Hey Pops. Cripes. You know me. Big-time historian and can’t remember dates to save my life. Had to look it up and yup. I was right this once. You made your transition seven years ago this week. I always write on the anniversary of your passing. Why? I’m nosey.
How the HECK are you, dear Dad? Around dawn, I sometimes drive the canyons, from Sand through Placerita, pass the Nature Center, simultaneously tearing up and laughing. Many serene adventures we shared, hiking along the creek. Remember? Our first expedition — 1958. Hey! How’s that? I remembered an important date! For 50-some years, you’d hike that steep Los Pinetos trail, up and over, past the “Beware of Bears” signs, into the San Fernando Valley and back again, every year, on your birthday. Solo. Pops. You’re a quiet force of Nature. Good company. Good medicine. Miss you. Suspect there’s good vistas where you are now.
I’m actually writing because I could use a little help. This Mighty Signal (and I hope they haven’t been pestering you to renew your subscription) has a deadline. After today, I’m not supposed to write about my political endorsements. History’s most important election visits in 32 days. Our country is looking like Victor Hugo and George Orwell sprinted at light speed into one another in an atomic particle collider and produced a dystopian novel.
You and I would sometimes vote for the right Democrat. Those were calmer days, when you could cast your vote for the lesser pervert or more tolerable crook. You wouldn’t recognize the country you fought for in World War II and Korea. Hard to choose which best describes America: vulgar, angry or obscene. A fog of insanity strangles our nation. Part of it has been breathed into life by Democrats. Part of it sustained by the cowardice of Republicans.
Not just in principles, but in behavior, the Left has become a destructive force. An easy answer would be to visit the editorial medicine chest and rustle through the old bromides. Both Sides Must Come Together. Compromise. Set Aside Our Differences. That doesn’t work anymore. One side is on a mission to destroy and control the country, at all branches of culture and government. Even more crazy-making, they constantly blame others to divert attention from their reprehensible behavior.
You were always my hero, Dad, a subtle performance art of a living Western movie. Strong. Silent. You did your job. Didn’t complain. You did the right thing. Loyalty, freedom, ethics — these were the foundations of heroic souls who survived the great Depression, World War II, communism and, possibility, worst of them all — television.
There’s yet another deadline, scratching at the door. Others worry of COVID. I’ve got PolitFatigue. Lost one of my bestest friends a week ago today. Remember Raynor? Laura? That P.T.E. (Prettiest Thing Ever) is with you now. While I roll my eyes, you two can laugh and chat ad nauseum about health foods, hiking, fresh air and exercise. Down here, I gotta write something. I remember lessons you gently taught on being a veteran. War. Journalism. Dry cleaning. Strip bar dancing. If you’re a veteran, you know the rules. Show up. Suit up.
Well. Maybe the “suit up” analogy doesn’t hold with live nude pole dancing, but, I’m betting you’re smiling sheepishly as the metaphor drops with a dull thud.
Deadline’s approaching. Office clock’s ticking.
Can a November endorsement be offered kindly? Maybe not.
It’s like having a drunk brother-in-law, who not only wrecked your new pickup he “borrowed” without telling you, but ran over four nuns and a baby carriage in a crosswalk before submerging the truck in the neighbor’s pool.
And then, he, a Democrat, blames you.
What, on Earth, happened to that good-hearted party?
You’d need hinges to finish an essay on what’s wrong with the Left today. They are the party of blame, shame, shush, guilt and hysteria. They bully. Different opinion? Possessed, they’ll work to get you fired, or destroy your business. With frightening speed, America has changed since you read the morning papers. Democrats scold. Bully. They topple statues. Block roads. Burn. Loot. Pillage. Pollute the minds of our young. Tell you what you can say or think. They use, “Science” without the foggiest idea what the word means. They carry weapons and want police protection, but throw a Shissy Fit (half Sissy, half Hissy) if you ask for the same. You can be beaten for wearing a red baseball cap. Liberals storm in to restaurants to make you — physically threatening to make you — chant their braindead Maoist/Orwellian slogans.
You can lose your job or be driven out of business if you don’t toe the Democratic Party’s insane and hysterical line of political correctness, Black Lives Matter, Earth’s Ending Tomorrow, Shame On You For Being White, Shame On You For Not Being Black, Brown or Mauve Enough. The Left? Thieves of tennis shoes, they publicly surround hospitals, screaming F-bombs through bullhorns, wishing death on a president or police.
The Democratic Party has absolutely no personal insight. “Am I doing something — inappropriate?” That question doesn’t dawn on them. The endless screaming of imaginary victimhood is obscene. More than that?
It’s no longer a difference of opinion. The Left has become dangerous.
Pops. Truly? I’m not mad at the Democratic Party. I pray their hearts be open (mine, too). May wonderful blessings come their way. I hope the Democrats change. It would be nice to have them over for tea.
But.
Basta. Enough.
Pops. Thanks for listening. It helped. You didn’t fight and work a lifetime for wickedness.
You taught me, Dad, that Happiness is an inside job. To keep my house in order. My home. The Santa Clarita Valley. California. America. The planet. There’s an election coming, less than a month away. In my small way, I must keep my house clean.
My political endorsements for the election so vital 32 days away? I won’t cast a vote for a filthy house. Nor a vulgar one. Nor a bullying one. Nor an insane, dishonest, profoundly corrupt or oppressive one.
Nor a Democratic Party one.
John Boston is a local writer.
