The Self-Administered Muzzle

Sigh. We've gone and done it again. In our abject fear of defeat, we play not to lose. Which of course only ensures we will.

OK. WTF? you ask. Let me explain.

Last Saturday, President Biden uttered the strongest, most-decisive words of his presidency. Speaking in Poland, he said Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.”

Yay.

Vladimir Putin is a toxin. In the relatively giant world of 1900, his toxicity would have remained largely contained to Ukraine and environs. In the shrunken, interconnected world we inhabit in 2022, it overflows and contaminates vast swaths of it.

Like his orange-haired counterpart in the U.S., Putin has been given far too long a leash by a global community more intent on avoiding conflict and provocation than protecting sovereignty. We have collectively given Putin an inch, and spoiled child he is, he has taken a yard.

He is deserving of Biden's words. And so much more.

But then the Democrats fucked it up.

Fearful of letting such strong words stand, they scurried to walk it back. Spinmeisters rushed to the world's press and nervously clamored “No! What Joe meant to say was...” In doing so, they opened the door to the always fragrant opinions of Putin-bitch Dmitry Peskov, who saw the opportunity and ran with it like an NFL running back charging through a four-foot hole.

Dear DNC: Has it ever crossed your mind that to win a game, it might be highly-profitable to play to win, as opposed to playing not-to-lose? Has it ever occurred to you that instead of remaining fearful at incurring the opposition's wrath, it might just be enormously-profitable to energize and engage your base?

To stand tall and say “We are Democrats! We believe in inclusion! Democracy! Equality! Law! And order!” To stand tall and shout “Vladimir Putin is a shit! And it's okay to call a shit a shit!”

I mean, ever?

Granted, you did once. When you stood in direct opposition to the blatant racism and discrimination that prevailed in the United States. Remember?

Once and for all: Stop apologizing!

Let's fire up the meat-grinder (literal or metaphorical—either one works) and make Vladimir Putin victim number-one.

Let's be proud not only of who we are, but who we are not.

Learning What We Don't Want to Know

Learning is largely a voluntary affair. We pursue the things we want to know and take the steps to learn them. Then there is the stuff we don't want to know. What I call involuntary learning. What does it feel like to lose a job? Undergo chemo? Bury a child? Those things that forcibly insert themselves into your life like foreclosure or violent crime. What is that like?

I found out. It was two-years ago today that I became a widower. It was the worst day of my life—and that was with the knowledge my wife's battle with early-onset Alzheimer's only had one outcome.

(Prior to that, I learned what it was like to be a twenty-four/seven care-giver. The stress and fitful sleep aside, that was only the second-hardest thing I ever did.)

You see, my wife was the most luminous soul I had ever met, and to my utter disbelief she liked me. She thought I was funny and smart and nice. Not counting the six-months or so we worked together before becoming a couple, we spent something like twelve-thousand twenty-one days together. For me, she was it.

Naturally, it wasn't all unicorns and rainbows. No marriage is. For example, frustrated one day by my bottomless enthusiasm for washing and waxing cars, she said to me (as only a wife can) “If I put the %$#@! bathroom on four wheels will you clean it then?”

Yeah, she could be a pistol. More often, she was the person who couldn't continue a walk because we'd come across a rabbit who'd been critically injured by a car and who wouldn't sleep until it was attended to by a veterinarian.

Or the one who whipped up a pan of double-chocolate brownies while I was in the backyard one hot summer afternoon, attempting to clear it of bindweed.

So yes, taking care of her was a no-brainer. And to my eternal surprise, it gave me a sense of purpose I had never known. Her descent was a slow one, which gave me time to adapt to the latest round of changes. And unlike many Alzheimer's patients, her personality never altered. There was no acting out, no violence.

We were largely able to continue our lives as a couple. We continued to make our weekly trip to Jewel and go to Lincoln Park Zoo and the CSO and just be together (something which I now understood had an expiration date).

The Great Recession had kicked us down a long flight of stairs, to the point where we lived in my parent's basement. But even that misery contained a silver lining: she was next to me. Things like holding her hand, kissing her hair and having her in my arms became impossibly redolent. Decadent, even.

She was an island of comfort in a sea of shit.

Nothing changed after the onset. The here and now—having her with me—was everything.

