THE POLITICAL DEMENTIA IN OLD FARTS

Fact number 1 - wisdom is not inherent and does not automatically come with aging.
Fact number 2 - uneducated and stupid people are uninformed.  If you're ignorant as a young person,                             you will be ignorant as a senior citizen.  Education isn't automatic either.
Fact number 3 - the U.S. is full of ignorant old people.  Want proof?  Take a gander at how they vote.

With these three simple facts in mind, consider what is happening to health care in America.  The reforms made by Obama will be turned back, giving the health care business back to corporate American, meaning Wall Street hospitals and clinics, and drug companies with full reign.  And who pays the biggest price for this?  That would be the old farts that mostly vote for idiot Republicans, and morons like Trump.  If anyone deserves a lousy health care system, they do.  But along with them comes suffering for people who had the good sense to support reforms in health care.  Not all old farts suffer from brain farts.

I'm old, and I like my peer group even less than millennials.  I'm not a baby boomer because they came slightly after my generation, but I am old.  I'm not an idiot, and I'm not uninformed.  Some sociologists are saying that the baby boomer generation was the worst ever because they're our first spoiled rotten group.  Even the X-generation did better . . . but now we've got all these spoiled rotten old farts running around out there.  They screwed things up for the generations that must come after them, and they're still screwing things up.  This country could, and will, profit from a die off . . . but would that help now?  I don't think so.  I can't see anything good coming from the generations that now hold power in this country, and I most certainly don't see anything good coming from the millennials.

I've had thoughts of devising an exercise program for old farts, and it involves just one exercise.  We should all practice putting our heads between our knees because the time is coming when we'll need to kiss our asses goodbye . . . and without anyone to blame other than ourselves.  You might as well get out there and have fun, grandma and grandpa, because your comeuppance is on the way.

HOW BAD CAN IT GET? TUNE IN, YOU'VE GOT A FRONT ROW SEAT

Someone sent me a video link a while back about how Americans have become slaves to corporate America.  Only about eight minute of watching that video had me wanting to puke up my breakfast because I knew it was true, right on the mark.  That video calls us slaves and points out every reason why no one is as free as they think they are.  With cooperation backed by a badly mismanaged government, corporations have taken you hostage, and they didn't have to fire a shot to do it.  They set the stage, became the producers and actors, and we gobbled up the slop they fed us.  Blame it on anything or anyone you'd like to, but in the end the responsibility rests with us.  We did it to ourselves, and breaking out of slavery is never easy.

So, you're thinking it's just bullshit.  If we're slaves, it's not that bad.  In fact, life might be pretty good for you . . . until you pull your head out of your ass and really look around.  Just how much can you do on your own, and without permission for it from someone at the governmental or corporate level? I've got a suggestion:  Why don't you jump out there and try it and see how far you get.  Not everything corporate American does is bad, and that's a fact.  It's not what they sell us that's the big problem; it's how we use it.  How much has the alcoholic beverage industry enhanced your life? What about the fast food industry?  Or clothing?  Or better yet, the food industry?  So, how've you been doing with medical costs, like paying monthly premiums that can easily soar above a thousand bucks a month?  Try getting by these days without a cell phone, or a computer.  Think about almost everything you do, and think hard, and then tell me you're not a slave.

Nobody is completely free, and they shouldn't be.  If mankind has demonstrated anything to the world, it's that we can't handle freedom very well.  We're not conditioned for it.  From the very first steps you took as a person, someone has guided them, and that someone was some entity that didn't want you walking off the path they'd designed for you.  I got bold enough as a teenager to announce that I didn't want to go to college.  Bad move.  "You'll go to college if you have to go with my number ten size shoe hanging out of your ass," I was quickly told.  And so, I went to college, and that was a good thing.  Someone needed to guide my steps.  I'm not totally opposed to restrictions on freedom for reasons like this, but I am opposed to being dominated by more subtle devices.

My car talks to me and tells me what to do.  I get inside, and it locks me in, because I'm too stupid to lock the door.  A sweet female voice tells me where to go, what turn to make, and I'm warned about my seatbelt not being secure, and it tells me about approaching vehicles, and it does all sorts of things.  I get amused, think I need a voice that's not so sweet.  I tend to ignore sweet voices.  Maybe I need a husky voice that says, "You just missed your turn, dumbass."  And I think, does anyone need this?  Do I have to be told not to eat the packing material in a delivered box?  And if I do, what does that say about me?  Uh, that would be that I'm a slave . . . and the thing that enslaved me?  That would be my own ineptitude.  Yeah, corporate American has taken advantage of it, but what enslaves us all is ignorance, stupidity, and just downright laziness.  I'll see you at Walmart, or maybe at the quick stop, fellow slave.  I'll be the one that's smiling.

