The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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We got a little library down here at the notoriously (but proudly) illiterate South End. One of those 1960 phone booths landed in the park I care-take across the island about a year ago so I decided it would be easier to make something interesting with it than try to haul it to the dump. We turned it into a Little Library, built bookshelves and stocked it with fiction and non-fiction, even some CD’s. A week later vandals pulled the bookcase out, scattered the books, burned a few, tossed some in the woods and painted graffiti on the glass walls of the booth. Sure, I was bummed, but since I was married to a librarian, I decided to rise above the obvious desecration of literary values and try again. To that end I posted alien robots to guard the sanctuary.

Yesterday I drove by and noticed through the windows the bookshelves were gone so I pulled into the parking lot only to find the entire library, books and bookcase, scattered on the ground and left in the rain, ruined. It’s not like the burning of the Library of Alexandria exactly or even like our own evangelical book burnings, more like a senseless attack on anything intellectual or bureaucratic. Although, to be honest, it’s probably just a couple of kids who think it’s funny to destroy things. You see it all the time, not just on the South End, but it’s epidemic on the internet. Ransacking a little library is probably just our way of trolling down here.

Obviously I underestimated the intelligence of our potential Vandals. It only took them one year to recognize the alien security guards as harmless sculptures. Sure, we could bring in surveillance cameras, hire some security, lock the library up at night, set up lending hours. But … let’s be honest here. Maybe the South End isn’t ready for culture just yet. It might be better to bow to the public, acknowledge their mistrust of books and art, maybe just use the phone booth for a private vaping salon. That, or patiently wait for our hoodlums to grow dumber since pretty obviously they’re not interested in learning much of anything. Couple more years on drugs then we can try the alien robot guards again. Third time, they say, is the charm.

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So now we’re treated to crowds of yahoos chanting, not Lock Her Up, but Send Her Back! What part of the democratic process, if any, do these pea-heads understand? Me, I’ve had a dose of ignorance to last me a lifetime. Enuff, I think, to demand an end to it. You want to believe Obama was born in Kenya, I can’t help you. You want to doubt we landed Apollo 11 on the moon, fine by me. You think JFK was killed by aliens from Mars, have at it. But I don’t want you writing the history books, I don’t want you telling me your latest conspiracy theory, I don’t need you screaming en masse that if a person doesn’t agree with your angry imbecility they ought to be deported. I’m sick of it and I’m sick of you. Read a book occasionally. Educate yourself. You think every opinion ought to be treated with equal respect, forget about it. We might agree that you have the right to be stupid, but that doesn’t make your opinion right.

We live in the algorithm of ignorance these globally warmed days. Anger, resentment, bigotry, all combustible fuel in the forest of stupidity, just waiting for a spark or a match or a dogwhistle or two. I won’t say every person who voted for Trump was a racist or even deplorable. I have friends who voted for the carnival barker and yeah, they’re still my friends. But there are a lot of folks who voted for the guy who would just as happily have voted for George Wallace in the day howling about de-segregation, who would vote for Judge Roy Moore even when they knew he stalked under- age girls, who would vote again for Trump full knowing he was guilty of conspiring with Russians and guilty of covering up payments to porn stars and guilty of obstruction of justice. They’re mad as hell and they’re not gonna take it anymore.

Trouble is, they just don’t have much of an outlet other than to rage against the machine. Along comes a demagogue like Donald, pissed off 90% of the time, tweeting his outrage, venting his narrow minded wrath against Muslims and immigrants and liberals and the media, against most everything, even the foundations of democracy. The future looks dim to him and the mob. It was better when the country was white, when Ozzie loved Harriet, when the kids were heterosexual, when cars had huge fins and got 10 mpg, when TV didn’t have sitcoms with people of color or people who were gay or people who looked different than … you know, Us. We didn’t have crime, we didn’t worry about climate change, we didn’t have transsexuals, we didn’t have any problems.

Oh, sure, the Russians and that communism stuff. Maybe some nuclear scares. But Father knew best and the Brady Bunch were a nice wholesome American family. What happened to all that Norman Rockwell goodness? Was it the uppity black folks? Did the immigrants erode the culture? Maybe the women wanting equality? Drugs and the hippie culture and now heroine and meth? Was that it? The American Dream became darker and darker. Jobs paid less. The Mexicans took all the good jobs from our white kids, you know, picking cucumbers and framing houses or working at Motel 6 as a maid. The government maybe, telling us cigarettes were bad, the air was filthy, the rivers were polluted, always the government, the goddamn government telling us what to eat, what not to eat, what was good for us, what wasn’t. Like we were children. Like we were too stupid to know any better.

It’s hard to say, hard to put a finger on it, hard to find the reason things went to hell. But the jobs don’t pay, the kids are on drugs, the kids are hooked on their devices, the kids are addicted to Facebook, the kids don’t want to work manual labor any more, the robots are taking over, the cars are driving themselves, the country is a mess. Hollywood has perverted everything, the media lies about everything, nothing is true unless it’s on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh. Something went terribly wrong back when and now, who knows, maybe it’s too late. But along comes this guy, a billionaire TV star, maybe he can fix it. Maybe we got nothing to lose. Maybe he can turn things around. Maybe he’ll drain the swamp.

Well, I got some bad news for you deplorables. He is the swamp.

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