Sunday, July 23, 2017

While I Was Away

It was vacation. I was away from the keyboard for a while. I put a bunch of blog entries on ice and went off on a little sojourn, down to the bottom of the state. While I was gone, I let my reminiscences take over, and some of my best didjaevernotice bits. The kind of stuff that holds sway while the vacating takes place. 
Which doesn't mean I was completely out of touch. I was able to track the most recent developments in the freak show we call politics as I meandered around southern California. Specifically, I kept a daily eye on Twitter to see if the "President" would continue to stick his finger squarely in the eye of history. He did not disappoint. I was able to catch him nearly pulling the arm off the first lady of France. "You're in terrific shape," said the guy who plays a lot of golf. 
And then there were his tweets about health care, and how he's working with a bunch of sissies who won't bear down and do the thing he promised they would do: repeal Obamacare. Replacing is no longer the concern. If there was a thought given to the way something could be fixed, it hasn't shown up in the one hundred forty characters he had to spare on the subject. 
This, to me becomes the core of the problem. If the leader of the free world was prone to sharing his thoughts in some sort of long-form essay or, dare I say it, blog, then a greater understanding might be engendered. Instead, we are left with the late-night/early-morning brain flatulence that comes to us like a the scribblings inside grandpa's birthday card to you. A month late and barely comprehensible. 
Unless you happen to share his cockeyed view of the world and his own place in history“Well, Napoleon finished a little bit bad." Or "...his one problem is he didn’t go to Russia that night because he had extracurricular activities, and they froze to death. How many times has Russia been saved by the weather?"
He also likes to remind people that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. 
As for Honest Abe himself, even the speech he wrote on the back of an envelope took more than a few tweets' worth of characters. 
Back in the olden days, it was suggested that "when the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Lately, all we have to do is watch the Twitter feed. 

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