Damn, I wish you were here to enjoy this beautiful Savannah weather with me. It is early winter, and things are finally beginning to die. It is wonderful to be out in the crisp air, with the leaves turning dark yellow, and the warmth draining out of the sunlight and big natural gas log fires blazing in our century old coal fireplaces while our cat Angel airblowers the fallen leaves from the sidewalk into the avenue’s gutters. We now see a lot of crazy politics, violence and mayhem on TV because we watch it a lot more, now that the days are so very short, and darkness comes so soon, and all the annual flowers we planted in the fall are about die from unseasonsally early freezings. Climate change, go figure.

You should have been here yesterday when I finished off another baggie of leftover Christmas turkey and knocked back some Christmas gift rye whiskey and picked up my motorcycle helmet covered with old cigar bands and went outside with joy in my heart because I was happy to be an American on a day like this. It was like Paradise. You remember that long ago bliss you felt when you powered your jalopy down back country roads without a care in the world. Well, our nation’s wild road trip last year felt like that and a whole lot more.

I digress. These moments of joy are soiled by flashbacks and ghosts from a distant past too foul to name. And so much for these southern winters. The nearly denuded trees look diseased and chilled, hungry animals roosting in them do not appear pleased to be exposed to the elements and our prying eyes.

I was just sitting here on an extended weekend morning, waiting for another day’s college football bowl games to start and taking a very brief break from the televised news blizzard of bit actors and charlatans who trudge about the political freak show stages of our nation’s capitol. Take my word for it. I spent more than my alloted time at “full wide open throttle” as it were in our nation’s capitol. Now the forces of time and decay are taking over even that clown show. Beware . . .

It seemed normal enough, at the time, just another weird rainy day down here in the coastal low country . . . What the hell? I was suddenly assaulted by a news item that crossed in front of me on my laptop’s screen. The fat kid in Asia whom some call Rocket Man claimed to have a nuclear missile launch button on his desk. I thought it likely that it had a USB port and blue tooth internet connectivity. Everything’s better with blue tooth.

Back when I was younger, the two main Cold Warrior competitor nations didn’t have these cool digital devices. It was a different time. People of those analog times were friendlier despite the megatonnage involved. We were forced to issue nuclear annihilation instructions face-to-face from a paper menu of bombing options that were lugged around in suitcases. Hell, you could afford to screw up the first strike, since we had lots of extra bombs and warheads for second and third strikes. There was a sense of certainty that we not just could but would eventually get the job done. People were not so afraid of the end time, as they are now.

There were laws then, but they were not feared. There were rules, but they were not worshiped . . . like Laws and Rules and Hackers and Media Sources are feared and worshiped today.

Like I said: That was a different time.

Further stories scrolling by on my laptop detailed in so many words Congress as a sinkhole of schmucks. We all know that. Hell. Sexual harassment is what Congress is all about. Until this past year, they acted as if it was the way of our forefathers.

Jesus. They have had us on the run and in the dark for many many years — until last year. One Leadership Lady called one of the perps from her own party an icon, while fully knowing the unspoken rule that a woman never got on an elevator on Capitol Hill alone with this creep. It was amazing to see them act so innocent and shocked by all these hushed up bad acts from the past, using tax payer money to secure the silence of the abused. It was horrid.

Why we couldn’t see it for what it was was mystifying. We weren’t wildly driving about with bags over our heads on a moonless night at eighty-eight or ninety miles an hour in a drenching, blinding rain on a two lane section of a poorly maintained US route.

But the country was travelling on a dangerous road seemingly full of blind forks, sharp knives and greasy spoons. Last year felt like the country was hydroplaning with its front tires no longer in touch with the asphalt or anything else. Our national center of gravity was too high and swung wildly side to side. We passengers had limited visibility into the facts or none at all. We could have tossed a flat rock a lot farther than we could see in front of us last year.

So what? We thought we knew this road — mostly a straight run across a big empty, with occasional dots on the map — small towns with gasoline stations and convenience stores.

Our plan, like it always had been during rough times, was to keep moving. Never slow down. Keep us and our car aimed straight ahead at speeds above the limit but not arrest-and-throw-us-into-jail fast. We all feel there is safety in speed. Nothing can hurt us as long as we keep moving fast.

But not last year, as we sped along faster and faster into an ever blacker and blacker darkness. We were rocketed along at 100 plus miles per hour news cycle velocity. It was dumb and extremely dangerous.

To add to our confusion, media outlets, digital and analog, erupted every half hour with outbursts of brainless gibberish about Russians, collusion, tweets, big money, and so on.

There were no breaks or brakes; if we had any of the later, they were useless. The national vehicle was wandering all over the road with its rear end frequently coming around. Jamming the tranny down into Low made no difference. So we went along for the ride, not even considering to brace ourselves for a serious impact, a crash that would hurt if not kill many.

The car never really hit anything. Now and then we felt a slight thud, like running over a small animal’s body (see Flynn, the Mooch, Manafort). So we just keep rocking on down the road never even looking to see if we had any of the road kill in our front grill.

Will the country in the coming year slide sideways very fast and utterly out of control and careen into an unforgiving steel guardrail at seventy miles per hour in the middle of the night? Hope not. But we really don’t know. No one does.

This has been a long time in coming — not just for the Republicans and the Democrats — but for all the rest of them. Even the rich, the famous and the powerful are coming to understand that change can be quick in these times and one of these days it will be them in the dock on TV, fighting desperately to stay out of prison.

I am sure that we are seeing this clearly despite all the fake politeness and smarmy hypocrisy of the media and not knowing whether to laugh at it or throw up on it as it as we descend into moral degeneracy and hypocritical hedonism, largely due to the misguided and greed-driven leadership of national politicians, senior law and intelligence agency officials, and local and national media.

Well, that’s about it for now. Christmas and New Year’s Eve are past us and it’s all downhill from here on . . . at least until Groundhog Day, which comes soon.

See you on the road. Drive safe.

Copyright © 2018 From My Isle Seat
www.vicsocotra.com