There are times when the seemingly nonsensical can bring to mind something utterly unrelated.
You look at or hear something and you instantly think about something totally tangential, or you feel that what you are experiencing - for some reason you can’t quite put your finger - on perfectly encapsulates something else.
And you can see something in the past and not give it a second thought but when it pops back up for whatever reason you can experience a very different reaction. Suddenly, it means something new in the current societal context.
Those are the feelings that came over me recently when a clip of one of the best television shows ever – “Mystery Science Theater 3000” - broached my attention wall for the first time in a long time.
When I saw it years ago, I just thought it was radiantly bizarre and truly funny. But now – for whatever reason - while it has absolutely nothing to do with government at all for some reason seems to me to summarize how exactly government works.
And here it is:
Are we the public the people who want to touch the llama or are we the llama being mistreated by the government? Are we in fact being enticed when we are being asked why we want to touch the llama?
Are we Mikey, utterly clueless in the face of a mystifying bureaucracy? Or – after dealing directly with or even just have been thinking about the awful state of governance – do we just feel like we have lived the entirety of the skit as all three of its characters simultaneously ourselves?
Either way, I cannot shake the feeling that the skit is in fact a window into the soul of modern governance.
Or I could be waaaaaaay overthinking things.
Speaking of underthinking things, the DC press corps is yet again trotting out Kamala Harris “re-boot” stories. Of course she’ll help the ticket in 2024 – remember she was a prosecutor so she can be the attack dog President Biden needs as he looks for his slippers in the basement of his surprisingly expensive for the poorest man in Congress house.
“While several people close to Harris say that it might be too late to return to the days when she was seen as an embodiment of the future, they see 2024 as her best and perhaps last chance for a major political reboot – hoping that by maximizing her time on the trail, she can defy the seemingly constant narrative during her time as vice president of stumbles and missed moments,” opined a recent CNN piece - https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/19/politics/kamala-harris-biden-2024-reelection/index.html
“Stumbles and missed moments” is, in this case, the rhetorical equivalent of “So, other than that, how’d you like Dallas, Mrs. Kennedy?”
Kinda misses the big picture, doesn’t it?
Missing the big picture, it seems, is what Buffalo, NY is up to right now.
The city is now selling itself as a “climate refuge.”
Really.
The once-proudly working class city, a city that made things, a city that was at the heart of America’s westward expansion due to its location near the terminus of the Erie Canal is now intentionally trying to attract the wokest of the woke, the most fearful of the perpetually afraid, and – to be blunt – the stupidest group of people on the planet: those who think moving to Buffalo because it’s cold means they will be fine when climate change fries the rest of the planet.
And it’s true because CNN said so - https://www.cnn.com/videos/weather/2023/11/14/global-warming-climate-change-refuge-cities-buffalo-ny-weir-cnntm-pkg-vpx.cnn - and because “Be In Buffalo” – “a program of Invest Buffalo Niagara, is the region’s talent attraction organization introducing – or reintroducing – a new Buffalo to an entire generation of people with the skills needed to build an economy of the future” says so - https://beinbuffalo.com/community/climate-refuge/ .
This is not meant to make fun of Buffalo – it is meant to mercilessly mock those who would move there or anywhere solely because of climate change, like the professor from California in the video.
One good thing, though – if the plan works, Buffalo won’t have to pay anything for schools because the new people are too afraid (really just incredibly self-absorbed) to have any kids.
And speaking of not having any kids, we turn our attention to San Francisco and the recent international summit held there.
We learned from the recent APEC conference that, if they want to, the state and the city can clean up San Francisco.
We also learned that protesting against a murderous dictator bent on destroying the United States is frowned upon…in the United States.
But the key lesson learned is how San Francisco can stay clean and livable – just have Xi Jinping move in.
Considering the billions spent on shelter programs, “harm reduction” strategies for drug users, and all of the other joyously tragic (but very lucrative for their administrators) programs the city has in place to “help” the homeless and the addicted, the use of just a tiny portion of those funds to buy Xi a house would be money well spent.
Because if the city will clean itself for his visit, imagine what it would do if he lived there?
It wouldn’t even have to be full time - he could simply pop over now and again and if he didn’t tell City Hall in advance they would have to keep things neat and tidy all the time.
But even if he did give San Francisco a heads up to his visit, that would work, too. Just think about how you clean your house before relatives (especially those who might leave you something in their will) come over or right before you have someone in to do some work or even before you have a Merry Maid stop by – you cannot let those people know (especially the maid) what a slob you are so you clean and clean.
So thanks for that APEC – and thanks for subscribing!