Decision Time — June 29, 2022 - Johnny Boy Marketing

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
Hitler Talk ⚖️
Chicken Postscript 🐣
Green Seats ⚾

I wonder when the average German in the 1930s/1940s said something akin to “Oh shit.” There has to be a point when the rational, sane sauerkraut-lover realized that perhaps his or her vote for a certain mustachioed politician was a really bad idea.

For a variety of reasons, I like history. I think it’s extremely instructive for the present. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about if we’re at a key decision point in what will eventually be written as the History of the American Empire, and so many of those thoughts are of the average German before/during World War II.

I am extremely forthright in stating that Amuricah and I are on the outs. The more I’ve read, the more I’ve learned and the more I’ve paid attention, the more I see Our Great Nation as hypocritically idealistic from the start, a global bully for more than a hundred years and so far off course right now that it’s really just a matter of time before our internal rot starts oozing out all over the couch (if it hasn’t already).

After reading the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson yesterday before the committee investigating Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow our democracy and then listening to the Trumpeteers in my life remain either willfully ignorant or brazenly stupid, I’m feeling pretty much done with those who continue to have their heads buried up their asses.

Which brings me back to Hitler.

I am loathe to trot out the Hitler comparison, if only because it’s been done so often by so many on such trivial things. I, personally, have never brought out that comparison in any sort of discussion or debate, and I’ve shut down those who tried to compared, say, a grumpy refrigerator repairman to the guy whose life plan included the extermination of millions of human beings.

Yet I’m starting to wonder if it applies here.

At some point — and I don’t know exactly what that point was — it became not-OK to be a German who was ambivalent about Hitler. There was a moment in which every German had to pick which side he or she was going to join. Refusal to make a choice was, in and of itself, a choice. And saying “I wasn’t really paying attention when I made my choice” didn’t absolve a person of moral guilt as the stacks of bodies grew higher and higher.

I’m starting to believe we’re at that point right now in America.

Similar with my stance on Amuricah, I am not shy about saying Donald Trump is an evil narcissist who attempted to subvert democracy and was an all-around shitty human being even before he did that. I say this as someone raised Republican and as someone who still has some conversative viewpoints. I’ve voted Republican and am still proud of most of those votes. But what has happened to that party in the past decade would be laughable were it not so dangerous.

I sat back and made fun of the GOP and its voters for actually considering Trump as anything other than a charlatan and TV personality, let alone a candidate for the presidency. I watched as good people — including members of my own damn family — were taken in by his whole “outsider” shtick and decided that a vote for Trump was a worthwhile vote for Not Hillary. I was shocked back then that otherwise rational people could look at a pile of dog crap and a pile of horse crap and happily dive into one while proudly exclaiming its virtues as they bathed themselves in it.

I left the Christian church in no small part because I listened to its leaders fawn over this man and donate church-goers’ dollars to his candidacy. I watched those in the pews proudly wave his flag. I was not and could not and will not be one of them.

I watched him bumble through his presidency like a drunk monkey trying to do calculus. I watched him make fun of people with disabilities. I watched him bully people and humiliate people and generally be exactly the Donald Trump his supporters elected. And I watched the people who allowed him to do this not give a shit and then willingly cast another ballot for him.

Put it simply: I see Donald Trump. I see those who support him. Still. And I’m really wondering if now is the time to make a decision. Hitler’s Germany isn’t the only example of these kind of decision points. They dot the landscape of history. Knowing what Trumpeteers support or, at the very least, remain willfully ignorant to, is it time for me to say that those people — whomever they might once have been in my life — are on the other side of a line I’m not willing to cross and don’t really want to associate with? And am I OK if Trumpeteers who look at me as family or friend examine me and decide the same thing?

The more I think about it, the more I read, the more I observe, the more I watch, the more I investigate … the more OK I am saying that I’m very, very close to that decision point. There was a time when associating with a person who associated with Hitler’s beliefs became more than association … when it became support. I am so, so hesitant to make any particular issue more than it is, but I really wonder if that’s possible with what’s going on right now. I don’t want to be seen in the annals of history as one who supported what, to me — at this very moment — already is indefensible and unsupportable.