The emotional contours of care-giving feature guilt. Exhaustion. Anger. Hopelessness. Self-doubt. Endless adjustments. Even after my wife had entered hospice, I reflexively responded to her CNA's remark that I was a good care-giver with the thought “Then why isn't she getting better?”

The cruel reality, newly reinforced, haunted me deep into the night. Tears and vodka flowed.

Yes, I was learning.

It shouldn't have been surprising that my wife, who was probably the most-intelligent person I had ever known, was still teaching me.

Then, on a damp, overcast Thursday afternoon, she was gone.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Death brings with it a whole new understanding of the word 'forever'.

It answers questions, such as how can survivors hand over ludicrous sums of money to people they believe can contact their loved ones?

It makes you wish for incredibly mundane things. Things like sitting next to each other watching TV. Or hearing a giggle—one last time.

Depending on your spiritual inclination, it may even challenge your notion of the afterlife. For example, even as a lapsed Lutheran, I refused to believe my wife was just...gone. How could all she said and thought and felt—all that she was—just be gone?

The answer, of course, is that it isn't. It's in me.

Lucy? You were a place.

And whenever I was with you, I was home.

Unfinished Business

So Tom Brady has pivoted and now wants to return for a twenty-third season.

Normally, I'd celebrate the accomplishments of such a late-round pick quite enthusiastically, but in his case there's a old expression that comes to mind, something about fish and houseguests beginning to smell after three days.

Tom? How are we ever to miss you if you won't go away?

 

The Second Time Around

I don't have to tell you how hard the world is sucking at the moment, do I?

Inflation is taking off like a rocket with an inexhaustible fuel supply. A nation suffering from foreign conflict fatigue can't summon a better response to Vladimir Putin's barbarism than to endure higher energy costs.

And even as we sit poised to collectively turn our clocks forward in recognition of daylight savings time, the thermometer reads but eight-degrees this morning.

Joy.  

But then the news of Jussie Smollett's sentencing drops into your lap like a warm croissant and you are made glad. While Donald Trump isn't in front of a firing squad or in a maximum security prison for committing treason and inciting sedition, at least one turd—Jussie Smollett—has been flushed.

Being the lead actor in a hit TV series wasn't enough for Jussie. The empty maw of his want wouldn't close until Jussie had even more money and even more attention and even more of everything that celebrities wallow in once they become celebrities.

After a failed bid to heighten his influence on the show, Jussie got it in his head to stage a spontaneous hate crime. After all—it wasn't too much of a stretch, was it? As an actor, he'd seen directors put together dramas his entire career. He could do that, too.

Only he couldn't. He fucked up. Central to the case (at least in my eyes) was how an impulsive trip to an all-night sandwich shop intersected with a carefully-staged, pre-planned hate crime.

Hmmm. 

Yeah, that is one hell of a stretch.

Initially, it all went Jussie's way. Kim Foxx, our grandstanding Cook Country State's Attorney, invoked all manner of civic outrage as celebrities poured from the woodwork in knee-jerk support. One even had ties to a former president.

This while the Chicago Police Department earnestly investigated, racking up six-figures worth of overtime in the process.

Yeah, this was a great, big deal.

Then it got weird. As it became apparent things hadn't unfolded the way Jussie said they had, it all just disappeared. The case, the charges, everything. Gone. Like water on a Las Vegas sidewalk.

Foxx issued all sorts of officious-sounding babble that didn't explain anything. The feds took note and began an independent investigation.

This time, the charges stuck. Without the inaction of a Black SA seemingly only interested in decriminalizing crime and any and all Black people caught committing it, logic and objectivity triumphed.

Yes, Smollett provoked a powerful dislike in me. He is a shit. Among public figures, he is second only to president forty-five. Smollett is an inveterate narcissist, a congenital liar and a slavish attention whore.

Which would be fine if it didn't involve municipalities and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars. Not to mention cheapening actual hate crimes and their victims.

So I offer thanks to the prosecutors and to Judge James Linn for cementing the end of this civic embarrassment in place—once and for all. It's a shame Judge Linn wasn't sitting on the bench for the Laquan McDonald and CPD trials.

With buy-in just short of a Trump-tard, Smollett's family are decrying his sentencing with every bit of mental illness they can muster. My favorite is the statement from Smollett's brother Jacqui, who claims Jussie is going to jail for being attacked.

Ugh-huh.

And how much Kool-Aid was required to embrace that, Jacqui?

