Dear Hume,
Ireland’s dragging darker, but it seems like winter snuck in on us sooner this year. I can only despair with pen in hand from across the pond at the sight of vultures circling the American dream. Yet, this year, even in my tiny Irish corner of it, the world seemed transfixed on the results as we watched 300 million scared emaciated hamsters choose the leader of the free world. And the bastard is the leader of the free world, make no mistake about it.
You asked if I have hope. Of course, I do. But forgive me for exclamation when I state: “It happened again — the rats are in the White House.” At the close of the most embarrassing presidential election I have ever witnessed, we’re back to square one. Back to the familiar, the decrepit, the dead. What I dislike the most about the Democrats is that when they aren’t losing they’re taking up all the contrarian space against Republicans and they still let them do whatever they want.
I have nothing against Joe Biden. Heck, I met the guy once while he was Vice President. Between the off-script flirting with the audience and the perfectly timed jacket-removal, he struck me as a guy who was friendly like my grandfather and carried a politician’s usual clownish charisma with grace and subtlety — so subtle that he washed over you like a wave and left even the most steadfast stunned. Still, after eight years of working with the first black president, you have to wonder who in their right mind would think that it looked like a fun job.
None of us are strangers to American presidential politics’ mind-numbing speed-ball. We turn our heads from our hamster-wheel and gawk at the two near corpses exchange the rhetoric slop of post-enlightened thinking.
I want to take one of those toddler voters, smack the sugary feeding nipple from their mouth, and scream: “Wake up, man! You’re in a nightmare; it’s all a cruel shill, and you’re the joke!”
It’s in those moments when I try to rest with the fact that becoming an ex-pat was my most challenging but enlightening decision I may have ever made.
Ol’ Mitch McConnell regained control and with him went all the hot air of the left. My dismay with the coming administration is not that it will be something different — it won’t — but that we remain in what can only be called a political quagmire. Keep some course, for Christsake! Just step away from the driver’s seat of this beast, and let’s let one last showman take the greatest joke of the 19th Century for one more show. I’d rather go into the unknown unwavering than have these GOP barkers steer us from the brink. Whether it’s into the flames of fascism or just the fire itself, let’s get to it already.
We need a monarchy so the peasants can go back to sleep again and yield completely to a peaceful ignorant rest. This four-year cycle of white-knuckled eyes glued to a screen more like moth agape with needle teeth is unsustainable and simply bad for mental health. Poor for morale. The crew needs a boxing match and some real blood so they can sleep comfortably in their bunks, glad just to have all of their limbs and most of their teeth.
This year felt more potent and more deranged and I shudder to think of the long-term psychological effects. There’s no pill you can swallow to fill the American Dream void; a collective realization that your whole life is a joke to these people who drool dollars into drone strikes and c-suits. (There’s a more delightful combination)
The loneliness of our time is deafening. The period of isolation in which we all must deal with this dilemma. Do you listen to the lies, deceit, and blatant falsehoods and scream them at your neighbor?
Writing to you about hope summons bile into my throat like a stuck fishbone. You and your neighbors are very familiar with that feeling. So I spew and muster up creative subtleties to stick it to the man. Perhaps that’s the best we can do. Creative medicine must be good for the masses if it is for me.
Where’d all the hobbyists shrink to?
But I don’t. I swallow back another sip or take another drag on something and carry on my work as the only way I know how — a slow build-up of bile into feverish creative bulimia.
I apologize for sending you these toxic vibrations; if you’re still reading, then I’d urge you to check yourself into a hospital. But that could lead to a body bag, so I’ll recommend this:
Walk barefoot outside and touch that oak tree in your back yard. Feel the earth beneath your toes and the bark beneath your hand for fifteen minutes.
The earth is a magnet for stale energy and a generator of sound vibes.
Doctor’s orders.
It would be great to meet one more time at the bar before the whole ship goes belly-up. Until then, I remain your faithful deskchair revolutionary.
C