Because, to be clear, it’s not just Trump. It’s all those in government who bowed down to his growing power and enabled him, much like the blob, to expand his path of destruction. It’s the justices he put on our highest court who have become more activists than interpreters. It’s those in my home state who run for state and local office by attaching themselves to his ideals. It’s the idiots driving around in their pickup trucks flying Trump 2024 flags next to Muricahn flags and confederate flags. And it’s those who continue to say “Well, I couldn’t vote for Biden, so what choice did I have?”

Dude, the absence of a great choice or even a good choice doesn’t mean you should vote for what is so plainly a horrible choice. I’m so far from what anyone would consider a supporter of the current administration, and I was very much not a Hillary fan. I see the fact that we as a nation are routinely putting up woefully inadequate candidates to compete for the most important position in the world as yet another sign of Amuricah’s decline. But that doesn’t mean that I’m willing to put myself in anyone’s camp just because the other camp sucks worse. Again, when does association turn into support?

Yesterday, a woman who was there talked about how she heard and saw the most powerful person in the world and his associated lackeys become incredibly aware that the crowd they’d assembled through their continual pushing of a false narrative was armed, lathered up and dangerous. She then was witness to his attempt to not only not stop them but actually join them and lead them in what became their attempt to cancel through violence what every single sane and rational person agrees was an election with legitimate results.

People died because of these decisions.

A lot more people could have died.

I believe a lot more people are going to die.

So today, I’m picking my side. Those who associate with Trump in any way? They’re not me. If you’re one of them based on what you believe and how you did and would cast your vote, I’m not with you. I don’t care if you’re blood, I don’t care if we’ve had a 30-year relationship, I don’t care if I don’t really know you very well.

You’ve chosen your side.

I’ve chosen mine.

Woo boy. That sure was heavy. So let’s talk about chickens.

As my regular readers may recall (hey you three!), I recently was tasked with babysitting chickens belonging to my wife’s and Boy The Younger’s friends. This was an incredibly unwise decision, as I should never be confused with a Farm Person. Yet there I was a few weeks back, collecting eggs and trying (comically unsuccessfully) to get nine chickens back in their coop in the evening.

An interesting postscript to this comedy: I essentially am a chicken abortionist.

Now I know what you’re thinking: “This is going to be more heavy talk, and I really don’t want to hear anymore about Roe v. Wade.”

Chill out. We’re good. Stay with me.

When being given instructions on how to care for the chickens, the chicken owner told me that one particular hen was being “broody.” My first thought was, “Yeah, well, welcome to my teen years (and many of my adult years, for that matter),” but no, she wasn’t talking about the chicken being deep in a grunge phase. She was talking about this hen’s hormonal desire to be a momma. So broody was she that she would go all Will Smith on anyone who tried to collect her eggs.

So, said Chicken Owner, Broody Hen was going to be put in timeout for the duration of their vacation, kept in a separate enclosure in the garage.

Now, I sympathize with the plight of a Broody Hen. I sympathize with the plight of any chicken. It’s got to be really frustrating to continually produce that which would bring new life, only to have obnoxious humans shoo you away so they can steal it and eat it.

I also love eggs.

Scrambled. Fried. Whatever. It pairs so magnificently with bacon, it’s as if both animals that lead to those products should be together in the same place at some point in their existence.

Here’s the thing: I have no idea how a chicken egg good for my frying pan is different from a chicken egg that is a protective shield for a new chicken.

My father taught me the birds and the bees using an example from his favorite hobby — tropical fish. The fact that fish lay eggs on coral and then a male comes around to fertilize them and that we were constantly instructed to not scare his fish because the mother would eat the eggs or the newly hatched babies should give you some indication of the scope of the problem (and I deeper appreciation for the fact that I have helped produce new humans).

