For What It's Worth

“There's something happening here. But what it is ain't exactly clear. There's a man with a gun over there, telling me I got to beware…” For What It’s Worth.. Buffalo Springfield, written by Stephen Stills. When I started writing this, I told Ann I was thinking about titling it, “we all need to calm the fuck down”. She gave me that subtle shake of the head, roll of the eyes look, that only women can do. Despite losing my title, my thought remains-we’re becoming a paranoid bunch of people, and we need to calm down. Six months from now, it’s the presidential election, not the Apocalypse. Despite the dire predictions, the republic will stand, and life will go on pretty much as usual. Will it be a little dicey at times? Of course it will, welcome to democracy. Look at the bright side, you aren’t some 17-year-old girl from Guatemala, hiding in the tall grass with a baby in one arm, looking for a way to get through the razor wire. You don’t have to sneak into the country, you’ve just got to figure out who should be running it. I was watching the national news last night, and their polls said that Trump’s approval rating was 45% and Biden’s was 46%, both less than 50%, both under water, and neither exactly enjoying a mandate from the people. Most voters, Republican or Democrat, if asked, would lower their voice, and say it was a pair of lousy choices-but at least, lousy or not, you get to make the choice. The brilliance of the founding fathers, and the safeguards they wrote into the constitution will protect all of us from the flaws and excesses of both parties and their candidates. Emotion, pandering to the base, and social issues will drive the narrative leading up to the election. After the election, regardless of who wins, reproductive freedom will remain front page with the religious right and conservatives calling abortion murder, and women’s groups and liberals saying, how about a deal?... I’ll keep my hands off your Bible, you keep your hands off my vagina. Climate will continue to be a hot topic, but in the end, no one is going to take away your gas stove, or make you buy a cute little electric car that’ll only get you halfway to your destination. Street crime will remain in the news, gang members will continue to shoot other gang members with amazing regularity, but except for the next-of-kin, nobody will be overly concerned. A new generation of comedians will write a new generation of jokes, but the day-to-day functions of government will continue as usual. There’s an old joke that says, “if every government employee walked off the job at the same time, the bureaucracy would run itself for three days”. When you get to my age, and you’ve seen changes of administration back to JFK, you realize good or bad, there’s a certain amount of stability built into our system of government. So, calm the fuck down, quit being paranoid, no matter who gets elected things will be fine- we can still buy menthol cigarettes, own a gasoline powered hot rod, the Doobie Brothers are on tour, and you won’t get sent to a Siberian Gulag for writing on the restroom wall with a black magic marker….