Adaptive Curmudgeon

When party leadership rejects its member’s views is it really a “party”? Recently I’m not sure “party” is appropriate. “Gang”, “bullies bossing stooges”, or “oligarchs and useful idiots” all seem more descriptive. I’m not worried. The nation doesn’t need parties anyway; certainly not these two.

Rushbo, the living embodiment of AM howlers, was in full apoplexy. He gets paid to freak out and he’s good at it. My truck’s speakers were awash in his blathering about Colorado. I had no context. It could be anything. Colorado tends to go ape fairly regularly. Last summer the EPA nuked a mountain river and they shit themselves over gun magazines. Before that it was legalized pot and the housing bust. Invariably there’s the continuing process of becoming an undocumented northern province of Mexico. It was probably something silly. Maybe an undocumented transexual Islamic terrorist demanding safe places to bake gay cakes in a church while shooting heroin?

My “go to” Colorado contact is a life long conservative. We debate politics and his opinions are reasoned and sincere. Often he changes my mind. He’d know.

I texted in all caps: “WHAT THE HELL IS LIMBAUGH BITCHING ABOUT? HAS COLORADO BEEN WEIRD AGAIN?”

The response came quickly: “After 38 years, I’ve quit the Republican party. I went to the courthouse today.”

Holy shit! This guy simply bled GOP. If he didn’t have a shrine to Reagan he at least considered it. (Editors note: My friend wants to point out he doesn’t have a shrine but he does have a coffee mug.) If he severed ties with the Stupid party what’s next; a Buddhist Pope? Me buying a Prius? Dogs and cats living together?

The ensuing conversation was both inspiring and depressing. It gave me hope that anyone can break free of the Stupid/Evil dichotomy. However this guy’s faith was dependable like gravity and I hated to see it go.

Me: “What happened? Did they gut a kitten on live TV?”

Him: “There was a primary. Actually it was a caucus. But it turned out like a straw poll. I think the word is a preference poll.”

Me: “Preference poll? Sounds like pansy shit but whatever. Did the people go for Senior Hair or the Sad Sack? Wait! I know, everyone got stoned on legal pot and went for Kasich!”

Him: “Well 34 non-binding delegates pledged their votes to Cruze. I think they’re non-binding. I’m not sure.”

Me: “So folks in Colorado totally dig Cruze?”

Him: “I think maybe Cruze would have won the state but the activity that looked like voting was just for show anyway.”

This gave me pause. A party is a private entity. It can select candidates any way it chooses. It could take careful readings of it’s party members and act accordingly. Or it could examine goat entrails in a secret rite. Which leads, immediately, to me wondering; if you’re going to make a selection based on goat entrails why drag your followers through the mud? Who invites people to an event that’ll prove how much you don’t care? Suppose I called up my neighbor and personally informed him I was going to let my dog shit on the public street in front of his house? Perhaps I have the legal option to do so but what good can come of it? Generally when you’re going to ignore someone you don’t ask them to take a day off work to be ignored.

Me: “So there was an event that had the appearance of voting but the real answer is ‘thanks for coming today but you can go fuck yourself’?.”

Him: “Pretty much.”

Me: “And the ballots or whatever you call them were irrelevant? Did they at least provide cookies? Maybe snacks?”

Him: “I didn’t go. It just doesn’t matter.”

Me: “Was, at any time, a goat sacrificed?”

Him: “This isn’t funny. Fuck those guys!”

Me: “Legally they’re entitled to ignore their members.”

Him: “Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.”

Me: “It does seem like a kick in the balls.”

Him: “I just didn’t matter. So I didn’t go. It’s long past time to leave.”

Me: “You were a rock. I didn’t see it coming.”

Him: “I’ve been inching this way for a while. They haven’t done Jack Shit. They never accomplish Jack and now my opinion means Jack. They’re not interested in doing the people’s will. They’re only interested in holding power. They haven’t made good on their promises on Obamacare even after they controlled both houses. So why should I be glad they control both houses? They only want to continue problems so they can bitch about them to get re-elected. There’s no real interest in solving anything.”

Me: “Am I missing something? Was this a straw poll? A caucus? What did you call it; a preference whatchamajigger?”

Him: “I’m unclear on the details, all I can tell with certainty is that it didn’t involve votes from people like me.”

Me: “Well you’ve been bent over by politics. Join the club. How’s it feel to be an Independent?”

Him: “If I registered Independent both parties would consider me a likely voter for them. I registered Libertarian. I want them to know they’ve lost my support.”

Me: “Sorry about that. Libertarian isn’t mainstream and you’re the last guy on earth I’d call ‘fringe’.”

Him: “I know! But my opinion (or vote if you want to call it that) just didn’t matter. I couldn’t stand knowing they’ll surely do it again next time. It’s a relief it’s over.”