I went about collecting eggs because I was told to collect eggs. I was instructed: “Eat the eggs.” And boy howdy, was I down for that! On Day 1, I went into the garage and, after unlocking Broody Hen’s enclosure, used a yellow Wiffle Ball bat I found in the yard to scooch her out of the way.

Motherload!

Her five eggs joined all the other eggs I gathered during Chicken Owner’s family vacation.

Then one day shortly after Chicken Owner and family returned, BTY went to play with Chicken Owner’s son. Suddenly, Wifey Poo’s phone started blowing up but, as we were on a date, she courteously ignored it.

It was later that night when I was getting ready for bed that she came in and said “You didn’t eat any of Broody Hen’s eggs, did you?”

Most questions that end with a comma followed by “did you?” aren’t questions anyone wants to be asked. This is one of them.

“Ummm,” I said, trying to remember when I ate what eggs and how I could possibly know which ones belonged to which hens. “Maybe?”

“Well, yeah, Holly said we should probably throw them out because they could be actual chickens.”

“Wait, what?”

Apparently, BTY had told his buddy about me gathering Broody Hen’s eggs along with the others’, and Chicken Owner felt bad that she had neglected to tell me, “Those eggs? Leave them alone. They’re gonna be chickens.” So confused was Chicken Owner and family that Broody Hen had no eggs when they came home and so freaking depressed was Broody Hen that she had refused to move since their return that they had to go to the local Rural King, buy chicks (yay for living in Missourah and being able to go to the store and buy chicks, amaright?), distract Broody Hen and then shove the chicks underneath her so she would think of them as her own.

Did I eat a developing chicken? Quite possibly. Did I notice any difference? Umm, no? Put it this way: There were no feathers.

Do I feel horrible to have stolen Broody Hen’s babies? Absolutely. Though I do feel a little bit better because some chicks that otherwise would never have known a mother are getting a little “mom time” with their adopted parent now.

Oh, and I’m never taking care of any farm animal ever again.

My family is not wealthy. I am now finally making a good wage after some really big bumps in our financial road over the past seven years or so. This is fine, because, in general, we’re pretty regular people and far from materialistic.

For example, we, as a family, love baseball. When we go to Busch Stadium for a game, all of us are more than happy to simply be in the ballpark, which is good because the seats we get are more associated with nose bleeds than close encounters with great baseball players.

Last night was different. The Core 4 made its way to Busch Stadium. The boys had no idea what was coming.

I’d been given these tickets from a rep of a business I worked with in my previous job. It was only after I’d selected them that I found out where these seats were.

The boys were impressed that we actually had a parking pass and didn’t go to our usual lot about a half-mile from the stadium. There’s a point at which parking drops from $20 to $10, and that’s our lot.

Not last night. We parked in the shadow of the stadium and walked the 100 feet to the gates. I then said I wanted to go see the field up close and went down to the Green Seats.

In Busch, the Green Seats are the ones that are right behind home plate. They come with a pre-game all-you-can-eat buffet that is more “upscale hotel” and less “Golden Corral.” It also includes all-you-can-eat, at-your-seat service for food and drinks once the game starts.

When the boys realized what was going on, they freaked out. I’d been waiting for that moment for a month. It was so cool to see their genuine excitement.

We watched the game, we laughed, we joked, we had up-close views of some of the players on our Waffle House Fantasy Baseball League players, and we sampled way too much food. It was good.

I don’t begrudge people who have done well financially and for whom such experiences are regular things. But I think I’ll always be appreciative of the fact that those kind of things aren’t regular for the C4 and, more so, that when they occur, my kids see them as special.

Seven Steps to the Dawn of Dystopia

🔻 What’s Below 🔻What shows our vulnerability 👨🏼‍🦳👨🏾‍🦳What step we’re currently on 🎈What the spark would be 💥 Ahhh, Dystopia, that imagined land where we watch zombies and Katniss and Mark Zuckerberg dance a creepy new form of the tango while asking ourselves, “If that’s what things are going to be like after The Fall,…

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