THANK GOD, IT'S FINALLY HERE!

I didn't celebrate the coming of 2017, but I should have.  I thought 2013 was a shitty year, had some health problems that put me in the hospital twice, but 2014 came along and proved me wrong. And then 2015 arrived, and I still held out hope for a recovery year.  It was Ok, nothing to brag about, and then the worst year in decades came along.  It started like the year from Hell, a sick wife, having to deal with America's miserable health care system.  Neurologists and a neurosurgeon misdiagnosed her problem as encephalitis, but it wasn't.  We didn't learn that until after two surgeries to fix the problem.  Finally found a migraine specialists who knew what to do, and she improved under his treatment.  Oh, but then we had the miserable election to deal with, when a sizable enough bat shit crazy people voted in a piece of shit human being as President.  That's when I decided that I'm surrounded by too much ignorance and started looking for ways out of here.  My religious sister said, "Well, sometimes God gives us what we need instead of what we want."  And I said, "Then why did he have to punish all of us?  Why not just the Trumptards?"  She didn't answer.  She married to one.

But, 2016 died last night, and we've got a new number on the board today.  Yeah, I know, that doesn't mean jack shit.  Only a few hours have gone by, so I can't say anything has changed.  I still live in a country eaten up with ignorance and run by complete assholes.  You know they're complete assholes when former governing assholes don't even like them.  I'm starting to like George W. Bush.  I'm also starting to like Obama less, and I've grown to detest his party.  The Dumocrats have finally lived up to their nickname but at enormous cost to the nation.  I'd grieve more, but I'm not sure we would've been much better off with Clinton.  She's pretty much a total dipshit, but I've always argued that dipshits are better than dumbasses, which is what we got.

The prospects for 2017 being a better year are gloomy, at least as far as the nation is concerned. Personal things can be much better, so I'll work hard at seeing about those things.  Maybe I'll take a shot at being uninformed, like maybe I could fit into my surroundings better if I had no idea what was going on around me.  But alas, I'm educated, very well educated in fact.  At my age, though, I'm dealing with a faltering memory, never know where anything is anymore.  Maybe that's why I'm starting to like George Bush.  I'm forgetting why I didn't like him.  And then the ugly thought comes to me:  Could I get stupid enough to start liking Trump?  Uh, no.  I've got guns, and I've saved back a few bullets for that special occasion when I see the asshole on television . . . and start smiling.  I hope I can just remember where I put the bullets.

CHASING THE HORSES THAT GOT AWAY

So, Obama finally did a little something in regard to Russia's meddling in a presidential election. That's like slamming the barn door after the horses have escaped and are running free.  Who let them out in the first place?   Uh, that would be the dumbasses who left the door unlatched, and they're not good at chasing down escaped horses.  In this case, it's horses' asses.  Little time left in office, no real talent for chasing freed horses, not much will happen with this little slap on the wrist.  We expelled some people, issued a few sanctions, big deal.  And the results of this big time brain fart will take office in less than a month, and that is a big deal.

But the Russian affair is small potatoes compared to what has happened to this country's electorate. I've factored in frustration and anger, disappointment, and even the remote possibility that the dumbass voters that elected Trump has some justification for their errant votes.  I come up with the same conclusion:  They didn't get bamboozled; they're just ignorant as dirt.  As a college professor for many years, I saw this coming quite some time ago.  I watched a steady decline in academic standards, stood in front of students each passing year less prepared for college work.  The dumbing down of America has apparently bloomed into an epidemic of ignorance.  Ask any employer what they think of todays workforce, the applications they get for jobs.  I live in small town America where the school system is supposed to be good.  A local merchants recently told me that he'd had 55 applications for a sales job, and most of them flunked the drug test.  Some had criminal records, and others were just too stupid to hire.  He didn't fill the position.