Me: “God speed. If you learn the secret Ayn Rand handshake tell me all about it.”

Him: “Ugh, don’t make jokes about tinfoil hats either. I miss the Republican party.”

Me: “But…”

Him: “I didn’t leave the Republican party, the Republican party left me.”

Me: “I can see that.”

Him: “Reagan said the same thing about the Democrat party.”

Me: “No shit.”

Him: “Yes shit. Read your history redneck!”

Me: “Ha ha ha.” (Like all men, I appreciate a conversation that ends with an insult.)

After our conversation I wondered how many citizens rebelled long before my rock solid friend and how many are still working up to disengaging by November. I’ve been going vaguely, independently, and quietly Galt forever but nothing I do is ever trendsetting. Regardless nobody honestly likes their party. It’s a party’s job to listen to American citizens and not the other way around. Didn’t they cover this in civics class?

Meanwhile parties reap what they sow. Jeb Bush couldn’t clear the opening lap and Hillary is the worst product since New Coke. Her struggle against Sanders is like watching Robocop bravely hold its own against a slinky. Hillary and Jeb; three hundred million Americans and those two dipsticks were the best “the establishment” could find? Groupthink is powerfully stupid.

Luckily change is afoot (even if comes in the form of two rich obnoxious New Yorkers who began with nepotism and persist through populism). Don’t weep when stagnating parties have to be put down. In the end it’s for the best. Put another way; a brokered convention that screws Trump will definitely be a screaming shitfest but maybe America needs a screaming shitfest. Perhaps it’ll finally kill off the Stupid party and free up headspace for an effective opposition party? Lest the Dems overdose on schadenfreude, remember their convention required tear gas in ’68 and when Obama needed a black woman for the $20 bill he picked a vigilante who clung to guns and religion.

A.C.

P.S. Sorry about the politics. In my next post I’ll write about bananas.

After three days of mouselike quivering in the truck cab listening to the Evil and Stupid party jockey into mutually assured destruction I dropped all contact with “news”. I was in constant motion. I hadn’t surfed the net, listened to what the press shovels into our heads as news, or even seen a headline for weeks. I ignored my blog, deferred addressing the looming menace of tax day, and nearly forgot my name.

Just a few hours ago I resurfaced. All I needed to do was make the last leg on a multi day multi mode trip into nowhere and I’d be safe at home. I flipped on the radio. Since I’d missed over a month of electioneering surely something had changed? I wondered what progress had been made.

The Stupid party: “Trump is still doing fairly well and zillions of people like him. As Republicans we will find out why he’s popular and do the exact thing that most pisses off his supporters.”

The Evil party: “Jesus Christ, that dick Sanders totally won’t leave the anointed one (Hillary) alone. And speaking of innocent, it’s no big deal to be under FBI investigation for the eleventh time. I mean who hasn’t been subpoenaed in a bunch of compromising matters? And doesn’t everyone have a bunch of strange sources of income, questionable contacts, and wads of ill gotten gains? And when someone gives you State secrets it’s no big deal… just blab that shit everywhere. Everyone is hereby ordered to chill out and submit to the inevitable. Did we mention the flying monkeys?”

Really? All that time and expensive scheming and backstabbing and lying has done so little! Both parties, in fact the whole of the 2016 election cycle boils down to this:

“The people have spoken and we, their betters, refuse to accept it. We hereby order them to shut the hell up and do as we’ve instructed.”

That’s the “problem” with democracy (or in our case a Republic). People who have free will make decisions. Inherently some of these decisions will differ from the “elite’s” considered and proper opinion that they strenuously insist all people must hold.

I suppose it’s the mark of being elite? One is elite when they know with no reservations or doubt how other people ought to live? It’s impressive really; the complete lack of humility that accompanies their false belief that they know precisely how everyone should live their lives. I consider it a character flaw. They consider it simply the truth.

Now the people are pissed off. (Why now instead of any year in the last several decades is a mystery but it’s definitely palpable in 2016.) Meanwhile both parties have crossed the line of frustration with dipshits in flyover country and have gone all the way to disagreeing with the concept of free will itself. They can’t fuckin’ stand the citizenry. It’s ever more apparent.

How odd that it must come to this. Yet how predictable. An expanding portion of our society is personally invested in the MANAGING of others. You can call them socialists or you can call them micromanagers or you can call them busybodies or you can call them nitwits but it doesn’t have much to do with their politics. It’s all about their self announced Godlike powers. There are people who allocate for themselves the role of decider and the rest of us are presumed to be cattle. They hang out with each other and tell each other how awesome they are. They’re the fish that can’t see water. They’re walking overinflated egos in need of a pin.

And so it goes until it crosses the dumbass event horizon.

