SMH

We're back at Jim's diner, the second time in a couple of weeks and once again the car is there. I'm no good with automotive brands and think of it as a Lincoln, which it probably isn't. It's new but is styled more like something from the seventies, clean and brilliant white with a scatter of political stickers across the trunk and rear window - proud supporter of President Trump, amongst others, most of which propose that the driver is additionally a proud supporter of the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't understand why anyone would want to advertise their personal preferences on their means of transport, but this sort of thing particularly gets on my nerves because it also seems to advertise their stupidity as though it's a boldly chosen stance - I done a smelly poo right in me knickers, laughed in your face with a big happy smile.

The car is parked right in front of the entrance and, as I say, this isn't the first time we've seen it. The glass door of Jim's is decorated with the usual array of literature concerning coronavirus and the requirement of masks to be worn within, but there's other stuff too and it takes me a second to decode what I'm looking at: colour images on paper, presumably printed off on a home computer. There's a photograph of Hillary Clinton with a caption referring to the supposed suicide of Jeffrey Epstein. I can't even tell what is implied here, which I guess means I don't spend enough time on the internet, but the political angle is implicit in the other images, each pasted on the door with a single strip of tape. The other two are too bland to stick in my memory, but something rhetorical along the lines of what those liberals will come up with next. It's the cosy syntax of persons who have learned all they needed to know at the university of life, and are not only secure in their ignorance but feel it represents an achievement, the sanctity of a mental virginity kept pure from anything with too many long words. I've encountered these people online, usually in response to some not unreasonable proposition - cops probably shouldn't shoot innocent people, for example - and their stock response will be SMH, which stands for shaking my head, or something borrowed from someone else about the sad effects of a mind destroyed by liberalism. It's not really an argument. It's barely even coherent as a sneer.

'You know, I think I've changed my mind,' I say. I've deduced that this material probably doesn't actually represent views endorsed by either Jim's management or staff, but it bothers me.

'I know, but I'm hungry.' Bess goes in and I follow.

'Take a seat,' the waitress suggests, pausing on the way to someone's table.

I wait for her to deliver the tray then catch her attention. 'I don't know if you realise, but someone has pasted a load of right-wing crap on your door over there, and it's kind of annoying.'

She sighs in a long-suffering way and mumbles something about dealing with it, and I immediately realise who is behind this. I said right-wing crap quite loud and he's staring at me from a few tables away. He's a little old man, maybe in his eighties, wearing a cap identifying him as a Korean war veteran. His jacket is similarly adorned with badges. He likes to advertise. He was in here last time with a friend of similar vintage and the same cap. He's small and the lower half of his face protrudes like that of a monkey or someone in a thirties Popeye cartoon. He's Cotton from King of the Hill.

I'm kind of tired of the fetishisation of the military in this country. I have no problem with anyone signing up with the military, but would hope they do so for reasons besides the eternal gratitude of complete strangers who bark thank you for your service at the first whiff of khaki. Military service does not mean you're a sentinel of freedom, and I'm suspicious of anyone who advertises having been in the military regardless of whether it's on a hat, a car sticker, or tattooed on one of their mighty biceps. Merely walking around with a gun on foreign soil does not make you a hero; and if your actions have been genuinely heroic in the service of your country or some cause you consider noble, you shouldn't need your ass kissed by the rest of us on a daily basis. I find it difficult to truly respect those who advertise their having served in the military, because it feels a little as though they have something to prove; and had they seen the sort of action which might be discussed in terms of heroism or courage, my guess is that they wouldn't feel the need to prove anything, much less by means of something so trite as a bumper sticker. I've met one veteran of the Korean war, my wife's uncle Elton. He told us all about it, particularly about the mass graves filled with the bodies of Chinese people, and it sounded nightmarish. For some reason he chooses not to advertise his military experience with slogans displayed upon either his person or vehicle.

Monkey Man regards us with fearful piercing eyes as we take a seat in the booth adjacent to his. He knows he is old and feeble, and he knows that I don't like him very much and could crush him, and he knows that it will take more than his veteran status to get me swooning like a seventies schoolgirl at a David Cassidy performance. I'm one of those people he's been warned about, here to ban everything reasonable with my mighty powers of political correctness, here to force your children into gender reassignment surgery regardless of their own personal feelings on the matter, and I do this because I'm following orders passed onto me from the mighty Antifa world headquarters inside a hollowed out mountain of the Sierra Madre. Ordinarily he might only frown to himself, then an uncharitable chuckle as he types a damning SMH before moving on to the next thread; but this isn't that kind of situation.

The waitress comes to take our order.

'Sorry to be that customer,' I say, waving my hand in the general direction of the door, 'but we just came out to eat and I don't want to see that sort of stuff. It's like having the worst of facebook following you out into the real world.'

She understands. She explains that the person who decorated the door is a regular diner of many years, leaving her in an uncomfortable position, but the memes are coming down just as soon as he's paid up and left. She speaks quietly. Although we're in the booth next to Monkey Man, a glass partition divides us at head height, and my guess is that his hearing may not be the greatest. The waitress is evidently smiling behind her face mask, but it's clear that she's on our side and that this is some bullshit she really could have lived without.

Our food arrives and we eat.

Monkey Man begins his long, slow pilgrimage towards the cash register with waiting staff as he goes. Eventually he makes it outside to the car driven by a proud supporter of President Trump, obviously himself. We hear the waitress agonising with the guy in the kitchen, just wishing this sweet old guy wouldn't be such a dick, then she goes to the door and removes the liberal-baiting crap.

One day he'll be dead.

They will all be dead, and the world will be a nicer place to live at least in that respect. I think of the people I've known who managed to make it into their eighties without turning into Enoch Powell, or at least a massive pain in the arse. Thankfully they outnumber Monkey Man and his kind by a significant margin.