The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I guess if you were the first felon elected to the highest office in the land and then given pardon privileges, you might, if you were a person without morals or guilt, decide to pardon all those fellow felons who were unjustly convicted of crimes by the government you swore to uphold and defend. Or maybe not.

You might even understand a pardon for those who contributed massive amounts of donations, sort of a Get Out of Jail Free card for the MAGA loyalists. I mean, money talks and felons walk, maybe a new motto on our legal tender, drop the In God We Trust. But c’mon, pardons for the rioters on January 6th? It was basically an admission that these were his loyal troops, his vanguard of a violent overthrow in order to keep him in office. And the senators and reps who ran for their lives down hallways or crouched in fear with gas masks when these so-called innocent tourists breached the Capitol, did they raise their voices in protest or just lay down and go along with the ruse? If they’d had the chance when those good citizens were touring the building, probably could have signed autographs while some were calling for the hanging of Pence and Pelosi.

Loyalty to the chief, tribute paid — all you need for crimes to be forgiven. Meanwhile anyone who criticized gets the weaponized Justice Department. The same senators and representatives who cowered in the Capitol and refused to impeach the perpetrator, now investigate at length, endlessly, the purported crimes of Hunter Biden for using the influence of his father’s office. Forget about the transparent and willful use of that same office to garner billions on $trump coins, Trump Towers around the globe, jetliner gifts and on and on, obvious emoluments banned by the Constitution, not a peep from the peanut gallery, whether from fear or agreement, who knows?

The inmates in the asylum are being set free. Insanity is being redefined and you tell me if this is what democracy looks like. Most of us can’t tell anymore.

What we used to call flip-flopping, we now call the art of the deal. I know, it seems cruel to pepper the Prez with questions about Trump Always Chickens Out, nasty questions he points out, when all he’s doing is ‘negotiating’. The stock market roller coaster follows every reversal judiciously, one day up when the tariff threat is lifted, next day down when the tariff is back on, all head-spinning stuff but probably exciting for you day-traders. Small businesses, not so much. Anyone who has their retirement funds tied to the Market, kind of a scary ride these days.

Consistency, Emerson told is, is the hobgoblin of little minds, but I’m not sure Ralph Waldo would assume inconsistency is the paragon or parakeet of big minds. Sometimes it looks more like just a confused state of mind, possibly the result of wee morning tweeting and social media overdose. Nevertheless, rest assured these aren’t daily reversals, they’re negotiating tactics, not TACOs. Course, if it looks like a chicken, squawks like a chicken and poops chicken shit endlessly, it might really be a chicken.

Half the news that floods through my newspapers and internet feeds is a reversal of yesterday’s reportage. TACO is angry with Putin one day, going to be dire consequences, next day there’s rumors of a breakthrough and possible peace meeting, followed of course by the news that Putin has scaled up the assaults, and you know tomorrow’s flip-flop. Deja-vu all over again. And again. And again.

I’m taking care of the neighbor’s chickens while they’re vacationing in Europe. Actually, I’m taking care of their hens while their usual chicken babysitters are vacationing in Oregon. The chicken coop, a veritable Trump Tower of a coop/aviary, sits right beside our joint property line so it’s no big deal to wander over and check the water, toss some chicken feed, gather up the eggs and cross back into my woods. The boys who usually handle this asked if I would check the house too, see if burglars had been prowling or were living in the mansion.

Some years back, shortly after the house was finished, the new owner was sunbathing in the privacy of her back yard and someone caught her sans swimsuit out on the lawn. That trespasser, she figured, being an amateur Sherlock Holmes, must be me since I live right next door. This created a bad start for our neighborliness as you might suspect. Nobody really wants to be accused of being a peeping Tom, but my neighbor kept asking friends of mine if they thought I was capable of this. Hell if I know what my friends probably told her, maybe worse than that. But she wouldn’t let it go and that dark cloud hangs over our mutual backyards like a constant threat of rain.

So I said no, I wouldn’t be caught dead or on video surveillance camera snooping around their house, just wasn’t worth the potential trouble to play security guard for them while they were vacationing on the Oregon coast. Michael mentioned that the owner had recently asked about me, whether I was a liberal or a redneck, a libertarian or a banjo whacker, a …. whatever? ‘What did you tell her?’ I asked. I’ve only lived next door to them for, oh, 15 years or so, how would they know what I was like, right? Admittedly they’re absentee chicken ranchers mostly, come up on holidays or a few special occasions, probably check on the trophy house, see if my buddies mowed and trimmed and pruned their fruit trees correctly. Rich folks. The kind of neighbors I love the most, especially the absentee part.

