In the Land of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King

President’s day came and went without much fanfare this year. I didn’t even know it was President’s Day until I got home. I was getting ready to walk in the door when I saw my new neighbor, Jim, watering his lawn and it was the neighborly thing to do to go up and talk to him.

“How’s it going today Jim” I asked.

“Oh, man, it’s been a rotten day. The mail didn’t run today. Those lazy conniving pekersnots look for any reason to take a day off from work. Back when I was in the Marines we never got a day off! Never! We were expected to do our job, by god! That’s what’s wrong with the country nowadays, people are looking for the easy way out” Jim wailed.

“Right on” I agreed as I retreated into my house. I was in no mood to deal with another one of Jim’s “how things used to be” sermons. To say the day had been rotten would be a gross understatement. Most of the day had been spent listen to co-workers bitch about their feminine cycles and their wretched home lives. I tried to escape this maddening babble by going to the gym and beating the mortal hell out of a heavy bag.

Right in the middle of my boxing workout I was distracted by the continuous music video channel on the wall. There was a dew rag wearing hooligan on there mumbling some sort of gibberish that the kiddies refer to as rap. The thug was singing (if you can call it that) about his “grillz”. After closer inspection he wasn’t just singing about his grillz, he was imploring women to rob a jewelry store and make him some “grillz”. What exactly are “grillz” anyway? The trainer Ali told me that “grillz” are basically a set of false teeth made out of either platinum or gold.

“Sweet Jesus Palomino is this what music has come to?” I squealed. Brothers on the screen singing love ballads about false teeth? I never thought I’d say it, but I’d settle for a new Depeche Mode tune, or even Richard Marx over this anyday.

My nerves were shot as I escaped into my new home so I turned on the TV to try to escape. I must have been hallucinating because there on the tube was Republican Bill Frist dragging Dubya across the coals. Frist was screaming bloody murder, and rightfully so, because Dubya is pushing a deal to sell control of 6 seaports in the U.S. to a company from the United Arab Emirates. The same United Arab Emirates that are a Michael Vick pass away from Iran” I yelled in disbelief. It was a shock that was almost too much for my heart to withstand. The damn fool wants us to believe that United Arab Emirates citizens are a whole lot different from Iranians? They are about as different from each other as South Dakota and North Dakota.

In a fit of anxiety I packed 2 suitcases and was ready to bolt out the door for Amsterdam. But lo and behold I was stopped by another hair-raising story. This one was about how some Amsterdam officials want to put an end to legalized prostitution. First prostitution, then the hashish will follow. No point going that route I thought, might as well just stay here and go down with the ship.

So I settled in and ate an entire bag of Famous Amos cookies when I figured out why President’s Day wasn’t celebrated with any pomp and circumstance. Those who have been elected president over the years have disgraced the position so badly that people openly mock and ridicule the leader of the free world. Rightly so I might add.

Just take a look at all of the carnage that Dubya has inflicted on this once proud nation. During his reign he allowed us to be hoodwinked by Al-Qaeda, stole 2 elections in broad daylight, instituted “Big Brother” spying tactics, took everyone’s freedom away with the Patriot Act, gratuitously endorsed “outsourcing” jobs to other countries for the benefit of big business, viciously attempted to destroy Medicare and Social Security, cut funding for almost every educational program, and lost 2 wars. Wow, most people would have enough shame to hunker down in the White House and finish out their term without anymore hoopla, but Dub II is now selling us out to the enemy.

However Dub II is not the only president to be a total disappointment. Bill Clinton was the last Democrat that we will ever see in the White House, but he wasn’t any great savior either. Clinton should go down in history as the first black Republican president. That’s why it’s such a surprise that he let the Hutu’s slaughter approximately 800,000 Tutsi’s in Rwanda. The U.N. would have brought down a blitz of retaliation on the Hutu’s if Clinton would have declared their actions genocide. However Clinton thwarted any intervention by saying that the atrocities were “acts” of genocide. The word “acts” being included in Clinton’s statement allowed thousands and thousands of Tutsi’s to meet a most unpleasant death, probably at the hand of a crude machete.

Clinton also pushed through the controversial NAFTA legislation like he would a load on Monica Lewinski’s dress. Bye bye blue collar middle class jobs, hello McDonalds. American companies smiled enough to rip their faces at the prospects of sending Union jobs down to Mexico for $3.00 an hour. Not to worry my good man we can retrain you, just head to your nearest community college for some top-notch instruction in the field of your choice.

I’ll skip over Bush Uno in the interest of time. Besides, all he is remembered for is taking a loss in the first Iraq war and bullying his child-like vice president to misspell potato on national television to divert attention from a sagging economy. The Smiling Monster, Ronald Reagan, came before Bush I and he set the wheels of demise in motion. Reaganomics should be included with all of the taboo words not to be uttered in public. The worst offenders being the much ballyhooed “trickle-down” economics he sold everyone on. The basic principle of Tickle-down economics supports giving businesses every possible break and loophole imaginable and their success will “trickle down” to the rest of us. What utter bullshit that is. The more you get the more you want. But it’s not just big business that’s guilty of this, we all are. If you are riding around with 100 extra dollars in your wallet and you see a homeless person are you going to give him $10 just because you have extra? No; you’re going to run to the porn store and buy something that leaves you with a warm and fuzzy feeling. On a personal level he made the word Union as rare as the word chilgoza (which is an edible pine seed for those of you keeping score). My dad was a proud member of the UMWA and without their help I would probably be digging ditches in Panther, West Virginia. But Unions are bad for business because for some silly reason they believe workers should not be treated like potted meat. Whenever a Union went on strike, Reagan put the screws on them to come back. Eventually this would be a perfect segue into the cutbacks that would plague the 80’s and 90’s. But to be fair he was better than what we have now. Even “honest” (honest being a relative term) Abe Lincoln wasn’t the great Messiah he was cracked up to be, he’s just lucky that 24 hour a day news channels weren’t around in his time. Uncle Abe gets a lot of credit for going to war in order to eradicate the institution of slavery. However, like most politicians, he just used that whole slavery business as a reason to keep the South from ceding. You can’t afford to give up that kind of tax base, no sir. If Lincoln was so damn worried about the welfare of black people why didn’t he have a plan for them once they gained their freedom? It’s like giving a 13 year old boy the keys to a Lamborghini and telling him he is qualified to drive. Unfortunately black people had never known freedom up until that point and they didn’t know what to do with it? The aftereffects from this lack of planning are still felt today. I wonder if Lincoln envisioned ancestors of slaves singing about “grillz”. Somewhere in the depths of Hell, Jefferson Davis is laughing about Lincoln being put on the brown coin.

The saddest thing about all of this is not the ineptitude of the chosen Presidents. No, the really sad thing is that millions and millions of people have elected every one of these shysters. Many times more than once! It’s a shame that the American public is so stupid that they will fall for every promise that every politician will make during the course of an election. Hell, John Kerry was for every program anyone asked him about. Keep the faith people, help is on the way. Help is on the way…