I’ve done a couple of things I shouldn’t have. I decided to share a meme I saw on social media on my own Facebook wall. Instead of going into a long-winded explanation I thought I would just show you below. Consider it a bonus cartoon for the day.

Of course, my conservative friends and family were up in arms. The most hilarious exchange came when a former classmate uttered that you know who the bigots are based on who is sporting Biden gear. I naturally pointed out that we don’t buy Biden swag. We don’t buy swag for any politician because we aren’t a cult. Biden could sell bibles, tee-shirts, hats, action figures, shoes, fake degrees, steaks, Vodka, and any other assorted nonsense with his name on it. No one would buy it anyway because our allegiance is to the country and to ideas.

Be that as it may, I thought I would offer a few words on the red hat that our patrons could borrow when talking with their conservative friends, coworkers, and family members. When asking whether a red hat makes you a bigot or not you should consider the very basics. If you are suggesting that you want to “make America great again” then you are suggesting that America is no longer great. So, exactly when was it great? What were the precipitating steps and actions that caused it to no longer to be great? I’d imagine many of those folks would be stuck by some of the verbiage used there, so you might give them a few minutes to collect their thoughts or you might treat them as a hostile witness.

I imagine many of them (if they are older) are thinking of when they were young and everyone “knew their place.” If they are actually young then they are longing for the days their parents or grandparents described. Immediately, two things come to mind. First, memory is a tricky thing. We often remember what we want to remember and forget what we want to forget. If we are unhappy now then we likely remember the past more fondly. This belies the truth because if we are unhappy now then we were likely unhappy then. Secondly, even if life were good for us we have to come to grips with the fact that it was worse for others. So, saying you want life to return to what it was then you are either choosing to ignore that little fact or you are actively bathing in it. My guess for most of those folks is the latter.

Simply put, it is a backwards looking sentiment. I don’t want to look backwards. For one, life quite literally sucked for large groups of people. Even if I could say it was good for me then I would have to acknowledge that conditions are different enough to where that life is impossible to replicate. Of course, there I go again with the big words. I finally went off on a different discussion with a so-called “thinking conservative”. He prattled on and on about how gun control wouldn’t work and so I literally shouted, “then make a suggestion!” That’s the point, They don’t have any. Their platform has literally become, “whatever THAT guy says” and THAT guy doesn’t have any ideas. He never did. We can make this a referendum about the man, but one of the ways to win is to simply point out that THEY have no answers for the problems they are highlighting. They just have grievance. They want to prevent US from successfully passing any of our own suggestions. So, I would say it is put up or shut up time. If you want that mythical great past you long for then it is high time to tell us exactly how we get back there. Spell it out for us. Give us a step by step blueprint. Of course, they don’t want to do that because they know the majority doesn’t think that way. It’s a lot easier just to complain.

“With a photographic memory
I could live in a time that used to be.”– Greg Ham

October seemed like a perfect time to go back and visit the alma mater. It just so happens that the weekend I picked was also homecoming weekend. It just so happens that the weekend I picked happened to be the 25th reunion for my graduating class.

That in of itself is a long story since I graduated in December. So, I was class of 1996, but I really wasn’t. It should have been 1997, but these things are complicated. I caught myself doing the same thing everyone else does when they see people honored at halftime of the football game. My first thought was, “who are all of those old people down there.” That thought process quickly switched to, “gee, do I know any of them?”

As I was pointing out landmarks to my wife and daughter it hit me like a ton of bricks. There was more different than there was the same. It’s then that you can’t really control the flood of emotions. It’s an unholy mixture of nostalgia, jealousy, and lack of connection. I could say the same of the new high school that sits on the same plot of land as my old one. I know people of my age and older can relate to these feelings.

I never knew why older people behaved the way that they did. The usual sentiment when someone wanted to renovate a school or make additions was to utter that “it was good enough for me so it should be good enough for you.” So, why do we need that new gym or that new addition with new science classrooms? Why do we need to spruce up the library? Why do we need to invest in new infrastructure so the kids can use their technology in the building? We didn’t need any of that crap.

