The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The mizzus and me were thinking of having an Election Party this mid-term. Serve up some bubbly and hopefully celebrate a Blue Wave. But then we remembered the last two election parties we had, one where Trump thumped Hillary and the other where Gore lost to Bush. Now, I like a good cry as well as the next man, but three in a row, not so much. So we’re going to skip that party and hope our luck changes for the better.

Trump is on the stump now. Hell if I know who’s running the country while he’s jetting to the red states with his little red MAGA cap, maybe Kellyanne, maybe Sarah Sanders. All I know is he can’t do as much damage on the road. And even he seems to understand that if this election goes Blue, his next two years he can look forward to some real investigations, not the pretend ones we have now. What is in those tax returns he’s waiting for the audit to conclude before showing us how the Master of the Deal evades paying anything. While we’re at it, maybe take a look at those emoluments, at the nepotism, at the Russian connections, at the Hillary e-mails that turned up in Trump’s campaign committee, at a few of those business deals of his.

Goodbye to the ‘pass’ the GOP gave him for two years if that happens, hello to Bob Mueller’s detailed results of his investigation. Course, if it’s a Red Wave, it’s crying time again. We’ll get the message that Trump wasn’t just some anomaly where the electorate wanted to shake things up and he was the monkey wrench. We’ll discover the majority in this country love a thug, a bully, a dog-whistling demagogue who prefers dictators far more than the democracy he intends to subvert.

I’m optimistic the country made a mistake two years ago and now realize the damage done. I’m hopeful we’ll right the ship of state and send Trump’s enablers packing for their new lobbying jobs. But I’m too cynical to be confident. Trump showed me what this country can easily become. And worse, what it already is. We’ll see shortly if we’ve seen an even darker future. Meanwhile, we’re skipping the party.

Rep. Matt Shea, a state legislator in the Spokane Valley, has been putting out a pamphlet citing Biblical passages to promote war and violence. His ‘Biblical Basis for War’ is a four page guide to waging holy war against those who refuse to obey Biblical Law. Now, I’m an eye for an eye kind of guy most of the time, but this is maybe a little more, I don’t know, close to what the good Representative for the Inland Empire might accuse the Muslims of doing if they could impose Sharia Law.

You have an abortion, you change gender, you marry someone of the same sex, well, you’re guilty of violating Biblical Law and should be punished. And, to quote from Matt’s text, ‘if they do not yield, kill all males.’ Kinda harsh, Matt, but pretty clear. Maybe stone them. Or behead them. Whatever you like but send a message to all the liberals and scofflaws, you ignore the Bible, buddy, you get what you deserve, death delivered by the righteous!!

Death to the gays, death to the woman who has an abortion, death to the folks who get a sex change, death to the unyielders, boy, howdy, that’s a lot of executions. And if you start throwing in death because you eat pork, death if you commit adultery, death if you steal, death if you worship false gods, holy prayer meeting, Matt, who’s gonna be left to vote for you?

These are strange times in the Holy Land, no doubt about it. Probably smart to get your hands on a Bible and read it, maybe take some serious notes if you want to avoid the Wrath of Matt. Over in Pakistan the True Believers are up in arms over some Christian woman who blasphemed the Prophet. She’s been on death row for years, but the Courts there said she was free to go. Not so fast, Sister, the Muslim Mattsters cried and poured out into the streets of Islamabad by the thousands, blocking her exit out of that less than tolerant country. Now the Supreme Court says they’ll review the verdict to avoid a political crisis. Seems to me we could defuse this fairly easy. Trade the woman for Matt. They’d both be happier in the other country.

Let’s recap the week, okay? Kashoggi assassinated in a Turkish embassy, a massacre in a Jewish synagogue, an announcement to pull out of the nuclear treaty with Russia, a scheme to smear Mueller before the midterms with a paid accusation of sexual malfeasance, troops sent to the border to guard against hundreds of women and children escaping violence in Central America, pipe bombs sent to a dozen Democrats and news organizations, Trump’s threat to end birthing rights to those born in America, try to keep up if you can….

It’s impossible. Most of us have already forgotten Kashoggi, murdered apparently by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, a friend of Trump’s son-in-law and Trump himself who thinks maybe the twenty-seven excuses the Prince has given should be assumed true at least until the next alibi. But, hey, it’s already page 17, old news, buried under 250 tweets. Our short attention spans have been diverted down 16 rabbit holes since then and the Next Big Tweet is coming in like a Tomahawk missile soon as you open up that computer. There are terrorists in the invading force south of the border. There are people with diseases they intend to spread across borderless America. The children of immigrants should never be given citizenship even if they’re born here regardless of the 14th Amendment, not if an executive order can stop them.

