By Brian Wask
My TV is old and the picture is fuzzy. That’s not the reason I can’t tell the difference between most Democrats and Republicans. Reliably, their drool is repetitive and their hairstyles are socio-pathic, but I shouldn’t expect so much from Executives and Lawyers. It’s absolutely true they eat babies on Thanksgiving and slaughter bunny eggs for Easter. It’s a hard world for cute things and the ugly guys want to keep it that way. Leadbelliy never picked a bale of cotton but who’s to say he couldn’t write a damn good song about it? Only a fool. So, maybe, if we stop paying attention to crying politicians they will stop eating spaghetti with their hands. The drama of World Wresting should stay where it belongs. An R or a D before someone’s name is a Scarlet Letter. Politics are supposed to be a carnival and if that’s agreed we’ve succeeded once again. Now I can finally sleep at night.
Crying is free. You can do it all you want and it won’t cost you much, except some right-minded time to think clearly. Sometimes I think too clearly and I need some chaos. I called my friend Harrison, who is still living in the nation’s capital, though his wife’s attorneys took all the furniture and left him with only a few TVs. His diatribe was on loop, having just returned from the local bar where he’d unexpectedly bumped into his doctor, which might’ve been pleasant if the same doctor hadn’t checked his asshole for hernias just a few days before. They shared time over several strong drinks anyway, discussing rumors of the early midterm results. By the time Harrison started the ignition of his minivan, a calm spirit of delight, complimented by grief, settled in his gut. And by the time I got him on the phone he was in a blissful trance, surrounded by not politics, but primetime sitcoms concerning best friends with silly problems. “Careful,” he told me in a deep, comfortable tone. “The devil will come wearing the cross. He will come as your friend wearing a tri-cornered hat. He will open his eyes to you and smile. And because you’re unprepared and misinformed, you’ll smile back. Then you’ll make a sign about the Founding Fathers and smash someone’s head open with it.” Harrison is always good for clarity, but he still has that gun and I worry he’ll find a good reason to use it.
The people are terrified again and nothing good will come from that. Fear is not a reasonable emotion but in this part of the Americas they serve devastation for breakfast; the television, newspapers, the internet and radio. We graze on it, over and over, the same shit over and over. The Conspiracies from the Birch Society are not worth the saliva they spread in, yet for the most popular slobs on television it sells very well. But I don’t blame the TV or the media for this great misunderstanding. That kind of excuse is designated to Fools and Fatheads. I don’t hold conservatives responsible either. They’re wired wrong from birth and, like anyone else deficient of intellect, it’s not quite their fault. Instead I blame the Fools and Fatheads. Their light-headed opinions are easily persuaded by obvious lies. What ridiculous opinion did they have two years ago they don’t have now? Did they think Obama was the Messiah, and when elected he would fix everything himself by simply snapping his fingers while singing a Woody Guthrie proletariat battle cry? I think they did. Why else would they get out of bed in the morning to watch an Alcoholic turned Mormon blubber his way through the Constitution? Tears pull at the heartstrings, don’t they?
But lets get down to brass. Someone who smokes a little pot should not go to jail. Not even someone who smokes a lot of pot. It’s simple. Jail is not a place for people like that. There is no credible argument for it. The debate ends there. I’m sorry if that sounds close-minded, but you have to draw the line somewhere and irrational jibber-jabber is where I draw my line. The House of Representatives’ new majority leader grew up in a bar, and that’s okay. But what’s in the California drinking water? That desert is overpopulated with the results of a secret nuclear mistake. I’m terrified of what they eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It’s obviously resulted in strange behavior. That’s the verdict among those who have a clue. The rest I guess are too stoned and don’t give a damn. A pothead will smoke pot, legal or not. It’s time to wrestle the gun out of Charlton Heston’s cold dead hands.
Soon after hanging up with Harrison my neighbor Feo serenaded my door with a monotone ballad about Iowa and her homophobic reaction to the state’s federal circuit court. In his song the voters hung their activist judges from a good old lynching tree in the center of a sparsely populated corn grove. At least that’s what I head through the peephole. I refused to open the door because Feo was also drunk and most likely armed. It was then I realized even progressives are stockpiling weapons and it was about time I did the same. I’m not scared, but I should be. Because suddenly the Fools and Fatheads and the Conservatives and Christianites got a good hand and they won’t fold without a fight. So it’s now time to fight. Fight for equality, freedom, and decency. When the economy is bad and there are no jobs, it’s a good idea to collect taxes from the people who have it. In fact, that’s their contribution to society. They’re boring the shit out of us anyway, so if they want to be awesome then they can act like it. It’s not ideal, but what is?