Wednesday, November 11, 2015

It’s A Far Different World From When I Entered It

Things were far simpler in 1936, when I first experienced life. Next January, I turn eighty and each day I seem to understand less and less about the world I am now living in.

THE LEAST INCOMPETENT
We have two snake-oil salesmen leading the race to be the GOP candidate for the Presidency. One is a blustery, loud-mouthed white man, who has yet to propose a workable plan to “Make America Great Again.”  He doesn’t quite tell lies, but has perfected the innuendo style of speaking used by Richard Milhous Nixon.

That style can best be described as, “I’m not saying that my opponent is a (liar, thief, crook, dishonest, incompetent), that’s for you to decide,” statements.

The second is a soft-spoken Black man, who embellishes (or creates) tales of his wayward youth, and how he was resurrected while sitting in the bathroom after one of his misdeeds. He hasn’t exactly told the media, “You are looking for any wrong doings because I am a successful neurosurgeon of color,” and seems to be a bit more subtle in his Nixon-like campaign direction.

THE TRUSTWORTHIEST
On the Democratic side, we have a kindly, honest, fireball of a Jewish grandfather running against William Jefferson Blythe III’s wife Hillary. Some women are supporting her because she is a woman, and they say this country needs a woman President to inspire young girls to have higher goals and rise above the secretarial pool. Isn’t that what Carly did, or said that she had done? There’s a hesitancy to believe anything a politician says.

When Tuesday, November 8, 2016 arrives and I vote for the President, I will once again be forced to decide which candidate from which party, will do the least amount of damage to my country and me over the next four years.

I am fortunate enough to have safe havens to move to if the “wrong” person is elected President, thanks to my wife. She’s not only a citizen of the United States, but also of Canada where she lived for thirty-six years, and of Spain where she was born. We can either move north and be “owt and abowt,” or be “muy contento” in EspaƱa, as long as there isn’t another Inquisition.

Political cartoonists will also face a difficult adjustment figuring out to incorporate the elected candidate’s ears, hair, facial coloring, pantsuit, or other attire, to incorporate within their renderings.

IS IT NEWS, OR ‘NU?’
When it comes to television news, I have had a great deal of trouble listening to Obama over his two terms as he vacillates when he talks the talk, without walking the walk. If anyone but Bernie is elected, I will have to figure out how to use the time I will gain by not watching any television news over the next four years. If someone spends an average of only thirty-minutes a day watching any and all television news programs, that would total 43,920 minutes over the next President’s four-year term, or 732 hours of time.

If I gave up watching all television news for those four years, I would have ample time to write a novel, or to write more blog posts kvetching about what’s going on in the world, and wondering if anyone is reading what I have to say.

Incidentally, has anyone read this?




THOSE WHO CAN’T 
REMEMBER THE PAST
Would you vote for a candidate for the Presidency, whose political resume included less than eight years serving in his state’s legislature?  What if he had been a U.S. Senator for little more than three years, when he sought his party’s nomination to be their candidate for President? What if he had no real experience as a Governor or another such elected position, to show that he could actually govern and lead the United States during troubled times? What if his Father had been born in another land?