It's getting ugly out there...trying not to be Dick Cheney

It's cold in the high desert. Last night, it was about 50F when we left for dinner. Ok, that's not cold. But, this time of year, figure 40 knot winds, and you get the picture. It was bitter. I stopped for gas and sent the spouse in to get lottery tickets, as part of our early retirement plan. The server was down, and the pump said go talk to the cashier. Bullshit. I got back in the car, pulled forward to wait for the spouse.

Glancing in the rearview mirror, I saw a guy in a light weight hoody coming toward me. He tapped on the window and asked for some spare change, to get a couple of tacos and burritos at Taco Bell because he only had 11 cents. I dug a bunch of quarters out of the console, and thought about it for a couple of nano-seconds. I then handed him all the ones I had in my wallet. He thanked me, did the godblessyou thing that's mandatory for the panhandlers union and moved off into the darkness. A couple of minutes later, the spouse came back and we headed down the hill for the restaurant. As I was getting out of the car, I saw the guy headed for Taco Bell. Last I looked, they didn't sell Maddog, and I realized that if the weather got worse, he was in danger of hypothermia or death. I called out to him, walked over and gave him my sportcoat. He asked me what I was going to do and I said, man, my car's right there...

Ok, I'm a saint, right? No, hardly. To qualify, I would have needed to bring him home, or give him more money, or buy him dinner with us, or have given him the leather jacket sitting on the back seat. But, Jesus wept...things are getting ugly out there, and we need to be conscious. I've bitched about the aggressive and constant panhandling here at the Crossroads of Opportunity; problem is that people still head to California out of hope. I have no idea why...this kid said he was from Pennsylvania and had come here to get away from the cold. Good luck with that, in Barstow, in December. We do have four seasons here -- decent, unbearably hot, decent, cold-wetter-incredibly windy.

I am not an intrinsically good person. The significant other once told me I was "too Catholic" which coming from a woman who would call her parents on Saturday night to say the rosary seemed a bit odd. But, while a lot of things that the church has done over the centuries has been awful, and the whole God-Son-Bird-Virgin Birth-Resurrection thing is pretty much a. insane and b. a rip off of Mithras, Zororaster, et. al, most of what's good about our decadent and decayed culture lies in the Greco-Roman-Judeo-Christian side. The Playboy Virgin Mary cover strikes a chord for a lot of reasons -- I think old Chester-the-Molester Flynt did it first, but the icon is there, in our heads, and by confounding it, tears a bit of our collective souls. And, the gal doesn't even look Jewish, or Aryan, going by the various incarnations of Miram, spouse of Joseph that we've come to see embedded in our psyches.

So, yeah, I was channeling St Martin of Tours , the Legate who gave half his cloak to a beggar on a cold night in Gaul. I was conscious of doing that, sheepish in a lot of ways, but did it and wish -- this morning-- I'd given him all the money in my wallet. There wasn't that much last night -- a caffeine driven orgy of bill-paying has me staying away from the Magic Money Machines -- but I didn't need it to survive, and maybe this kid does.

So, because the oligarchic assholes, corporate trolls and their lapdogs have done and are doing everything they can to ruin us all, maybe if those of us who can waste time writing and reading blogs hand out a little more and maybe give the coats off our backs to those who need them to survive, maybe the world will be better. Not for long, and not for karma or for our souls or any of that. But, maybe if we pretend to be compassionate, we will become so out of habit. I'll remain pissed off at the beggars, angry at the gritty underclass nature of the Crossroads, but that doesn't excuse me from trying not to be Dick Cheney. If you're reading this, you have the same challenge...If you think these guys are ball-licking, bloodsucking vampires ruining the country and the hopes for the future, bitch , moan, write, complain, and as an afterthought in our Yuppie-lives, pretend to practice a little human decency.

Or not. It's your call, and will not have any impact on your soul in the afterlife...just on it now. Be a slimebag, or a troll, or a hypocrite or maybe, just maybe, aspire to something more. 

Comments

[Jack]

My older brother lives in Alabama, considers Shelby dumb as dirt and an asshole. I live in TN and have to put up with Corker. He is a SLIGHT improvement over Bill Frist, although a bigger crook.. (see his bio on wikipedia.. sell out to WalMart, etc). Note his degree, "Industrial Management (ie, union busting). He was smart enough to sell most (all?) of his real estate holdings in 2006, giving him a fortune of about 20 mil. Guess he is going for the favor of the oligarchs with his anti UAW, anti domestic auto maker mission..

I agree with you that these assholes are Conservative drones and sellouts to the oligarchs. And Traitors...

I hope we do rise up and assault the bastards. But we probably wont..