I sometimes wonder if the gene pool for intelligence in this country has gone dry.  We're currently raising a crop (generation) of young people who seem to think they were born with the right to be taken care of.  Few people go searching for jobs anymore; they want a position, and with no credentials for a position.  They're wizards with electronic gizmos like cell phones and I-pads, but they can't fill out a job application form.  Do the statistical work yourself and just google illiteracy in America.  One in five people can't read past a fifth grade level, and about 40 percent of our population can't read well enough to understand much of what they've read,  unless it's the drivel that shows up in todays literary marketplace.

While watching the Olympics from London some time back, like over four years ago, I saw a blip where a Beefeater was being interview.  You know, those funny dressed guys who serve as tour guides at the Tower of London.  And the interviewer asked this Beefeater about the strangest question he'd been asked by a tourist.  He said a lady from Texas once asked him if the Tower of London was where they'd kept Snow White prisoner before they cut her head off.  He said no, that Snow White was a fictitious character.  And as the woman walked away with her husband she was heard saying, "He's wrong.  I know that's where they kept her."  The sad part is that I could perhaps walk downtown where I live here in Texas and tell that story to someone on the street, and I might well get a blank stare, and the question, "Well, was it?"  How much would you like to bet that the same person voted for Trump?

IT'S ANOTHER OF THOSE DON'T-DO-WHAT-I-DID STORIES

If you are another of those I'm going to stick it out at all costs people this post is not for you.  Like the old hippies used to say, "I know where you're coming from, man."  Some people grow roots instead of wings, and some like me never grew either.  I'm not rooted, but my wings have been clipped.  I'm grounded by old age, obligations, and situations, and that's a familiar story in this country.  I'm an American, but I'm not all that proud of it.  Love of country is one thing, but at some point in time you realize that life can be much bigger than that.  I'm not ashamed of my ancestry, nationality, home state, community, and anything like that.  I've had some grand opportunities here in America, but that was then, and now is now, and living here is just not working for me anymore.  I'm not one of your average American highly propagandized devotee to our way of life.  This ain't my first rodeo, and I've acquired a good education about what goes on in this country.  I see the good along with the bad, but that's like watching a football game.  You know the feeling, I'm sure, of when your team gains more yardage, has more first downs, looks like a winner all through the game . . . and then fumbles it away in the last quarter and loses.  Let's blame it on the refs for making bad calls. Let's blame it on a single player who fumbled or dropped the winning touchdown pass.  Let's blame it on just bad luck, but if we had played the game like we should have, the score wouldn't have been close enough for that one fumble or dropped pass to beat us.  We live under a government that fumbles a lot and within a society stupid enough to think that's just the breaks of the game.  A loss is still a loss, and we've turned into a bunch of losers willing to accept those losses.

Ok, so we now have a low class turdball of a President soon to be in office, and he's making some unbelievably bad decisions already.  He's not there by chance either.  We didn't have enough reasonable voters in place, and that's what put us in this position.  We didn't have a strong enough opposition to his bullshit approach to campaigning to beat him.  That's the only fair part about his election.  He won by hook and crook, deception and lies, and he found enough people willing to believe him to win.  Good for the turdball, he at least got that part right.  A big time fumble by the other side cost them the win, and it should have.  This makes you wonder just which side is really the dumbest, and that's something voters had to decide.  A good democracy offers much better choices, and we're not that kind of democracy.  I could present a good argument that we're not a democracy at all.  But still, almost all Americans will hunker down and wait it out, somehow believing that the democratic processes (that don't exist) will turn things around in time.  Dream on.  It won't happen.

I'm one of those trapped people who'll have to sit here and watch a country continue to decline, and it's going to be an ugly affair.  I'd rather not witness it at all, and since I'm old, perhaps I'll catch a break and get out of it much easier than younger people will.  I keep working each day, writing books that take me away from reality for a while, and wondering what comes next.  What if I live another ten years?  Yuk!  I'd rather be living elsewhere if that's going to happen, and I keep a tiny dream alive that I might be able to do that.  I won't go far, just to Mexico where I can live on far less money than here.  I've written half dozen books on Mexico, and my research has taught me a lot. First, forget almost everything you know from press reports up here because it's bullshit.  I challenge you to do your own research, if you've still got wings.  If not, don't torment yourself.  I could show you the way to a good existence down there, but we all need to draw our own lines on a map, make our own decisions.  If you've already bought into the American propaganda bullshit, you're fine with where you are.  You wouldn't fit in anywhere else anyway, so stay put and wait it out.  You'll wait forever, but that's what you bought, so wear it.  If you've still got a clear mind and wings that work, then fly and see what you can find elsewhere.  It's up to you.

