Are These The End Times?

There’s something happening here.  Everybody look at what’s goin’ down.

He walked into The Brothers barber shop and immediately sensed something different.  Place was brighter, more colorful.

New sign.  That dang Ishmael finally raised the prices.  Damn.

Hope I brought enough money, the old man said aloud, like he was trying to reach the back rows..  He had been coming here for what? ten years paying less for a stylish cut than he had in the early Eighties.  He had been a yuppie briefly, that was his excuse.

The old man sat in the barber chair.  What do David Duke and Vladimir Putin have in common?

What?

Both are campaigning hard to elect Donald J. Trump as the next President of the United States.  ISIS and Mitch McConnell are also rooting for Trump.

Dannie The Barber asked, “What do you think of all these police shootings?”

I have long ago lost count of the times I have been stopped by the police, how many times I fit the description of the assailant or the profile of the suspect.  Too many.  Got pulled over once for drunk walking.  Guilty!  But as he told the lovely young officer, didn’t think he was in any condition to drive.

Except for that one other time, the bad time, he always walked away.  Free as a bird.  Unshot and white.

The old man had been studying politics since the ’56 campaign.  Back when campaigns started the same year as the election.  “Whistle while you work, Stevenson’s a jerk, Eisenhower has the power, whistle while you work.”

He remembered Dwight Eisenhower for the Interstate Highway System and Ike’s warning the country against the military-industrial complex.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”

Ike was talking about defense contractors – like Dick Cheney – but he could just as easily have been talking about Wall Street, Big Pharma, the Koch Brothers, Fox, etc., the usual suspects.

The old man traced much of the nation’s decline squarely on Reagan, who said, “Government is not the solution, government is the problem.”  Followed up by some union busting to crack the Middle Class.  Catsup reclassified as a vegetable for school lunch purposes.  Arms for hostages.  But we don’t talk about that much or anything but the legend.

You begin by creating distrust of the government, somehow convincing the people privateers will work better than public servants.  Attacking government while also attacking government workers, well-compensated at the time because of union organization, worked great to bleed the state.  Lower the private incomes, then lower the unions to bring them in line with the new low.

Create a deficit on wars and tax cuts for the connected, then say we have to cut government – except for bombs – because we are in debt.  Which you created.

Skip ahead eight years ahead and you bastards want to convince us we should let you do it again.

And our answer is in doubt?  Oh, My Effin’ God, I have five grandchildren.

Trickle down economics isn’t even good water science.  Give the poor the cash, trust me, eventually the gold grabs those who already have it.  Like magnetism, if you believe in that.

Attack the media next.  The faux leftist, lame-stream media.  Attack science.  Attack climate change and evolution and vaccinations.

Half of all Americans don’t trust Hillary.

If you’d been hammered for thirty years with specious attacks, hell, you wouldn’t trust yourself.  Oh, and they never proved anything.  Nothing.  Proved nothing.  Never.

Besides, can we even trust the election results if my candidate loses?

That candidate is a draft-dodging, tax-evading narcissistic philander who wouldn’t know the truth if it sat on his face.  Which is weirdly puffy.

Want to hear my latest theory?, the old man asked the barber.  Of course.

You listen to the Trumpites and you hear, we’re angry, we’re protesting the status quo, yadda yadda.  Got to thinking, cause they’re my neighbors.  Just people who got passed by time.  All they really ever wanted was to be hippies, but were afraid and just trying to get by, missed their chance.

They want to have their fun now, before the Mexicans take it.  A taco truck on every corner.

Or the Muslims.  Or the little guy down the street who works eighty hours trying to get his kids into college.  That bastard.

But Trump says the things we wish we could say out loud.

Hey, lady, reason we don’t want you saying that crap aloud is cause it’s racist and misogynist and sexist, whatever.  Fill in the -ist of your choice.  Fuck, it’s anti-American, anti-Constitutional, anti-Christian.  And not good for you.

Not good for the country.

Here’s an idea, you fat fucks, there’s enough of the American Dream to share, there’s enough to go around for everybody.

Get used to it.

Like magnetism.

Here’s the truth about the USA economy.  Under the Obama administration, there’s a slow – too slow sure but would go faster with some bipartisanship  – gentle climb upwards to the positive.  Trump’s policies are the same drove us into the ditch to begin with.  When your imaginary thread to reality breaks, don’t blame the doctor for not fixing you fast enough.

Stay off the zipline.

https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/Documents/20120502_EconomicGrowth.pdf