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Month: August 2020

Low-yield recipes

News is a lot like the bathroom scale in this house. I eagerly check both but I’m not doing anything with the information. Both express inexorability equally well, and neither nudges me towards action. Both make me feel increasing shitty about myself. I used to have dreams of civic engagement, weightloss. Lately the only thing on my bucket list is outlasting Trump. Maybe if I stay  marginally healthier than him I’ll pull it off. Such a middling bar.

I’m a libtard but was all for giving Trump a chance. Since neither of us have any redeeming qualities that ended abruptly. Maybe we do share one- we like Citizen Kane. The rest is objectionable,  doughy. Mindless reaction and reflex. Unprincipled and undisciplined vanity. Serial brinkmanship, chronic turpitude. Yet on we go, so energetic in all the wrong ways. Dumb inanimate inevitability. Like gas station chicken detonating in your gut 300 miles later; or maybe the used condom that brings a water treatment facility to its knees.

What could be my redeeming qualities? I seem to like people a little more than Trump does, but it is close. Since I’m no longer predisposed to action I am infinitely less worthy of a good country. Even so, perhaps I want a good country a little more, whatever good means. I can’t help but think of all the stuff that went into me, the making of my middle-aged white dudeness. Instruction, intention, indulgence, opportunity, patience, food, fortune, furniture, and more than a little benediction. And yet here I am, still measuring myself against nothing.