I Wear My Own Kind of Hat

Pledge Allegiance to the Republic

Vive la Résistance! (hawh hawh)

no pretending you'll come back and get it later, 'kay?

PREMISE: We Get to Take Back One Word

 

Friends Railing at the TV Machine is Like a Warm Binky

The resistance is to be waged on many fronts simultaneously, not roam from this lion-killing-happy dentist over here to some ruthless African warlord there, from an emotionally charged faith in the best ideas, to being played for chumps by false-flag trolls; sequential interest in the body politic by meme and hashtag is over.

Or it needs to be, pronto.

Because the change you can't whip up in just one election cycle is 'job one' after a crushing turn of events such as we have witnessed. I reflect on election 2016 first and foremost with the thought of what was the McGuffin in the room?

Period, to borrow some Sean Spicer. To suggest a word to put back in the lexicon from where it has been co-opted, just one, it is to have a wish list too big for the frame.

The candidates were as different as a good education with a public life of service to boot and Chance the gardener melding with high society as it re-named him Chauncey. Words from the campaign will have their day, even losing any prophecy, but it's always going to be uphill to reach the half who couldn't care less about voting. Silent Majority (my aunt Fanny) is too many words for the premise, and not eligible for any further co-option than its original meaning and utility.

 

So It Wasn't "Silent Majority?"

When looking back, pick a story line; then follow it from birth to death. Like how the president with an asterisk would scuttle any reportorial probe into his once rabid birther-ism. This was 2015, sweet Jesus, and he laid down the formula with an "excu-u-use me" here and a palm push there.

Why did Katy Tur of MSNBC back down from her line of questioning? The tapes are there. Men gone to Hawaii - amazing what they were finding - and now it's bluster, space invading and interrupting?

There's a really good one word hiding in this and countless similar anecdotes: access.

It extends throughout the entire campaign. End on an up note when you can. A "leave it right there" is as good as a "thanks for coming on" to a Chuck Todd wannabe. You'll always be welcome to repeat this monkey show whenever. However, that one word access isn't nefarious for its semantics; we can undo the reliance on it without the discipline required for a quitting smoker's triggers - just stop coveting it, for crying out loud.

 

Your Editor Has Stopped Giving You the Stretch Sign

A word more co-opted than even journalism which can often mean one-time journalists now employed by media is the one I want back.

Don't call anyone reporter without two sources and an editor.

It's a little like two wraps and a hooey to my country cousins, because the judges (We, the People) will disqualify you without it. That's the word I want nobody to trespass. Not Frank Luntz, not Joe Scarborough, not Breitbart/Bannon, not a single member of a press corps more aptly referred to as a media gaggle.

Journalism, irrespective of the crap we're supposed to accomodate in the name of the modern, the hip, the happening, is built from reporting. Bra ads are down the hall to the left, but in here, editors are at work corralling reporters into honest reporting. We need that, he said with the understatement of a much older and crankier old dude.

Now the confusion comes with this here media thing. Trumps says media dishonest. Well, some might just be. But I don't give a crap. Media got us here, true, but they have no power to get us back. Only to sell us more soap, got me? Only facts will suffice and good humor enough not to hold a grudge. One is the province of an institution with a constitutional mention; the other is evidence of the need to be placed in one.

For the facts, you had better seek out a reporter. (Ask your grandpa.) When it comes to the other, try not to go viral, 'kay?  

Now with More

Of Course We'll Get Fooled Again

Finding Acceptance

 

To the kids out there: you get to be my age, moving house is one of the hardest things you can do. 

Especially when you're closing out 35 years in your owner-built home at 8,000' in the southern Rockies and trading it in for a house in a town 1500 miles away, with a yard and everything. Sure, my old desk is here at the new digs, and now I have one of those laptop thingies so anywhere can be my desk I suppose, but did I mention old?  

Savvy readers have noticed the absence of fresh writings here since mid-July, when in an hardly rare outburst of braggadocio I stated that "(y)ou need a pajama-wearing guitar player pundit sometimes, I've often found, to vigorously clench the scimitar of the obvious, and at that I remain your humble servant." Then I took 5 months off to move and get settled, neglecting those very needs for which inflated self-importance serves me in good stead as muse and confidant. But enough about me. How about you? Did you miss me? 

I have managed to work through the stages of grief in the interim. For those who hadn't yet grieved from MSNBC lovin' the escalator in May 2015 to Trumpism usurping airtime away from reportage and thoughtful analysis to the tune of millions in free advertising, from the fervor of red hatted brownshirts to the stench of Tea Party redux - if somehow, after all the shrugging off of flaw after flaw one was still able to avoid an iota of grief for one's country, Donald Trump's ascendancy allowed no such quarter as denial. 

And November 9 was an angry day, not that Bernie purism and Priebus apologism hadn't already popped steam from the ear canals, but America trading in the 2nd chance it so didn't deserve after Bush, Cheney and the bubble's recession: that was assault. The depths to which they will go to see us liberals dance like ice cubes on the flat top - that really pissed me off. And I don't need a red hat, just the longest finger. 

Now the electoral college has returned to the dimly lit round-tables of academia and with it goes any hope of removing Trump without handing the keys to Mike Pence and it has dragged into oblivion the postulations and alternative realities that can't now be fact, nor part of this new deal. Bargaining has been short lived.

For those of us who were 21 in '69, the last couple of months have been a repudiation of the slack we cut our fellow citizens when we said they couldn't be that stupid. Which in turn means who's stupid now? So yes, I'd say that could bring a person down, harsh a buzz, lead to 13 weeks of all day drinking. Maybe just give up entirely and learn to love video gaming. Take up Facebook and collect "likes" in some sort of twisted quid pro quo. Tweet, while resisting the urge to use exactly 140 characters every time. 

