Friday, August 24, 2012

Just South of Saginaw

I had a note from my best man, Chris, now in Austin, Texas yesterday about dark happenings in his part of the Hundred Acre Wood that I might not normally find out about for quite some time (or in my case, if ever). Later the same day, Roger passed along a related story on the same situation. My old chums' instincts are very good. There's a mean-spirited goofiness most curious and furious afoot, my little one, from both the left and the right leaving those of us out here in the middle with very little but McMurtry and bus fare home.

As my brother Adam shared yesterday in his space you cannot be too righteously indignant and intellectually offensive in pursuit of points of view that are meaningless and actually hateful and hurtful to just about everyone else on earth but yourself and then wonder why the general populace lines up around the block to spit on you.

But Chris offered me the counter-balance, the yin to the yan, the tippe to the canoe, the arsenic to the old lace and it looks like Judge Tom Head takes the cake and what ever other pastries are being offered. In the How Hazy Is Crazy Contest, no more calls PLEASE! We have a winner.

The visual of Obama leading UN tanks through the streets of Lubbock, Texas, should keep me up waaaay past my bedtime for the next few weeks. Seriously. Poor Carol Morgan is already an insomniac it seems (of course she's a lot closer) and after the Judge achieves gleichshaltung, she'll probably be one of the first in the reeducation camps.

We used to be the country everyone else on earth aspired to be. Read our history. We welcomed everyone from everywhere-we had  boundless horizons and needed all the help the world could offer to carve out individual dreams. And now look at us and try hard to NOT look away.

Somehow, we've become your wacky Uncle Wally, that guy on Dad's side of the family but he claims it's your mom's uncle, who drives cross country every five years or so to say "hi" to the whole gang and who can't leave fast to suit the grown-ups because he just creeps every one out and for God's sake do NOT make eye contact with him or we'll be here all day.

Don't get me wrong, we've always had whack jobs on both ends of the political spectrum but now, they're no longer the exception, but the norm. When insanity becomes some form of an alternative to sane and sober, what does that leave for the rest of to do, hide? Make no mistake: that chestnut about 'it will have to get worse before it gets better' is all about us here in the Land of the Round Doorknobs, except for the getting better part.

Maybe it's just me-after all you can share the planet with just so many Judge Heads and folks who get cross and crazy about crosses only so long before it all rubs off, but don't start me talking, I could talk all night. My mind goes sleepwalking while I'm putting the world to right. Or left, as the case may be. And the violence and vitriol are already stacked to the gunwales and it's not even yet Labor Day in a Presidential Election Year. And I would rather be anywhere else, but here today.
-bill kenny

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