CSotD: It’s gardening time
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Pros and Cons sets the mood for the day, perhaps the week, perhaps longer.
I wanted to avoid politics this morning, but nothing on the comedy side particularly amused me, or, at least, not in a way that stimulated any sort of commentary.
But Stan happened to tap into a recent conversation, because when my last newspaper was shot out from under me, I checked jobs around the country for several months. And I kept thinking how little I wanted to pack my stuff into a U-Haul and go halfway around the country only to be the junior employee at yet another struggling paper and so first in the next set of layoffs to wind up on the street again.
And I contemplated filing early for Social Security and realized that, even if I let it fully mature, it wasn't going to be enough and taking it early sure as hell wouldn't pay any bills.
The saving grace turning out to be that (A) my kids were grown and gone and (B) I've never really given a damn about money and so with a little belt-tightening, I could live on a part-time gig and now I have fully-matured Social Security, too.
However, my point is that I would rather be smeared with honey and staked to an anthill than go into an office every weekday morning at 8:30.
And, like Stan, I was okay with it before but I was younger and more energetic and less disappointed in the world back then.
Which sounds like I'm depressed, but I'm not at all. I just don't want to go into the office and thank god I don't have to.
Or, to put it another way, my life is great. It's the world that sucks, and I don't think I can do much about that, so, like Candide, I'm going to cultivate my garden.
Though, of course, if Voltaire really believed that, he wouldn't have written the book, and, similarly, I'm not going to shut up.
And I like Pat Bagley's commentary, which, I would note, he posted before the storm hit, which doesn't change its point.
Everybody I know in Houston seems to still be in their homes with electricity and connectivity, but this doesn't seem to be one of those disasters that hits people by income level. I've seen photos of flooded McMansions and it does make me wonder how many of the people in them have inveighed against government handouts in the past.
But the reason Bagley could do the cartoon before Harvey made landfall is the same reason I'm shrugging and agreeing instead of leaping out of my chair with new insight.
I'm hearing complaints that Trump hasn't filled the top positions in FEMA, and meanwhile seeing commentary on the fellow who is apparently running things, and I'm hearing reminders that Cruz voted against aid for Superstorm Sandy and meanwhile seeing other reminders that he voted against it because it was part of a legislative package with a whole lot of other spending crammed in and …
… and I've run around this barn enough times to know that people manage to feel one way about Big National Things and another about what they actually see in their own lives.
Our schools all suck, but the one their kid goes to is pretty good.
All politicians are crooks but they like their local guy.
And on and on.
Disaster spending was misdirected there but we need it here.
It's not that this doesn't matter. But it makes me just want to cultivate my garden a little more and fret over the evil of the world a little less.
The frustrating part of retiring from the fray is that I see blind, ahistoric, ignorant altie-anarchist cartoons from know-it-all Gen Xers and Millennials and think I can't possibly leave the world in the hands of these nitwits, but then the Millennials I know personally are supporting good causes and approaching the crisis in smart ways.
I have to remember that we had self-imporant, self-promoting nitwits who stole the spotlight in my day, while a lot of other people were actually doing the lifting and toting that got black voters registered, ended the war, empowered the farm workers and drove two presidents from office.
In fact, I was just remembering a march during the Cambodian incursion in 1970, in which the football players and cheerleaders and other "straight folks" finally turned out, and as we all settled in on the grass, up gets some Fighting Priest Who's Not Afraid To Talk to Youth, waving a plastic pistol and shouting about our brothers in North Vietnam and our brothers in Cuba and our brothers in North Korea.
And all these straight folks are looking at each other like "What have we gotten ourselves into?"
Well, here we are again.
And besides people trying to do to Bernie Sanders what they did to Ed Muskie in order to ease the re-election process, we've got jackasses dressing up as ninjas to undermine the kinds of peaceful protest that might actually change something, because elbow grease and shoe leather just aren't as romantic as screaming in the streets.
As for media coverage, one guy in an Uncle Sam suit smeared with blood is still more photogenic than thousands of normal-looking people, and a handful of violent morons are still more fascinating than thousands of people marching peacefully.
So halfway down the story there is acknowledgement that the first half of the story didn't really sum up the event:
(T)housands of people who came out to oppose the right wing rally had no connection to the anarchist mob. Instead, they came to voice opposition to Trump’s policies, which many people said had buoyed white nationalists across the country.
Which is why we used to read Time Magazine and roll on the floor laughing.
Oh well. I've got a garden to tend, but I'll be back tomorrow.
Slow learner, yeah.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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