TALKIN’ CABBAGES AND KINGS

TALKIN' CABBAGES AND KINGS: An email with exclamation points in the subject line arrived this week from a reader on the mainland distraught at our apparent lack of interest in and comment on the new prez.

Our reticence comes from the fact that it’s awfully depressing to think that the pendulum has swung so widely that this is probably the best president we’ll ever get in the corporate democracy of the USA Inc.

Worse has been keeping out lunch down with the mindless gushing of the media- the first thing we heard upon turning on CNN on Monday morning was “...during this historic week when the past literally intersects with the future”

Literally.

It’s not like national policies haven’t gotten better in some areas already. But how could that not happen? There have been presidents that left in disgrace, under a cloud or despised beyond rationality. But never has one been a laughing stock.

There’s something about political humor that requires an almost caricature-like super villain to play off of before it’s really funny. And when you’ve got a willing foil like we had just being earnest every once in a while will make you wildly popular replacement.

And when Porgie and Dickhead left as the mother of all butts of jokes it was not a hard act to follow especially since people are laughing as an alternative to crying.

So in walks Barry who is “gooood” as in “oooo- he’s gooood”.

Some people have that thing going that, when they talk you’re lucky if you still have all your fingers when they’re done. Some sell timeshares, some sell cars and some become politicians and sell ideas.

We all sense it when we hear it if a speaker’s ”got it” Kennedy had it. King had it. Even Clinton had it.

The problem is that it well may be that in order to have “it” you have to be “full of it”.

And just because we like the description of “it” doesn’t mean we have to swallow it whole. Because once it’s ingested it becomes a part of us investing us in the original palatability.

The political gourmet need not be the cynic just the skeptic and realist. We need only to remember that the lambs that follow in lockstep are the last to know. so the first to the slaughter.

For all the pretty bows on the package we will still have a leader who will leave us at perpetual war, without insurance company free health care, still perpetuating an exploitive economic model and still be slouching toward theocracy in a country built on corporate personhood and expansionist genocide.

We’d be well served to check out those blankets before we wrap ourselves in them.

To those who prefer to play Peter Pan and think lovely thoughts this kind of disbelieving must seem like that ubiquitous “negativity”- code for “don’t shatter my delusion, it’s all that’s keeping me from stuffing up the cracks and turning on the gas.”

But “real” is neither positive nor negative – it just is what is is. If it seems charged one or the other it’s only one’s perspective. In actuality it’s all just existent or fanciful.

It takes no time at all growing up on the streets of New York City to figure out that it’s a sucker’s game to trust anyone and everyone until they prove untrustworthy rather than keeping count of your teeth until it seems ok to take a smoke-break on the vigilance.

And the same is true for those in Missouri. But no matter where or what there’s still a lot of people who will let the smooth talker steal their face right off their head.

It couldn’t help but be better now It up to us to be real enough to reject the castles in the sky we create in our perceptions.