Forget about large clusterfucks like the Trumpening or Sanders’ Quixotic socialist challenge to Hillary’s Tower of Sauron. I have a funnier example. Here’s my report on the mundane stupidity that comes from people who smell their own shit and call it roses:

In a hotel room I saw ads about how smoking will kill your pets. This was meant as a self referential “joke” that was “serious”. It was also stupidity so compressed it created its own gravity.

Someone somewhere collected tax dollars. They used to force of government, including men and women with guns and scary dudes with law degrees, to get this money. (Actually they used ill gotten gains from a huge lawsuit.) Then they expended the seized fruits of someone else’s labor on manipulative ads. These ads tell me my cat will die if I light up a Camel. Suppose I want a Camel and personally experiencing lung cancer isn’t sufficient motivation to keep me away? What then? Will they shoot my ass for my own good? Will they shoot my cat?

Quite simply the kind of person that’ll spend seized funds on ads to manipulate someone’s behavior is a person who’s never considered the ethics of manipulating other people. It’s… for want of a better word… evil.

That’s the crux of it. The problem with that person and their cat saving crusade is not that they’re wrong. It’s that they’re at odds with free will.

There’s more. Stay tuned.

A.C.

P.S. I wasn’t hallucinating. I found the link here. The link goes to America’s State Sponsored media, NPR. Unsurprisingly they like the ads. You expected a State Sponsored Media to say “nah, leave the people alone”? NPR knows everything about how you should live and they know it better than you. So just shut up and do as you’re told.

For several weeks I dropped out of all news content. Usually it’s a planned effort to maintain perspective while the press shrieks “Ignore the forest! Stare at all these trees!” This go round it was just the mundane chaos of life. I did the following:

• Woke up to a flat tire. I manfully jacked up the truck and swapped tires in front of a hotel room in the middle of nowhere. As far as I can tell the entire town drank coffee and watched.
• Miles later, approaching midnight in a crowded city in a different time zone, I drove over a nail and toasted a different tire. I called it a night and parked at the nearest hotel. Nothing says “fun” like pulling dual wheels in the snow at dawn and that’s precisely what I did.
• Fortunately the third flat, in a third tire, in a third state… which made me start wondering if I was cursed, was in my driveway. All I had to do was roll around in chickenshit while it rained.
• Been physically groped by the TSA, psychologically raped by overpriced hotel drinks, shoved like cattle through chutes, and emotionally battered by the psychotic monsters in a Salt Lake City terminal. Those bastards told me they had “craft beer” and then delivered a pint of 3.2 pisswater.
• Made reservations months early, paid full freight for a flight, checked in two hours early, and still got dumped into “standby” because “fuck the customer” is apparently a valid business model.
• Stepped on a cactus. I do not blame the cactus.
• Ate a cactus. (It was a different one.)
• Slipped on ice and wound up in a ditch.
• Found a magic flashlight. (More on that later)
• Went on an adventure. (This was actually pretty cool. Maybe I’ll mention it later. Maybe I won’t.)
• Went to a rock concert. (This is VERY rare. The last time I saw live music was a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away. Mrs. Curmudgeon got the tickets and talked me into it. She loves me y’all!!!)
• Worked my ass into the ground.

Stay tuned for sober reflection as I pass from unseemly chaos back into order.

Here’s the beginning of it all several weeks ago I was on the cusp of a scheduling crunch when I experienced an epic, no holds barred, evacuate the body in all directions, illness. No worries. I lived. In fact it was short, probably because an illness that nasty must necessarily be short lest it kill off it’s host instead fulfilling its cosmic duty to optimize misery.

Under such circumstances a sane man will call in sick, crawl into bed, and stay there a week. I didn’t. Literally hours later I verified most of the storm had passed and bravely (or stupidly) climbed into my truck to pursue the almighty dollar. Reflecting on the events leading up to it I figured it was even odds the trip would be a failure and I’d wind up barfing in a gutter somewhere. Of course I’d never let a fear like that stop me from completing a job.

I rolled along in my truck; a hollow shell with the constitution of a tiny little bird. No sudden moves. No scary road food. No nothing… just one man hermetically sealed and perched on eggshells in his roving security blanket; desperately hoping breakfast wouldn’t explode all over the dash. I did this for three days. Three full days of thinking… and listening to the press hyperventilate.

The radio dutifully injected stupid into my cab. America’s Pravda (NPR) took the lead but the gibbering hordes of AM were nipping at its heels. Being as weak as a mouse and driving from nowhere to nowhere I could only listen. I listened as if observing a strange alien culture from a great distance. This helps one grok the inanity of it all.

Think back. Can you remember what was on the mind of the newsies and spinmiesters back then? Rewind a month or more of this fun filled election roller coaster. What was the panic du jour?

