Editor’s Note: The tide of interesting news has washed the shores of Marlow’s Coastal Empire. On a delightful Sunday morning, filled with light, there are continuing rumblings from overseas. In the meantime, there is a cascade of laws- or what used to be laws- being circumvented by the very government charged under law (and Oath) with defending them. Here is Marlow’s take on it all.

– Vic

Author’s Note: Errant unruly musings. Sorry for any intimations of woe is me. They are unintended.

-Marlow

car wash

Forty years ago, we were led by a cowboy movie actor who had the remarkable gravitas demanded of someone in the middle of existential danger. Now we have similar dangerous international situations and an equally aged man in charge who whispers his important money lines like Grandpa Simpson thinking this gets our attention while ignoring our eye rolling.

His program is to pretend that a rainstorm is the perfect car wash solution for our crap encrusted, out of tune, bald-tired motor vehicle of state and the roads they ride, while proposing brief drizzles sufficient only to mildly wash a few bugs off of our nation’s windshield, thinking how virtuous he is for being there and rebuilding things back better.

The former told jokes while the current is the butt of quite sad jokes and late-night TV comedy routines.

We old timers have been round the world many a time in planes, trains, automobiles, and grey steel ships of the line, witnessing revolutions and assorted violent human and weather tragedies in obscure places, while dragging ourselves in and out of seedy ports of call.

Today’s digitally and socially networked men and women parade about holding up their signs for or against that day’s extremes while we older analogue ones duck for cover until whatever results from this or that radical -ism and the general gory corruption riddling the country from stem to stern.

Whatever happened to the American archetypes of men and women? In my mind, perhaps we should think of them as The Last Americans, nonchalantly wearing store-bought clothes that put to shame the DC types with their narrow Parisian shirts and Italian tailored outfits. We are obviously too busy to think beyond a turtleneck and a jacket given the winter weather. We are so artlessly physical that we don’t realize how Very American we are or rather were.

We were mostly too busy to closely follow the outcome of the games between the parties inside the beltway. We understood everything perfectly that the two parties were stuck with each other. They didn’t really like the games but played them and were graceful about it. It was very relaxing for us to have them being stuck.

And so now here we are — impatient, suspicious, waiting, demanding solutions, justice and so on for problems not even partly defined or even real problems.

It didn’t much matter then. Why, I still wonder, does it now.

America’s characters are being written out of the nation’s soap opera script — plane crash victims consigned to survive but remaining abed and unconscious — just along for the ride. They’ll soon become forgotten tropes.

Meanwhile our fearless leader drives the nation’s car in a most inexplicable fashion with an absent-minded, almost puttering kindliness, as though when he’s inside the car, the world gets slower and safer. Like it’s a nappy reverie time 24/7.

Feeling ourselves fading into the background and letting their voices wash over us, well aware of our place in this traditional back-street political romance school play, there’s plenty of time to worry about who’s taking advantage of whom in the war between the parties or the future of the country or any of that.

Just pay attention to the hand reaching under the table and coming to rest someplace just above our knees.

Meanwhile out in our driveways, I suddenly think our luxury rides remain unwashed.

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