Red Is For Sissies and Commies

Growing up my mother used to have a standard response whenever I would ask for something beyond our means. A typical exchange would go a little something like this....

Me: "I want a Mongoose BMX for my birthday"

Ma Donkey: "Well spit in one hand and wish in the other and let me know which one fills up first"

Sounds harsh and it was, and it was even harsher when I would inevitably not get what I had wanted but rather something (usually in the undergarment family) that I actually needed.

However after my initial anger at the world - personified in the form of the perennial pair of celebratory socks wore off - I would get to the task at hand of making my dreams a reality.

In this instance circumventing local child labor laws and going to work at the local video arcade within two months I was the proud owner of not just any run of the mill BMX but hells bells a chromed out Supergoose with pimped out Z rims.

Looks like the ol' biddy knew what she was doing after all.

Now the reason that I bring this up is not to be your typical drunken Paddy waxing nostalgic about his poor old dead mother or to be a big shot boasting that my bike was cooler than yours (it was) but rather because that I was recently involved in a political discussion with my in-laws by proxy about the current crop of numbskulls aka the Presidential candidates and I had to break out the ol' nugget.

Now if you are familiar with this blog and some of its past baseball themed incarnations you are aware that I speak of a family divided not just by designated hitter rule but the dumbed down media created color lines of blue staters v. red staters.

So I went about my bizness of soundly thumping all arguments like a pre-prosthetic Roy Munson knocking down pins during the 1979 Odor-Eaters Championship for each and every one of the candidates by using their own words and policies past present and future, in other words I used facts to formulate my opinions and winning arguments.

That is until I momentarily got stumped. Mind you, I said momentarily and it wasn’t so much the candidate but rather the supporter and his reasoning that stumped me. The Patriarch in-law is all about Obama. What the frick? Wouldnt have guessed it in a million years. Here you have an intelligent church going self made successful business owner supporting a political neophyte for the sole reason that he is “inspirational and represents change and hope”

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME

A beautiful woman is inspirational. The Slieve Cliffs of Donegal are inspirational. A Frank Zappa guitar solo is inspirational.

As a nation we should neither want hope or need our leaders to be inspirational. Now Im not saying that inspiration and hope and change and all that mumbo jumbo is bad, what Im saying is that shouldnt be the reason we hire our civil fucking servants no more than you would expect your mailman or town dog catcher to give you a warm and fuzzy feeling. Deliver the mail and catch dogs thats it.

There has to be a substance beyond them that has been sorely lacking the past few decades. As the Rhino is known to say "don't talk about it, be about it"

Saying you're about "hope" and "change" isn't worth the fucking cue card that the catchphrase is written on without a plan for a course of action that to date I haven't really heard anyone talking much about.

.... and we (meaning you) the electorate are buying it hook, line, and sucker. Its a weakness based on emotion or to paraphrase me ma....

"Shit in one hand and hope in the other and see which fills first"

That my friends is the current state of our political system, on one hand you get nothing but wishful thinking/empty promises and in the other what you do get smells like shit and we have no one to blame but ourselves for it and for whichever abortion we put in the White House come November.

That's it I'm done, throwing in the towel, moving to Montana to raise dental floss.

I'm taking the blue pill.

"I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss. I don't want to remember nothing. Nothing. You understand? I want to be rich. You know, someone important, like an actor."