‘I told her you were a story teller,’ Michael said. We were next to the coop, chickens hopping up and down the escalator to the pen from the motel room style appointed laying bins. They were doing their cackle thing. A story teller, I repeated. What the hell does that tell her? A story teller is like, for her probably, a congenital liar, faux facts, Trump supporter, who knows what would run through her suspicious head?

I don’t know either what that means. A story teller? Well, okay, let’s roll with it. Stay tuned, is all I can suggest. If my chicken ranching neighbors have video cameras tuned to that chicken coop and find me prowling around their pen, I suspect we’ll have a sequel to this little story. If not, I get some free eggs and chicken shit on my boots. Life on the South End in these modern times … it’s never what I expect.

Most, if not all, Presidents use national holidays to celebrate their country, to remind us we are One People, all of us pulling together to make this nation what it is and what it has potential to be. Not the current one, of course, who sent out an all caps message to us that read: “Happy Memorial Day to all, including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country.” Nice sentiment from the Commander-in-Chief, the guy who called prisoners of war ‘losers’ and the troops who died fighting for their country suckers. Thanks, General.

Always in search of a scapegoat the guy can’t help himself denigrating any and all who he can’t see in the mirror. Losers, scum, suckers, deadbeats, gang members — I think he means you and me. But … help is on the way for this once great nation of ours that has lost its way. And that solution is him. Why he’s throwing himself a military parade on his birthday. Not sure why he didn’t get the job done the first term of office but let’s not go there. He gets a mulligan. In his world he always gets a mulligan and he always wins every tournament.

Most, if not all, Presidents aim for uniting the country they’re in charge of, not calling us scum and communists, not investigating anyone who has ever slighted them. Every good autocrat and every dutiful dictator looks for a scapegoat, Jews, Muslims, immigrants, pick one or two and blame the ills of the nation on them. This president has an enemy list longer than his inventory of merchandise he sells. Elite colleges, all Democrats, all immigrants who aren’t white, Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift, Joe Biden and Joe Biden and forever Joe Biden. He has skin so thin nearly everyone is a potential loser scumbag if they forget to kiss the ring frequently. And if the scapegoats aren’t enough here, he’s got our allies overseas to criticize and threaten. Some he hauls into the Oval Office and gives them the World Wide Wrestling Smackdown treatment, great TV he says, figuring, apparently, everyone loves a bully so long as he’s a winner.

So it’s Memorial Day here in America. Losers Day to him, all those gravestones in Arlington National Cemetery. To the rest of us, just another sad day in a long line of his Presidency.

This past fall my 74 year old body let me down, succumbed to the entropy of old age and geezer mechanics, went beyond the usual aches and pains and finally threw in the white flag of surrender. My left knee, the one I’d injured as a 16 year old kid falling on skis the only time he ever went skiing and the boot didn’t release so that the knee bent to the point of breaking. But not quite. Hello future arthritis.

When, after jerking a recalcitrant outboard motor trying to make it start for nearly an hour, that old knee flared its outrage and walking was suddenly a challenge, I reluctantly went to the clinic for an evaluation where the x-rays and subsequent scans came back with multiple issues, ranging from spurs to chips to misaligned meniscus to bone on bone and even sprained ACL’s. The prognosis for an active old age had greatly diminished in no time flat.

I had a fairly straight forward choice. I could gimp around the rest of my days, two stepping up stairs, hobbling in pain, accepting my fate. Or … I could opt for a new bionic knee. After which I could leap tall buildings in a single bound, no doubt with the assistance of a chip implanted in my brain to control the new titanium gizmo. Part man, part machine, everything I’ve feared most of my adult life. Why wait for the Artificial Intelligence Apocalypse? If you can’t beat em, join em. Resistance, needless to say, is futile.

Three weeks ago I had the surgery performed by a robot bone-cutter programmed for exact slicing and dicing. Post-op, I had a semi-human leg the size of a small elephant’s and an incision running from above the titanium knee to below, a throbbing gash that has kept me from full sleep all this time. I had sincerely hoped the controlling chip implant would also handle the pain as well as the bionic instructions but no, the android apparently hasn’t concerned itself with pain management, not feeling any itself.

Suffice it to say, I’m not leaping even small sheds, much less tall buildings. Folks tell me it’s going to take more time than my overly and unrealistic optimism had led me to believe. Soon, I hope, the pathetically weak human component of me will yield to the inevitable union with the machine masters. Meanwhile, I still have to oil the damn joint.