The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I was just reading that Amazon has 30,000 non-human employees, what we proletariat call robots. In 2014 Facebook acquired Whatsapp whose worth was 22 billion dollars. The messaging firm had a total of 55 human employees, not that I think they were profit-sharing with them. Google, whose worth is more than most country’s G.D.P., has 60,000 workers compared to GM (worth a tenth of Google) which has 215,000. And you can bet your 401-K GM is on the forefront of automation.

Trump can talk about bringing back the coal mining jobs til the cows come home again, but if anybody thinks employment is going to go up in the land of the digitized, home of the android, they need to adjust their meds. Go ahead and bring those factories back to America’s fruited plain, but don’t expect them to hire us humans. That dream left with the Industrial Age. The discontent from the folks who watched their jobs outsourced to China, Mexico and the robots, well, that resentment is only going to get worse. And the income inequality too.

This is Future Shock rearing its ugly orange head. This is the future roaring up in our rearview way closer than it appears, ready to roar past, curves or not. The folks who think we can close the barn door and wall off the borders, they either need to stop smoking whacky tobaccy or start. Pulling the covers over our heads isn’t really the brightest color in the crayon box. I know, folks are worried about global warming and immigration issues, minimum wage and Black Lives Matter, transgender rights and gun control, abortion restrictions and prayer in the schools. All worthy causes and reasons for concern, granted. But when half the population is thrown out of work, when the 1% who own the wealth become the overlords who wall themselves in armed compounds and patrol the perimeter with drones to protect their largesse from the peasants who suspect injustice is being done to them and their odds of winning the Lottery are actually worse than they ever dreamed, well, all those other issues will take a backseat to the bonfires that light up the purpled mountains majesty.

Like the song sez, the jobs are gone boyz … and they ain’t comin back. And if you think Trump is scary, get ready for what’s coming when people who aren’t stockholders in those companies worth billions with 55 employees can’t feed their families. You might just change your mind about gun control.

These are tough times in the Land of the Rich, Home of the Corporation. And you know as well as me, when times get tough, the tough huddle up with their tax lawyers. My newly minted president doesn’t pay taxes and claims that because he doesn’t, it proves how smart he is. The dishonest media wants him to show them his tax statements, maybe see where his money is actually coming from over there in Russia. The dishonest media distorts his real position on those Russian hacks and his refusal to believe the good Moscovites would stoop so low as to feed Wikileaks the Democratic National Committee’s e-mails. So what if even the right wing Republicans believe the dishonest media, someone has to stand firm in his convictions, or at least his gut instinct.

My mother would have washed our mouths out with soap, but those were vicious times when the rod was never spared and the child was seldom lost. Even if the child ended up beating his own kids. A few days ago that seem like months Mr. T was made President of these not so United States, proving once again that democracy is a work in progress and maybe not a permanent state of affairs. For those of you who think that placing our trust in a racist, thin-skinned bully best known for self-promotion is tantamount to a trainwreck, let me say that folks who were fed up with Wall Street shenanigans and lost jobs in these globalized times threw the dice. My liberal pals who think Bernie might have won or maybe Joe Biden, okay, maybe, but the Donald fed off the fury and resentment of folks who think the immigrants have stolen their jobs, that blacks are welfare cheats, that homosexuals are going to hell in a hurry, that transsexuals are bathroom predators, that both political parties are beholden to Big Money, that a woman, particularly a Clinton, was unfit for office and that it was high time to shake things up.

Well, we’ll see, won’t we? If those folks pinned their hopes on a vicious clown, well, we’re all in for a wild ride. If some of their anger was misdirected, okay, maybe the next election they’ll try some other crazy experiment. You know, like fairer tax laws or single payer health care. But don’t bet your 401-K on it. People still vote their pocketbooks and until the rich learn they don’t need to accumulate every last dime and nickel and Lincoln penny and to hell with the lazy poor, you can expect pitchfork politics to continue. Even the 1% might regret this much excessive greed when the guillotines get rolled into the public squares.

Meanwhile, let’s hope the dishonest media isn’t cowed by all this bluster and bullying. If nobody is checking on facts, Big Brother has already won. And the rich will only get richer. God only knows, they need the money.

