Dead Presidents, and Others

Two guys I care about got into it pretty bad yesterday. I made me think about the Presidents of my lifetime. There was never any love from me for any of them. Maybe at times an allegiance, never worship, never adulation.

My father hated Kennedy with a passion. I started to become aware during Nixon. I hated him more than my dad could have ever hated JFK. The dead girl on the ground and Kent State will never leave me. Nixon turned the military on us that day—May 4, 1970.

Ford — was a weak cartoon, a placeholder while we recovered from Nixon.

Jimmy Carter — May have been a decent guy, but his one term was held hostage by the Iranians. I had little respect for him or his policies. I think he’s an exemplary person, just never a great president.

Reagan — His “trickle-down economics,” was the beginning of the end of the middle class. Even with that, I thought he was a calming voice during tragedies like the Challenger explosion. He was a capitalist stooge, but he wore the decorum the office required well.

That decorum wore thin and I grew to hate him when he spat on his heritage and sided with Maggie Thatcher. Reagan took a knee for the Queen of England and was knighted while boys like Bobby Sands starved and died in Irish prisons. It makes me happy to wake up every day in the world where Reagan and Thatcher are no longer poison the air with their breath. If I ever get to England I will piss on that rancid bitch's grave.

Bush I — was a former director of the CIA, that told me more about him than I needed to know. He may be somebody’s, “Gampy,” and he jumped out of airplanes at 90. Good for him. CIA is no better than KGB.

Clinton — I never trusted him. There were too many sketchy skeletons in his closet. Bubba and his wife were a pair I had little use for. It was during the blowjob impeachment I came to realize that we look to these thugs as moral leaders. That is our biggest failing. Using power to get your dick sucked was never, to me, an impeachable offense, but it was not something I could, or would, admire.

Bush II — an easily manipulated idiot who probably stole the election from Gore. I’m not sad about that. I think Gore would have been a disaster, but he probably wouldn’t have sent 4000 American kids, and countless Iraqis to their grave, so Dick Cheney could score a cool $34.5 billion. Cheney is a vile son of a bitch, just slightly ahead of the dead Thatcher in my book. Tipper Gore running around deciding what music we should listen to always struck me as a little disconcerting.

In 2004, John Kerry ran against Bush II. That was the first time I thought I’d seen the bottom of the barrel. I wonder to this day if John Kerry walks around with a pair of Jayne Fonda’s panties in his back pocket.

Obama — I voted for McCain. I didn’t dislike Obama, I didn’t care he was black, in fact, I thought it was past time this nation put its racist history behind us and elected a black man. I liked that Obama was a constitutional scholar. I voted for McCain because I believed then, and still do, if you are going to send young men to their death, you should fully understand war, on a personal level. Sarah Palin, concerned and confounded me. I’d no idea what she’d become.

I’m still pissed off that NOT ONE bankster spent ONE HOUR in jail for almost destroying the world economy. And that the day after the economy began to recover the same shitheads that nearly destroyed it were right back to work pulling the same exact shit. Obama let that slide. Many, many of these capitalists, corporate shitheads should still be rotting in prison.

Trump—voting for HRC almost made me sick to my stomach. I didn’t vote for her, I voted against Trump. I think the current president is a disgrace. I think he’s not a bright man, he has no values I share, thinks himself above the law and Is unqualified and compromised. A racist coward. I don’t think HRC was a whole lot better choice, but would have been, like Ford, I’d hope a placeholder while we healed. That didn’t happen.

I have a friend who was ruined financially by some of Obama’s tactics in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deep Water Horizon and voted for Trump. I have another friend who was ruined by Trump’s business tactics in NYC. I respect both of these guys equally. At least they know why they voted the way they did.

And then there are Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Ted Cruz, Jerry Nadler... the NY Governor, Andrew Cuomo. He just took $250,000 from the Hasidic voting block.

My point is none of them are any good. Some had some good points, None of them ever have or ever will have our backs. We need to not idolize these men, we need to not fight each other defending them. They’d not do the same for us. The best of the best men on this list, on their best day, were and are, and always will be members of an elite club, we can never belong to. I registered as a Republican in 1975—an Eisenhower Republican—By 2012 and Mittens Romney I knew that party was forever gone. After Trump, I knew I could no longer be affiliated with that party, even by name, ever again.

I voted for two Republicans in my life. Reagan and McCain. I’ve never voted party line.

I’m sorry Dad, I liked Ike, and I joined his party in your honor, but John Kennedy and how he handled the Cuban Missile Crisis is why any of us are here today having this conversation. Barak Obama’s policies somehow saved the economy from Bush II and the banksters. These three are the best I’ve seen. The worst, choose any others from the list above.

As another July 4th approaches we really need to stop the lie once and for all and examine the alleged greatness of the “Founding Fathers,” Washington owned human beings, Jefferson, the man who penned the Declaration of Independence, owned people and regularly fucked them. You can’t whitewash this stuff, you can’t say, “That was then and blacks were property, not people.” Bullshit—they knew exactly what they were doing and they did it anyway. The founders were such cowards they shelved the entire discussion of slavery until the 1830s, knowing full well they’d all be dead and gone by then. Gutless, fucking cowards who orchestrated and participated in a power, money and land grab that we celebrate, still, with fireworks and some baffled ‘pride.’

There are so many things worth fighting for, worth fighting over. We will lose 80,000 this year to opioids, 40,000 to gun violence, the system we live under is one of institutional and systematic racism, it’s been a fundamental part of the system since day one. Our healthcare is a mess and getting worse and less affordable. We have kids going off to war and coming home and sleeping in cardboard boxes. We have a militarized police force, killing us on the streets for selling untaxed cigarettes. We have kids going to bed at night starving, in the ”greatest nation on earth.” We jail babies. The list is endless. Go fight about that stuff!

I have no issue bloodying a knuckle to fight anyone, I’ll be goddamned if I’ll fight any of you defending any of these men listed above.

These men, Democrat and Republican, right-wing and left-wing are playing a part, knowing full well what they are doing.

While we fight each other they take more power and control.

Every day as we fight each other defending them, they are golfing together, dining together, laughing at us. Laughing their way to the bank.

We need to stop giving away our precision breath, and energy fighting for them and start standing up for ourselves. I see this nation about to bust open into civil war. How many of us are going to die defending men who would step over your dead carcass on the way to get lunch.