“Trump is winning big time and we Republicans need to stop that shit toot sweet. Perhaps we can scheme up a brokered convention whereby we take the likely holder of a plurality and kick him in his big brass balls. We’ll follow that with an ugly screaming shitfest where we draft a milquetoast loser that Hillary will grind to make her bread. We’ll even ignore competitor number two, Cruze. Why? Because we’re a foot that likes shooting itself. Nothing impresses Americans like fucking the first and second place winners in a year long marathon. They simply love it when we excrete a gutless uninspiring apparatchik on America’s plate. We sure love being the Stupid party.”

While the Stupid party was aghast at the horror of a popular candidate who can pack stadiums what was the Evil party thinking?

“Sanders has not gotten the memo that we anointed Hillary years ago. Plus, quite frankly that bitch terrifies us! What’s wrong with that dipshit? Stand up to Hillary and bad things happen. Also Sanders is building tremendous support and as Democrats we need to stop that shit toot sweet. Perhaps we can pretend that Hillary’s secret illegal server is no big deal and line up a herd of purchased superdelegate shitheads that’ll do what our idiot party voters won’t do. Doesn’t everyone realise that she must win or she’ll release the flying monkeys? We sure love being the Evil party.”

That was several weeks ago. Since then I’ve been busy. Stay tuned.

Here’s a video of political insiders discussing the 2016 election cycle.

You know how life settles into a calm and orderly routine? Where things happen in their appointed time and each task, great or small, blends seamlessly into the greater whole? Where each day carries it’s share of peace, contentment, and relaxation?

Well I don’t! Fate has chosen 2016 as great time to send figurative Keystone cops to shove metaphorical grenades down my symbolic undershorts. I’ve been bent, folded, and spindled while events bounce around like tweakers disco dancing at a speedfreak convention during an earthquake. It’s at moments like these that a reasonable man (or yours truly who must suffice) will sit back, drink it all in, and think “what the fuck!?!”.

So… that said, and acknowledging that I’m a blogger who literally hasn’t turned on his personal (as opposed to work) computer in weeks, I recently resurfaced from a tsunami of chaos to reacquaint myself with the circular firing squad that is politics. Here’s what I’ve got to say about both parties as they ooze toward November:

“Suck it up assholes!”

In my next few posts I’ll elaborate on my reasoned thinking. Stay tuned.

You have to sit through a 30 second commercial but it’s worth it for some quality journalism that sums everything up properly.

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/691b209fe7/finnish-news-team-reports-on-u-s-elections

Today is “Super Tuesday”. The sun may set on a nation where Trump has destroyed all R’s that oppose him. For his next trick he’ll point his laser augmented sword of demagoguery at the party of D and start removing heads. The D’s defender will be the mainstream press (what’s left of it after spending most of the last decade propping up their current lord and saviour) and the D’s candidate. The candidate will be either a Socialist nitwit or an ex-president’s harridan wife with a penchant for crime. Good luck with that. Maybe the press will emerge from their gimp box and save the party of D one last time. Maybe not. It’ll be as ugly as it is entertaining and most importantly it’ll be visited upon those for whom a good solid hammering is long overdue.

Back to Trump. WTF? Nope… no WTF… the guy’s arrival is logical in it’s own way. Obama paved the way. A magic mirror that reflected to his supporters anything they wanted to see. Trump was watching and learned and now he’s giving it a good shot and the Nation seems ready for a freakshow. In fact both parties, by their failures, made a freak necessary. If it wasn’t Trump it would’ve been some other freak. Ron Paul, Oprah, who knows… but it was going to be someone the establishment loathed.

It didn’t have to be that way. Had Obama and Bush before him, the party of R, the party of D… if anyone at all had led like reasoned adults Trump wouldn’t have happened. It’s boring to follow the Constitution and act with deference and avoid doing stupid shit but the nation needed boring and it has realized it’ll never get boring until it plays a game with the parties I like to call “scorched earth”. Regardless, a new form of both parties is now inevitable because nobody is putting the freak back in the box once he’s been let loose.

It comes down to both parties abdicating their role as reasoned representatives of the people in a constitutional republic. Remember those big words from when you slept through high school? Well they mattered. In response to both the parties’ failure the Nation created the current form of Gozer.

I touched on the concept in 2013:

“Sequestration implies that we cannot make wise decisions about debt so we must make unwise decisions about debt.”

So are we doomed? Not particularly…. or rather we’ve been doomed a long time. Trump’s peculiar form of shambling stupidity not even remotely as dangerous as other things we’ve been long enduring. A bipartisan instigated debt of $18,000,000,000,000.00 can rock the firmament. Trump pissing off Mexico is a side show. Obama’s (and Bush’s) long slow crumbing of the rule of law is similarly bigger than a New Yorker with questionable hair. I could go on but you get the point.

The universe itself conspired to upset the applecart because the establishment’s status quo is unsustainable. There’s a phrase that explains Trump; “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

So buckle in and enjoy the ride. It’s going to get ugly but remember that ugly is better than a straight jacket.

