Cheeseburger Community

“All told, everyone was super nice to each other. What’s the word that’s overused but still exists? Oh yeah… community. It was a community and everyone in it was good to everyone else.”

I’m limiting my exposure to media and, by extension, America at large. There’s too much stupid. It’s addictive to the mind and corrosive to the soul. The stupid comes from politics; or rather a political “elite” that makes all things political. A humble “elite” would understand they can’t be all things to all people. Some things, even making a pencil, are not well managed from a pinnacle of power. Yet, fools insist on managing everything from gas stoves (banned in due time) to teaching fractions (all about sex, none about math). Thus, maniacs stampede onto ever thinning ice while the people suffer.

Benito Mussolini said “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state”. Mussolini was the absolute textbook definition of fascist. Social justice warriors call everyone and their cat fascist but they’re the ones that follow Mussolini’s plan.

They politicize everything! Talk to any college student (or professor) and ask them to name ten things that are none of the state’s business. A social justice warrior won’t be able to do it. They make everything from where you stick your dick (including if you should have one), to how a sportsball team operates, to what you read, to what you eat for lunch, to the color of your hat into political positions. The social justice warrior will have an opinion on all things and ignore nothing. They’ll “tolerantly” explain how “wrong” opinions should be eliminated (along with the people that hold them). If your head is deep enough in your ass “tolerance” has a way of drifting toward “the final solution”.

It wouldn’t be too bad if the elite that’s trying to be in charge of every damn thing was competent. But our “elite” is the least elite of all gatherings of supposedly elite people since humans lived in caves. Round up all 435 Federal Representatives, toss in 100 Senators, and (if you can rouse him from his nap) add the President. Of that august group of 536 “elites” what is the chance that they can do the simplest task? Can they fix a flat tire? Hold a job as a pizza delivery boy? Do accounting without corruption? Grow a tomato? Knit a sweater?

I’d pay good money to see politicians on a game show called “can you accomplish the job better than a stoned sixteen year old”. If our current President were told to assemble a Crunchwrap Supreme at Taco Bell he’d commit three felonies and start a war in Taiwan before delivering burned popcorn while calling the customer “boy”. How about asking AOC to drive to Brooklyn in her own car and drop off a cheese pizza? Could she get to the appropriate location within a 20 minute window? Hell no! She’d wind up in Tulsa with ten grand in her pocket and a TicTok photo involving orangutans.

A true elite requires both competence and noblesse oblige. Our “elite” are geriatric, corrupt, incompetent, scheming, evil, jackasses. They make bad decisions. They live fucked up lives. Nancy Pelosi’s household has gay naked hammer fight night. John Fetterman looks, acts, and dresses like a cave being that lives in a dumpster. Hank Johnson thinks Guam might capsize. Every one of us has seen a photo of naked, passed out, Hunter Biden with a crack pipe.

Imagine a bar. Then lower it. Was it low enough to represent “know that islands don’t float”? How about live your whole life without public photos involving hookers and crack pipes?

Allowing idiots to ooze into a national driver’s seat that shouldn’t even exist has made our society batshit insane. At this point it’s hard to catalogue the list of fuck ups just to keep them in order. The only thing that distracts the nation from a ridiculous helter-skelter retreat from one war in the Middle east was a different war in eastern Europe. Which is now overshadowed by domestic protests both for and against terrorists in a different place in the Middle East; a location where just last week we were buying hostages nearby at a billion a pop.

In the shaky and fractured world of now, we all feel trust fading. The devolution of a high trust society into a low trust one is a done deal in some places. Laws aren’t laws so much as guidelines depending on your political view. Borders aren’t borders so much as legal regulations which can be ignored if desired. Pot is simultaneously legal and illegal and that’s the best we can figure out of that mess. We have windmills in Texas that don’t run when it’s cold, water in cities that is sketchy, political prisoners in DC, and riots in cities that are apparently ok if we call arson “mostly peaceful”. In some places it’s ok to shit in the street. In some places we can’t quite differentiate between citizen and not-citizen. Sometimes we can’t define “woman”. Sometimes we pretend electric cars run on magic.

Sometimes we have elections and sometimes we have “elections”.

Whoa! I started out intending to talk about cheeseburgers. What happened? Forgive my wandering off into the weeds. I’m out of practice telling a comprehensible story.

The point of all this is that I get my cheeseburgers from a crappy greasy spoon (mentioned in the last post) and the reason I like the place has nothing to with food. The restaurant rural enough that it more or less resides in the past. The food isn’t great, but who wants to eat good food in the presence of green haired lunatics emoting over homeless people while your car gets vandalized? I can deal with salty fries to enjoy social tranquility.

I’ve become part of the “community” without thinking about it. They know my bearded gruff face even if I’m not particularly talkative. Even so, it’s part of America and I simply expect low trust society to intrude. My guard is always up. I say nothing of national politics when I’m there. (Not that you couldn’t guess my opinions from posture and behavior.) I carefully avoid local politics too. (For all I know the local school board election is a five generation Game of Thrones quagmire.) I mention weather and hunting season and nothing else. For that matter, I’m careful to stay vague about hunting season. (Every State has their own game laws. They’re a mishmash of history, politics, and voodoo. Game laws have maybe 10% to do with biological reality in the area.)

So where was I? Oh yes, munching on a burger. I was silently surfing the internet on their fancy new wifi and (as usual) saying nothing to anybody. I come and I go and I pay cash and I bother nobody…

…uh oh. I forgot cash?

I forgot my whole wallet. Shit!

In a modern low trust world I’d expect this to turn into a shitstorm. “Dine and dash” is only allowed for one part of the populace. My life of unearned privilege means I can’t do that. Like the sucker I am, I always pay promptly and tip well. What to do?

Panicked, I texted Mrs. Curmudgeon. “Stand by to pay for a cheeseburger over the phone. You may mock me later.”

I asked the waitress if she sometimes took orders over the phone. (Since COVID they do.) Gingerly, like a guy defusing a land mine, I inferred correctly that these orders took a credit card # over the phone (voice call / landline) and it was no big deal.

Then I spilled the beans. I’m a loser and a cretin! I had no cash or cards. I deeply apologized for my failure as a human being. But I would make up for my reprehensible dishonesty. Mrs. Curmudgeon would call in and pay for my meal. I wouldn’t move from the spot until my debts were paid in full. I assumed full responsibility for being a raving douchebag and promised to never make such a mistake again.

I cringed like it was the ultimate faux pas… because it is!

Silly me. I was going at it all wrong. I was thinking like a peon in a low trust urban shithole. Instead I was an accepted community member in a high trust rural redoubt.

The waitress waved away my idea of paying by phone. She pinned my order slip to the wall. There were a half dozen others. Oh my God! I was on the “Group W” bench!

“Just pay when you come back.” She chuckled.

“But it’s going to take at least an hour to drive to my house and get back here.” I looked at the clock. “How long is your shift?”

This made her smile more. “Relax cowboy, I know you’re a local. Pay tomorrow or next week. Whenever is convenient.”

Holy shit! In America right now the Federal Debt is $33,547,137,879,410.43. My debt is $14 for a cheeseburger, Coke, and fries. My debt is pinned to a wall as part of the Group W bench.

My debt will be paid hastily and accompanied by a large tip. The other is backed by the full faith and authority of a Government and has grown so unmanageable it’ll eventually take down our society.

By the time you read this, my bill will already be paid. The waitress just assumes it would be so. She thinks it’s funny I got so worried.

I like where I live.