January 6, 2021
Happy New Year!
That’s something we say every year at this
time, but this year, more than any other year in my recollection, it
really sounds as if everyone truly means it.
I’ve been doing some web surfing, looking for
some funny memes heralding the arrival of 2021, but most especially the demise
of 2020, looking for something to give me a good laugh. Some are funny, but most?
Well, I felt as if that awful half-bored, half-desperate sense we’ve all been cozied
up with since this pandemic began has finally leeched into our senses of humor.
Thank goodness we still have laughing baby
clips on YouTube. Folks, I don’t know what I’d do without those.
That platform has been a marvelous go-to
place for me. It’s full of rabbit holes, but the last time I went there, just
to see what’s new, I noticed that the first 7 clips that weren’t “ads” were not
new, either. They were old, and sourced from: 6 months, 10 months, 2 years, 4
years, 4 months, 1 year, and 8 years ago. Understanding that YouTube will offer
me videos based on my “clicking” habits, I have come to the conclusion that I
may be perilously falling behind the times.
I also realize, as I post this essay, that
we’ve arrived at a day that a lot of people just want to be over, much the same
way as we wanted the year 2020 to be to be over, or a root canal to be over, or
that frontal lobotomy...
There was a comedian who was very popular
several years ago. His name is Bill Engvall, and his one routine that was
ensured to get the loudest applause was “here’s your sign”.
The premise of the routine had merit then
and is just as relevant now: people who are stupid should be required to wear a
sign that says, “I am stupid”. Life, he maintained, would be easier if everyone
who was, did. Then you wouldn’t ask them for directions, or opinions, or
really, anything at all. And when they opened their mouths, you’d discount every
word that emerged because, hey, that sign would be impossible to ignore.
Talk about timeless comedy. Watching the
television news the other night, listening to the plans that are being fomented
for today, I felt something was missing. After remembering Bill Engvall and his
funny, if sadly true routine, I know what it is: everyone who should have
a sign, sadly, does not. I’m seriously considering a go-fund-me page to raise money
to correct that little thing.
I heard one politician explain, this past
Sunday, that what was going to happen was not a challenge to the integrity of
the election process, or the rule of democracy or the sanctity of the vote, but
the exact opposite! It was an action in support of those great ideals.
Friends, these political-type people can
convince themselves that poop was healthy to eat if they found a reason to do
so.
Really? I wanted to ask this person if he’d
fallen and been concussed, lately. And I had an image in my head, partly
inspired by one of the “talking heads” who interviewed him, of someone standing
in front of a house with a flame thrower. “No no, you don’t understand,”
the would-be arsonist claims. “I don’t intend to burn down the house. I just
want to kill the germs!”
Am I the only one who feels their
reasoning is about what you’d expect to hear out of the mouth of an eight- or
nine-year old child caught red-handed doing something they knew in their tiny,
childish hearts was wrong?
Actions have consequences, and few things
in life are simple. And those who should know better, do know better but
what they don’t, is care. What we’re witnessing isn’t something as on-the-surface
laudable as an attempt to stand up for justice. At best, it’s a political
stunt.
At worst, and really, in truth, it is an
attempt to subvert democracy, pure and simple. What’s planned to happen today
in the United States Congress is not the peaceful protest of men and women standing
firmly in the light of righteous principle.
It’s an attempt by people with no morals,
and certainly no love of the U.S. Constitution, to highjack a nation to feed
their own greedy political ambitions. I believe with all my heart that all
those who participate in this pointless protest—because these people are at the
base of it all, liars—should carry a newly minted titled before their names
from this day forward. My version of wearing “a sign”, if you will. And hey, if
we raise those dollars, we can have signs made for them.
They should be called, neither senator, nor
representative. They should be referred to by what they truly are—what they have
already revealed themselves to be.
Seditionists.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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