Well, 2024 is certainly off to a roaring start.
And that’s another thing . . .
When I was but a callow youth, and election time came around the way it always did, everybody went to the polls, and marked their selection in the wet clay of the cuneiform tablets, and the votes were all tallied up and announced by eleven o’clock that evening, and that was even allowing for the time it took for the clay to be run through the kilns. We voted on one day, and we all found out what we had done on that same day. What we had done wasn’t always that great, because Jimmy Carter does come to mind, but we always found out that same day. Computers were introduced to speed things up, and as it always goes with such things, everything slowed way down. Now election returns come in like rapidly cooling magma. Or perhaps, depending on which alarmists you prefer to listen to, like slowly melting glaciers.
Let me tell you about the ten cent ice cream. Wait. No, actually, come to think of it, I’d better not. Things are sad enough around here already.
In my day, an insurrectionist was somebody who had kicked your army’s butt at Chancellorsville, and not somebody who was guilty of polling ahead of you in Ohio.
As a general rule, plugs in airplane doors didn’t pop out mid-flight, having been installed by mechanics who had been too busy studying their DEI worksheets for their workplace sensitivity training seminars. Back in the day, the general public didn’t really care if the installer of airplane parts didn’t know what a microaggression was. We all sort of expected him to not know what a microaggression was. We kind of liked it that way.
I can still recall the halcyon days of yore when Joe Biden could look you straight in the eye and tell you a straight up lie, in that endearing way that politicians have, with not a trace of remorse, or dementia. Back then he was doing it honestly and on purpose, and not on the basis of muscle memory the way it is going now. The whole thing is kind of discouraging, and reminds us all of our own mortality. You really miss that bright look in his eye and the youthful exuberance that said he almost expected you to believe him.
Here’s another thing. When I was a teenager, and then when I was a young man, and even after I got married . . . not once did I ever have to deal with aging boomers. The country was entirely free of them. Back in the seventies, you couldn’t find an aging boomer anywhere. Contrary to the common caricature, they must have been shy, retiring, modest, and unassuming. They never thrust themselves forward. You would scarcely even know they were there. Aging boomers were not a thing. I don’t know what everybody is going on about now.
I don’t want to reveal too much, or say too much here. You might not believe me, or call my veracity into question. But there was a time, and I was actually there, when half the population of every high school in the country was made up of pretty girls. And even the marginal ones would try.
So when I was a kid, the Jews used to occupy themselves with constructive projects, like building a nation and winning wars in six days and making the desert bloom, instead of digging tunnels under New York synagogues.
Back in the day, dark conspiracies had the decency to not walk around naked in broad daylight. It took you some time in the library to find out what the Bond villains were up to currently, and then you had to persuade all your dubious relatives to listen to you. It made Thanksgiving gatherings that much more vibrant and lively. Gave you something to look forward to. But now, when you bring up the latest conspiracy that you noticed, everybody just nods their head sadly. They had noticed it too.
Government operatives used to have chops back then. If they were going to make somebody a fall guy, then they arranged to have him, you know, like, fall. Now they are just dialing it in. Ray Epps was the one J6 participant they really had the goods on, video footage and everything. But because years were going by and nothing was happening to him, conspiracy theories were beginning to abound, and their advocates were holding secret meetings in order to chant, “Fed, Fed, Fed!” See my previous grump. So somebody in authority decided that it was important to put this Fed nonsense to bed, for good and all, and so they sentenced him in a way that sent a hard message. What was his sentence? A year’s probation, a $500 fine, and 100 hours of community service. That’ll shut the conspiracy theorists up! What will the community service be? Oh, I don’t know. Something about volunteering as a poll watcher in Maricopa County.
After church services, Southern Baptist deacons would stand outside on the church steps, smoking cigarettes. We were a real country then.
Speaking of counties, as I was just a moment ago, this lack of craft competence is showing up everywhere. You can’t get good help at all anymore. Back in the day, if you were, say, a DA for Fulton County, and you wanted to prosecute a former president, and you had the strongest sham case out of all the sham prosecutions, and everybody in the media was on your side, and would give you every possible benefit of the doubt, it was expected back then that you wouldn’t hire your secret lover to be the special prosecutor. And if you did do something like that, you would have been savvy enough to keep the whole thing under wraps, and not take luxury vacations with the money you were paying him. I don’t have to tell you that standards have slipped in pretty much every area.
Big Eva was Billy Graham telling you to believe in Jesus. Something to think about.