“He don’t know me very well, do he?” – Bugs Bunny, “Rebel Rabbit,” 1949
I’ve been taking some time off from political proselytizing. The truth has been quite blatant and either you recognize it for what it is or you are so deep in the Rabid Right’s tank that reality testing is a waste of energy. There’s extraordinarily little middle ground anymore, and you don’t need this fool on the hill to tell you squat.
On the other hand, I’ve been pontificating since 1965 and this doesn’t feel like the right time to stop. As Bob Dylan said, “If my thought-dreams could be seen, they’d probably put my head in a guillotine.” So I’m going to pundit on, with the proviso “he that pundits is verily full of shit.”
There’s been a great deal of talk about the 2024 presidential election. I don’t know why; political years are akin to dog years and there’s a lot of dogs to be wagged. But I do recognize what is missing from our uncivil discourse.
Everybody is acting like the race will be between the current president and the criminal poser with the giant Mussolini complex. I’m not as certain that’s the way it will come down. Both men are really, really old – several years older than I am, in fact – and one of them has a digestive track that is as rotted out as his moral compass. If, next year, the Republicans fail to take back the house, which is an if that is somewhat larger than those other pundits let on, our nation’s dipshit il duce will likely be under indictment if not in prison – unless he picks up an AR-15 and starts murdering Black Lives Matter Wisconsinites, which is now perfectly legal.
The current White House keyholder presently enjoys a popularity rating only slightly higher than his predecessor, so, of course, now the wags are predicting he won’t run for reelection and/or his party will dump him. Yeah. Um tut sut.
This reveals the Democratic Party’s overwhelming dilemma. It’s always something, but this time at this moment they’re completely screwed and those other soothsayers ain’t ponying up much in the way of revelation. Not me. I’m always the guy who farts loudist in the swimming pool.
People don’t like the incumbent as much as they did a year ago. Well, that will happen – but those running down-ticket don’t want to risk drowning in the undertow. As we learn time and time again, politicians love their phony-baloney jobs more than they love America.
But if they dump Joe Biden, or if he dumps himself, the pressure to promote the candidacy of Vice President Kamila Harris will be enormous. A whole lot of people went blue last year with that very understanding. The non-White vote will have a hard time backing another old White man – promises inferred are promises made. The non-male vote will have a hard time voting for any man. In politics, perception is reality and such “promises” are nothing more than perceptions.
So let’s say the Democrats back Harris. That will prove interesting. You might remember Barack Obama, the president who recently inducted Jay-Z into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame. His election and his subsequent reelection empowered the Pathetic Right and titillated the big money monsters who want to keep all the loot they’ve stolen from what once was the middle class. These people either could not abide by the concept of a Black president or have profited enormously from the reaction one-third of Americans have to the reality of a Black president.
Just imagine how these liquored up bible-babbling assault weapon hugging democracy hating marionettes are going to react to the concept of a Black WOMAN as president! It’s like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton all rolled into one! The very prospect will make the little bigots crawl out of their heads. They will come out en masse to prevent Harris from ever putting her hand on any bible. They will do so more aggressively than they have been doing since The Great Pumpkin floated down his escalator informing us the Mexicans are all drug dealing rapists, Satanists, and Communists.
As the kids say, these people will lose their shit. You know, like they did, literally, when they invaded the Capitol building this past January.
In other words, the Democrats are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
Roll on, roll on. Keep a happy thought.
And happy Thanksgiving.
As I walked upstairs to my Scribbler’s Sanctorum to write these words, I noticed daughter was watching a hockey game. That’s hardly unusual in this house; both of us are hockey fans and unless otherwise occupied we will watch any game that has a puck and a dearth of New York Rangers fans. But instead of nodding my head in regret, I was thinking of how surreal our times have become.
You may have heard of Kanye Omari West. He is a very successful rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and fashion designer… and now, he’s a presidential candidate.
I recognize that having column inches such as I do grants me a public space to air my grievances. A place, in plain sight, to shoot straight and vent with hope in finding sympathetic ears. Such as it were, we all have these spaces — take the social media platform of choice, and let loose. But here, on Pop Culture Squad, I’m given a bit more leeway to stretch a would-be status message and let it get some height. Normally I’d save my ire for something specifically in the pop culture space (#relevancy), but, here I am stuck in quarantine — a nebulous vacuum of pop culture at present. So, I’m detailing several things in my life that are at very least pop culture adjacent that have been grinding my gears. Hopefully with a little venting, this tightening in my chest might relieve itself a bit. On with the ranting!
