A funny thing happened before the Christmas holiday. Donald Trump admitted that he not only has had the vaccine, but he has also had the booster. The crowd’s reaction was interesting to say the least. Avid readers will recognize Mary Shelley as the creator of Frankenstein. The story is easy enough to remember.

As on the money as that analogy seems at first blush, I’m not certain this is a Frankenstein situation. Trump didn’t so much create this monster as much as he simply fed it and released it from it’s cage. He recognized it when he decided to run for president. Say what you want about him, but he recognized the anger that was there and plugged into it. People will make the obvious comparison with dictators and demagogues of the past. They’ll make the obvious and lazy connection to Adolf Hitler. Sure, there are parallels there, but one can always find parallels when they look hard enough for them.

The parallel I draw is not necessarily with Germany but with the French Revolution. He doesn’t fit any particular individual in that scenario. What he has done is take advantage of his place as an outsider. The country is not in as extreme a situation as France was, but there are similarities. People are smart enough to see how things are slipping away. They are largely incapable of pointing the finger where it belongs. They see education costs rising. They see wages stagnating. They see other costs going up like health care costs and housing costs. One party has been really good at pointing fingers away from them. It’s the immigrants’ fault. It’s women’s fault. It’s those LGTBQ+ people’s fault. It’s ACORN. It’s Black Lives Matter. It’s Antifa. It’s critical race theory. It’s the war on Christmas.

What Trump didn’t figure is that once you get people started on a lie, they will follow that lie to its illogical conclusion. They will keep latching onto alternative treatments that don’t work. They’ll keep resisting the obvious. They’ll keep looking for scapegoats and when they don’t find a new one they’ll start pointing the finger at you.

That was seemingly going on in France at the time. The people were dissatisfied and they wanted new leadership. New leadership came in and they didn’t like them either. So, they kept revolting and they kept replacing until they stumbled into Napoleon. The funny thing is that I don’t think that’s what they had in mind in the beginning, but they did so much damage that is who they ended up with.

In that sense, I’m sure there is a comfort in someone that hates the same people you do. There is a certain amount of comfort in that hate. I can offload my failures and my insecurities onto those who I hate. The problem is that same person who helps us to point the finger either has no ideas to fix anything or actively doesn’t want to fix it. They want to fund raise off of it. They want to rob you blind while they are getting you to look at the “other”.

I do not call them New Year’s Resolutions. I call them casual promises I make to myself that I am under no obligation to fulfill.

Look, before I agree to 2022, I need to see some terms and conditions. I fell for this trick once before in 2019 and I am hesitant to go to the trouble of getting tipsy and blowing little horns if it’s going to be a godawful year, which I have a tendency to suspect it will.

Here’s my starting list:

While I am interviewing for a job, I will keep it to myself that I have trouble with authority.

I will try to overcome my nomophonia (fear of being left without a mobile phone or being in an area without coverage).

I will stop using hashtags before every word on job applications and IRS filings.

Live my best life and only buy pants with no buttons or zippers. 

Turn all my high heel shoes into cozy house shoes. I will also purchase basic woodworking tools: a saw, a hammer, and a big ole tub of Crazy Glue.

Recycle my tattoo “New Year, New Me (Just Kidding)” for the third year in a row.

Never take HomeGoods trips for granted ever again. Linger in the aisles and touch things. 

Practice to become the GOAT at sarcasm toward

Keep kicking ass and taking names, because detailed record-keeping is important.

Eat more tacos because … Honey, if you need a reason, you ain’t in Texas.

Stop drinking orange juice after I’ve brushed my teeth.

Lose weight by hiding it somewhere you’ll never find it.

Got any of your own?

Progressive Insurance runs a series of commercials with a trainer that works with younger adults that are becoming their parents. It’s hard to say how many iterations of this commercial we have seen to date. I want to say half a dozen, but I think you get the general idea. As ad campaigns go, it’s very effective. Anyone that has seen these ads can find themselves or someone they know in at least one of them.

The problem is that they’ve made a joke about becoming our parents. The cold, hard truth is that we are destined to become our parents. We always have been destined to become our parents. Introspection is difficult to say the least. It is a lot more noticeable when you compare your parents to their parents. It gets to the point where it is unavoidable.

Personality quirks are one thing. We could go on all day about those. Obviously, most of us had two parents growing up, so we become a kind of hybrid combination. However, we also become a combination of their greatest hopes and dreams and their worst instincts and fears. It becomes a competition to see which side ultimately wins. Do we become the best of our parents or the worst of our parents?

When we view politics in that prism, the current state of affairs makes a lot more sense. Many wonder how people could become so nasty and hateful. That doesn’t happen out of thin air. People don’t suddenly become something they are not. What they become is something that has always been inside of them. They have simply chosen (consciously or unconsciously) to become the worst of their parents. Sometimes that choice is overt and sometimes it is activated by outside factors.

This happens for a variety of reasons. The biggest reason is that a parent’s basic aim is for their children is to have a better life than they did. We are in the first time in our nation’s history where that hasn’t happened. We aren’t seeing a rapid increase in people going to college. Those college degrees are not paying off like they used to and those loans are getting bigger. Wages have stagnated overall and costs are increasing. It’s human nature for fingers to point outwards when that happens.

Of course, we have politicians. networks, pundits, and talking heads that invite people to do just that. We collectively know we are not as successful as we could or should be. We know it isn’t our fault and so we look for someone to blame. Those politicians, networks, pundits, and talking heads provide the targets to us. From there it is just a short hop, skip, and jump to become the very worst of our parents.

The darkness hasn’t completely succumbed us yet, but it is close. Progress has always been slow because there has always been these two instincts playing tug of war inside of us. Maybe the Progressive Insurance guy can’t stop us from becoming our parents. Maybe he should stop trying and focus on how we can collectively become the very best version of our parents. It might be less funny but we will be a lot happier in the long run.

I’m sitting here (with a nice bourbon) watching the finest movie of 2021, Don’t Look Up, which is about astronomers at Michigan State University discovering a comet that is headed directly toward earth.  That’s not the actual story, though.  The actual story is a feature length metaphor for how a corrupt sociopathic/fascist government can destroy civilization.  A star studded cast, led by Leonardo DiCaprio (as the scientist) and Meryl Streep (as the female Trump), complete with Jonah Hill as Trump, Jr., brilliantly shows us how disinformation, combined with a malignant narcissist supported by sycophants and crass commercialism can destroy civilization as we know it.  Mark Rylance plays the crazy corporatist, modeled on Elon Musk, a giant financial contributor to Streep’s campaign and has convinced her that comet hurtling toward earth can be broken up and mined for precious metals for his cell phone company.

I won’t give you the ending – you must watch it yourself.