A semi-regular attempt to address some of life’s minutiae that might otherwise be overlooked…..
I am willing to wait & see what happens in a few weeks when a temporary agreement to end the longest government shutdown in United States history reaches zero hour. There are some that believe that ending the shutdown at all without an agreement to fund border security is President Trump’s version of President George HW Bush’s “Read my lips…no new taxes” moment, and they may be right. Those folks feel like Trump caved, that he was outmaneuvered by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. On the flip side are those who are convinced that Trump has won the battle, that he has his political opponents right where he wants them. I must confess that I am having difficulty understanding that logic. Essentially what all of this seems to come down to is whether or not one believes that the last resort option that Trump has in his back pocket…declaring border security a national emergency and getting the money for his “big beautiful wall” by circumventing Congress altogether…is a good idea. Is it shortsighted?? Could setting such a precedent come back to bite us all in the tookas someday?? Could a future (presumably Democrat) President declare a similar national emergency and do something sinister like confiscate guns?? To be honest, I don’t feel intellectually equipped to tackle such big questions, but I’m not ready to push the panic button. Let’s see how this all plays out.
I have developed…well, it’s not a short fuse…let’s call it a higher standard for interaction. Whether it’s face-to-face communication or a phone conversation my threshold is about 15 minutes. After that my patience for tedious chatter or pointless babbling is essentially non-existent. There are people in my life who I talk to on a daily basis that tend to drone on & on & on for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour…sometimes longer…and I just want to scream!! I can have intelligent conversations til the cows come home, but when faced with mindless blather I have started to become borderline rude, cutting people off, ending the conversation, or pretty much telling them they need to leave.
Liberals are people who, when confronted with facts & objective truth, will continue to push their misinformed agenda and false narrative. I wish I could just let that roll off my back and laugh, but I find it extremely irritating.
Spoiler alert…I am not thin, buff, or sexy. I know this about myself, and I’m okay with it. Would I love to shed some pounds?? Sure. Could I do a better job in an effort to accomplish that goal?? Yes. However, it is narrow-minded and completely wrong to assume that an overweight person is simply a lazy slob. I’m not going to make excuses, but there are multiple factors that determine a person’s particular body type. At any rate, whenever someone resorts to a fat joke or a comment about my weight during a…discussion of the issues…on social media I immediately know that I’ve won the debate because they haven’t got anything more cerebrally significant to add. On occasion I have been bothered by such insults to the point that I’ve changed my profile pic to a cartoon character or inanimate object, but mostly I’ve just learned to shrug off that kind of dumbassery. I recently ran across a Twitter thread in which a young lady laid out a clear & concise argument against President Trump’s wall & the whole idea that illegal immigration is even an issue. I might not agree with her conclusions, but I respect the fact that she presented a cogent case (complete with statistics) free of name-calling, foul language, & general nonsense.