An anti-Semite walked into a Jewish synagogue with an AR-15 assault rifle and murdered 11 people who had spent their lives helping immigrants acclimate to this very strange culture we have. The President tweeted that when he went to Pittsburg to show his empathy to the grieving city he and Melania were shown a great deal of respect. Not one word about the victims, not one word about the climate that created a monster. Nope, nice visit, thanks for the courtesy to me and the mizzus.

Did his politics of division trigger this rampage? Hell if I know. But the drumbeat of mockery, the dog whistled racism, the attacks on the press as fake and unbalanced, I think we know they had something to do with it. Don’t blame the messenger, he says, don’t blame me, we need to come together, one America, united we stand. Then he tweets that the lying press is the enemy of the people.

This week we’re voting. My ballot went in last week. Rumor in the lying press is that we’re turning out in record numbers for the mid-term. We’ll see in a week who America thinks is the real Enemy.

With Halloween cranking up full volume in stores right after Labor Day, Pastor Paul down at the Little Church in the Ravine made it his mission to warn the South End about a holiday devoted to Devil Worship and the celebration of Evil Spirits.  He’s been pounding the pulpit three Sundays in a row now and we still got three more before Fright Night actually arrives.  No doubt he’ll need chiropractic work on that right hammering hand.

Most of the congregation is my age, meaning they remember when Halloween really was a spooky affair.  Outhouses got moved a few crucial feet back, wagons got disassembled then reassembled on the shed roof, burning bags of dog poop were set on fire in the driveway.  Trick or Treat was no idle threat.  Now, of course, the only Trick is the one played on us by the candy industry.  Like most every holiday, holy or not, Halloween’s been popularized, commercialized and sanitized.  Now they’re profit industries.  Economic engines.  Job creators.

I haven’t seen a kid in a skeleton outfit come knocking on the shack door in decades.  Pastor Paul is maybe a bit overwrought about the flock’s grandkids serving as Spawn of Satan when maybe we ought to worry more about the little tykes dressing up in $50 Star Wars outfits, becoming subjugated Slaves to Obesity.  The poor little high fructose sugar beggars haven’t got the foggiest clue what Pastor Paul is worried about.  And their parents, who’ve driven them to the lucrative candy-rich suburbs of Stanwoodopolis, mostly worry about child predators and sewing needles stuck in apples.

Nowadays Halloween ends before dark and the security lights come on.  Hardly matters with Mom and Dad sitting shotgun in their SUV idling by the curb….  Now, I’m not advocating we go back to the days of cruel tricks.  But it did encourage some creative thinking.  Although maybe this is what Pastor Paul is railing about.  He’s got a steep hill to climb down here on the South End, is all I know.  That, or he should look into Exorcism as a second profession.  Be a cash crop down here.  And not just around Halloween.

Little Jimmy was preaching at the South End Marina’s Pilot House Lounge the other night, carrying on about the upcoming elections. “It’s like we got two Halloweens,” he was orating to about 8 of us layabouts who weren’t quite ready to go home and face the music. “One with goblins and then the one we vote for spooks, no treats.”

“Yeah,” Biker Bob threw in, pounding his Bud bottle on the formica table, sending suds onto the pulpit. “And then you got 4 more years of Halloween every damn day.”

Some of the boyz, especially after more than a couple, don’t much believe in the democratic system we got. “Throw em all out, I say,” says Ralph from behind the bar where he’s filling in for Joey, the usual weeknight bartender and referee. Joey never takes a side in a political discussion, wouldn’t say Gerrymander with a mouthful, which explains why the place stays open in these partisan times we live in and the Stanwoodopolis Gazette isn’t half obituaries of patrons shot in the parking lot.

George next to me sits pensively peeling the label off his beer bottle before venturing, “You mean everybody but YOUR guy, don’tcha Ralph?”

“Oh, my guy’s okay,” Ralph agrees, wiping his hands on a dirty apron. “He voted to kill that Gun Bill this year.” Ralph’s a big NRA fan, something he usually espouses this side of the bar most nights until Joey tells him to pipe down. Ralph can get pretty agitated without much counter-argument even. Argue with him and he can get scary as Halloween in an Ebola isolation unit.

Half the place votes for their guy, it turns out. The other half are too disgusted or apathetic to even vote, especially mid-term. They’d vote if they could vote out the president, but nothing’s going to change, why bother? they think. So Ralph’s vote should count double, a fact that makes him happy. And me … I take the point about a prolonged Halloween in the Land of the Brave.