Alabama Don't Give A-

     Hey, Alabama. I know you’re busy these days. We all are. We have jobs to get to, and ups and downs to contend with, new ciders that have been aged in scotch barrels to try. But I need a word. I promise it won’t take long, and I’ll try not to bore you. Just real quick, though:
     WHAT IN THE NAME OF MARY ARE YOU DOING?
     Have you dried up old crackers lost your self important little minds? What, a history of Jim Crow laws and systematic disenfranchisement of poor people and “tha ethnics” isn’t enough for you? It’s not bad enough that people already see you as a hotbed of racism and the butt of a never ending stream of incest jokes, now you have to go and make it known that you consider abortion worse than both incest and rape?
     Look, I know that you old, white fools are using your bible to guide your governance, but not everything that happens in a religious text should be held over. I know what Noah’s daughters did to him, but that doesn’t make it okay for a man to rape his sister and serve less time in prison than the doctor who aborts the fetus. While we’re on the religious aspect of this, if you believe that this is a right and just law that serves your god’s justice, then either you’re misinterpreting some choice passages, or your god needs to mind his (gender pronoun intended) own business almost as badly as you do.
     But that’s a personal belief you hold, and one you’re not likely to change despite how outdated and draconian it is. I’ve seen your haircuts, and it’s pretty clear you’re not into modernizing ( I usually try to avoid attacks like this one, being no prize myself, but I’m really mad right now.)                 Besides, I wouldn’t want to alienate you, so let’s shift our focus somewhere else.
     Let’s take a gander at it from a political/economic point of view: couldn’t be dumber. Take a second and look around, will you? We only have like three viable industries left in this country, and one of them is filmmaking. I don’t think I need to tell you, my Alabamanian friends and neighbors, those Hollywood types aren’t gonna like this one bit. Your actual climate is already a tough sell, considering what the humidity does to their perfectly coiffed hair; you might want to reconsider this political climate change, as it’s a lot harder to deny. I saw somewhere that even old Permanently               Obstructing Truth Until Sentenced himself is getting distance from it, and that guy is drawn to political fires like Roy Moore is to shopping malls.
     Though to be fair, the world class real estate mogul has no doubt paid for an abortion or two himself over the years. And I’ll tell you what, after seeing his kids perform in the world, I’d say those were the best investments he ever made.
     Whoops, hold on. Starting to feel like I might be alienating some folks again. Let’s try a different track.
     How about from a purely rational standpoint? What’s your logic here, legislators? Where’s the reason behind this? Any of your citizens who are against abortions are already not getting them (obviously no one would do something in secret that they were publicly against, right?), and you’ve effectively made a large number of the population potential criminals. Have you considered the cost of prosecution to the taxpayer, you fiscally conservative math whizzes? Keeping a woman and a doctor in prison, one of them for 99 years? I don’t know if you’re aware, but you already ain’t the richest state around. Nevermind the cost of raising all the kids who will for sure get abandoned to the state.
      You’ll have to take care of them for eighteen years before you can force them into the military through poverty, you know.
     When you look at it, there’s only one viewpoint where this looks like the right move, and it’s so monstrous I can’t imagine it as a viable motive. This really only makes sense if you have a long term goal of removing from women the right to control what happens to them, or how they can react. Like if somehow you don’t see women as people, or at least not equal people who deserve their rights and independence, even if they don’t agree with you. Seriously, when you get right down to it, this only makes sense if you’re senselessly, thoughtlessly, ruthlessly imposing your own belief system on an entire group of people, and that’s not-
     Oh. Dang. Alienated for sure. Too bad for me, I just enacted a rule where I can’t use the delete button, even though it’s right there and completely safe and might save the world from a lot of pain and suffering. I just think it would be immoral.
-John

