The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I been listening for the last year or more this growing drumbeat against public service employees, social security entitlements, health care run by the government and, well, damn near everything run by the government. You’d think teachers were communists and firemen were Marxists and anybody who wasn’t working for themselves or for a corporation were leeches on the body public. We suddenly got ourselves a debt crisis and some folks thing the only solution is to shrink government down to a size they can flush in a toilet.

I used to be a school teacher way back in the Paleolithic. And I don’t mean Sarah Paleolithic. I find it troubling that public employees are the bad guys now. That somehow they don’t contribute to the wealth of America. The Ayn Randians think the corporations are the only way to restore the nation to its former glory days, but I’m not sure what glory days they mean, although probably any time before last year would do.

We got a lot of folks out of work right now who can’t pay taxes if they don’t make a living. And we got a Congress with a lot of senators and representatives who want to cut government jobs some more. Because, I guess, they aren’t real jobs. Don’t pay real taxes. Don’t buy real groceries and cars and television sets. Don’t pay into social security. Don’t get loans or put their phony money in banks. I guess. These senators and representatives, it should be pointed out to them, don’t have real jobs either. And lately, most of us might at least agree on that point.

What I don’t understand, being a communist on the South End, is how we watched the banking industry and the Wall Street boys and the hedge fund managers and all the heroes of Ayn Rand take us down a subprime mortgage meltdown and nobody seems to think anyone is to blame but the government. Call me stoopid and paint a clown face on my hat, but something is terrible wrong with this picture. Something’s upside down and inside out and distorted like those old funhouse mirrors at the carnival. Why aren’t some people in jail for gaming the system? Why aren’t laws being passed to keep it from happening again?

I’m not a Bolshevik just because I want to lock up thieves who were supposed to be capitalist heroes, am I? I just want somebody to tell me how it is we think one job is more valid than another, why a private construction worker is more important to the economy than a government construction worker the FAA laid off the last few weeks, why we should want a private agency security person instead of a municipal cop, why we think a corporation beholden to its investors is more honest than an employee working for us, the people.

Course, I’ll have to admit, in full disclosure, most of us down here on the radical South End, aren’t too much interested in jobs. Any jobs. Work, I hate to admit, isn’t high on the value chart. And here’s something for the Sarah Paleontologists: you won’t find too many communists here either. Everybody’s supposed to work under communism. That isn’t gonna fly down here. We got a few better things to do than work. Maybe we should’ve run for the Senate.

76 trombones led the big parade. With a hundred and ten cornets close at hand.

Aw, who doesn’t love a good parade, marching bands, twirlers, floats and banners and our boys in uniform? Women too now! And Transgenders! Followed by tanks and artillery, jets flying overhead in formation, bunker buster bombs carried on carriages two blocks long. Formation after formation of the Army, the Navy, the Marines and the Air Force. Battalions and generals and military hardware. The Commander-in-Chief looking down from the stage specially constructed for his viewing pleasure, salutes to him as thousands pass by rank and file, hail to the Chief!!

Damn the expense! If we can’t put on a good military parade once a year, what kind of cowpie country are we? Let the rest of the world cower before our display of drones and cruise missiles moving mile after mile down the banner festooned streets of D.C. Patriotism on Display!! Military Might on Display!! Who doesn’t love a good parade?? Forget that Mickey Mouse balloon stuff. Homer Simpson three blocks high. We’re talking about Fire Power, not Star Power. Save the Disney stuff for the Mummer’s or the Rose Bowl or Mardi Gras. Bring on the Bradley Fighting Machines, the 1126 Stryker, the MK19 grenade machine gun, the Black Hawk helicopters, the MK-54 torpedoes, bring it all out and let the world tremble.

Shock and awe on the streets of the USA, that’s what we need. You wonder how we won the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria, well, sir, check out that hardware we’re selling to every hungry dictatorship around the globe. What’s on display here is more than Uncle Sam’s mighty muscles, it’s a runway for arms sales, pure and simple and who better to brand that than the Trumpster himself, Captain America. You need a second generation jet, we got em. You need some Surface-to-Air missiles, we’re your supplier. Just don’t resell them to terrorists. Don’t want those SAMs falling into the wrong hands like that time with the Taliban back in the cold war days when they were fighting the Soviets.

No, give me a good parade any day. Celebrate the weapons of destruction. Hell, drop a nuclear bomb out in the countryside, nothing too big, just a little show of atomic power, a warning to the enemies of liberty. Small mushroom cloud over the capitol, better than the 4th of July. Guns and God, let freedom ring. 76 trombones and a huckster Music Man, is this a great country or what?

My President doesn’t really read anything other than ‘news’ articles about himself. Mostly he watches TV, news stations whose talking heads talk about him. In reverent tones. Far as anyone knows he doesn’t listen to music, doesn’t dance, doesn’t sing or play an instrument, doesn’t write much of anything beyond a florid signature, doesn’t paint or mess with art. What art he appreciates is anyone’s guess. My guess is the only art hanging in the penthouse of the Trump Tower would be a full size mirror. In a gold frame, of course.

