Well, when you’re wrong, you’re wrong I suppose. Even though JD Vance seemed to flex in the beginning like a conservative Al Gore, turns out he’s just another Franz von Papen.
Pay enough attention to what happens in Washington D.C., and you get a preview of what is coming to Anytown, USA. Military in the streets, “deep state” actors laden with blame, and that ever-elusive protection, protection, protection. Civil liberties have lost their caché; take your eyes away from your screen and reflect on the sad possibility that the only things left for us are consumer goods.
Protection from tyranny? Nope, we need the extra security because of those will-they or won’t-they threatening-our-frailties immigrants. A roof above our heads? Yes, but please make sure you pay triple what you would need up front, and you better have solid credit, and oh … by the way … that ink doesn’t sign the lease until you can show that you can afford three of these places every moon cycle. Want to run for local office? Of course … but you need to have 100 people vouch for you … so its empty pockets if you happen to be introverted or of a humble disposition.
As always, maybe it’s me. Trying to keep a pulse on the struggles of my fellow commoners, it seems to habitually echo in my subconscious that the collective patience is wearing thin. Is it because of Trump? Meh …
One thing that is a tad bit annoying about our chief is the way in which every self-assessment this guy gives himself is locked deep within the halls of praise. Humility doesn’t seem to fit within our current era of “the brand”; wherein each person’s representation has to be saturated with adjectives skewing more than overly complimentary. As the bombers rest and refuel, our national leaders juggle police state wishes with nuclear war dreams. So it has ever was, and so has it ever been.
Being slightly disappointed that my recent article on the Connecticut River Project didn’t spark the grassroots revolution I had hoped it would, perhaps the time is right to just head back to the grocery store.
Armies move on their stomachs, and the American industrial machine (with all of its economic entanglements with education and economics) has once and for all achieved that coveted checkmate of food accessibility. This is why those who disagree, fight, and “stand” against the tyranny of MAGA are ultimately full of both their recently digested meal … and quite a bit of hot air.
This is why maybe Massachusetts and I have never gotten along.
When I was growing up in Walton County, Georgia, my grandfather set the standard for how one does business. If a store, market, mechanic, or hot-boiled peanuts purveyor behaved in a disrespectful manner towards their customers, my grandfather simply ceased doing business with that person. No griping did he ever engage in, and I doubt highly that he would have sprinted to social media to give them a bad review. No, it was in his decision to exchange in trade elsewhere that showed me the invaluable truth of that old adage “actions speak louder than words.”
Witnessing Gaza enter into yet another level of Hades, while driving past downtown Greenfield on a Saturday morning and basically hearing just a bunch of noise, I wonder how my grandfather would have responded to genocide being perpetrated by a government he paid taxes to.
Would he have simply started “trading” with some other entity? Possibly, but therein lies the funniest joke of all. We, my friends, are living out the board game Monopoly.
Every property, railroad, and utility has been bought and paid for, and guess what? The super elite, with their tuxedos and fashionable cigars, have ran the board to the point where no one with the right cash ever goes to jail. The “Get out of jail free” card is constantly being waived in our faces by those who we somehow thought would treat us like human beings last November.
Maybe that’s why, even at the Republican Convention last year, I knew JD Vance would let me down. Sure, his association with the Buckeyes wasn’t the greatest thing about him, but perhaps the final nail in the coffin was the fact that he went to Yale Law School.
No, no … I am most certainly and unequivocally not saying every Ivy League esquire is a person of ill-repute. These heroes of stone are the cornerstone of our democracy.
I wonder what my grandfather would have thought of that hot air.
Ahmad Esfahani lives in Greenfield.