Lunch (Debt) Special

As most of you know by now, there is no limit to the number of things I dislike. I’m pretty sure the proverbial “one new thing” I learn each day is that there’s one new thing I don’t like. I mean, really, give me a topic, and I’ll find something not to like about it. It’s what I do. It is pretty rare though, as I get older, to find a brand new gem whose flaws draw my attentive ire. But I still try, and occasionally my efforts are rewarded.
Take this flawed little marvel, for example: school lunch debt.
Are you kidding me? It’s not bad enough that we can’t get these kids up to date and honest history books, or teach them how taxes and finances work, or figure out a way to judge them aside from standardized tests that show nothing, or pay their teachers an appropriate amount, or keep them from getting shot? We can’t even wait for them to go to college before we charge them extra for being poor now?
Here’s a quick run down: public schools are providing lunch for kids who can’t afford it, except it’s not free (which is a terrible way to teach an old adage), not at all. Instead, the school sort of opens a tab, and then holds the high school diploma hostage until the child can pay.
America. Home of the free.
So. We have money for our leaders to stay in expensive hotels - often owned by the Perpetually Outclassed Thoroughly Unprincipled Swindler himself - , we have money for those same leaders to have better healthcare than most of us do, and apparently we’re going to find money for a pointless and stupid wall. But not for feeding -or for that matter, properly educating- our children. I’ve heard a lot about how we’re going to win a bunch of trade wars that we’re losing, and how we’re going to bring back a lot of jobs in obsolete and deadly industries, and how good and smart and stable certain people are. Why am I only hearing about problems like this one when the parent of a child who was murdered while in school steps in to help solve them?
For that matter, why am I still hearing about children being murdered in schools?
Speaking of terrible things being done to kids in schools, hey kids: I know about lunch shaming too, you hear? I know some of you little rapscallions are bullying your fellow students because they can’t afford to pay for lunch, and boy oh boy is that wrong and pathetic and shame on you. With all the access you have to the world, you should know by now that your generation doesn’t have the luxury of infighting like generations past. You need to start working together yesterday if you all are going to have any kind of tomorrow. I think my generation and the one before it have made it pretty clear by now that we are not capable of taking care of things for you.
As to those other generations, members of which are the ones responsible for this whole situation: the largest of all shames on you. Isn’t this the opposite of your whole point? Your gig is to serve your country, the future of which depends entirely on these youngsters, and you’re setting them up to underdeveloped on every level. Shamed and underfed, with an education as useless as Tucker Carlson, and debts to pay before they even make it to college and earn their debt by taking unhelpful but somehow mandatory classes, like I did.
Some of you even tried to make it worse, by only allowing these kids jelly sandwiches for lunch, guaranteeing them nothing but refined sugar and empty starch. Blessed be the Buddha, someone found out about it and raised enough hell to shut that down. For now, anyway.
Listen, I’m not trying to tell you how run the country - except I am because I’m a citizen and that’s my job- , but I’m pretty sure having an overabundance of weak, stupid people running around is bad for us in the long run. Sure, it’ll make it easier for rich and greedy people to take advantage for a while, but all coffers have a bottom, friends and neighbors.
John

Empathize, You Jerks!

     I’ve always been one for empathy. I like the idea of people doing their best to understand and relate to other people, and I firmly believe that if people paid more attention to empathizing and less to the Kardashians, the world would be a far greater place. Not that the Kardashians have any connection to empathy.
     Or ever would, when they have makeup and jeans to sell.
     The rest of us, I still somehow believe, can do better. Sure, it’s pretty easy to forget that notion when spending any amount of time on the internet, a medium people so often use to express their meanest, least virtuous selves. There seems to be relatively very little love, understanding, or even respect for those with differing opinions or experiences. Now, I personally have never put much stock in the notion that people should love everyone, because that’s impossible, and the inevitable failed attempts could drive one mad. Understanding, on the other hand, only takes a little thought and an open mind, and from there, connecting and relating to others comes quickly into view.
     Not that seeing it and reaching it are the same, mind you.
     The stretch of road between the two is littered with obstacles for all of us. I tell you, friends and neighbors, when I think about how some people don’t seem upset about tearing children away from their parents or locking people in internment camps for the crime of being refugees, or when I am again reminded of how comfortably they wave away the crudeness and corruption and cruelty of Philosophically Otiose Though Unreasonably Sonorous (it never ends, people), it becomes very difficult to feel anything but frustration.
     A long road, and one that runs two ways, eh? What must these folks think of me, with my pro immigration, pro choice, pro health care for all thoughts and beliefs, and how it all threatens their way of life. How they must cringe at my insistence that guns do the opposite of make things safer and shouldn’t be worshipped as the embodiment of freedom. What an oddity and perversion it must seem that I claim no authority over my partner, and have little to no interest in telling other consenting adults how they should conduct their love lives.
     I mean, for whiskey’s sake, I couldn’t even keep my bias out of that paragraph. What a fool I must seem to them. How easy must it be easy for them to forget that I too love barbecued meats and the spectacle of fireworks, and that even though I don’t celebrate the religious aspects of Christmas, I still enjoy being with my family and getting free stuff.
     Anyway, my point is that despite everything that’s going on, all the disunity and enmity being spread around right now, I think there’s still some room for people to connect. Be it a shared appreciation for a cold beer at the end of a long day, or sleeping in once in a while, or the universal struggle of trying not to laugh too loudly when a child falls down. Whatever it takes, it’s important to try to remember that everyone is going through their own stuff.
     Final note: this plea for empathy does not in any way extend to bigots, racists, or sexists. Those societal cancers deserve no quarter, and must always be called out for the slack jawed, hate filled, over-boiled potato, inbred, sponge brained, jelly spined, mushy sacks of tasteless gravy that they are, and then dismissed to rot alone and sad and forgotten.
    To everyone else though, just be cool and use your brains and hearts, yeah?
-John