Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Talking to the Cadillac Man about the State of Things

 The first words are the mutual exchange of physical health status and he's become a nebulizin' man as well but he carries the additional curse of wondering why me sometimes.  He stopped smoking anything decades ago and has been raising a little girl, living the clean life for decades.  Fair enough for him in asking why me but there's no question in my own case since if you smoke then you die.

There's quite a bit of focus on finding things which don't suck since this stage of life makes things which do suck readily apparent.  Therefore we look for things which do not and one is hanging about with his grandson plus there's anticipation of the imminent arrival of another one.  This may sound like desperately searching for joy with a flashlight in a coal mine and likely no words from me will sway any young people from that thinking but it isn't that way.

The situation is much more one of trying to tap dance in a field full of giant rolling cannonballs and they even come in colors.  We love the tap dance and we try to help each other in dodging the cannonballs so we can keep up that dancing.  It takes relatively adroit footwork for both but that's ok; we're old but we're bad ass.

ML:  because without bein' bad ass, you ain't goin' get old in the first place

No-one knows bad ass like ML.


The next part was the aspect all of us share since the biggest hurt isn't our own but rather it's that which is carried by those we love.  I know CM has trials and some are like my own but there's the consolation that he's not so far along and may never come to the point I've cleverly reached.  Yevette has had some hellish trials of late but I could see the situation and there were even helpful things I could do so that made dealing with it a bit easier.  Lotho seems to do remarkably well but not so much with ML and she goes it all alone.  See above about bad ass.


Discussion does come to the historical and the political since, wtf, the American history is a field of major expertise for him.  That went immediately to Tricky Dick Nixon, the name by which he's known instantly to any Boomer, since he was the one who signed for the HMO legislation to take the Kaiser Permanente life for those who can afford it model and pushed it out to the country.  The medical system has been disintegrating ever since to the point at which today there's nothing but blasé dismissal of the loss of tens of millions of people from medical insurance rosters.

While I have no particular interest in the personalities in the news, Richard Nixon is the historical precedent since he signed for it.  Prior to that was Blue Cross / Blue Shield for the single payer system and it had its inadequacies but it didn't manifest the open and mercenary brutality of the modern system.


Cadillac Man had tended somewhat toward the Centrists because, WTF, they're not real Democrats but they're better than nothing.  I don't hear that anymore since he has swung, like many Americans, to the point at which we don't trust either party and they give us no reason we should.  He's still somewhat defensive of Obama but he's a historian and that defensive position can't possibly hold up to the facts (e.g. NDAA, CIA support, etc).

My position, probably not surprisingly, is harsher than that of Cadillac Man since he may think something worthwhile may come out of Washington but I believe the system is so heavily-rigged financially there's no chance of getting people of substance and we only wind up with lackeys instead of leaders.

Ed:  Donald Trump is loaded!

In terms of total wealth, he's got about enough to run valet parking for a party at Mark Zuckerberg's house except there are no parties at his house other than to watch the suicides on Facebook Live.

The historical aspect is various corrupting influences which exist now did not exist in earlier times and those include PACs, Super PACs, and so much money they can now pay the bribes to MSM out of petty cash.


The consequence of all that dirty money in Washington is the town is full of nothing but cattle rustlers who traded lassos for three-piece suits but their manner is just the same and the consequence is we only get the rustlers and never the cattle barons who sent them.  In effect, the Washington politicians are the sacrificial meat shield for the super rich who will trade them off like baseball cards.

For example, the Sugar Daddies for the Centrist Democrats realized, at their typically turgid pace, that Hillary Clinton is a worthless loser who talks but doesn't deliver and whines fucking forever.  They dumped her and will push Kamala Harris instead.  Like I said, the politicians we get today are just baseball cards and the real players are too cowardly to show themselves.

The thing the Rockhouse observes is the obvious cult of personality in the news but we also observe such things only distract from remedying the systemic problems at the root of the problem.  They may talk of campaign finance reform but, as with anything else from Washington, unless they're talking about more weapons, they won't actually do anything.



In the time between Richard Nixon and now, we saw the narrowing focus in America to that which we have now in which nothing matters to Washington except the military, cops, and waving flags.  While Richard Nixon was one of the most evil Presidents, he did sign off for EPA which shows me there was less of the willful destructiveness which is so prevalent in the modern political climate.

Perhaps one day we will see the real leaders and the money people at Goldman Sachs will be exposed for all to see.  The Rockhouse maintains there's not one who would last until sundown and no-one would call for mercy.

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