Wasteland

 

So, I was drinking and watching the news briefly today.  I have to drink during these episodic  bad decisions and briefly is really all I can handle

But the cringiest thing that I have ever seen popped up on one of the feeds that hate America  (I always watch these because I do recognize the fact that America isn’t universally loved and there are some damn fine reasons for this unpleasant little tidbit).  When I saw that this was a poster for Kamala’s campaign.

To tell you the truth, I kinda threw up in my mouth a little bit.  

Now, to let you understand why, 

Looking west out of a window in a small bedroom (looking out over the railroad tracks and sometimes when the light is just right, a glint of setting sun over the Great Salt Lake) in 1972, the “watch out, I vote” sticker above was stuck on the window.

Then you have to remember the ridiculous McGovern posters

As I stated before, in earlier posts, I am not going to vote for president this year.  But more and more this election is looking like 1972 just came in through a time warp and threw up on 2024.  But what bothers me is that I cannot for the life of me remember which of the two bad candidates I actually voted for in those days of a Shiny used Vega and a desperate and ongoing effort to divest myself from the embarrassment of my virginity.  I am leaning toward having voted for McGovern.  This was probably for the most common and stupid of all reasons, my father was a staunch Nixon man (he was of the idea that Roosevelt sold us down the river at Yalta) and my vote was a silly bit of rebellion against him.  To continue the poster/sticker theme, the sticker on the sliding glass doors looking out onto the carport (he always referred to them as the “french doors”) was something like this but with an added Elks lodge logo:

The corresponding image from today is:

I think that history is rhyming pretty hard right now.  I think that we may well be going through a different flavor of the spasms that came after the mess that was politics in that particular bit of craziness.  I think that a lot of the folks my age look back at that strange period with fondness.  

As a society, we are now struggling with a divided population, the same as the population that happened back in 1972.  The parallels between the election in 1972 and the one we are facing is pretty stark.  I think that folks ought to look back hard at the cultural, political, and economic wasteland of the late 70’s and reflect.

I am now coming the what I thought then and how I voted and the philosophies and tenor of the parties then and now exemplified the sad truth of the phrase:

“The opposite of a bad idea is another bad idea.”