I haven’t blogged lately. I’m busy rectifying deferred maintenance and sipping bourbon. Also I’m reluctant to comment on the creepy obfuscation of our election cycle.
Author’s depiction of the 2016 election cycle.
Yet it’s too big to ignore. It’s not the 800 pound gorilla in the room… it’s the 10,000 pound sack of shit that raped your cat. Eventually one must say something.
I’d like to offer a lifeline to fellow realists who aren’t drinking the Kool-aid. It helped my sanity to follow simple guidelines. They’ll help; if not in this election then the next. You can ignore or ridicule them. It’s up to you. I’m only saying what works for me.
A selection of guidelines to avoid going apeshit during election cycles:
- Guideline 0: These people aren’t in charge. You are. Politicians like Obama, Trump, and Hillary don’t know you, they never will know you, and they aren’t going to solve your problems. Voters who think otherwise are seeking not a president but a God.
- Guideline 1: I don’t vote for people who inherit power. I decided I’d never vote for the son, brother, wife, daughter, concubine, maid, pet, or sex toy of a former president. Each family gets one shot at the big chair. After that they’re done. Dynasties welding their ass into a throne is Un-American. There’s a reason they had to stab Caesar.
- My guideline eliminated the total loser we call Jeb: Madness seized the (aptly named) Stupid party and they embraced Jeb explicitly because of his family. Everyone sane (possibly including Jeb) knew better. I suppose Stupid Party apparatchiks huffed Kennedy glamour off a stripper’s ass and overdosed on visions of dynasty? I don’t care if a candidate walks on water while curing cancer, I won’t vote for a successionial line.
- My guideline eliminated the total loser we call Hillary: Hillary is a greedy, corrupt, power mad, misanthrope who schemes like Gollum and we’d have never heard her name if not for Bill. Imagine being so close to something you covet and earning none of it. What does that do to a person? Hillary’s grasp exceeds her merit and, like a Greek tragedy, she invariably fails spectacularly. She seeks not to earn power but cheat her way into it. Earning things gives you self respect and humility. Lacking that, Hillary is a toddler with a flamethrower. Her entire career is that she married someone important. That put her off my list. I wasn’t forced to stifle gag reflexes over a human puppet spawning cascading ethical lapses. It seems like even Hillary’s supporters are tired of her problems. I picture a few naive innocents swept along with tide of fearful courtiers bowing to Lady Macbeth. I’ll never vote for someone based on their spouse.
- Guideline 2: I don’t vote for commies. I grew up in an America that ate steak and owned overpowered Buicks. Russian peasants grew up eating turnips and waiting in line for toilet paper. The ghastly Utopian cult of socialism always fails. No matter how much indoctrination is hurled at me I’ll never regret being free and rich! People who’d take my freedom and ruin my economy are dangerous. I won’t trade freedom for the fiscal hand job of a free cell phone or college tuition. I’ll never vote for a Communist. Nor will I vote for their newspeak word du jour; Socialist (as mentioned in acronyms for USSR and NAZI). I won’t be fooled when they rephrase it as Progressive. Regardless of their mask, commies are off my list.
- My guideline eliminated the unemployable wingnut called Bern: Why submit myself to an obsolete deadbeat who learned nothing from history? Free things are not free and socialism ends badly. Almost uniquely among candidates on both parties; Bern can’t actually do anything. He can’t practice law, he doesn’t run a business, he has pretty much done nothing with his whole life. Until he can do something all by himself; run a business, drive a dumptruck, program a computer, craft a fly rod, set a broken bone, or grow a carrot I presume he’s seeking the Whitehouse because he needs a couch to sleep on. He’s a creepy old loser handing out candy and student loan forgiveness beside his rusted van. Don’t get in his van. You won’t like it.
- Guideline 3: Thunderdome works but you don’t get to pick who’ll emerge from it. I believe in meritocracy and honest competition. America’s search for leaders benefits from battle not coronations. On the right side of the equation, they got one. They got it good and hard. The race began with a healthy stable of participants who milled about like little pussies for a while and then finally got into the spirit of things. Most did their best. Hats off to ’em. Better to lose in honest competition than whine from the sidelines.
- My guideline helps me make peace with the hairball from New York: To everyone’s amazement (aside from Scott Adams) Trump strode into Thunderdome and shredded all who opposed him. Go ahead. Say it aloud. Let it out. Take a breath. “Trump and his ego won the nomination fair and square.” There, it’s over. Don’t you feel better? Trump won even when the Stupid Party conspired against him. He won on the cheap. He won when the press assured us all sentient mammals loathed him. Trump remembered the old fashioned (forgotten?) notion that it’s all about the people. It’s a lesson the Stupid party needed. A million people chant for Trump and we’re supposed to look for approval from Mitt Romney? Fuck Mitt. I thought he was an OK guy and might have made a good president but he failed. Mitt’s opinion is now exactly one vote among 300 million. That the press and Party hate Trump tells me more about them than Trump. The American people have made their voice heard in a way that made George Will’s little bow tie spin. They stepped over the twitching corpses of a dozen vat raised elites and handed the baton to a smarmy real estate developer. That’s a “clue”! More importantly, competition honed Trump. I prognosticate that Trump (regardless of who I’d prefer to be president) will tear weak and scheming Hillary into tiny bits before setting fire to the pieces and pissing on the ashes. (I could be wrong.) Trump is probably not the best choice for president. Lord knows I wouldn’t pick him. But I have faith in competition and whomever would be better (in my eyes) either has or will fall to Trump’s sword. Thunderdome doesn’t pick who you want. It picks who is strongest. Perhaps (we hope) it picks what America needs. Even if he’s a freak, Trump is the only thing standing between the Whitehouse and a harpy who commits crimes. Thunderdome is how you know Trump is the real deal. He entered Thunderdome and fucked up everyone within reach. I’m less fearful of candidates who’ve handled competition.
- Guidline 4: Free citizens owe nothing to any political party. If two New Yorkers, a hairball and a harpy, are just too much to swallow, vote for someone else.
- My guideline helps me make peace with voting my way: The Stupid Party and the Evil Party can kiss my ass. They aren’t the boss of me. I will not vote for someone I loathe just to be on the “winning side”. I will vote for whomever I wish. It may be the aforementioned hairball or it may be third party. Vote in a way that will let you sleep soundly at night.