It’s roughly mid-October in a roughly MAGA America and how is your rough life going? (Seems like early November, but only politically, not as far as the mal-adjusted seasons.)
Well I’ll tell you about mine, thank you. And roughly. Halloween haunts — got to find some extra dough for candy and costumes for the kids and myself, more and more obligatory for adults, but all I have is some spare change, can you please bum me a dime? — are already becoming reality in our everyday lives. Note use of the word “everyday.” Master of Reality? Black Sabbath nailed it with a landmark album years ago. Could they today?
Things for all of us, I note, have for two years or so been slowly grinding to a halt, so slowly that no one notices, and that is not fake news. Well I have more news for you: Come a few months after midterms, a term virtually even the most illiterate voter will instantly recognize, give or take a couple months, if the Grand ol’ GOP wins, there will be no more grinding — the bottom will finally drop out completely.
(It’s like the bad political and cultural swamp has in their minds indeed been drained, but not by turning it into a fully funded nature center complete with a trail of educational signs, not terror, and creation of a few new jobs filled by workers who actually get paid, god forbid fund such a project, but by filling the swamp with concrete and constructing a Trump Tower II on top of the former wetland. No daylight in the swamp, to paraphrase a family punch line. The nature center reference will be a theme throughout this post, and I refer you in song to Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Rage Against The Machine, we continue to thank you for your concert-forming activism Tom Morello, and their past take on an old pop song, they paved paradise and a library and put up a parking lot.)
And why is all this, MAGAns ask? Well my child, it is as simple as your fucking can opener. How so, let’s take it apart with analysis. Since we’ve been waiting two years for big papa bear Trump to do it, or anything positive, and we’re still left in the lurch. It’s Main Analysis Mangled Again by (MAGA becomes big MAMA). Bring on the true matriarch of our country, not big brother, the Democratic Party.
I see a truism that has been running for decades: Republican gets into presidential office, and while there is a short-term bubble of relative prosperity for a few months, by the end of their term or terms, by God I don’t know how any of them got re-elected, the country is about ready the cease to exist, (and it can be demonstrated that it got that bad), and then a Dem gets into office and saves the day for both the many and the few, and then their term is also up, so the process starts anew with a new GOP Big Boss. It’s a vital microcosm of the roughly, again, 85-years-cycle of first boom then hope, then bust described by a very astute if I dare say so myself, online political commentator. Although this time around, there has been despite lots of meaningless construction, far so much administrative damage done, I don’t know if we’ll ever come back … We’ll never see the post-WWII boom, marked by the Beaver Cleaver myth, again.
But speaking of wars, there seems to be one of the month, every month, (like the unfailing beer of the month in so many haunts), and since they are unending and we’re being loose with stats, and everyone with the status of ceasefires, it has been said that by the end of Trump’s term, he will be fighting battles with every country on the planet, so to engage in more “conflicts” he with have to look to the moon and Mars. Elon Musk says he will help. Gazing up at the stars.
I’ll digress a bit more before explaining the can opener thing. The worst you will have with the Dems, or their ilk, is a Minnesota governor who although he did a lot of good, is being defined because of the relative ink drop in a bucket (do your math) that is the Somali day care fraud alleged crisis, which he did not even cause. (It should be noted that one reason that most long hardy Minnesotans have had it so good for so long, and they have and I reference quality of life despite you whiners, is that there was a rarity back in the 1990s and such, a Republican governor who was seen as, and may have been competent, by and large. Along with a Democratic president, so in tandem, you got it … But then good guy Arne Carlson was a victim of a cry for change, and we soon afterward got instead a pro wrestler for governer. So watch out for the legitimacy of those “change” orders.)
Since everything, based on how politics affects the world — and in a Trump world, as he tries to put his stamp on everything, and mainly it’s flown, so everything is about the pols and the polls — it goes to shit and it sits there every other October, right about now right before midterms, prior to a new round of voting, although you will note gas prices actually go down most times in the week or so prior to elections. And midterm tallies, it’s not just political science students cramming for exams, are seen as being paramount, we hear it on the news every day. But nothing ever changes, come the first Tuesday in November.
So just how has your life, outside of Minnesota, been today, in a mostly MAGA longrunning era, and the feds define things, not the states, (which if done right can at least bring a sense of unity to various proceedings.) I will show you the situation with the beef. Which segues into the can opener thing.
Back under Biden, and don’t we long for those relatively competent days, when maybe you couldn’t afford even rib-eye cuts, but you still could go out for an occasional sirloin steak. But now under Trump, you can’t even buy a cheap cheeseburger. Hence the can opener comparison, and how badly everything is made. You purchase one and it lasts for what, maybe a few months, before it stops turning and you have to buy another one, even though it’s now more expensive than the first time around. Cheap products fail even faster these days and years or months, with more cheap plastic used, go ask mom. We both have seen this maybe-planned-obsilesense with our computer printers, as most have lasted only about a year before things aren’t working right, even if that is (printing) a fine line. Diesel and fertilizer prices are through the roof, and most of the cheap work force has been deported, and drought occurs everywhere, making it prohibitively high for farms to produce the veggies inside the can. Your hands aren’t turning the god forsaken opener as well anyway, because of years of not hitting the gym because of expensive rates, like having a functional car to get you there, and not getting higher priced medical care — at least if you do, and have insurance, you’re hitting your deductible faster — since you can’t find a doctor or nurse in any case because of shortages of those key professions, so there is stagnation in worker satisfaction and therefore its productivity too, thus bringing it full circle to your can opener. Everything these days, though more complicated, is a full circle like-the-can-opener-should-do of ineptness.