Also for your viewing pleasure I’ve gathered to alternative versions of Trump:

First, from everyone’s favorite prophesy, I present a man who needs no introduction, President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho!

Now pay attention here because this guy, in addition to being satirical (and a second amendment supporter), was a better president than we’ve had in a long time. His people were suffering and so the “nutcase” found a smart guy (with a peanut head) told him to solve it, and then got the hell out of the way. This president, unlike the losers we’ve been electing preferred solving problems to creating them! Seen DC solve a problem lately? Go ahead, name a real life political problem from the last 15 years or so and tell me that it’s been solved by DC. Heck, our current establishment says they’re awesome so surely they can name a few really resounding successes. I’m waiting. In the meantime I’ll read a press report that says “plants crave it” and DC will go back to freebasing debt.

Second I’ll turn to a different prophesy; Harrison Bergeron. It’s a short story from Welcome To The Monkey House, a nice simple little movie that seems to have been shoved down the memory hole (I can’t find any video clips or photos of President McCloskey), and a disappointing shorthand remade video abomination. In the story the President is selected by random lot from the totally equalized people of an affirmative action wet dream / dystopic future America. McCloskey (like all presidents) has foreign affairs challenges. Unlike our current Nobel Prize winner he seemed more eager to solve problems than create more. Let’s see some dialogue from how a freak handled things:

[Harrison Bergeron gets to see an official having a video conference with a private citizen who also serves as the randomly selected president]

President McCloskey: No, no way.

Reynolds: Mr. President, the Premier is only asking for another 24 hours. He wants the approval of the Moroccan parliament. He fears a civil war be axed(?) without their backing.

President McCloskey: Fuck ’em. I told them two weeks ago if they didn’t agree to dismantle that factory under our supervision, we’d bomb the shit out of them! Now they’ve got one hour to agree, otherwise – bombs away.

Reynolds: But Mr. President, the installation is only 5 miles outside of Rabat. The nuclear fallout could be apocalyptic.

President McCloskey: Well, that’s what they get for building a T-bomb when we told them not to. Those cocksuckers got to learn not to fuck with us. 59 minutes!

Newman: Inform the Premiere. Tell mission control to make final preparations for the strike.

[a female official complies and walks away]

Reynolds: You’ve got to be kidding me. Shouldn’t we get Klaxon down here?

Newman: You know his motto – [cynically] the will of the people.

Reynolds: Well, this isn’t the people! This is some steel worker from Scranton we picked as president!

Newman: I’ll remind you, Mr. Reynolds, that since that nasty Canadian business, American policy – brutal and unsophisticated as it is – does work. The rest of the world seems has learned to use the president’s stern words [cynically] that they can’t…fuck…with us.

Reynolds: This Moroccan business is different. The Premiere is at an impossible situation with a board of dispute in Algeria and an unrest in his army. The president does not understand the complexity of the matter. Now, he may be an average person, but I can assure you leaders of other nations are not average. They are subtle, sophisticated men and dealing with them takes great skill and patience and diplomacy!

Female official: Sir, the Moroccan Premiere has agreed to the terms of the president’s ultimatum.

[Harrison Bergeron signs the words “thank you” in relief in the corner]

Newman: [smiles cynically] As you were saying?

So… has our current president done better than a randomly selected fictional dolt?

Has he either normalized or closed Guantanamo. Or has he done a little of both?

Did he win in Iraq or lose it? Or did he win it first and then bail out and lose it?

He wants to let everyone south of the Rio Grande emigrate. We all have goals. Did he find some clear, legal, and popularly supported way to accomplish that? Conversely did he actually defend the border? As far as I can tell he temporarily hamstrung enforcement of actual law (you know… how it’s written on paper and stuff) and then encouraged throngs of peasants to become criminals on our soil. How’s that a solution to anything?  It looks to me like a deliberately created problem as his gift to the next administration.

So a satirical dolt saw a problem steamrolled it in a humorous exchange. An exchange that’s even more amusing because it’s both honourable and truthful. No bluffing and red lines from this dipshit. President McKlushy had it done and went back to watching TV smoother than Bush could find an entanglement or Obama could snatch defeat from the hands of victory.

See what I mean. When you’re in stuck in a rut and everyone wants to keep digging maybe a freak is the reset the system needs. At the very least he can smack some sense into the rest of the crowd who apparently forgot how to be adults. One might hope at least.

Happy Tuesday.

[I dread (and by possibly deserve?) angry responses to today’s rant. What can I say? As the election season poisons the air I had to vent.]

The road was treacherous so I hunkered down at a rural truck stop. Trucks were bailing off the road en masse. No tourists today; just working folks.

What kind of dumbass would be out in this weather?

I observed. Only one sort of of dumbass was out there: men.

Men will do anything for a buck. They were busy doing it.

