The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I get tons of viral e-mails from my old man, mostly right wing ranting about Muslims taking over Detroit and America, or the usual Obama-is-a-foreigner bent on destroying America, all the vitriolic propaganda you might think would fade out a little after 7 years of the Obama presidency. It’s been non-stop since 2012 and believe me, that seems like a lifetime.

Don’t ask me why, but this past year I decided to tune into Hot Talk Radio occasionally to listen in on what’s being said outside my usual frame of reference. My usual is three newspaper subscriptions, the New York Times online and plenty of NPR and PBS, what Rush calls ‘lame-stream drive-by media’ when he’s charitable, liars when he’s not. Hot Talk jocks aren’t much for dialogue or debate. They’re angry, they’re fed up, they’re not much interested in the clash of ideas so much as they want a clash. Democrats, all Democrats, are pretty much intent on destroying this once great country. They’re scaredy cats afraid to invade Syria, they lost Iraq, they want to open the floodgates to terrorists, they want to take away our guns, they want to see the Enemy win.

And there are plenty of Enemies. If you listen to this very long, you can become angry too. And more than a little cynical about the state of our union. You will distrust all government. Not just the Democrats, mind you, but those RINOS, those Republican in Name Only frauds who have capitulated too to the Enemy, the Democrats. You will be alarmed about the country going to the secularists, the gays, the politically correct, the Hollywood crowd, the anti-Bible, anti-Christian, anti-God folks who don’t understand what it means on the dollar bill In God We Trust. Your entire American Way of Life is under attack.

So when Donald Trump stepped onto the national soapbox, the lamestreamers thought he would fade in the polls about the time it took to say Birther Whackjob. Me, I bet my brother back a few months ago he would not only not fade, he would win the nomination. Jeb Bush, my brother said, and I said Jeb Bush, money or not, is the Enemy. Jeb Bush is dead raw meat for Trump and the Angry People. The Republican Party itself may be too.

A month ago my brother and I doubled that bet and Trump doubled his lead. He thinks, like most pundits, the Donald is too crazy to win. I think that is exactly why he will win. Maybe not the whole enchilada, but the GOP nomination. Maybe you’ll understand why I’m not going to celebrate when I collect my winnings… and why I’ve made my New Year’s Resolution to turn off right wing radio and stop reading my old man’s e-mails.

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We always have a few friends in for Thanksgiving every year, mostly folks who don’t have family nearby. I guess we don’t either — this is our family. A few years back we had Dr. J____, a neighbor lady who preferred the Dr. added to her name, a PhD in business, giving her the right to ask, I suppose.

We’d pretty much sated ourselves on the abundance of the South End, gluttons for tryptophan overdoses, and maybe that was the reason Doc J decided as we cleared the debris before a second round of desserts to clear her throat and suggest, this Day of Thanks, that we go around the table, each one of us bloated feasters, and declare How We’d Like to Die.

“I’ll go first,” the good doctor volunteered. “I’ve given this some serious thought.”

Holy cranberry sauce, I thought as we all sat stunned. Before I could manage to sit bolt upright and offer objection, the professor was launched into her dream demise, a drowning at sea with her little dog Toto on her around-the-world cruise in her 40 foot sailboat. I could feel my turkey and dressing and mashed potatoes colliding with the yams and creamed beans and peas baked in onions. They were waging a war south of the duodenal canal and nobody was inclined colonward.

Finished with her preferred death, she turned to us future corpses and asked who was next? She looked at the person on her left but before that turkey-eater could launch into a thanatopsis, I raised a leg bone and demanded a halt to this. “It’s Thanksgiving,” I cried, “not a funeral. How about we go around and say what we’re thankful for? Jeez!”

Some folks are looking forward to Armageddon. They’ll tell you they’re the ones who’ll be saved, carried up to the Promised Land when the Rapture comes. Me, I’m gonna be glad to be left behind. And I was glad when the doctor finished dessert and left for home. Turns out she almost died near the Fijis on her ill-fated cruise. I guess you should be careful what you wish for. Or at least what others wish for you ….

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