Now that's pure hellscape. 

Which brings us up to this morning. I didn't plan on hiatus; it just kinda happened. I've thrashed privately, exceeded the curbside glass recycling tub to where it never all gets picked up and thought about trading in cozy anonymity for the chance to go viral, like 110 million of my closest "friends." 

I had gone all Rip Van Winkle during the horse race we like to call our "Candidates Showcase Showdown" and watched as everybody "came on down" and now we're stuck with the least qualified human for most jobs anywhere, let alone president, and a cadre of tentacles and Koch suckers. 

Believe me. More than a few people are saying this. 

But I woke up surprisingly calm. 

I know my place in this. Not bomb throwing, though the appropriate spitball here and there seems inevitable. Not willful ignorance, for then I have become my enemy. Not anarchy, for a nation of laws not men is far superior. 

But I do feel a fight coming on and have been given that rare, umpteenth chance. 

This time I will do better at being the loyal opposition. I can accept that.

In the Afterglow of Unity

The Mandate for Coalition

It should be evident to every Democrat that, for this year anyway, that's how sausage is made. Turns out sky pie doesn't cram into the casing as well as red meat and gut check, but that, as they say, is why they play the game. 

So there's this new Pokemon app. Have you heard about this? No, there's only one Seinfeld, I was just curious. Seems like the same featurette of your "smart" phone that picks up useless information as you walk down the street, is now a fun thing to do while waiting to fall into an open sewer.

There's been this media narrative (jathink?) that there's a dedicated cadre of Sanders folks who will just stay home and it's been touted just like the much ballyhooed "never Trump"ers of yore. The latter proved to be so much hacky-sack Jell-o; a similar fate is not the wildest of predictions for the former. Evidently the nation was not as fevered in pitch about the campaign so far as represented by the possessors (9/10 of the law) of our most reputable journalism logos, or maybe national principles have become like the latest lion-killing dentist not named Kone. 

Methinks a fad app is telling its own story about now.

Now I've heard, as have you, savvy reader, the impassioned support even Jim Webb got a taste of. Folks align - it's what we do. 

In the either/or of Bernie/Hillary a pall of disingenuousness envelopes anyone who now proves to have been an ideological scoundrel by showing utter poor sportsmanship. Of course there's a mandate for coalition.

But to any hold-outs, and I hope the number is less than any poll whose reputation is burgeoning in media narratives tries to okey-doke on your behalf: this is worse than "the rent's too damn high." 

This is so serious, John Adams just had a heart attack. 

No, no no! Don't convert any one of your positions. Please. 

Save your idealism for the next "make your own sausage day." But prove me right, please. In as non-rubbing-your-nose-in-it a way I can muster.  It's important.

You remind me of you at your age. 

The streets were ablaze on several counts. The plutocrats entangled the nation in ways nobody really appreciated except them. The old farts then had been Joe McCarthy lovers. They bought that stopping communism snake oil the moment it came through town.

We were put in a lottery to die. No, really.

Trust that you are surrounded by old farts who merely lack your physical energy.

Above all, that Bernie made Hillary better. 

Who knew?

Lastly, I have to wonder how much effort is being spent at this critical juncture on posing whilst surreptitiously trolling? They know who they are and we must greet them like the latest distracting app.

Whether for pay or bragging rights, there's going to be a flood of disaffected sounding, supposed Sanders supporters calling into every last show with open phone lines or Twitter feeds to rail against the Democratic nominee. Screeners on the shows we love will be up against it. And when I say "we" I do mean in that 1st person plural way which should be the afterglow of our unification. 

The saddest part of the process which makes commonweal is that it is so readily co-opted. I can't explain the fact that people gave thumbs up and thumbs down to a YouTube video of the president consoling Dallas today. Call Seinfeld. No please, call Seinfeld.

Retweets-per-minute as a statistic has always struck me as theater of the absurd and this is right in there with it. It's instructive. Perhaps the ups are an atta boy for the president we, on our side, have come to really, really appreciate. I venture I know who the downs are but they only use more subterfuge if they think you're on to them. (Walks away, whistling... 

                      ...

                                ...

You're welcome.)

72.4% appreciated the president's speaking for the nation to the grieving. The remainder did not.

You need a pajama-wearing guitar player pundit sometimes, I've often found, to vigorously clench the scimitar of the obvious, and at that I remain your humble servant.

A Clue for the Clueless

Sarah Palin Willing to Give Opinion

Overheard at Politicon Comma Comma

                             I would tell him to find someone

                                        who understands who the boss will be,
           
                     someone who is not running to,

                               someone who he could serve with who he wouldn’t need a taste test,

      a food taste-tester around him, you know?

                                                                    You know what I mean?

                       Someone who is going to be loyal to what the boss’s agenda is.

                                       That’s going to be real important, too.

                                                      And someone who had experience, too,

                                                                 again,

                                              coming from the private sector,

                             connected to the essential people in this country,

                and not part of the political establishment that has been part of the problem.

Paul is Dead

Abbie Normal Road

The white blocks, making stripes on the new asphalt. Always new asphalt in these goddam socialist countries!

The lads, posing while looking like they're not posing.

There's a Lamarckian blood trace heading towards Why I Nevertown. Let's say it's in Wisconsin. For the continuity. Let's say.

One of the guns of a youthful nature, the one who didn't get "All You Need is Love" must have been Photoshopped in because, you see, Paul is dead.

Deads I tells ya. Ya dabbles in in with Trump, out with Trump back in with Trump goo gooka cho enough times, you are relying on residuelles, mes belles. Sont les mots qui prove you're an incorrigible bitch for hire.

Trumpism Recapitulates Machiavellianism

Deontology