A LEGACY FOREVER TARNISHED

Being the first black president of the U.S. made his legacy as chief executive important, and he has worked hard at promoting his achievements.  He has also offered some lame excuses for his lack of achievement, one of them being how he handled the Russian hacking situation.  In that regard, he blew it, and that will forever tarnish his legacy as a competent president.  He thought Clinton had it won, so he decided to roll the dice and let her deal with the problem once in office.  But he crapped out, and that ends up costing us more than just a lost election.  Yeah, I'm blaming the loss of the election to Donald Trump on Obama, will drop this hot potato right in his lap.  He should've known better.  Some people are willing to let that pass, but as Trump takes office and the frightening prospects we face become a reality, Obama's big brain fart will become more of an issue.

Obama knew the Democrats had a bad candidate, but he bit the bullet and worked hard to try to win it for her.  He knew his own party was rife with nitwits and dipshits, and he still worked toward electing the worst candidate Democrats have fielded in many years.  He did that because he knew Trump was that bad, about as bad as any candidate can get, and that leaves him with no excuse for what he did in allowing outside forces to turn the election.  He sat back as an FBI director changed the direction of the campaign and did nothing to get him out of the way, or to discredit him.  That's not a legacy anyone should be proud of.  I don't believe that Obama ever knew how to use power when the time came to get tough.  He was good at sending drones flying at an enemy everyone hated, but he didn't know how to handle our worst enemies of all - the home grown variety.  And that leaves me thinking that the biggest pussy Trump grabbed was Obama . . . who pussied up when he should've been showing some balls.  Bye, bye Obama, and bye, bye grand legacy.

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE AT ITS WORST

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE DOES NOT WORK!  It has never been a democratic way of electing the President and Vice-President, but that's not a mistake.  Our forefathers designed it that way because they didn't trust the democratic process.  A history lesson in voting rights in this country should teach us at least that much.  I blame most of this on the federal system where states are allowed to control voting, which is idiotic when it comes to national elections.  But the way it's set up, this fart brained system of election, is the current law and should be respected until it is legally changed.  Trump should win the electoral college because he won the most states, and that's the simple fact of the matter.  And the vote in the electoral college won't be close due to the current rules. Forget all the bullshit about who won the overall popular vote because it doesn't count.  Forget all the Trump sculduggery as to how he won those states because that doesn't count either.  We let it happen, and now we have to live with it . . . and no one deserves it more than we do.

People who voted for Trump, the dumbfucks who bought the lies and skulduggery, are first in line when it comes to the Great Idiot Award . . . but just barely.  Were I giving the award, the Democrats would get it.  How can anyone screw up an election campaign any worse than they did?  Clinton should never have been the candidate, and her campaign cost them a victory in the way they went about ousting Bernie Sanders.  The Clinton campaign staff was rife with sleazy political operatives, nitwits, and lowlifes.  Want to talk about how badly Trump has damaged the Republicans?  He has, but there's no way he's done a number on them like the Clintons and their band of bullies have done to the Democrats.  Want to talk of party purges?  Start with the Democrats because they're truly become Dumocrats.  The Trump campaign was smart enough to seize the opportunity the Democrats provided them, so kudos to them for that.

But here's the bad news.  With Trump's win, this nation is now in the crapper.  Low class has risen to the top like rancid cream, and your new government will be staffed by corporate pirates, right wing extremists, racists, xenophobes, and the dregs of our political society.  And it won't work, and we'll all pay the price for that.  Complaints against Trump won't go away.  Investigations will cripple his presidency like none we've ever seen, the economy will suffer, unemployment will rise, and there'll be the onset of a season of real political hostility.  And since there are no good guys in this fight, there's little chance of a win for anyone.

Perhaps you've owned one, a car that just will not work right, always leaves you stranded and afoot. And you keep pouring money into repairs, but the car just keeps breaking down.  At some point in time you come to the realization that it's worn out and must be replaced.  You go shopping for a new vehicle to get you where you need and want to go, but finding something you can afford is almost impossible.  That's where we are with government and politics in the U.S.  It is broken beyond repair, and it's time for a new one, and we don't even know how to go shopping for it.  Too many obstacles are in the way, and so we keep pouring money into the old vehicle, hoping and praying it will get us around for a while longer.  What this all means is simple:  We're fucked.  And we did it to ourselves.