Maybe I’m being ungenerous. Nobody has to read literature, no one is required to listen to music, you don’t have to appreciate art to be a full human being. I know a few South Enders like that and they’re plenty happy to go to work, come home and watch ESPN sports without becoming narcissistic cretins. They just don’t care much about the arts. C’est la vie.

But they didn’t fire the Director of the nation’s premier Art Center and any of the Board Members he felt were too Woke. The man with zero aesthetic appreciation just put himself in charge of the Kennedy Center making himself the Czar of Culture in America.

Apparently Trump isn’t content to wage war with his own government. Isn’t content to make enemies of the press. Doesn’t mind alienating neighboring countries or allies. Is willing to denigrate the leader of Ukraine, call him a dictator and accuse him publicly of starting the war with Russia. Seems to be open to alliances with true dictators who have traditionally been our enemies. And with malice toward all, now he needs to co-opt the Arts too??

My friends who voted for him think he’s the businessman this country needs, a billionaire who’ll bring back the Gilded Age, who’s transactional, meaning he sees the world as a zero-sum game, everything through the lens of profit and loss, money, goods, relationships. The Art of the Deal and only the deal. A gold toilet is the throne for this kind of thinking. But a full size mirror is not art, merely a narrow two dimensional reflection of a small one dimensional man, the last man on earth who should be the Czar of Culture.

When I was young and heading off to college, Humanities were still an honorable degree. History, Art, Philosophy, Music, Literature — you could get a diploma even if your chances of getting a job were slim to none. I guess I was more interested in getting an education than a career because I took a double major in the humanities at the Univ. of Wisconsin in Madison, a time when the Vietnam riots were in full swing, a different education altogether.

Jump 50 years into the future, a half century — the trend now is to downsize or eliminate the Humanities, the argument being that high tuition costs DEMAND degrees with maximum employment potential and a salary to pay off the huge student debt. Bizness degrees, I.T., engineering, high tech — that’s where universities and community colleges are funneling their students. Microsoft and Amazon, Google and Facebook, the billionaires of Silicon Valley, they’re all driving the pilot-less train into a brave new future of automation, artificial intelligence, drones and a wired world. The Digital Age is rapidly replacing the Industrial Era, leaving the Romantic Era beneath deep sediment. Who needs poetry when you can program the next generation of androids to write a ditty?

We call the Humanities humanities because we’re exploring just that, the qualities that make us human and not machine, an altogether necessary endeavor in this next evolution of mankind. It is more than alarming to watch the diminution of the Humanities at the same time humans are inexorably merging into their own technology. As an artist, I’ve never been one to argue that we’re the saviors of the culture, the Sensitive Ones, the Visionaries. I may have been wrong. More worrisome now — we may be canaries in the mine.

You can hang this over the Main Hall of Trump University: Ignorance is Bliss! Maybe you thought another term for the Chancellor would be tuition-free, why not enroll in advanced coursework in Economics from the professor who has declared bankruptcy six times? Of course, if you have been considering bankruptcy, this would definitely be required credits. If not, there’s plenty other advanced coursework for those who care to learn at the knee of a renowned businessman. Bible Studies 101, Tennis Shoe Sales for the Complete Novice, Baseball Cap Politics, Tax Evasion PhD, Legal Tips from the Roy Cohn Files, Emoluments for the Politician, Stock Market Manipulation and Inside Trading, Tariff Calculations and Deferred Tariffs — all in all, plenty of classes whether you signed up or not.

But tuition free? Better think again. If you thought the price of eggs would be going down or inflation would be tamed in the first week of the University reopening its doors, you missed last term’s featured study in Hyperbole, Prevarication and Doubling Down. Not to worry, that class will be offered this term as well. Nevertheless, the cost to you, the consumer, will be enormous. Price you pay for that Bliss poster over the entrance.

The Chancellor has offered us students a front row seat on the workings of a global economy. His required reading, Art of the Deal, should have made it abundantly clear that all negotiations must have a clear winner, a zero-sum gain. If we have a balance of trade deficit, we are losers. (This will definitely be a question on the final exam you are required to sit through.) There is no such thing as soft power. Aid to foreign countries in expectation of their appreciation is a fallacy and has been curtailed as of Immediately. Tariffs will be imposed on … well, every country on the planet, even those without import or export potential. The math is simplified, the balance is in our favor, foreign investments will flock to our shores, the future will be beautiful, more beautiful than it’s ever been before.

Don’t even think about asking for a return on your non-tuition. The semester runs four years and if you think the first few months were eye-popping, hang on to your seats, the best courses are coming up fast. Recession 101 will begin shortly. Advanced Trade War may have already begun. Tax Cuts for the 1% will be required coursework. Medicaid Roll Slashing, IRS Defunding, Social Security Fraud, so much to look forward to. Textbooks are not required, in case you were wondering, but you will be expected to pay for them.