismisses science and facts, mocks anyone who gets in the way of his reflection in his mind’s mirror. He is without policy, without ideas, without thoughtful analysis, without much of anything outside the narrow range of his greed and his ambition. He claims to be the Master of the Deal, he purports to be one of the richest men in the world, he brags that his brain is one of the biggest. He admires dictators and thugs.

But in truth, as if anyone can handle the truth anymore, he’s a cheap thug, a fraud and a phony, a man who declares bankruptcy then brags at the savings, a rich guy who wouldn’t want you to see his balance sheet, a high stakes gambler with someone else’s money and a politician without a clue.

They say a country gets the leader it deserves. What a wretched state of affairs….

Fat shaming is apparently back in vogue judging by Trump’s mockery of a man he thought was protesting him. Told him he had a serious weight problem and pointed him out to the mob in Manchester. Told him to start exercising.

I guess it’s ironic the guy turned out to be an ardent Trump supporter. Didn’t even bother the fellow that his idol had called him out for obesity. Melania is running that anti-bullying program, but apparently it hasn’t done much to curb her charming husband’s propensity for everything from racist tweets to fat shaming. Charity starts in the home apparently.

What interested me about this latest episode from the Bully Pulpit wasn’t the act itself but the victim’s response. He loves his Trump. Best thing that’s happened to this country, he claimed to a Fox interviewer. Digest that for a nano second or three. He’s just been called a Fattie by the most powerful man in the world, his President, the guy who claims to be unifying the citizens of this country, the same country he’s making Great Again, and he’s unfazed by being singled out for ridicule and shame before an audience of thousands, soon to be millions. Doesn’t alter his opinion one little bit, no sir, who cares if the powerful use their office to reach down to the little man and kick him in the teeth.

If you wonder, as I do, why this creep of a President isn’t despised, much less dropping in support, well, here’s a peek into the folks who vote for a despot. Some people love the idea of a boot on the neck of their enemies. And apparently they need someone to tell them who their enemies are. Hillary’s a crook, says the guy who won’t show his tax returns. Send those four foreign looking women back where they came from, says the fellow whose wife and family are here on bogus visas. Everybody look at that fat slob up in the top row of this auditorium, cries the man in the big suit. Exercise, buddy, shouts the sedentary fuhrer. Notice how that Muslim woman (who was a Gold Star mother) isn’t allowed to speak, growls the guy who evaded the draft with phony bone spurs. It’s enough to make an intelligent person weep.

Fascism looks a lot like this, you ask me and I know you didn’t. It’s not just the guy with the megaphone and the daily threats and continuous insults. It’s the people who will stick with him. Even after he attacks them or what they once held dear. That may be the serious weight problem and it has nothing to do with obesity.