Gas is trending towards five-bucks a gallon. Another miserable winter refuses to release its grip on northeastern Illinois. And the once-invincible Bulls have been exposed and now appear decidedly vincible.

But Jussie Smollett is going to prison.

Yay.

Texas: It's a Whole 'Nother Country

Can Republicans see the color gray? After all, it's a secondary color, not a primary one. It's a melding of black and white, which theoretically shouldn't be visible to the Republican eye.

It must be said the ultra-binary folk on the other side of the aisle certainly like simplicity. And under normal circumstances, so do I. I mean, any idiot can devise a complicated, labyrinthine plan for something, right?

True genius lies in simplicity. The design with the fewest moving parts.

But in light of the misguided simplicity Texas Governor Greg Abbott seeks in Texas, it's not too much of a stretch to term his assault on transgendered kids genocide.

Life is messy. It rarely conforms to the yes-no, good-bad schematic we lay out for it. It goes up when we want it to go down. Left we we demand it go right. We end up with jalapeno queso when we wanted buttermilk ranch.

A favorite expressions states that life is what happens when we were planning something else.

But not to Republicans. Simple-minded creatures they are, the infusion of even in a little black in their white confuses them. Alarms them. Panics them. “That's not black!” they cry. “That's not white!”

It's pure, unmitigated terror.

And this is the challenge Abbott and his developmentally-disabled Texans face with transgendered children.

There have always been feminine men. And masculine women. And if you'll allow my libtard snowflake self to say so, there ain't nothing wrong with it. Only with the rigid gender-based expectations society imposes on them.

And depending on the degree to which each feels the tug of the other, serious mental-health issues can ensue. And if the libtard snowflake can again express an opinion, I am not a fan of mental-health issues.

I want everyone—with the possible exception of Donald Trump and his strumpets—to live their best, most-fulfilling life. If you're a boy who feels more comfortable in a dress or a girl who wants chest hair and a mustache, have at it.

As long as you only wish to get along in the world and perhaps even contribute to it now and then, what of it? If adopting the characteristics of those opposite your birth gender allows you to be your best and most authentic self, who cares?

In the early days of women's lib, the media seized on the question What do woman want? There is no single answer. Women want as many different things as men. What they really wanted (and still do) is the freedom to want them—even if they don't conform with narrow gender norms.

Yes, it's challenging. Yes, it's complicated. But so is technology. So is medicine. So is developing financial schemes that lay on the very edge of what could be termed 'legal'. But we do it. Every day. “It's complicated!” isn't good enough.

Unless you're a Republican. You have to remember, this is a group of people who were undone by having to wear a featherweight mask during a pandemic. That provoked the most vicious and destructive assault on democracy in U.S. history.

Republicans are a tremulous lot, easily agitated. In a country that is now a thoroughly non-white melting pot, they are creeped out. If you're imagining a party collectively wearing Depends underwear (extra absorbent), you're not too far off.

Where's my bowl of unmolested, homogenized tapioca? It's in 1890, bro. Good luck with that.

If you're a Republican and feel you can differentiate between Hitler's effort to cleanse post-World War One Germany and Abbott's in Texas, the comment box is open.

I dare you.

Remember Baseball?

The well-dressed man at the podium is smiling. He appears relaxed and happy, as if he received word his stock portfolio just doubled in value. His posture, his expression conveys an utter lack of concern. Me? Worry? About what?

If you didn't recognize Rob Manfred, you'd never guess he was the commissioner of major league baseball. Or that he was in the midst of a news conference confirming that the three-month long work stoppage is now going to eat into the baseball season.

The photograph is one that crystalizes the divide prolonging a complex and multi-faceted negotiation that pits baseball players against the upper crust of the one-percent.

As a working stiff, I frequently derided both sides. I just didn't care about a tiff between what I saw as billionaires vs. millionaires. But in 2022, I feel very differently.

We are well aware of the monstrous contracts offered the game's elite players. We are less-aware of the ones offered to the game's dwindling middle class. In fact, the median salary in major league baseball is just one-million dollars a year. That means there are as many players making more as there are making less.

I never would have guessed.

What we see happening in society at large (ever-increasing amounts of wealth concentrated into fewer and fewer hands while ever-increasing numbers of people fight for an ever-shrinking pool of money) is also happening in baseball. And that's not by accident. It's a deliberate, on purpose outcome driven by policies put in place by ownership.

