Sometimes I’ll Pay Extra For A Good Stiff Drink

[Note: I usually spend a few days or weeks(!) ruminating on a topic. Only then do I hammer out a post. Today I’m shooting from the hip. If it has a jumpy outline, so be it. I want this to go live Friday night so I can (mostly) tune out for a while.]

When I was a kid there was a dwindling population of old people that were different than the rest of us. I call them “depression era people”. They’d been through a situation from which one cannot return unchanged.

They were fiscally careful. They saved up a long time to buy things. They loathed banks. (They remembered banks wiping out life savings. They’d seen it happen.) They saved bits of string, they re-used plastic baggies, and they always had an extra can of beans stashed. They’d keep broken stuff around with plans to fix it (rather than the fledgling at the time and now widely embraced method of “chuck it and buy another one new”).

I never mocked these people. They’d been through hell. I honored and respected them. They were elders; people who’d seen more than me.

Then a funny thing happened to my child world; everything went to shit. The economy tanked, inflation was berserk, unemployment soared, there was an oil embargo, American hostages held abroad, and America just didn’t seem to have balls anymore. President Carter moped around pointlessly; a useless fucking muppet in a cardigan. We needed a man of strength but had a weakling at the wheel.

Worse yet, society was a mess. There was disco and the AMC Gremlin. It stayed that way until a goofy actor from California showed up. His own party hated him. The press mocked as “sidekick to a monkey”. He turned the economy on a dime, and then the nation.

I remember it. I learned two things.

• Things can suck more than you’d expect. The pit can get very deep.
• Things can go from suck to awesome much faster than you’d expect. The instant we stop digging and start climbing, we’re halfway to the good times again.

I am, for this time of 2020, the current generation of “depression people”. I act like them. I fret when I throw old broken things out. Not because I have some hoarder attachment to all that shit… it’s because I know, deep in my heart, a time of wealth can become a time of poverty… it can happen fast.

When I was a kid there was another kind of people. This group was far more fun and also slightly outlandish. They were worried about Russkies dropping the bomb, or financial collapse (which was a legit thing happening in realtime), or urban crime (which was crazy bad at the time)… or whatever. They were called survivalists.

This was a long time ago. Self reliance wasn’t deliberately mocked back then. If some dude wanted a bomb shelter in his basement and six years of shitty canned “rations” then that was his (or her) business. If he had a 4×4 in a time when it was common to chain up a 2WD station wagon, that was just peachy. Make friends with him in case you need to get pulled out of a ditch.

Now, decades later, we’ve redefined self-reliance to almost a social pathology. Society mocked caricatured, and generally bred out that sort of behavior. They created a new critter. The sort of fool that’s far more comfortable being led than following their own compass. They turned the very simple and obvious and non-political word “survivalist” into the convoluted and uninspiring “prepper”. If a survivalist wants to “survive” a prepper wants to stack shit they bought on Amazon..

Sure as shit, I became a survivalist too. I don’t call myself a prepper. I never liked that word. I have a homestead. It’s a little, shitty one… but I raise bacon and eggs and leave everyone else alone. No harm in that right?

I mention all that so I can mention this. One must balance interests. No one solution suits all times. The times in which we live matter.

The depression era thinker in me would gladly starve to pay off the mortgage early. The survivalist thinker agrees but thinks maybe I ought to spend more time on physical training. I moderate all that and say life is beautiful. The mortgage will get paid in due time and exercise is good, but there’s a time and place to lighten up. I should celebrate a bit. In my case that means a nice bottle of high end bourbon. You can get drunk on cheap shitty Jack Daniels but I’ll pay triple to sip the good stuff. In that, I’ve backed “depression era AC” into a corner. While I’m sipping that drink I’ve backed “Bert Gummer AC” into a corner too. Life is pretty good.

You heard me; life is pretty good. Any time I’m not near the media, most of what I see is sunshine and good hunting weather. The masks and the empty streets and the tense scared populace… yeah, it’s there. But it’s not everything.

Take a look around. What you see in reality is nothing like what you’re told is out there.

So here it is; day three of the election that is, was, and always was going to be a total fucking shitshow. Having had time to reflect, I can live with it. If it had to happen, now’s as good a time as any for a good solid goat rodeo.

We know damn well that every election has become “the most important election in history”. We know damn well that every election has inched closer and closer to total banana republic horseshit. After all, it’s not 2020 that coined the word “hanging chads”.

So lets fight it out. Now. Today.

I went to sleep in an election that was in the bag. I woke up watching shenanigans go down. Yet another in a long line of ugly recounts. I had that feeling of Carteresque “malaise” that comes from knowing each and every time, the politicians on my side pussy out and quit. Who wants to watch that?

So I went off grid a bit.

While I was  off grid. Trump announced “I won motherfuckers. I’m fighting every inch.” NICE!

Excellent! If now’s the time then so be it. I’m in the eight month of “a few weeks to flatten the curve” and I just ain’t going to accept more resignation and weakness. Damn if I forgot that the Orange Menace isn’t a gutless RINO. I just plain forgot!

Seeing that one statement by the Orange Man, felt the same way I did when Carter slunk away or in 2016 when I realized that Hillary the Shrieking Harpy wasn’t going to crawly up the ass end of my 401(k). I felt… hope. I felt like I might have more room. I might be left alone a little longer.

I needed that morale boost.

I decided to toss a few bucks at the Trump Election Defense fund. (Not much, don’t get too impressed.) I’m not linking to it. Y’all can find it yourself. And I’m not asking you to follow my lead. Make your own decisions.

However, it’s an uncharacteristic move for me. It’s a big shift. I just broke one of my hard and fast depression era personal rules.

This is the first time in my life I have ever given a damn penny to any politician anywhere for anything.

That’s right. In a world where people can’t buy sneakers without making it political I weld my wallet shut. In a world where most people can’t go a week without a Facebook announcement that they’ve made a donation signaling their support for free vegan pizzas for transgendered Guatemalan baristas… I have never donated to a politician. Until now.

Surprisingly, the cheapskate depression era me is cool with it. He sees it as less a donation than paying for a service. “You want to go after election cheats with a sledge hammer and army of lawyers?” Shut up and take my money!

As is the survivalist. He figures I just added my name to the list of “fuck this guy over when the party of the left is in power”. He doesn’t care. If not now, when all I’m doing is dropping the price of a pizza dinner, when? Right now, Trump is going pitbull for things I support and getting beaten day after day, year after year, for not submitting. Better him than me. He loves this shit. I don’t. I wish him well. I’ll pay for the service too.

Like the fancy whiskey, both sides of my mind are in agreement. It’s worth a few bucks.

Also, this may be a last chance to resolve things with lawyers and paperwork instead of tanks in burning cities. They’ve built pressure all my life. If things are still a matter of law and rules, lets establish it right fucking now. I’ll happily ride this roller coaster as far as it’ll go.

Having done so little, there’s not much more I can do. I’ve got my own soul to take care of. I’m going off grid for at least a few days or maybe a couple weeks. I was rooting for a mellow happy ending to the 2020 shitshow. Now I’m rooting for a knock down drag out legal battle that clears the air. Luckily, it can happen without me.

Bye for now and try to avoid the media. Those assholes will do your heart no good. Steady, don’t give in to Carter’s malaise, and carry on. This sucks but it can get better and it might.