I love a good holiday as much as the next yahoo … but c’mon, this Groundhog’s Day business, let’s be honest, the Chamber of Commerce out there in Pullmyleg, Pennsylvania has pulled a fast one on those of us who take meteorologic prediction seriously. Down here on the convergence zoned South End, No Way is a groundhog going to see his shadow on Feb. 2nd. Even if we had groundhogs! This thing just gives Science a bad name. And lately, the last thing it needs in these superstitious, Mayan Calendar, end-of-the-world times is a black eye over some mammalian hairball on the East Coast seeing its hairball shadow (or not) and then extrapolating that to El Nino or asteroid strikes on Wall Street or global warming.
Which is precisely why some of the more empirically minded boyz down at the Mabana Body Shop have been searching, in a deductive sort of methodology, an alternative Predictor of winter longevity. Hellfire, if winter’s just going to last until April, we figure there’s no point in fighting serious incentive-reducing Inevitability. We’ll just pull the covers up, collect unemployment and wait for spring. This is how civilizations thrive: they figure out tides and seasons for planting schedules and harvest times and happy hours.
The model the boyz constructed over the past decade or so is a local paradigm that utilizes a 5 gallon polyethylene bucket of fresh caught Dungeness crabs —- I KNOW you’re going to point out they’re illegal this time of season, but listen, we’re putting em back when the data is collected. Spirit of the Law, if not the Letter and that, in a clamshell is the very essence of the South End Way. —- So you got a pail of clacking claws and now you bring out a dog, any dog, any breed, random sampling, see? And you let the pooch check out the crustaceans. No shadows, no hibernating drowsy marmots. And if the crab gets a lock on Snoopy’s snout, voila, studies have shown that is a true omen of an early spring. The dog schnozz slips the noose, 6 more weeks of sleeping in.
Simple. Like Einstein says, the more elegant the theory, the higher the probability it’s correct. And the boyz down at the body shop will tell you, the accuracy here is in the 90 percentile range, statistically astounding. We’re not claiming, like those unabashed self-promoters in Pennsylvania, that this will predict spring for the entire country, but for all us Left Coasters, rest assured, Feb 2nd now has science as its bedrock foundation. We’ll leave it to the South End Chamber of Commerce how they want to capitalize on it. Crab Dog Day. Nice profitable ring to it, don’t you think, kind of like a cash register. If we can keep PETA at bay….

In between playoff football games the talk down at the Pilot House Lounge usually turns to politics. These days, even during the games…. The other evening Bobby, the night bartender, had the TV turned to CNN at the request of the Vandiver Brothers who had wearied of the hockey game on ESPN. “Puck this, Bob! How about some news instead of this stupid game with teams we never heard of.” Bob’s a little new to the Lounge scene, a recent hire, and so he acquiesced, not realizing, I guess, he might as well have tossed a Roman Candle in the middle of the bar and yelled Fire!

The channel couldn’t have been switched more than 30 seconds before Wally, seeing a newscrawl about Trump firing his attorney general over his new immigration policy, went ballistic. “That stupid %#@!!*$” he hollered, “What terrorists does he think he’s keeping out?” From the back corner, Little Jimmy fired back, “The Muslims, that’s who!” If this had been Tombstone circa 1880, tables would’ve been overturned, the mirror shot out, bottles broken over drunken heads, the pandemonium spreading into the street outside, panicking the horses. It would’ve taken the Marshall to restore order, haul a few of the cowpokes to the hoosegow, maybe even lynch one or two.

But … this was the Pilot Lounge, and while it isn’t a bastion of civility in these decidedly uncivil times on the wild wild South End, violence is pretty much verbal and even occasionally regretted in the sober light of the following day. The argument went from banning Muslims from a few countries to letting Belgium and France immigrate, sides forming in the bar and the shouting making it impossible to carry any one argument to a logical conclusion. Finally it was Bob who shouted for order, swearing to cut everyone off if they didn’t shut the *%$#! UP!! Like I said, Bob was new and didn’t really understand the Rules of the Lounge. Course, who does?

But one of them is this: the bartender does not take a side. Not once, not slightly, not ever. Bob said to the suddenly quiet room, his threat to curtail their Monday night drinking effective as a punch to the gut, “I’ll tell you something about Extreme Vetting. Forget the damn Muslims, forget that. Forget even vetting the President. He never showed anybody any tax returns. You haven’t got a clue what he’s going to do. Nobody knows and maybe nobody cares. Just vote the man into office and see what happens. Vetting? Cripes! But here’s some Exteme Vetting for tonight. One more word from anybody about politics and I’m 86’ing you. You can go home and argue with your wife.” And with that Bob turned the hockey game back on and the sound way up. “Now,” he said, “who needs a refill?”

I don’t remember who won the game and I doubt anyone else did either. But we chose up sides and rooted for one team or the other. I hope I never watch another hockey game as long as I live.