Election Day has come and gone…

Well, not actually gone. 

It’s devolved into what appears to be blatant cheating along with the usual allegations of voter fraud.

Due to the mail in voting, it’s going to be weeks until we have a winner declared and even then, the legal wrangling will likely last for months if not years.

So ultimately, even if the Democrats lose… they’ve still won because they’ve managed to cast a pall of illegitimacy over the President. 

Likewise though, if the Democrats win, they’ve cast the same pall over their candidate. This is the lesson of mutually assured destruction.  Apparently, the Democrats didn’t learn the lesson during the cold war. 

The new Democrats and their ultra progressive allies obviously never learned the lesson and quite frankly are behaving more like Communists, Bolsheviks, or flat out NAZIs than I’ve ever witnessed. 

Frankly, I’m so disgusted I can’t think straight. 

I fear for my county, and I fear for our future. Not because of one President, but because of the cultural shift that’s occurring and this (In my opinion) wrong headed thinking of win at any cost.

Historically the win at any cost philosophy has proven itself to extract a very high price.

Even now, people are questioning law, order, government, and anything official. 

Folks are also demonstrating a surprising willingness to tear down and destroy anyone or anything that they disagree with.

This path is littered with war, poverty, crime, and genocide. 

It doesn’t matter if you’re killing people over religion, color, or politics, people still die and xenophobia in various forms kills more than people. xenophobia kills progress and enlightenment, and gaining of knowledge. Ask Galileo about that.

xenophobia: [noun] fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign.

By that definition, anything strange or foreign could loosely be politics, religion, belief,  or custom.

Is this where we’re headed? Are we careening down a path to wanton destruction on both sides?

I find myself asking if I want to deal with this. I’m old, and tired, all I wanted was to quietly retire, go fishing, or hang out with folks my age, in peace.

If I don’t want to deal with this – insanity, what are the alternatives? 

Can we all agree this is out of hand?

There are scattered reports of businesses and even homeowners boarding up their windows and closing or planning to close on election day and perhaps for days or weeks after. 

Never in my life and thankfully it’s been a long one, have I seen this kind of behavior. I remember antiwar riots during the Vietnam war but nothing like we’re seeing today.

This is a standard election year, this happens every four years and all of us are supposed to get a say in the direction of our nation.

This is supposed to be a respectful process. Let the politicians sling the mud, We The People, are supposed to be better than them. After all, our elders used to say the only thing politicians had in common was their corruption.

Yet that is not what we’re seeing. We’re seeing what amounts to a series of childish temper tantrums played out on the streets of cities around the nation.

Thanks and credit to GettyimagesACTUP, an organization that appeared during the AIDS crisis wasn’t as violent and there were literally thousands of people dying in hospitals around the nation. (I Know… I was there.)

Visiting an AIDS patient was done with full biohazard protection. I’m personally all too familiar with dressing in white disposable “Bunny Suits” with gloves, mask and eye protection. There were some hospitals where the staff was in self contained pressurized suits because physicians had no idea what was killing gay men, but they knew it was contagious and communicable.

ACT UP 1489405375Let me tell you, those were ugly, lonely deaths. ACTUP had plenty of reason to scream, riot, and raise hell.

Those deaths were in fact generally being ignored by the media, and the government, and everyone else. Because they were deaths occurring in a marginalized segment of society. A group of people who could and did have their rights regularly suspended because of the love that dare not speak its name.

Yes, Black Lives Matter, ALL LIVES MATTER.

080213_Westboro_Baptist.jpgDuring the AIDS crisis there wasn’t any separation between black, white, hispanic, or asian gay men.

They were all dying and the gay community, the real gay community, stood up and raised hell. Eventually the gay community was joined by other people who realized that standing up for what was right, outweighed being stigmatized.

And in the midst of that, The Westboro Baptist Church was holding signs outside hospitals, protesting at ACTUP rallies, or protesting funerals, spouting hate filled speech, (as is their right), things like God hates fags, AIDS is God’s retribution, all FAGS burn in hell, better dead than a FAG.

185ay4jt8tqiwjpg.jpgMy Mother and I were even accosted by members of Westboro, going up the steps to a concert hall where one of the Gay Mens Choruses were performing.

My first reaction to these people’s hate filled vitriol was to punch their teeth out of their heads in anger and defense of my dear old mom.

