“We have faults which we have hardly used yet.” — cartoonist Walt Kelly, from “The Right Freedom, for the Right People, in the Right Place, at the Right Time,” published in the fall 1955 edition of the University of Chicago’s Chicago Review
Choices.
At times when we cast our ballots it seems we’re doomed to choose between getting stomped by the Hell’s Angels or chain-whipped by the Gypsy Jokers when all we wanted to do was ride our motorcycles. Or decide whether we should buy our bacon and beans from Safeway or Albertsons when we feel peckish. Just another shift in the barrel, and the view through the bunghole rarely changes for the better.
There simply is no “good choice.”
“Boy, you sure get offered some shitty choices,” a Marine once said to me, and I couldn’t help but feel that what he really meant was that you didn’t get offered any at all. Specifically, he was just talking about a couple of C-ration cans, “dinner,” but considering his young life you couldn’t blame him for thinking that if he knew one thing for sure, it was that there was no one anywhere who cared less about what he wanted. — Michael Herr, “Breathing In,” from his Vietnam book “Dispatches”
Six decades later every can we open is full of worms. We couldn’t care less about what they want, and they feel likewise about what we want. Nobody loves us, everybody hates us, we’re gonna eat some worms. Thus we shit the bed that our forefathers built for us.
Oh, but we’ve done our research. A podcaster on YouTube, this gal on TikTok, a Facebook group. Even worse, some dipshit blogger.
Nope. Democracy is not a spectator sport. Sure, you can pick a side, be a fan, follow “your” team online, on TV, or even in the newspaper … if your town still has one, and informing the readership still outweighs entertaining an audience. But you didn’t pick a single person in the lineup, from the head coach right on down to the waterboys. “Your” team was presented to you by its owners, who won’t even give you a ball cap. Not for free, anyway.
Citizens of a republic have to come off the bench and find the time, somehow, to engage with The System: study its mechanisms, learn how (and whether) they work, decide who might be best qualified to pull its levers and punch its buttons, and dismiss the time-servers and shovel-leaners who always seem to be on a coffee break or beavering away at some more lucrative side hustle.
Many if not most of us gave that up long ago, just like that Marine gave up looking for Mom’s apple pie in those C-rat tins. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.
Examining voter turnout in 2020 and 2024 the Pew Research Center observed:
Most Americans are not regular voters. Even across the three most recent national elections, which featured higher-than-normal turnout, just 41% of adult citizens who were old enough to vote cast a ballot in all three. About one-in-four (26%) did not vote in any of them.
Nonvoters tend to be younger, with no college and lower family incomes, the Pew research indicates. So, the future’s not so bright that we need to wear shades at the old ballgame. Or so it seems to this geezer on the dole with his cowtown B.A. in journalism.
I could rave on, but it all seems kind of obvious, yeah? Back in the Day® there was a bumper sticker — a hippie riposte to the rednecks’ “America: Love It or Leave It” challenge — that read “America: Fix It or Fuck It.”
Hm. Which one do you think we picked? Pass the C-rats, bruh, maybe there’s some chicken salad in one of ’em instead of the usual.
Mad Blog Media 
Not much to add, except I think you could have stuck in George Carlin’s quote that elections were bought and paid for long ago. All we do is get to decide whether it is chicken or fish based on the lies we are told. And as we know, one of those choices is poisonous. BOHICA, man.
I really do think there is something to be said for Federalism and reducing the size of any government office that is farther away than you can walk, bike, or drive to it in a few hours. At least then you can get a crew of torches and pitchforks and run a few bad pols out of town on that rail.
Federal and even state elections are now sold to the highest bidders for staggering amounts of money. Look at the money our own Governor race is pulling in. Do you really think even our own state level candidates give a flying rat’s ass what some working class stiff thinks? Not surprisingly, since the working stiffs don’t vote, the pols will listen to the college grads who do vote, and demand that someone else pay off their school loans for that worthless degree in Gender Studies. I could go on with what I think is wrong with colleges today, but that is worth a rant of its own.
No, it is about harvesting money (nationally, now, from some like minded fool half a continent away) and votes. Vote for your team, even if it is headed by a felon or a doddering old man. Or an idiot. And enjoy those C-rats.
The citizens who can’t be bothered to vote expect service men and women to go to war for them.
And those same citizens don’t seem to mind when the mess halls get shut down with the rest of the government, and the troops lose their SNAP payments. But they surely love to fly those American flags on theiur pick-’em-up trucks.
Thankfully, that flag decal won’t get you into heaven any more.
If it does, I don’t wanna go there.
I wanna go where the dogs go.
Here in the Mitten State I have decided to agitate a little. In a decidedly Herb like way. I have been flying an American flag with a smaller Ukrainian flag below it on my flagpole for some time. Some serious wind broke a cord and allowed the two to entangle. When I went to set things straight I could see the US flag was torn and bedraggled as well as beginning to fade. Just like our government. I removed and stored the Ukraine flag and ran the US flag back up the pole upside down where it will remain that way until the Nazis lose power. Yeah…feeble protest but I’m just getting started.
Good on ye, mate. Every little act of resistance helps.
We ordinarily plant two small (made in USA) flags in the yard on various national holidays. I’ve summarily ended that practice. “Canceled,” one might say.
I’m considering some sort of alternative. My friend Andy Bohlmann used to favor a pirate flag (at the celebration of his life in B-burg his boys ran it up the flagpole in a driving rain and we all saluted). So maybe something in that vein.
Or a black anarchy flag? Red flag for the Reds? If I could find a Bozo the Clown flag I might take that route. Maybe I could have one silk-screened. I know a guy. …
Happy birthday to Bernard Hinault, who at 71 can still kick all of our asses.
71? Judas Priest, he’s younger than I am. Won more Tours, too.
It has been obvious for a while that the Democrats are winning a TKO on most every issue but are getting knocked to the canvas on the only one that counts: lifestyle candidate that appeals to the uninformed voter.
One party only knows two color schemes: red white and blue, and RealTree™️ camouflage
They keep it simple, ignore their own contradictions, and totally forget about policy, speaking in 3 to 7 word bumper sticker worthy sound bites
Democrats need to forget about appealing to everybody and just fight fire with fire.
I don’t even wanna know this guy’s platform
Marine with a beard who dresses like the Brawny paper towel guy. I’m in. We can sing Kumbaya next election
https://www.grahamforsenate.com/
It’s a beauty contest on Ugly Island, for sure. The (extremely low) standard used to be “I’d like to have a beer with that guy” instead of the old Conan bit about driving your enemies before you, the lamentations of their women, etc.
I’m not looking for beauty, bros, or broadswords at dawn. I just want to hire someone who knows something about working for a living and won’t boink a 14-year-old on the Resolute desk.
“Won’t boink a fourteen year old on the resolute desk.” That’s golden you ole word wrangler! Chapeau. I’m stealing that one for sure.
Images like that one I have to evict from my head with all possible haste when they turn up demanding attention. There’s a strong likelihood that at least one president thought of it long before I did.
We can only hope that the Epstein videos don’t follow the Epstein files into public view. O. My. God. Worst. Porn. Ever.
Probably Bill, heh? Dumpster should look in the bottom drawers. Probably a blue dress in one of them. Pretty shitty thing to do to an intern.
Marjorie Taylor Green an unlikely hero.