The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Down here on the South End where unemployment figures fly in the face of national statistics showing the lowest percentages in decades for the rest of the country, we layabouts and welfare queens rely heavily on our one main crop. Nettles. Oh sure, there are other industries down this way, everything from dog grooming to … well, real estate sales, I guess. Let’s be honest here, most of us are either retired or on the dole. We’re not apologetic about either, but those real estate agents, maybe they should be.

So when this tariff war started up we didn’t think it would have much of an impact on us local yokels, not unless the cost of dog shampoo went through the ceiling. Like a lot of fact-averse Americans, we just figured we’d poke along, harvest our bounty of wild nettles for the Asian markets which revere the stuff as a supernatural aphrodisiac and an organic antidote for erectile dysfunction. If ignorance is bliss, we found out the hard way that maybe we got it backwards. And if the Asians looked at a map of the island, they’d realize it looks like a Before ad for Viagra.

The Chinese took umbrage to the billions of yuans in tariffs the Trump boyz piled on them and so, in a tit for tat, watch THIS gringo, socked us with import duties mostly on products from the red states to teach the Trump-tolerant a hard lesson in economics. As if they’d be likely to learn…. Soybeans, wheat, apples, ginseng, oh, and you betcha, nettles. We weren’t exactly making a killing on those nettle bales shipped by container ships bound for Ghuangzou, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Dongghaun, but we eked out a meager living now that marijuana was legalized here in La-La Land and ruined our underground economy.

So now our unemployment figures, already at record highs, are going to shoot up stratospherically. Great. Thanks a lot, Mr. Prezident! Don’t blame us when creeping socialism rears its ugly head. You’re the one who put us on welfare. And maybe, just maybe, you could offer us what you offered those soybean farmers, our own subsidy. Capitalism, right?

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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 23rd, 2018 at 3:35 pm and is filed under rantings and ravings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.