Two guys in a rental car wore business attire that screamed “salesman”. They’d freeze in minutes if their car stalled. They loaded up with coffee and fearlessly spun back out there. Brave or nuts?

The lot filled up. Kenworths and Macks and a potato chip van. An F150 with firewood. A FedEx truck. My Dodge. All driven by men. We stomped around inspecting tires and scraping ice off turn signals. Everyone bought coffee. The coffee sucked.

A livestock trailer parked next to me. The driver began hauling bales of hay, filling buckets of water, etc… The ice made it difficult.

A road grader pulled up; never a good sign. Road graders are best when the snow is balls deep. The driver was dressed like Nanook of the North. Did his tiny glass cab lack heat? He was smiling. He smelled overtime!

Two snowplows arrived. The drivers topped off bucket sized travel mugs with nasty coffee and left; going my direction! I followed. My paint job took a beating but that’s what trucks are for. They stopped at the county line. I kept driving.

Finally at ease, I clicked on the radio. For this sin I was verbally abused (again!) by NPR. I’d missed several speeches by “Free Shit” Sanders. Now it was a solid hour of “Vagina” Hillary. (“Vote for me because I’m a woman.” Really? I’ve got a dick. Do I get to be Governor?)

She kept coming around to the topic of men. Those slimy bastards tend to earn more than women. Hillary will fix that!

I gritted my teeth. Damn straight we make more! Men are nuts. They’ll do stupid shit to make a buck. In return they tend to get paid more.

Women (on average and with many exceptions) avoid eating shit and taking risks. It’s probably a sign of refinement and maturity but the pay ‘aint so hot.

As knuckle dragging males chase that extra buck, Hillary sees red. Her Royal Omnipotence will “correct” my work ethic. Once all jobs are equal I won’t work so fucking hard. The “all jobs are identical” thing is a phase adults usually overcome. Children think of jobs as interchangeable. Then they get a job and discover they’re infinitely variable. Or they remain unemployable and risk the life of a Community Organizer. A terrible fate; filling out petitions and making bumper stickers until they die alone and angry; leaving behind nothing but unpaid student loans and the stink of futility.

Hillary extolled her glorious imaginary Utopian future. Back in reality I pulled over to piss. (Coffee takes it’s toll.) Imagine standing knee deep in a snowdrift (which is part of your work environment) while a fuckwit at a podium opines about what I ought to get paid. I engaged in crimethink. I ought to get paid as much as I can goddamn well pry out of the market. I get that by working both hard and smart and eating occasional doses of shit. And I take risks. There’s a small chance I’ll wreck or wind up frozen. It’s a mundane thing. I invested in (and use) 4×4. Hillary got a helicopter tour and invented Bosnian sniper fire. A hollow person fills her void.

Where does Hillary’s “magic spreadsheet of justice” hold work environment data? Does “pissing outdoors” and “abominable coffee” go in the formula? Will the Eloi in Hillary’s Ministry of Fairness value my truck in a blizzard like a Segway at a mall? Will considerations, applied in warm offices where the Keurig is never empty, include frostbite and truck stop swill?

Women avoided the blizzard. Men didn’t.  Women can be truckers but none were there. It wasn’t just truckers. The harried salesmen were men. The poor bastard skating hay bales was a man. The two snowplows were driven by men. The hyperventilating FedEx driver was a man. The grader operator (dreaming of overtime and dressed to spend the day in a freezing glass box) was a man.

Men embrace the stupid/brave world of risk. They do it for money. That’s why they get money. Hillary decries being “overpaid” like it’s bad. Men (generally) pursue “well paid” because it ‘aint bad. One method is chasing unequal (i.e. miserable) jobs.

For example: Suppose there’s ditch to be dug through radioactive lizard shit. It’s on an active volcano, in Greenland, with snakes. Offer enough money and someone will give it a shot. That lunatic is often male. Hillary’s won’t convince masses of women to take up lizard shit ditching. Hillary herself won’t show up with a shovel. Why not? Is it Bush’s fault? Is Hillary a victim of sexism? Does Hillary want equal jobs or not? If Hillary isn’t there did the nefarious lizard shit Mafia delete her application? Are skilled freelance female lizard shit shovellers getting shafted?

Only in Hillary’s head. The rest of us know shitty, miserable, dangerous jobs are open to anyone. If you’re dumb enough to compete you might “win” one. They pay a bit more. You’ll work your ass off. Men roll the dice. Women less so. Saint Hillary; who hates men, work, and math… disapproves.

Hillary simply assumes she should be in power; possibly due to divine right or proper genitalia or favorable marriage. Pretty medieval reasons eh? It’s a standard socialist conceit. Socialists don’t crave subservience to another socialist any more than I do. They simply assume they’ll be the boss… all of ’em. No starry eyed product of indoctrination imagines a mandatory 40 year career sweeping floors in a Soviet tractor factory.

