The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I got most of my education from the School of Hard Knocks. To be fair and completely honest (ho ho), I also graduated from a college with a double major, neither of which I used to find a career or even a viable means of livelihood. What finally served me best was wanting to keep learning, try out new avenues, read books and teach myself, see where the highway led, mostly detours and dead ends. I won’t say everyone should try this at home, but hey, the learning part for sure. Nothing wrong with continuing education even though most folks seem to think graduation is pretty much when it should stop.

Lately, though, we’ve all been getting an education whether we want one or not from the Trump University. Mitt Romney recently said “Here’s what I know: Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing the members of the American public for suckers. He gets a free ride to the White House, and all we get is a lousy hat.” Mitt is basically right, but he’s forgetting that we’re also getting quite a tutorial in New American Politics, 101. I doubt in our lifetime so many of us have focused so laser-like on the minutiae of Supreme Court nominations, impeachment proceedings, sausage making, foreign policy decisions, nepotism, cabinet appointments or various Constitutional deliberations. We even know what the term ‘emoluments’ means now. Put that on a red baseball hat and call it a mortar board cap. You’ve graduated with honors!

But … like my first run at the sheepskin fit for hanging on the office wall, it may not mean all that much if you can’t or won’t apply it to life skills. What we’ve mostly learned is that so-called Christian values are more malleable than we previously thought. The end certainly justifies the means. You want an end to Roe v Wade, pretty much everything is okay to get it. Honesty? It’s definitely a 20th Century relic. Patriotism? Ask Putin for help on that one. Compassion? Don’t make me laugh. We’re nasty sumbitches now, Homey. The weak need to get out of our way.

Maybe we do get the leaders we deserve, sad to say, and maybe we can still teach old dogs new tricks. It may take the pups to do it, kids fed up with this pathetic do-nothing-sensible government we have now, but if any of them want to tackle the existential problems of our time, they need to get rid of the Trump U. graduates. They know anyone running for President whose sole modus operandi is to beat Trump, well, they’re not the ones who will solve global warming, student debt, nuclear proliferation or income inequity. Trump isn’t the problem, he’s just the con-artist CEO of Trump U. It may just be time to try that School of Hard Knocks and forget about bogus degrees. Time’s running out.

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