Getting Along in Normal entries

I feel pretty confident in saying the recent election didn’t go the way I wanted, at least for the office of president. I’m pretty confident too that the sense of polarization, division, derision and implication of class struggle that began sixteen years ago, as best as I can reckon, at least in it’s most recent incarnation, was not mitigated but rather provoked by the outcome of the election. Recounts and allegations of Russian tampering are not helping the chasm.

It does not bode well for the president elect that he is pointing fingers at the CIA for the suggestion of tampering. As polar as you want to get and however deep you want to live the chasm, that motherfucker is the commander and chief, but, the way our government works, in theory, there’s a bunch of checks and balances with lofty reasons that can be summarized by ‘Play nice with others because anyone of y’all can take the ball and go home.’ It’s a bad idea to piss off the spooks before your fat ass swivels in the executive chair of the oval office.

Spooks don’t quite fit in the checks and balances, oversight committees, yes, sppoks, no. An oversight committee is the embodiment of ‘It’s easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission’. Just saying.

When I worked for the state the number one unwritten piece of my job description was to duck red tape and rules without getting caught for the best possible outcome. You’d think something as simple as ‘Pedophiles bad’ would be good enough reason and just enough cause to, at bare minimum, remove children from their care. It’s not. In the simplest terms, and the terms you’ve most likely run across in your own life, ‘Quit persecuting him, I know him, he’s a nice guy, he wouldn’t do that.’ The idea that someone’s friend thinks they are nice being a more valid talking point than my two hundred page report rife with preponderance of evidence is … very American.

In broad simplistic ways that’s how our government works; for the people but with marginal transparency. Anyone who is adequate for the task, any task in government, won’t let something as insignificant as the president impede progress. Hmmm, progress is the wrong word. Success with agenda is what I mean. Just because the commander in chief has Alzheimer’s (Reagan) doesn’t mean the agendas that exploit that are progressive. Just saying, it’s a public servents duty to serve the public and the law or the people or both making it impossible to do is a piss poor excuse, tantamount to ‘sorry, I was drunk, I didn’t know what I was doing.’ If you don’t know how to get around the law and the people you aren’t really a public servent, you’re a place-holder and if you are well meaning you’re worse than the malicious self-serving bastard who is competent at the same job.

Huh. Got off track. The gap between the left and the right is more dangerous to this country than whatever idiot is leasing 1600 Pennsylvania ave. I’m not sure how it happened but there seem to be a vocal number of folks who think the left are rich intellectual elitists. I know there’s been a marked rise in trailer park republicans for Jesus and against abortion, but their poverty has not raised the mean income of of the guy sharing a flat in Boston’s north end with three refugees and using his masters in philosophy to manage the graveyard shift at dunkin donuts. Economically the trailer park guy owns his double wide but the guy in Boston is less likely to have a tornado take his apartment. Despite either guys opinion on Jesus or abortion, neither are likely to meet Jesus or have an abortion or lack thereof. I’m not saying they should be friends, I’m saying there’s not an empirical reason they should be enemies, well, not until they meet. Either way Trump is still president elect.

I’m thinking Jesus probably would not have voted for Trump, but, not being an American citizen he wouldn’t get a vote anyhow. It’d be fun to have heard Trump Supporters rationalize a Trump rant against ‘Mid eastern Kikes in swaddling clothes conspiring to give that bitch the white house and I’m gonna round up all these skullcap messiahs and blast them back to mecca.’ Um, I just mean that’s the sort of shit he’ll say over the next four years, don’t let it get to ya. The folks who actually do the work do it no matter what nutjob is in office.

Better to shake hands with your neighbor than fret the comings and goings of presidents. There’s no term limit on neighbors and they don’t need congressional approval to build a fence. You are not very likely to meet Trump, you see your neighbor every day.

I don’t know that the people have much say so in who or what the government does, but you have absolute say so in what you do and the more neighbors you have with you the more you can do. Democratic politics are a lot like middle of the road Christianity; the more you do the more likely your prayers will bear fruit (e.g. Jesus please fill that pothole at the school crossing is a more effective prayer when you have a bunch of tar, asphalt and shovels and some guys who know how to use them).