Would I like the shoe on the other foot? No. Unlike Hillary I don’t indulge in envy. She earns more than me. Whatever she obtained legally (if there is any) is none of my business. I hope she enjoys her money just as I would. (I hope she goes to jail just as I would if I’d behaved like her. That’s a different matter.)

As a non-Socialist adult I have the maturity to accept people who are different than me and ignore them. I don’t want to bully them. Why would I? I don’t need that crap. I’m a free man. I can skin a buck, run a trot line, and drive a motherfuckin’ truck!

Also she’s depressing. She’s doomed. Doomed even if she becomes president. Men and women are different. That’s a wonderful thing. There’s nothing Hillary can do to remake people into different beings. It’s her unsolvable Achilles heel. She’s not God. Winning an election won’t make her God. She’ll never be God. Not mine anyway.

My stupid quixotic insistence on running around in blizzards is not a sexist thing. Hillary, lacking accomplishment, is mired in zero sum thinking sees nefarious plots which aren’t there. A tendency toward slightly higher wages isn’t a flaw, it’s a carrot. Carrots motivate problem solvers. No matter how much Hillary foams at the mouth, problem solvers make the world better and she does not solve problems. She’d like the dismiss with the carrot and wield a stick. Hillary with a stick is merely a slaver in search of a victim. Another reason Hillary’s doomed. Coercion just can’t compete. Russia was a nightmare and collapsed. Venezuela literally can’t wipe it’s own ass. Sanders wants to run the economy but can’t pay off his Visa. Hillary can’t (or doesn’t) drive a car.

Dismissal of honest work (in anyone) reeks of hubris. Hillary has it in spades. She’s clueless, was hatched in a vat, and lives in a bubble. Her megawatt ego assumes things she can’t do are trivial. Bullshit! Nothin’ is easy. All skills are valuable. Meanwhile she’s literally incapable of handling introductory blue collar jobs. Managing an iced potato chip truck in the hinterland exceeds her skillset.

Remember that as the election proceeds: Hillary (and the rest of them) are not qualified to drive a potato chip truck. In November millions of us will turn the government over to someone who can’t deliver Fritos. The best we can hope is whomever gets elected knows their limitations. Hillary can’t do anything and therefore all jobs are the same to her; yet she’d gladly tweak the wage market and fuck up the Frito supply!.

Eventually her two minutes of hate ended. It was all sour grapes anyway. She’s a loser but the world isn’t interested in losers. Even if she wins (shudder!) she has failure within. Braying she wants a world where idiots take harder jobs for “equal” pay won’t make it happen. Nothing will make that happen. Theorizing that men and women are identical passionless worker bee widgets won’t make that true either.

Hopefully America comes to it’s senses before The Hillary gets elected and starts breaking things. I like a civilization that delivers FedEx and Fritos regardless of blizzards. But there have been dark times before and some light always shines for those who see it. You’ll know the socialists won if ten years hence I’m smuggling toilet paper while NPR blathers about “unexpected” and “temporary” shortages due to “hoarding”. (And if that happens I’ll try to be the best damn toilet paper smuggler there ever was… because some guys can’t help themselves. They see problems as merely interesting things to be solved and hopefully a chance to make a buck.)

[I’ve tried to avoid politics. I’ve failed. Forgive me.]

A month ago my truck and I were happily haulin’ ass when the wind started cycling into white outs. I listen to history lectures when driving is easy (Great Courses but that’s another post) but it’s too distracting when mother nature is trying to kill me. I clicked off the lecture, engaged 4×4 (with a prayer of thanks for modern engineering), slowed down, and kept my mitts at ten and two.

Driving at 45 MPH is boring so I turned on the radio. Throughout the vastness of America (what urbanites call “Godforsaken flyover land”) the clearest station is always America’s Pravda (NPR). NPR’s reporting was, as usual, somewhere left of Trotsky.

It was shortly after the Iowa Caucus. I hadn’t heard the results. Turns out Trump had tied for second; just behind Ted “He Who Shall Not Be Named” Cruz. Quelle suprise! This was notably factual. Actual news on NPR? Awesome!

The “news” went downhill. The woman reporting this factoid just couldn’t chill out. She was giddy that Trump didn’t win. Suppose I informed you I’d released a cobra in the kitchen. Then suppose I changed “cobra” to “puppy”. That was her level of relief. It’s interesting that voice alone can transmit such emotion through tone and cadence. Either she was really happy Trump didn’t win or she was having an orgasm.

Yeah right, thought I. A goofball stomps around like Godzilla, spends minimal funds in Iowa, tells Fox News to fuck off, shits on the press, insults every PC concept known to humanity, and still gets within 4% of a plurality. This is a bad showing? The chick on NPR (I use the word “chick” because “journalists” at least pretend they’re not giddy) seemed to believe 3.3% below a plurality is “soundly defeated”.