So when making food, cleanup is harder too, as paper towels and dish soap are up in price, and even now in mid-October, because of the inescapable impact of global warming, in the first time I can recall in my lifetime, and I’m 65, there are still swarms of fruit flies in some parts of the apartment, you know stovetop, this late in the season up here in western Wisconsin, temps are around 85 degrees and we’ve not seen the typical frost or two yet, so the fall colors have not arrived at all, either. The maple turning red is very occasional, and greenery is still the rule. Migratory cool bird species have not passed through yet, and our local sparrows have stayed. Watch the sparrow fall, brings new meaning to it all, sings Dream Theater, but this is not a dream. At least your AC unit still works fairly well, if you are fortunate enough to be able to afford a functional and huge-cost one, but so for recreation to get your mind off all these bad things, if you go out and have a beer it’s five bucks or more. Forget actually buying dinner. So you stay in and want to have a cheap meal, but reliable and quality and affordable food is hard to come by, with grocery prices the highest in history, and it grinds away at your already poor mental health — do I have enough money in my account for Door Dash? — nationwide at its lowest ebb, and on top of it all … your can opener doesn’t work. So it all becomes circular. And all of society, various forms, is collapsing. Absurdity is the new normal.
And as far as the Somali thing, your diesel prices are ending up already to cost you more, per capita, so stop whining about it. In government by its very nature, there will always be a certain amount of fraud, and now we have another new wave of GOP hopefuls, mouthing the same old tired and baseless mantras, who are delusional enough to think they can come in like the new sheriff in town and fix it all. Bunk. All you can do is limit it to a reasonable level — a million or two ain’t much these days, unless it’s across the board and there is a multiplier effect, with our record national debt — like I would say is the Somali thing. Programs are run by bureaucracies, which are by their nature inefficient, and also see the adding of riders to bills (and insurance policies) that are promising for promoting pork-barreling — after all, those senators live and have homes in the states they represent, in most cases and at least mostly for the democrats, and so will also get perks from such localized bills, and it’s too tempting to throw in something self-serving. And that’s the benign and not the blatant. But we should fund those programs when they are good and working, and slash them when they are not. That rather than a blanket cut ’em all should be the barometer. I will say it could be argued that liberals fund too many programs where the scope of value is there but relatively limited, but psst hey buddy, in states that do it, that’s where you get a greater quality of life. You get what you pay for, and you have to pay for it.
That’s where democracy comes into action. Think we’re spending too much on that pretty archway in a wonderful and plentiful local park? (It may come down to if it’s one used by your own kids or grandkids … But I bet the legislators are not the ones living within a mile of data centers set for construction … What’s in your backyard?) Then make your voice heard. Go beyond ranting on social media, although that is a start if it starts a debate, and maybe copy it to your congressman or women or trans too. So many people say that they don’t like all the newer, even greater divisiveness in politics, so they tune out rather than tuning in and watching the news. So bitch to your legislator about the divide that exists, and say the parties should work together!
Note: Everybody complains about FEMA and disaster response and aid supplied and money that is spent for various things here and there, but like there are no (or these days few) athiests in a foxhole, everybody becomes a liberal and wants loads of money when a tornado or hurricane hits their own town.
Ergo: Democracy, or even more accurately our oligarchy, fails when people don’t actively participate. Or at least educate themselves, a different end of the same horse. But I can relate to my Gen Z bartender friends, who may think that we’re all going to die soon anyway, either because of nuclear war or environmental or economic concerns, so party it up while you can. They work hard — when the job is worth having and pays enough where it can even come close to getting you by — and play even harder, and all most of them get for news of what’s going on in the world and in their backyard is a scant and unreliable bit from social media, which in the long haul does even more damage to mental health.
Meanwhile, as we can produce loads of killer screen savers, (lately being that sleepy but lovely bear slumbering on a log, though it seems he won’t be hibernating anytime soon without the usual freezing temps until January), and such constant tech upgrades, but not a fully workable cell phone and such tech for get-the-bugs-out provisions, rather just roll out new marketable widgets. All while main street situations for the work force and small business get even worse, by many barometers.
So much more coming, related to that last graph or two and how democracy etc. is flailing and failing. As some people pass on apps and track such things with old fashioned bar graphs and charts. What are some of those barometers, as old should become new again? Continue to follow this site for analysis. One you’re going to love is a weighing-in by a former Minnesota legislative auditor and how his wisdom affects views on the oversight of the Somali day care situation. Given the HudsonWiNightlife ability to connect the dots.