There's a house with a chain link fence on a corner a few blocks from where I live. The chain link fence runs across the front lawn of the place, which is unusual. The rest of the street is just regular houses, fairly well-kept lawns, trees, maybe flowers, no chain link fencing. Some of those other lawns are presently host to political campaign advertising, mostly Beto but a couple for Ted Cruz, according to the political leanings of whoever lives there. Beto is standing for the Senate on behalf of the Democratic Party, challenging Ted Cruz who currently holds the seat on behalf of the Republicans. Those dwelling within the house on the corner favour Ted Cruz, and his campaign material is secured to their chain link fence, along with a whole load of other stuff advertising their political sympathies to those who drive along North New Braunfels Avenue. Amongst the other material is a large presumably canvas banner which reads:
We have had it with Barack Hussein Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Cory Booker, Chuck Schumer, Colin Kaepernick, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Beto O'Rourke, Socialism, and political correctness. Vote as if your life depends on it, because it does.
To unpack all of this for anyone unfamilar with this array of names, Barack Hussein Obama was our last president - meaning either the president we had before the current guy, or our last president, depending how things go from hereon. The good news for our people behind the chain link fence is that he ceased to be president nearly two years ago, so I'm not sure why they've had it with him, as they put it. Maybe he regularly pisses on their lawn on his way back from the pub, which might also explain the fence.
Hillary Clinton is the wife of another former president, and she herself applied for the job at the same time as Donald Trump, but didn't get it. Again, I wouldn't like to speculate on how she's managed to upset our mysterious family. I can understand why people might not have wanted to vote for her, and it isn't that they're scared because she's a woman and she's brilliant - as one dimwit so memorably put it, but sheesh...
I don't know much about Nancy Pelosi beyond that she's a Democrat politician whose name is routinely employed as a smear in Republican campaign messages. Current campaigning against Gina Ortiz Jones here in San Antonio relies upon her association with Pelosi. Having just come back from a weekend in Houston, I noticed that one of their local Democrat candidates is also supposedly awful due to something or other to do with Pelosi, whom I therefore assume to be a malign Lovecraftian octopus entity manipulating human history from behind the scenes.
Colin Kaepernick is a football player, or at least a participant in a game which Americans call football. He famously failed to stand for the national anthem in protest of institutionalised racism. This caused the heads of certain people to explode due to toxic levels of what Orwell described as primitive patriotism.
It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances.
I'm only vaguely familiar with the other names which have apparently struck terror into the hearts of our family behind the chain link fence.
At the risk of shooting a fish in a barrel, these neighbours of mine therefore feel - as is implicit in the last line - that their lives are jeopardised by someone who isn't president, someone who didn't get to be president, a football player, a space octopus from beyond time, a political ideology which has never had much of a foothold here in the United States, and anyone who tells them that they can't say the word n***** because it's disrespectful. This stuff is ruining their lives.
On the other hand it could be that they're just shitheads who don't fucking understand nuffink, instead pooing their pants every time some power hungry nest-feathering plutocrat waves Nancy Pelosi in their faces and growls, she's coming for your children, and she's going to force them to have abortions and gender reassignment surgery. It's always depressing to see people whose buttons can be so easily pressed by almost anyone in a nice suit claiming to be on their side.
Hopefully no-one will take offence at my use of the term shithead here. Angry Moron Who Doesn't Understand Stuff seems cumbersome, and is a little too politically correct for my liking.
The button pressing would seem to be revealed by the inclusion of Barack Obama's full name, given that the banner appears to have been commissioned from a company specialising in such things, in which case I imagine our family would have been charged by the letter, or at least the word; and Hussein, Obama's middle name, is not widely used and is therefore a superfluous inclusion unless attempting to establish an association with Saddam Hussein by means of sympathetic magic. This is the same button pressing favoured by the sort of righties who photoshopped images of Obama with a Hitler moustache, so I suppose our bunch are just passing it on. The possibility that someone behind the chain link fence owns a banner manufacturing business and got this one as a freebie seems unlikely given crude handwritten cardboard signs affixed to other parts of the fence reading God Bless the USA, Secure the Border, Keep Our Guns, and all of the usual rightie concerns for things which either aren't the problem, or are else actively contributing towards it.
