In my quest to give my life meaning, I've decided to become a Republican.
This is not because I'm a business nut, or a capitalist, and in many cases I'm appalled at the idea of putting people into taxis at hospitals, as publicised by Michael Moore.
However, I remember having breakfast in Brussels, on the week George Bush Jr was elected, & talking to this Christian fundamentalist from Texas. This was a man I'd worked around for a few years & he absolutely fascinated me.
Wearing a white shirt, striped tie, pen pocket cover, he looked like a computer store salesman - thick spectacle-framed, fifties, forthright, unbendingly absolute in his tone, which was just enough to ascribe absolute infallibility to ever sentence he carefully enunciated.
"I think, he just might do it," he said. I knew he meant George W.
I was taken-a-back. Why would anybody in the world, particularly a bible-belt, bible thumping, baptist-type, want a Republican president? Surely the Democrats were the social justice champions, giving a shit about their fellows?
"You'll always find, " he continued" it's the Democrats who cross the line, with the funny stuff."
"Like what?" I asked.
"Like abortion. Once these states cross the line on the legalisation of abortion, then that's usually the end of their moral standing."
I thought at the time, he was coming from a completely different world from me, and he was.
I always blamed such thinking on America's and Americans' unfaltering, uncompromising commitment to the free market, almost at the expense of all else.
Then, on #FoxNews, during the Inauguration - related disgrace of undemocratic boycotts by people like #JohnLewis & the other 60+ Democrat officers who had been appointed as public servants, but then had decided, sometimes even in God's name, to rebel against the democratic appointment of His own deputy authority, as an example to the people.
Then, somehow we wonder whether the USA didn't just lose its collective marbles, as it deteriorates into street fires & the chaotic & illegal destruction of property and intimidation of people.
This has culminated in, once again, a showy display of protest marching, now brand allied with the ill conceived, broad/conflicting market scope of the internationally franchised #WomensMarch across the world. See previous post.
It's as if nobody knows what to do, so they'll just march up and down the street, waving placards, chanting slogans.
Good for them, it achieves nothing. It particularly doesn't help the snowflake young - or what I'll refer to from now on as #Snowflakelets - who are very distressed because they feel mom & pop aren't really getting along & there's a bit of a heavy atmosphere around the house.
The #FoxNews reporter - it might have been Tucker, said "the Christian right, is the only obstacle in the way to a totally liberal society; one in which everybody can do just whatever they please," or something, similar.
I have considered this comment the whole day, as I walked in the park with my daughter, fed bread to the starving ducks on the frozen lake, listened to loudmouthed, inconsiderates as they exercised their right to free speech as loud, as they damn well pleased, as far as anybody else even existed, talk about their right to be unimposed upon.
So here we are, going forward. Trump went to see his new CIA, today. He gave a speech to highlight what CNN-driven, media cooked bullshit his recent spat with the agency really was, that he loved them, and that he wanted to eradicate Islamic extremism, and ISIS in particular, from the earth, to loud applause from most who were there in the audience.
Times are changed. I'm actually excited. Can't wait for that smell of righteous napalm, mixed together with some smokey, crispy jihad....
