I have been trying to steer clear of politics, as it seems little good comes of my interest. The negative results are not quite as clear as a certain lack of good that comes from admiring the curvature of the female body, when it begins as “art”, but tends to degenerate into the dark shadowy figures of lust lurking about the periphery of Dejas’ paintings, turning “art” into “pornography”.
Politics has different dark temptations, yet the results do seem to be negative, at least in my case. Rather than lust the temptation seemingly is hatred.
Not that I don’t like to sit around with other old geezers and solve all the world’s problems. That is not a problem. The problem only arises when I assume others might be interested, and I post the results of geezer forums.
Not that I expect people to respect their elders. My generation did not respect our elders, and indeed robotically repeated the mantra, “Don’t trust anyone over thirty”, (back when we were so green that thirty seemed old). Now we are lots older than thirty and are seeing “turnabout is fair play” and “you reap what you sow” and “Karma sucks.”
Even so, I’d expect people might check out the results of geezer forums, even if it was only to have a good laugh. Yet to my surprise geezers get “shadow banned”. Apparently, somebody somewhere feels doddering old men represent a dire threat.
Who knew? I had no idea solving all the world’s problems was so dangerous.
In any case, it sure doesn’t encourage me to dabble in politics.
However, just as a person addicted to pornography will be tempted to admire curvature, even though he knows he tempts trouble, I find myself addicted to the watching of the lunacy currently dementing our leadership, even though I doubt good will come of it.
Mostly my attention has begat agonizing depression. Policy bound to bring about ruin is dressed as pink flamingos, and when ruin results people get mad and accuse you of racist hate towards pink flamingos. It is beyond nuts, beyond even blind squirrels. So, for the most part, attention to politics has been a test of my ability to stay sane.
Recently, however, there has been a change in the weather. The ruin certain policy must bring about has started to come about. And it is very hard to dress up things like freezing to death and starving to death as a pink flamingo. Therefore, politicians have started to scramble to CYA.
This is not due to any input on my part. After all, I am shadow banned. But it is as if some Higher Power’s input snuck into the calculations of the hopelessly corrupt. The input seems, at this point, a sneaking suspicion, stimulating the anxiety of a cat on a hot tin roof. They were hypocrites to begin with, but now they are attempting to be hypocritical to their own hypocrisy, which is so ridiculous it is downright funny.
I believe humor is highly regarded by God. I think He only regards pure Love more highly. Therefore, to have humor clobber “serious politics” seems an act of God. Yet the political morass, which the “Swamp” called “normal”, and which had seemed an ever darkening and dismal swamp, has been riven by the sunbeam of humor.
As an onlooker I was made dismal by the dismal swamp, but the unexpected sunbeam restores my failing, dwindling faith. It feels so wonderful to just laugh, rather than to be despairing.
There can be no denying that the pompous actions of authority, (who liked to strut around his flamingoes wearing the peacock plumes of respect), now looks like the strutting of a bantam rooster among chickens twice his size. It is a joke. How is it a joke? Three examples:
First: The FBI invades the former president’s house seeking some sort of criminal stuff, yet can’t say what they are looking for, or what they found, which could be nothing, and yet they absurdly looked through the former president’s wife’s underwear and the bedroom of his adolescent son, and (perhaps worst of all), didn’t clean up the mess they made when they departed.
This was a big mistake, in terms of public relations, because few of us would want anyone rummaging through our house looking for evidence of our moral failures. Who can claim perfection? Who hasn’t driven at 36 mph when the speed limit was 35? Even if we don’t admit such shortcomings publicly, at home we can relax and confess to our wife, “Yes, I drove at 36.” But now some FBI agents can barge into our wife’s bedroom (even if it’s also ours) seeking “evidence?” For what crime? They cannot say. But they hope to find it.
This did not make people laugh as much as it made them roll their eyes, but when the FBI swooped to interrogate Mike Lindell, the absurdity got too giant. First, of all the vicious criminals they could stalk, they attack a fellow who makes and sells pillows. That is a laugh in and of itself. But then they treat him as if he is hiding something, when Mike Lindall has confessed all his crimes publicly, even writing a book about the stupidity of his sins. Few people are more open, with so little to hide, as Mike Lindell, and it took nerve for those with so much to hide to question him, and hilarity resulted. Even while freely answering FBI’s questions (with answers the press zealously shadow bans), Lindell began to interrogate the interrogators. The question he asked that buckled my knees was, “Do you fellows know Jesus?”
I’m not sure why that struck me as being so funny. Perhaps it just seems an unlikely question for a criminal to ask.