If you don’t check yourself it is fairly easy to find yourself going down a different rabbit hole. It’s easy to find yourself talking about how unfair it is that these kids have it so nice. Why do they get the nicer dorms? Why did they get the new student center? It’s not fair that they got all of this new stuff. Think of what we would have done with all of this new stuff.

Give into those feelings and you become “get off my lawn” guy. It’s a slow but slippery descent that can creep up on you seemingly overnight. One minute you feel like a progressive kind of guy (or gal) that seems to know what’s hip and what’s going on. The next you’re just lost in a haze and wondering what the kids are doing and how they got to be so young.

Get off my lawn guy is bitter and hates change. Get off my lawn guy doesn’t want to spend any tax dollars improving things because they were good enough for him (or her) and they should be good enough for you. Get off my lawn guy is the one that starts every story off with a “back in my day…” Get off my lawn guy is the guy (or gal) that we all swore we would never become when we were young.

Some of us have become get off my lawn guy. Some of us haven’t. The deciding factor is how we deal with change. I never quite understood how people became stick in the mud conservatives when I was young. Now that I’m not so young I understand. It’s equal parts jealousy and equal parts nostalgia. The trouble is that it simultaneously was never as good as we remember it and it was also better than our parents had it. That’s the conundrum that get off my lawn guy can never reconcile.

“Lay down the law, don’t let em’ cross the line. Under the hood, got the bad and the good, everybodies doing time.” — Mike Post

These lyrics came from the theme song for the sitcom “Hardcastle and McCormick”. Post made a career of writing sitcom jingles and this is probably one he would rather forget. The show ran for two seasons during the mid 1980s and it is one I remember watching. In the old days, that would put the show on the scrap heap of history. A show has to be on the air for several years before episodes will officially go into syndication. So, this show joined “Buck Rogers” and “Battlestar Gallatica” (the original one) in the relative dust bin of television history.

Through the miracle of YouTube and other streaming services, these shows have been brought back to life. I have not found full episodes of this particular show yet, but we found the theme song and opening credits. That alone was good enough for a trip down amnesia lane.

At this point, you are probably wondering what this has to do with anything. That’s a fair question. I suppose the point is that nostalgia is a powerful feeling. In this sense, we are just talking about old shows. We remembered them being good because we were younger and because there wasn’t anything better to offer.

As long as those shows exist only in our memories they continue to be as good as we want to remember them. The moment we watch those old episodes (as you can with Buck Rogers and Battlestar Gallatica) we suddenly realize how stupid they were. It isn’t even so much that they were stupid, but that they seem so stupid now. Our sensibilities have changed and so our tastes in entertainment have changed.

I’m sure the perceptive ones among you realize where this is going. One of the allures of conservative politics is the whole idea of nostalgia. The concept of MAGA depends on the notion that America really was great and isn’t anymore because of what those damn liberals have done. It counts on you remembering the past like it was a Hardcastle and McCormick episode. Man those days were cool.

The problem is that they are tapping into a feeling and not any sort of reality. Reality (much like those old shows) was never quite as good as we remember. Oddly enough, it was also far different than what we remember. So, some wax on about how good the Reagan years were when everyone was free and the government didn’t mandate you do anything.

Unfortunately, we can’t YouTube the distant past, so we can only fact check actual rules and regulations. We can’t re-watch a memory. We can’t experience what life was like again to test our memories. The powers that be have managed these conditions well. They’ve used the old west in addition to our childhoods to create a world that never really existed, but know must be true. So, many rail against the present in a not so quiet bout of desperation. It makes so little sense until you consider they are working from false memories or faux nostalgia.

So, they rail against vaccine mandates and quarantine rules that have actually been used in the past. We just don’t remember them. We don’t want to remember them. If we don’t remember them then they must have never happened. If they never happened then all of these mandates now are an obtrusion that’s new. We somehow tack that onto the stuff that actually is new because we live in an ever evolving society.

Life was simpler then. Our shows were simpler then. Everyone knew their place and everyone was a lot happier. If we try hard enough we can train ourselves to really believe that. We can convince ourselves that those were good shows that never should have been cancelled. We can convince ourselves of a lot of things. When forced to face the reality we understand how truly foolish that is. Some just don’t want to face reality.