Hung from the awning of the house is another home-made sign reading We Love President Trump, and in the garden there's a professionally made one pertaining to a local anti-bullying campaign. Evidently they see no contradiction there.
I was in the middle of an already lousy morning when my wife told me about the signage at the house with the chain link fence, and I found it significantly depressing. There are too many shitheads in the world as it is, and I don't like to think of them living in the town I've come to call home.
While I would agree with the shitheads that there are problems on the left, if they genuinely believe America even has a left, then they're even more shitheaded than I thought. My position is that the difference between Republican and Democrat politicians is that the Democrats at least feel a little guilty after they've shafted you. I don't trust anyone in a suit who tells me they have my best interests at heart, because historically they never have done, and if they did, it would be self-evident and would hardly need stating.
However, the bottom line is that part of being an adult is making peace with the idea that maybe not everything in the world will be exactly as would you like it to be; and if you're an adult you should have the ability to reason and to at least empathise with those in opposition to whatever you happen to believe, to at least understand where they're coming from even if you don't agree with it. That's what being a grown-up is about.
Therefore, when a stranger waves something awful in your face, explains that this awful thing wants to turn your kids into homosexuals, communists, people who can tie their own shoelaces, or whatever else gives you cause to wake up screaming in the middle of the night, when the next thing that stranger tells you is that he or she has the answer to all of your problems - the ones you've only just found out about, thanks to the testimony of this same individual - if it doesn't occur to you that you're being played like a fiddle, then you're either a very small child or a fully grown shithead.
I don't know how much more simple I can make it. It really isn't that hard to understand. No source of information - no news source if you prefer - is without some form of bias; but this simply means you have to use the power of your mind to deduce whatever may actually be going on. Living in the information age, it's not difficult to find varied accounts of any given situation or issue, and it's down to you to reach a decision based on what seems likely rather than on what seems most comforting, most consistent with your existing view of the world, and which requires the least effort expended outside your comfort zone.
If you're unable to do this, then you're a shithead.
If you're a shithead, then your opinion is of no value because you don't understand stuff, and there's no reason the rest of us should be obliged to listen to you or to take your uninformed shitheaded views into account; because when a small child tells you they've just seen a real live dinosaur, it's cute, but hopefully you won't believe in the literal truth of such a claim; which is why we hopefully don't vote for people engaging in cock-obvious attempts to goad you into hatred of whatever easy target happens to be on the table at the time.
The day after I learned about the house behind the chain link fence, I passed by the place on my way to have a root canal. I wasn't in the most buoyant of moods, but nevertheless I had to stop and take photos, just as I would have done had a real live dinosaur been reported in my neighbourhood by someone more authoritative than a small child. I cycled down a street with lawn after lawn playing host to Beto's campaign material, and there it was at the end, like a shit splatter of Info Wars taped over the end of an episode of Kenneth Clark's Civilisation, the house which still seemingly fears that Obama is a'comin' for our guns.
I dismounted.
To my surprise, I realised that I felt sorry for the poor dumb bastards. I'm scared of all sorts of things - old age, cancer, and the likelihood of the entire planet becoming significantly less habitable during my own lifetime - but I can't imagine what it must be like to be so terrified of the rest of the human race, even one's own neighbours. I can't imagine daily existence lived in the belief that they're out to get you, with they being whatever some over-moneyed corporate saviour has you scared of this week. I can't imagine how difficult it must be making one's way through life with the comprehension and reasoning power of a typical eight-year old boy; and if this comparison seems unfair, consider that the shitheads are in power, gaining more ground across the world every day, all the cards in their hand, and the fuckers still aren't happy.
So I felt sorry for them, because what else is there?
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