Altered AM
Early Saturday morning. It’s a struggle to keep the fog off my windshield. The sun still hasn’t come up over the tree line. The birds are still issuing their morning calls.
And Kilroy’s on Kirkwood is packed. In fact, patrons are spilling out the front door.
It’s 8:25am and dozens — perhaps hundreds — of Indiana University college students are drinking alcohol.
Hmm. I’d always heard that drinking booze that early in the morning is a sign of a deep, urgent problem. But what do I know.
▼
Screaming
We live in a world of helplessness. All of us.
That’d be okay if only we’d accept the fact that forces greater than we are, we individuals, are swirling around us and there’s really nothing we can do to stop them or even nick them. Biological forces. Psychological forces. Political forces. There are seven billion of us running around in circles, looking out for ourselves, some of us occasionally even trying to help our sisteren and brethren.
That’s seven billion impulse-laden, desire-driven souls trying to make sense out of this chaos that is life. Seven billion who’ve inherited and are trying to tweak risibly imperfect systems and relationships. We do the best we can although I would caution against bragging about what we’ve accomplished so far.
That said, there are times when even our laughable ways of doing things fall apart. Like Tuesday, when an earthquake tore through Mexico and devastated much of its capital, Mexico City. Today, crews still are trying to dig potential survivors out of the rubble of collapsed buildings. By this time, the effort seems to be only a hope for a miracle.
Yet I heard a report this AM on the radio of people gathering around certain buildings, protesting, demanding the government do something about it all, insisting at the tops of their lungs workers find missing loved ones. Their chants and their demands sound so much like those of the many protest groups springing up around the world calling for change, for equity, for something — anything — good.
The earthquake protesters, it is to be feared, will end up being as successful as most of the other protesters.
The sad thing is, we’re now down to protesting earthquakes, for all the good protesting often does.
Still, we have to do it. Even if it doesn’t work 99 percent of the time.
▼
Personal From The President To The 32%
When all is said and done, the appeal of President Gag comes down to a simple message. It’s personal and it’s directed to a certain segment of the citizenry of our holy land. It is often is stated in the clearest of possible terms. It runs thusly:
There are two types of people in this world: You and Them. You, and everyone like you — your friends, your family, the people you love on TV, a very few of your trusted co-workers — are the only good and true representatives of humanity, the top of the heap. Everyone else is lower than you and yours. They are pests. They deserve less than you do, yet they want more. Very often — any chance they can — they will take what’s yours. There’s a battle brewing and one day it just might blow up into full scale war. Be alert. Be prepared.
Every other message Li’l Duce conveys is subordinate to that one, mere window dressing, details. Somehow, the candidate discovered that that is precisely what a certain minority of people in this country wanted to hear. That certain minority is so tight and strong that, when a few other percentage points of people were added — the visceral Hillary haters, those distrustful of anything and everything reeking of Washington, and a few other demographics, it was enough in a perfect storm election year to elevate a know-nothing, anti-intellectual, woman-hating, white supremacist greed monkey to the position of Leader of the Free World.
And here I’m worried about kids drinking early on a Saturday morning.
▼
Biz
Click Image To Donate
▲