Here’s a word problem for us all: “Suppose Mike Mainstream gets 8 delegates and Alexander Asshole gets 7 delegates. Suppose NPR says Asshole was crushed like a squirrel beneath a Mack truck and Mainstream has dreamy eyes. In one hundred words or less, describe where NPR’s funding originates.”

She acted like any day now Trump would bugger off to the dungeons of capitalism or wherever dirty bastards who work for a profit lurk. Eventually she spewed the six hundredth prediction of Trump’s flameout.

Now there’s an idea that’s been tried and found wanting; “He’s toast this time for sure!” It ‘aint happening. I initially thought Trump would self-immolate. So did everyone except Scott Adams and my dog. I was wrong. Everyone except Scott Adams and my dog was wrong. When I am wrong, I attempt to learn from it. I don’t try extra hard to believe I was right. That’s because I’m not a six year old child or an NPR propagandist.

The giddy chick’s pronouncements made me uncomfortable. The lady doth protest too much. She probably has a Trump poster over her bed.

Some other hack took over the microphone, possibly to give giddy chick private time to explore her feelings. The new factoid was that Jeb Bush garnered 2.8%. This makes him less popular than a proctology exam performed by Ebola. None of the NPR flacks thought Jeb was a flameout. Isn’t that awesome? Jeb gets under 3% and Trump gets over 24% so Trump is doomed and Jeb “has time to improve”. Really? As a sane man I’m aware that <3% is the very definition of “toast”. It would take a month and $100 million of other people’s money before Jeb figured out the obvious. Slow learner.

The first chick came back but now she sounded less giddy. Clinton beat Sanders by 0.3%. They spoke Sander’s name as if he caused leukaemia by entering the race but I think it’s just their opinion that Queen-elect Clinton really shouldn’t have to put up with his hippie shit. Even so it was a win for NPR’s obvious favorite and they had audio smiles all around. I’m impressed whenever the female Clinton gets through the day without committing a felony so I tried to feel charitable about her slim but honest win. I hope she enjoyed a little champaign or whatever Clintons drink to celebrate; probably the blood of slain enemies.

Then came the description of how Clinton has already locked up 450 “super delegates” (whatever the hell they are). Sanders, who has the fighting soul of a koala bear is up against a pit viper. I know this because he started out 450 points down. Pat Buchanan channeling Mussolini on a blind date with Gozer the Destroyer couldn’t make a voting system that crooked. That said I admire Clinton’s clanging brass balls when it comes to game manipulation. I expect her to start handing out business cards that say “Fuck you, I’m a goddamn Clinton”.

If there’s an upside maybe America could harness that level of deceit and rule the known universe. Imagine future negotiations between Vladimir Putin and a person who’s never once played fair:

“Listen up Vlad baby, you’re former KGB and look good without a shirt. That’s cute. But you’ve got no idea about me. I get plus seven on all saving throws. I start elections 450 points ahead of every living being. I’m straight up concentrated evil. I was fired for being too unethical to Nixon. Isn’t that impressive? I treated Nixon, a douchebag whom everyone hated, so badly that I was fired for being mean… by lawyers! I did that at an age when most kids are still playing beer pong and you were learning Judo. You should have cut the shit Vlad, forget martial arts and spycraft and simply refine the practice of being evil. I come from a different dimension of time and space where humility and kindness doesn’t exist; and I’m not talking about Newark. Understand Vlad? Your human ways are chew toys to my sinister mind. I break laws when I don’t need to. I ruin people when it’s unnecessary. I fart in elevators, make the maid work on Christmas, and force my chauffeur to hit orphans on the street. I key diplomat’s cars and blame Mitt Romney. When the Pope visits I’ll put sugar in his gas tank. When shitheads burned the American embassy and tore people to bits I had some random idiot blogger arrested. Yeah baby, I threw some dipshit in the clink for a year just to amuse myself. I’ve built a dungeon in the white house basement and I’ve got Ted Nugent and John McCain chained up right now and watching Barney 24/7. Why? Because I’m super special extra mean like that. When I send e-mails I commit treason. Ever heard of anyone else who breaks the law just to send an e-mail? Why store State secrets in a non-governmental shitter in Denver? Because I can! People throw money at my charitable organization and I spend it on Chia Pets and crack. I sleep on a pile of gold coins. I cause acid rain. I bake kittens into my oatmeal. I’m undead and can never die. No mortal can win against me.”

“Now Vlad baby… before we discuss trade agreements I’d like to point out that I’ve already poisoned your coffee. Why? Because I’m a goddamn Clinton and nothing can stop me. Bwa ha ha ha ha!”

Seriously man, who gets to start an election 450 points ahead?

Part 2 next….