This but for a single reason: to make more money.

I ask you: shouldn't baseball owners have the same right to pillage and plunder as your garden variety hedge fund manager? I mean, is this America or what?

So while baseball owners decry their financials (think Cubs' owner Tom Ricketts, who termed his 2020 losses as 'biblical'), the valuations of their profit-sucking ventures continues to soar. Please—tell me the last time you saw the value of a money-losing business escalate like a professional sports franchise.

Answer: you haven't.

And now our billionaire owners have a new revenue stream to frolic in—legalized gambling. It's probably just me, but I can't position my head sufficiently to glimpse the top of their tower o' cash.

And yet these whores are still playing hardball with their talent—the folks you and me and millions of others actually go to see. Or watch. Or stream. Professional sports are—for better or worse—a TV show. And a TV show ain't worth the stink under your arms without a great cast.

Tom? Do you honestly believe three-million people pour into Wrigley Field each year to watch you own?

Really?

You just sign the checks. And to be perfectly honest, I can do that, too. Lots of people can. What I'm not so good at is turning a double play. Or getting around on a wicked curve. Which is why I pay to see the guys who can.

Even apart from your craven, short-sighted efforts, baseball is suffering. It's not connecting with our youth, which is critical to sustaining any kind of endeavor. Then there is the descent into the all-or-nothing gambit of the home run. The endless pitching changes. Shifts. And the torpor with which so many games proceed.

And why is it we never hear of small market NFL, NBA and NHL teams struggling, anyway?

Going on, how is it that in a celebrity-obsessed culture like ours the game's premier players so consistently fly beneath the radar? How to make them sizzle? How to make them snap, crackle and pop like their counterparts in the NBA and NFL?

Wring the neck of the golden goose if you wish. It's “your” game, isn't it? Install a servile lap cat as commissioner; one so far-removed from the game he is able to laugh even as the game creates yet-another degree of separation from its fans.

Seize the day, bro. Have at it.

But I'm fed up with you and your kind. You're ignorant pigs so suffused with gluttony you can't see the approaching train. But not to worry—our body bags feature 24k zippers and are strictly limited edition.

We call them bags, but they'll fit you like a glove.

Teflon Man

There appeared to be some light in the effort to hold Donald Trump accountable for decades of shady business practices, first and foremost lying about his assets and their valuations in order to receive preferential loans from lenders.

Unlike you or I, no one questioned him. Lenders took him (and his claims) at face value. Imagine. His well-known reputation as an inveterate liar was somehow pushed off to the side and forgotten.

But just as a case seeking to prosecute Trump for these actions was gaining traction, Alvin Bragg, the District Attorney for New York County, has stepped in and announced he has “doubts” about the case. Doubts which provoked its two lead prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, to abruptly resign after years of work.

That the timing of this is incredibly suspicious goes without saying. What were you offered, Alvin? Or perhaps more to the point: what were you threatened with?

With apologies to Ronald Reagan, it must be asked: is Donald Trump the real Teflon president? Trump's repeated dodges of consequence call to mind the expression “I'd rather be lucky than good.”

But is he that lucky? Really?

To put it mildly, I am not a fan. He is the most contemptuous public figure of my lifetime. More plainly, I wouldn't wipe my ass with him. His recent endorsement of Vladimir Putin again confirms the emptiness and blackness of his soul. 

If Donald is the question, a lingering, painful death is the answer.

That being the case, I'm trying to conceive of the irony in having a core Republicant tenet turned against them. Namely, the rash of 'Stand Your Ground' legislation awaiting passage in red states across the country.

To anyone with a half a brain, these statutes legalize murder, permitting anyone who feels “threatened” to unload the contents of their AR-15 assault rifle into the torso of the alleged offender.

With just one side of the story available in court, feel free to hazard a guess as to the outcome.

Just for fun, imagine a red state resident who feels threatened by Donald Trump. Does that mean a resident of, say, Florida, can buy an AR-15 assault rifle and empty the contents of the gun's magazine into said threat?

Ah, what delicious irony.

Alas, the phalanx of taxpayer-funded Secret Service protection Donald and his family enjoys into perpetuity makes that a remote possibility at best.

But in the face of such an execrable man, the thought alone is a comfort.

And these days, I'll take whatever comfort I can get.