My first response was, “Does she? Does she really?”
The point is: just because she SAID she did was not sufficient for me. And, in a candidate for president of the United States, a statement like that really should be enough.
It was not as if I thought she was bald-faced lying (and she doesn’t look robustly healthy) but more that I didn’t fully believe what she was saying. Subtle difference but a difference nevertheless.
I know, I know, ……….“Dave, we don’t believe any of the lying bastards. Why point her out?”
There are two main people running for the position of leader of the so-called FREE World and one is so comically unacceptable for all the obvious and deplorable reasons mentioned by the other and that very same other is becoming well-known for colouring, or at least heavily varnishing, the truth. One is stupider than hell and the other lies.
How would either doofus influence world affairs?
Mind you, Nixon WAS a crook and Regan was senile so maybe the Oval Office is just a hood ornament? I dunno…………But, still…………
Presumably Trump and Clinton are the two best people the United States has to offer.the world at this time. But HOW is that possible? Three hundred million of them and these are the best they got? Hell, all of my ‘merican friends are much better people than those two. Their truth-telling record alone is light years ahead. I have even met moderate Republicans that I liked much better than those two.
Trump and Clinton – as THE choice – simply bodes ill for everyone on the planet.
And it may come to mean something while one of them is in office. China, it seems is manifesting imperialistic aspirations. They are active investors in South America and Africa and active invaders in the South China Sea. And their little buddy, North Korea appears to be coming off the rails internationally more frequently just to spice up that side of the world up a little bit more than usual.
Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and maybe a few other tigers are not happy over any of that ’emerging China’ crap.
And, of course, Russia is the real bad boy doing whatever it wants to do, it seems, so long as it is limited to just cross-border or internal issues and then they just leave the bear alone.
While the EU begins to unravel and the Middle East continues to burn.
And South and Central America are growing into even larger drug cultures.
Or so the news is telling us.
But they lie, too! Reported news is always bad and now getting worse but they lie all the damn time so we don’t really know, do we?
And people wonder why anyone would choose to live off the grid?
Are we far enough off the grid is the real question?
We are not kidding ourselves; living off the grid does not exempt us from world politics. You might get rid of the killing pace of modern life, traffic jams, shed dozens (if not more) financial leeches and you might even find a beautiful, healthy, new way of life in your immediate but more natural surroundings but BIG forces create BIG shadows. Our sunshine is occasionally overshadowed by the BIG evils in the world. Their force is not felt, but the shadows are. Things can still look dark sometimes.
And, as I have written previously, they look dark to me right now. I can’t see the imminent threat but I can see the sky getting darker. Economic conditions are right for something….political tensions are right for something…idiots and criminals are in power……climate conditions….
Sometimes you can just feel it in the air…………...
“Dave? Do you feel it in the air?”
Not quite. Not yet. It’s more like the calm before the storm that I am feeling. But I see the clouds, I see the shadows, I have read my history, I see signs. But no one calls me up to give me a briefing from the Kremlin or the White House. I am not invited to Davos. I am not part of a cartel or even a golf club. I am out of the loop and hope to stay way, way out of all loops.
So, why do I keep seeing this? Why is it obviously getting worse to me? Is it because I am not immersed in the daily sewer and my vision is so much clearer? Is it that all I see around me is beautiful and wonderful except what I know about the outside world?
Am I made overly sensitive by that or am I made a raving paranoid?
Our Off the Grid Home 
Romney expressed his disinterest in the 47%. Trump has courted the the right wing fringe of the Republican Party and has motivated a percentage of those who usually do not note vote to turn out at Trump rallies and scream, “Lock her up and build the wall.” The percentage of Trump’s supporters who constitute the deplorables is now a matter of debate. Trump claims that the number of deplorables supporting him is less than 50%. It is true that the fringe of the Republican Party is not 50% of all Republican but if Trump keeps shedding voters it may soon be.