The third joke was Florida’s governor sending fifty illegal aliens to the posh resort of Martha’s Vinyard. The hypocrisy was rich, as an island with well over 50,000 and perhaps 100,000 empty beds (it being the off season) claimed it could not help due to a “housing crisis.” The fact 120 National Guard troops were activated to whisk a mere 50 people off the island and to a military base on Cape Cod, while nothing was (or is) done when thousands cross our southern border every single day, overwhelming small towns in the American Southwest, could not be a better example of the mind-boggling double standards of the elite.
I like the new word “optics”. Optics was formerly the scientific study of light, light’s properties, and vision, but politicians highjacked the word and now it means how a situation “looks”, and the art of changing how things “look”.
There seemingly is a belief that “optics” can make a black cat look white, if the cat is viewed with the proper “spin”, and that the public is so gullible that it will accept the untruth as truth. However, this apparently is not true. People quietly murmur among themselves, “That cat is black.”
There is a magic which performer utilize when on stage, wherein the audience willingly undergoes a suspension of critical thinking and willingly enters a world of make believe, but there are also occasions where the magic fails. The performer pushes things too far, asks too much of the audience, and the magic bursts like a bubble. It is a terrible experience for performers to undergo, known as “bombing out”.
It seems to me politicians are currently “bombing out.” Many are baffled by the experience. Having no close relationship with Truth, they don’t know which way to turn. Rather than facts all they have is “optics”, and they shuffle through their selection of “optics” like a gambler through his cards, seeking an ace when even an ace won’t help. Why not? Because the public is sick of cards, sick of being played, sick of being treated as if they are a game when life is dire.
People can only be told that what is dire is not dire (and that what is not dire is dire) for so long before the tedium of it all sets in. Heartstrings can only be tugged so many times. The men on the stage become strangely emotional, manipulating like Scarlett Ohara saying, “Where shall I go? What shall I do?” and the audience, En masse, says, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
I’m not sure why this strikes me as being so funny. I’m not sure it is funny at all and do my best to adopt a severe expression. But I fail. Something is laughing in me.
Do you know what I think it is? I think it is joy. After being made dismal so long the sight of a sunbeam makes me laugh. It seems such a delightful blow, such an uncanny counterattack, in the weird war we are midst.
*******
PS: One sunbeam was, oddly enough, rain. There is nothing quite like rain after a brutal drought. Here is a sonnet-sequence written during the transition:
Life has me on the ropes and I sure wish I could run home to Mom's and lick my wounds, But she's been dead for decades. I can't fish For compliments midst losses. Time consumes My strength like fire does straw. All are needy And nobody gives. So, it seems the time's ripe To rear up and thunder at the greedy Who ask and ask and ask, and never wipe Their own butts. . Once I was young, needing A Mom to run to when hurt, but outgrew That tenderness, and I quit the feeding Of hopes for help. That's life. Where I once knew Help ceased, when young, I'll get none now I'm old. My pension is God, whose goodness is gold.
Lord, all my life I've longed to sit with You In a little cottage sipping coffee With all bills paid, and no draining debts due, And a maid to make my bed and meals. Free To write my sonnets. Free to talk of rhymes And rhythm. And free to sit and admire The poems you create. Yet I've lived hard times And even the old get no help. My desire Is too much to ask. Not my meek wishes But Thy great will be done: Work. Work 'til I drop. Have no desire. Irony's delicious For You're more with me as my wishes stop. I'll dance to the words Your music has sung As rather than helped, I help the hurt young.
Striding through the bright windy morning After the rain, with the sky widened blue, My heart's busted free of worry and warning And a freshness uplifts all the things that I do. My wallet's the same: No less and no more. The facts haven't changed. Why's all different? I was in prison. You've opened the door. Now there is perfume. Before, not a whiff of scent Wakened the drab. How is it all's changed? Where leaves just hung, now foliage billows And sparkles. The whole world's rearranged. The sky is still sky. The willows still willows, Yet You alter all with Your glances of love. My mind cannot grasp what my heart's singing of.
I love those rare mornings when I awake Secure in the bosum of God. A child Does not build his home, nor do I make This lifting day. The blooming east has smiled On all of us. The blending knows no hate. The stars do not hiss like hot coals in cold Water as they dim, but, like men who wait Aside as women enter, the stars hold The door open and let the Biggest Star Make them dim. The King of kings is coming. We have no idea how lucky we are Even if stooped. Without fanfare or drumming We are already saved, secure in the arms Of He who makes woes dissolve into charms.
Sunrise's Swansong 