March 11, 2016
Dear Everyone:
What to write about? Can’t
gloat about the weather.
Can’t whine about ARMA and the
Homeowners.
Thank god for politics!
I love Donald Trump.
I could swear at him for hours.
In the interests of full disclosure, I’m a registered
Independent.
Oregon was one of the
first states to lower the voting age from 21 to 18.
The Vietnam
War, which the Vietnamese called “The American War”, was raging.
And some people felt that if you were old enough to be
drafted and sent off to die, you should also be considered old
enough to vote for the people who were drafting you and sending you off
to die.
So shortly after my eighteenth birthday I trekked into
Portland to
register to vote. At
that time the choices were stark:
Democrat or
Republican. Both our
mother and bossy oldest sister were avowed Democrats.
Our Dad was a died-in-the-wool
Midwest
Republican. It led to lively
conversations at the dinner table during even-numbered years.
In my case it was a matter of choosing the Lesser of Two Evils.
Many years passed. The
choices expanded. I
re-registered as an Independent.
Life goes on.
Meanwhile…
Richard Nixon
got into hot water over a tiny little matter of trying to
fix the
election, but more seriously over getting caught.
On the Plus Side, Nixon did succeed in getting the United States
out of the Vietnam War.
Score one for Nixon.
Jimmy Carter
was swept into office on a wave of disgust.
He didn’t do very well.
Ronald
Reagan was swept into office on another wave of disgust.
The White House seesawed back and forth between the Republicans
and the Democrats. In other
words: Situation Normal.
But somewhere along the line, each Side decided that the Other Side was
the Spawn of Satan and things got nasty.
Furthermore, both sides forgot that a very large part of their
job was working with the other side to make government function.
Non-functioning government:
Not always a Good Idea.
Our mother used to say that you always knew what the Republicans would
do in any given situation. The
reason she preferred the Democrats was that you never knew what they
were going to do and that was more fun to watch.
Now the situation is reversed.
The Republicans got used to holding the Average American Taxpayer
hostage, first threatening to “shut
down the government”, now threatening to
hog tie the Supreme Court.
The Average American Taxpayer is fed up and, just like in the
movie, opened
the proverbial window and shouted, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to
take it anymore!” And is now
attending Donald Trump for President Rallies.
To the embarrassment and befuddlement of the Republican Party.
They really don’t know what to do, much less how to do it.
They’ve shot themselves in the foot one too many times and now
don’t have a foot to stand on.
Ordinarily, the “Grand Old Party” (GOP) would rally around the
heir presumptive and pump money into his campaign.
But they really don’t like Donny the Trumpet.
He’s just not Their Kind of People.
As for all those enthusiastic supporters, it may just be that they are
thinking that Donny can’t possibly “foxtrot” it up any worse than the
Good Old Boys have done for so long.
Example: Donny wants a war.
He keeps telling everyone that he’ll make the military stronger.
Never mind how he plans to pay for it.
“We don’t win anymore!
Elect me and I guarantee a win!”
The last time America “won” a war was in 1983, when Reagan
declared an
undeclared war on
Grenada, a tiny island-nation in the Caribbean with a total
population only slightly larger than
San Ramon,
California. The war was
over before most people even knew it had started.
Just makes you feel proud all over, don’t it?
Someone pointed out that having Donny in the race has made it “lively”.
So is a food fight in a high school cafeteria.
Someone else pointed out that, “We’ve never seen his like before.
And may never see it again.”
There’s always hope.
In the meantime, on the Democratic Side, we have
Bernie versus
Hillary.
Both represent a “break” with the past.
One is an avowed
Socialist,
there other is a Person without a Penis.
Thus, they both appeal to people who feel they have been
under-represented for quite long enough.
Maybe, with
Caitlyn Jenner
as a running mate…
Love, as always,
Pete
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