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It is truly interesting to meet and get to know ‘deplorables’. Sal and I met Ray in Mexico. This guy was a train wreck straight out of a train wreck and getting crazier and more extreme as the days wore on. He drove a Mad Max vehicle (seriously, it was outrageous). He spoke like he was in a street fight even at dinner! And his companion was the psychiatric nurse he spent time with being locked up for being nuts. Ray was well into being totally nuts. AND he was not harmless. He wanted to kill and punch and go nuts all the live long day………..unless he was over on our side of the beach having a beer and shooting the BS. He was kinda fun in a whacked out kinda way. He lived (when he wasn’t traveling) with his nurse in an airstream in the high desert under an army camouflage net. He wouldn’t give us his address. “Go to the town (X) and look up the American Auto Parts store. Ask for Cletis. Tell him you want directions to my place. If Cletis thinks you are OK, then he’ll give ’em. If he doesn’t, he won’t.”
We passed through the high desert a few months later, found Cletis, visited with Ray and his nurse. Saw his gun collection. Drank Jack and ate pizza. And we left. It was nice. It was fun. It was WAY weird. Ray would be a bona fide deplorable and deportable if he wasn’t wounded all to hell in Vietnam and a born-in-the-Ozarks kinda American. No education. Ruined young. Drugged all the time. Psychotic but manageable by the nurse. We kinda liked Ray.
But then, a few years later, he beat the crap out of the nurse, went on the lam, got caught and is now in prison.
Deplorables? Waddya gonna do?
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“Alice’s Restaurant” Arlo Guthrie’s commentary on militarism and other stuff that happens after being arrested for littering and sent for a mental evaluation. “…And I walked in and sat down and they gave
me a piece of paper, said, “Kid, see the phsychiatrist, room 604.”
And I went up there, I said, “Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I
wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and
guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead, burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill,
KILL, KILL.” And I started jumpin up and down yelling, “KILL, KILL,” and
he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down
yelling, “KILL, KILL.” And the Sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me,
sent me down the hall, said, “You’re our boy.”
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That was Ray. But who knew what Ray might have been WITHOUT Vietnam and drugs and guns? He had a ‘good soul’ quality that we saw, the nurse saw and, more importantly, even Ray saw.
But, as it turned out, it was not enough.
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Here is some irony for you Alice’s partner was called Ray! I met a guy who had flown choppers in Nam. His party trick was to swallow wire coat hanger and then wave it around. A geek show but not deplorable.
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My favourite nut-bar-trick was Brian’s (now deceased). He would open beer bottles (screw top) with his anal muscles. Pants down, bottle in the hole, tighten hard and twist. More than once one of his buddies would hand him a squeeze-fit cap and he would just grind his butt til it bled.
He was one of my best friends. NOT deplorable but a smidge whacked at times.
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As any reader knows, I am not a Republican nor am I a Conservative. I am fiscally conservative, sociallly liberal but my primary colour is green. Do greens HAVE deplorable? As a green, am I allowed NOT to like stupid, gross, ugly things? As a social liberal, shouldn’t I applaud the stupid ugly pride parade? Aren’t those beasts and parasites PART of the great Gaia tapestry?
I think they are. They are allowed to exist. But I do not have to like them. Does the Gazelle like the lion? Do the mice like the cats? We are allowed our values. We are even allowed our biases.
I have a bias against the deplorable but they are allowed to vote.
The question is: are there more deplorable or are there more betters?
We’ll see.
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Challenging times are upon us and it seems at times like a Fellini production. We have a candidate who seems to be entitled to say and do whatever he wants according to some unwritten set of rules but only these special rules apply to him. A news cycles is taken up by a rival candidate who gets sick and fails to give the press a moment by moment accounting of her case of pneumonia. He attacks the foundational values of American society but she gets the higher untrustworthy label. No matter what has happened in past history it is blamed on the Democrates.( Poverty, pay inequality, Middle East war, instability, wall street crash, terrorism, immigration, trade deals, grid lock in Congress, gay marriage, abortion, zenophobia, global warming and on and on goes the litany). The blame game is grinding American society.
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Well, at least I’M not deplortable! I was born here.
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We may petition Immigration Canada………..
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