It was she, that stayed my hand. “Son,” she said loudly, “these people, no matter how cruel, misguided, inbred, or stupid, have the right to be assholes where ever they choose. We have to defend their right to be morons or risk losing our rights too.”

Westboro-Baptist-Church-protests.jpgWe enjoyed the concert.

What the hell happened to that philosophy? How is it that in 30 years we’ve gone from understanding people have the right to their opinions, (no matter how contrary to our own,) to a culture where people who don’t agree with you must be silenced unequivocally?westboro.jpg

While looking up Westboro, I honestly didn’t know if they were still around since Fred Phelps died. I noticed that not only are their current signs still largely about FAGS but a lot of their signs now relfect a general hatred of America. They also seem to hate Trump which begs the question of why, or if, they’re not naturally aligned with ANTIFA or the radical Islamic elements.

They don’t like Jews, and many of their signs appear to be thankful of the maiming and killing of American soldiers.

It’s likely they’re not going to be aligned with BLM since they may just be flat out racists too, perhaps the racist thing is the reason they’re not marching with Islamic terrorists.

I find it interesting that they are not censored in searches, their hatred is on full display with no content warnings. At  the same time conservative and GOP voices while far less hateful are being censored.

I guess this means that there are acceptable kinds of hatred, or hate speech. 

Today, membership in ACTUP means you are by definition apparently against Trump. There was a time when politically ACTUP was against anybody that refused to take action in the AIDS crisis. The organization was fairly nonpartisan. Now it seems that they’re firmly Democrat.

It’s Due to COVID…

“Due to the ongoing pandemic crisis we have made changes to our enterprise systems to protect your health and the health of our employees. This may cause longer than usual wait times. For faster service please use our voice prompt system or our website. If the answer you’re looking for is not available please continue to hold…”

Alright, I call BULLSHIT!

First of all I as a customer don’t care. Whatever you’re doing to protect your employees is your business. It’s between you and your employees. This is especially true if I’m calling someone like a credit card service or my insurance company. I DON’T see you people in person EVER!

Second of all, I’ve been noticing that there are a lot more errors. Errors in Billing, Errors in shipments, Errors in services rendered.

And when I call folks on those errors, the response is “Oh well with COVID, blah blah blah” The problem is, computers don’t get COVID. COVID doesn’t suddenly and mysteriously change due dates, causing late charges on credit bills. Someone commanded that change but it wasn’t COVID.

COVID doesn’t add two days to shipping in the one second between the time I click on “Checkout” and the time I press “PAY”. If you’re going to quote me a delivery date on my whole order, then split that order and space it out of 4 days after I’ve pressed PAY and entered my credit card info just quote me the real date not some fiction.

“But it’s due to COVID”

NO, IT ISN’T!

You know what’s in your warehouses and you also know how long the shit I order is going to take to get to me.

Somewhere in the billing systems for credit cards there’s an algorithm that says, “If customer pays bill two weeks ahead of schedule, then adjust Due Date to three weeks earlier.” Deposit collected late fees in account marked “Profit Skim”.

A second algorithm says note in customer account for representative. “If customer calls to complain reverse charges and allow customer to choose new billing date. Blame it on COVID”

The hope in the case of the credit card companies is that most people won’t call ‘em on it and will just pay the late fee, assuming that they (the customer) made a mistake.

The best case scenario for the credit card company is that the customer won’t notice it at all, and is an auto pay customer. If they pay a fixed amount monthly, then the unpaid late charges generate another full amount late fee that continues to add up month over month until the entire monthly payment is consumed in late fees but nothing is applying toward the actual debt. 

Once that happens the late fee cycle resets causing the customer to essentially make no headway towards paying off their debt.

My plan is to pay off all the credit cards and not have more than one. I prefer CASH or debit card transactions. I’ll keep one credit card for those weird life emergencies. But I’m cutting up cards as quickly as I can. 

COVID has become the Catch All phrase that is supposed to be the acceptable excuse for whatever someone has screwed up.

I’m sick of it. 

Own your screwups, don’t blame your mess on a virus that appears to be 99% survivable without intervention.

Yeah 1% of the population is a big freakin number. But to date, less than 1% of the population has died and the financial computer systems are still running.

It’s funny that for all the mistakes I’ve been seeing, I’m still getting the bills. You’d think that at least one of these institutions would have an outage that takes out their billing wouldn’t you?

Grrrr!