Taking It Seriously

Yesterday am I met my friend Kenny for breakfast.  I've known him since junior high, and he's always been one of my smartest, if not smartest, friends. Back when we all took the SATs, in the era before tutoring, most of us scored in the 1200s -- at least those in the top 10% of our class in the mostly blue collar high school.  I still recall Kenny's score was above 1500 --he grasped both Math and English.  And he loved to learn and experience -- he still does.  He retired as a full Navy captain and flight surgeon, and works as a Radiologist locally.   Whenever I meet with him, I learn something.

Yesterday it was about politics. Kenny and his wife, a Law professor, are very liberal, and take it seriously.  We watched the last presidential election returns at their house, and some of Kenny's wife's friends took things comically bad when Trump's victory was announced.  One woman, who sat quietly and watched the PBS commentator spoke, erupted into a tirade of curses, some I had never heard before, when PBS, of all things, called the election.

But anyway, Kenny told me he was committed to spending significant money this coming year on various elections trying to get Democrats back in office.  He sees it as the duty of any right thinking American who has the ability to do it.  He's probably correct.

I'm too jaded. When Trump won, it struck me that a sizeable minority of my countrymen are simply morons.  And as the comedian Ron Wright noted, you can't fix stupid.  If I needed any more evidence, it came in the Alabama Senate race, where a world class creep nearly won.  I think that, nationally, things are, in the military acronym, FUBAR -- beyond all repair.

As I age, I've begun adopting Hemingway's philosophy -- the world is so messed up, the best a man can hope to do is stake out a small oasis of sanity around himself.  This flies in the face of altruism.  I think it comes with wisdom.

Even on a micro level --I've undertaken a spring cleaning of toxic people.  I take a good, hard look at those I no longer want as part of my oasis, and though I'm not rude to them, I make it clear that any relationships will be surface only.

A friend once described me as Shel Silverstein's "Giving Tree."  Well, the stump is now gone, other than for a very small, select circle.

I hope Kenny's quest is successful -- I really do.  But I'll keep my giving activities to actual charities -- groups that heal others, body and soul.  I figure the big boys can buy the politicians -- on either side.

Locally, there was a candidate for Miami Beach Commission who held himself out as a man of the people.  No more being bought by the big developers, he said.  Well, he got caught setting up what he thought was an anonymous pay for play group -- and his bag men went around collecting lots of money.  It's just the nature of the beast.

Besides...if we've learned anything, it's that politics is a pendulum -- it will swing back on its own, after enough of Trumpism.  I'm holding my money this time around.