I’m sitting in a heat dome while Mitch McConnell freezes up on TV, and an aide whispers to Sen. Diane Feinstein to vote “aye.” Everything is fine, McConnell said, after not blinking for 20 seconds. Do not worry.
It’s sweltering. The ocean is 100 degrees at Florida. The coral reefs are dying. Greece is burning, and Rome is damn close.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, rides onto the screen and to the rescue. He wants to impeach somebody. He looks like a character from a Little Orphan Annie cartoon. If Hunter Biden is a fool his father must be guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. Or something like that.
Down the hall a House committee asked whether we have any alien bodies stored in a Pentagon morgue. Despite being able to navigate the Starship Enterprise, apparently they might have crashed on a blacktop in New Mexico after being shot down by Wile E. Coyote with his Acme rocket launcher. But we can’t talk about it, obviously.
This just in: Donald Trump has been indicted a few more times for ordering his bungling aides to destroy security video that would show them lugging boxes full of nuclear secrets and such into the bathroom. The chosen method was to drain the pool and flood the security camera control room. Brilliant. This nearly ensures him a commanding win in the Iowa caucuses.
So a betting man would put his money on a Biden-Trump rematch. McConnell said everything is fine. Feinstein voted “aye.” California hasn’t fallen into the sea yet. Chuck Grassley is there. So is Nancy Pelosi, thank goodness. We are governed by a gerontocracy, octogenarians with a purpose if we could only remember what it is.
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity,” Yeats wrote in the “Second Coming.”
You wonder if he penned it while in the clutches of doctors who have probed and wrenched your plumbing to the point that you are paralyzed like Mitch McConnell, gazing into the televised abyss. You can almost see a beast slouching toward Bethlehem waiting to be born as you contemplate a bathroom break. It could have been what McConnell saw, but he isn’t telling. He might have been fixed on a mental clip from a Charlie Chaplin movie.
And this came to me in a vision: A focus group of Iowa Republicans gathered by Judy Woodruff of PBS said that you cannot be Christian and progressive. They are mutually exclusive. If your daughter marries a Democrat, well, then, I suppose you just have to support them. But, by God, my God is a righteous God. That’s what you call some passionate intensity. Hence, Iowa banned abortion lickety-split during a one-day special session. We are banning books in school libraries that mention sex. Our governor is listening to Jason Aldean. The corn is rolling up its leaves to protect itself. I am rolling into a fetal position and sucking my thumb.
Not to worry, though. Everything is fine. The antibiotics should do the trick. You don’t really need Mitch McConnell or Dianne Feinstein to be mentally conscious as long as they have someone who can tell them how to vote. It’s taken care of.
Coral reefs are overrated. Can’t eat one. Florida is overrated — alligators crawl in the ditches. If it slid into the ocean that would be a bad thing, but at least they wouldn’t be teaching that slavery is a good way for young folks to learn a trade.
If Greece is reduced to ash, we won’t have to worry about them dragging down the European economy by slothfully drinking wine and running their shipping lines into the rocks.
Well, yeah, you might not be able to grow corn in Kansas, Toto, but you can live in the land of Oz until the balloon sets sail. Captain Mitch is at the burner blowing hot air until … whoa, wait a minute, he hears a Munchkin tell him it’s time to vote and for you to wake up. There’s no place like home, and in Dodge City the forecast calls for 103 degrees today, not fit for a Black Angus steer. No problem. Feinstein is on it, Grassley is all over it. Biden and Trump, too. And with guys like Chip Roy in the House those UFOs don’t stand a chance.
Art Cullen is publisher and editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in northwest Iowa (stormlake.com). He won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2017 and is author of the book “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from America’s Heartland.” Email times@stormlake.com.
From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2023
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us