Posted: August 15, 2020
We are all stressed during these crazy times and for some of us it just bubbles over. So I get this call from Jim at about midnight his time and about 6 am my time. Yeah 6 am. That is in “time speak” the equivalent of scientists talking about “black holes” – they may exist in theory but most of us have never experienced such a thing.
Covid 19 has Jim and Janice reading papers, watching the BBC World News, the first fifteen minutes of the PBS News Hour and their own National CBC newscast to keep up. And sometimes Jim gets a bit overwhelmed and despite his best efforts otherwise, turns to wine to enhance the news experience. Such was the case a couple of nights ago.
Now fortunately for you, I speak Jim, and pride myself on my ability to understand the dialect of Inebriated Jim and can translate for you the thoughts of this drunken monkey from that night.
“The American people have had to put up with this idiot who is doing permanent damage to U.S. culture, basic human rights, its diplomatic role in the world and now they all are expected to learn to speak Fauci.”
So for anyone who has been living under a rock for the last six months Dr. Anthony Fauci is an American immunologist who has run the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for many decades and is highly respected in both the United States and among other immunology geeks around the world. He knows his stuff. But what my man Jim was referring to is that Dr. Fauci works for a nutbar and has learned to rephrase questions so either Trump wont understand or his response to a question is sufficiently nuanced that he can speak the truth without the President having the guillotine sharpened and at the ready. The American public is in on the farce and learning to speak Fauci.
“There is a glimmer of hope that the caretaker will go to sleep and let the talent take over.”
I did not write about it at the time but I had a similar call some time ago from Jim when Joe Biden was chosen to run for the Democrats. Terms like Nice Man, Honourable, and Trustworthy were thrown about and its clear he would be good with Joe as a brother in law but its also clear that “America needs more than a caretaker – it needs a leader and what the Democrats chose was a predicable, steady as she goes fellow who will plod along”. So the choice of Kamala Harris is the glimmer of hope that may drag the U.S. into some basic social safety net for income, some enhanced version of universal health care like the rest of the world, and perhaps a new vision for what to do as the school yard bully internationally.
“And now the village idiot is going on the birthing thing with Kamala Harris when he was probably never born, but hatched, or excreted.”
Ok so this one is pretty easy to understand.
When Jim was ranting on about some of these things I could hear Janice in the background at one point say “Trump is going to tweet that Joe Bidens running mate does not know how to spell Pamela” and at another point “Why do we need a Vaccine for a hoax? LOL”. She enjoys her wine too, but in moderation.
The rant on “standing under the falling statues” was a bit of an emerging poem he is working on and I actually found pretty interesting as he takes some personal blame for Canadas treatment of the indigenous population and systemic racism in all its forms. When he sobers up I want to chat with him further on this one and come back to it as a post with my own thoughts one day this fall.
It may seem like my drunken buddy is pretty focused on the U.S. and it is hard not to be these days, but his rant moved closer to home at one point when he went with “Trudeau is becoming a Kennedy”. The reference here is to the American President who was exceedingly flawed, and made some incredibly stupid mistakes domestically and internationally on his way to doing more for racial equality in that country than anyone since Lincoln. So it’s a complement, and not. For those who have not been noticing that massive country with the little population that is north of the U.S., Justin Trudeau, now for the third time in his tenure, has been cited on ethics issues, while taking on the challenge to reconcile the terrible treatment of the indigenous peoples, with mixed results, and managing a pandemic and associated pending financial meltdown very well.
So what have we learned today?
Well I for one am going to turn off my phone when I go to bed.
Django