Bubble, Bubble, We're in Trouble
June 11, 2013
by William P. Meyers

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Congress is in session, Obama met with some Chinese dude, somethin' is going on in Syria, and we are in a global warming plateau complete with tornados. Even the streets of Santa Monica aren't safe anymore. Have you ever been to Santa Monica, California, on the beach right next to L.A.? I have never seen so many beautiful people in one place. The inverse of the rural south. Everyone is thin, everyone exercises, everyone has had plastic surgery, everyone does yoga. Where are the real people who control those avatars?

But all kidding aside, we really are in trouble. Congress is in session. If you are lucky, you are not paying attention. If you are unlucky enough to be paying attention, you may think this is the worst Congress ever. You would be wrong. After a great deal of almost Talmudic study I have concluded that Congress of 1789, the very first congress under the then nude Constitution, was the worst. Pretty much the same group of guys who wrote the Constitution showed up and let Alexander Hamilton show them how to line their pockets while writing the very first federal laws designed to put the Feds in charge of the destiny of all of us. Most people couldn't vote back then, Thomas Jefferson became the first Secretary of State, and his 200 or so slaves could hardly grow tobacco fast enough to keep up with his spendthrift habits. I would tell you the details, but then this would not be brisk summer reading.

The problem with President Obama meeting with Xi Jinping, the dictator of China, is that it makes Michelle Obama look bad. As first ladies go most people see her as an improvement over Hilary Clinton, but in a foreground/background switch it is not to hard to imagine her as the American equivalent of Madame Chiang Kai-shek or Madame Mao. Apparently someone was thinking along those lines when they pulled down a statue of one of her relatives in Atlanta. The vandals may not have been racists, but that's what has to be our first guess. Second guess, they don't like to eat garden-fresh vegetables. The Obamas have proven that a half-white President can govern as badly as any white President, and we should respect his first lady. Barriers have been broken. Some day we may even elect a President who did not attend Harvard or Yale.

Syria has become the latest "politics makes strange bedfellows" example. There are two main sides in Syria. One is the current government and its supporters, who are secular (not very religious) and not crazy. The other side are Sunni Islam, and of course range from not crazy to very crazy. America, which is to say Obama, the Pentagon, and most of Congress, is ordering the crazy Sunni side up breakfast. Meanwhile Iran, Hezbollah (not a nation, but the largest faction of Lebanon), and what was supposed to be a U.S. puppet government in Iraq, all Shia Islam dudes, are supporting the secular Syrians on the theory that the only thing worse than an atheist is a Shia Muslim. Kind of makes you wish the British had not been so eager to grab what they could of the old Ottoman Empire around one century ago.

Around here in Point Arena people have more immediate worries. There's the indoor and outdoor gardens and speculation about crop prices to attend to. We are by the ocean so the air is always full of moisture and any high-altitude jet that passes by leaves a long line of cloud, a vapor trail, condensation trail, or contrail. But 82.3% of Mendocino County residents believe these clouds are really chem (chemical) trails, sent by the U.S. government if not space Aliens to try to control the weather or kill the redwoods or turn us into mindless Democrats or something. The streets clear out, people grab their shotguns or whatever makes them feel safe and then cautiously peak out the windows, wondering when it might be safe to go out again.

Me, I got used to contrails as a child being hauled from one Navy base to another. What worries me is how people behave when they don't spray those chemicals. What else worries me is Congress. I am worried they will do nothing, despite the many things that need doing. I am even more worried that they will do something, because that means enough lobbyists did enough lobbying to get almost everyone in Congress to agree. What the lobbyists want seldom strikes me as being what is best for the ordinary people who don't own lobbyists.

Meanwhile, Obama has been in office for almost four and a half years, and we have not yet had a zombie apocalypse. Which is about all I expect for a P.O.T.U.S. in our era. As long as there is not a zombie apocalypse, I really should not complain so much.

But I still do. Enjoy the summer.