Pine Nuts: Unpacking political baggage
McAvoy Layne” data-medium-file=”https://i0.wp.com/www.carsonnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/123796-mcavoyblackwhite.png?fit=300%2C297&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/www.carsonnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/123796-mcavoyblackwhite.png?fit=708%2C700&ssl=1″ />
By McAvoy Layne — As our mutual friend Mark Twain told us away back in 1897, “These are sardonic times … but I am not sorry to be alive & privileged to look on.”
As vice president of the Anti-imperialist League, Samuel Clemens inveighed that he did not like to see our Eagle’s talons on any other land. This evocation gave President McKinley a mild case of heartburn.
I have to believe that during President Trump’s second term in the catbird seat, he will suffer periodic spasms of compassion, and we will welcome his compassion at a moment in time when the country has become weary of thermostatic fixations on politics, and ready to return to the comforting confines of music and sports. This, when baseball has fallen out of favor as America’s pastime, superseded by the American pastime of litigation.
Like a new pair of cotton skivvy drawers, I feel our country’s tolerance shrinking.
In our two-party system, it seems Republicans would like to grow the country from top down, while Democrats would rather grow the country from bottom up, and we really do need both, working together, to put an end to prevailing demonization. For now at least, it looks like we’ve got ourselves a government of the wealthy, by the wealthy, for the wealthy, with the mission of, “Feed the Wood Chipper Now – Fix Later!”
“When you take to worshiping power, well, compassion and mercy start to looking like sins.” And as the prophet Isaiah cautioned us, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.”
Personally, and only a minute ago now, I changed my Nevada voter registration to, “Nonpartisan.” (No Political Party)
I once asked a good friend, who canceled me out every time we voted together, if he thought he had any redeeming virtues. He answered, “Yes, I sometimes pay other people’s library late fees, how ‘bout you?”
“Yes,” said I. “Now that you ask, I smooth-out the earmarks that I make in the books I borrow before returning them to the library. Our civics depends upon our ethics.”
Feeling dead-even on virtues, we continued to cancel each other out at the voting booth and then repair to the groggery to celebrate our fast friendship. But now I feel free to fly across the aisle and vote for any chosen candidate, and any preferred policy…
And while I’m thinking about it, here’s a shoutout to the Washington Post for reminding me that the First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press to those who own one.
Today’s good news is that 2024 appears to have been the year in which the smallest percentage of children died since the dawn of humanity. Bravo! Now let us give those little door-slammers every possible opportunity to succeed and thrive.
Like our friend SLC, I’m glad to be a deponent, and allowed to share my thoughts with you in this fine family journal.
Want to hear McAvoy tell it? Go here for the spoken word version of this and other columns.
For more than 35 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American.”
The post Pine Nuts: Unpacking political baggage appeared first on Carson Now.