Red V. Blue

Even discussing these issues we hold so dear with those people would compromise our own sacred beliefs – Red V. Blue

Why should we have to pay for your fast food and candy addiction, aggravated by terminal couchitis

Why should we listen to your lame exercise crap when we worked all day & there’s a good game on

Why should we pick up your litter since that just tells you it’s OK to toss more junk out your windows

Why should we try to read all the tiny print, big-word food ingredients we don’t understand anyway

Why should we fret over climate change when the CO₂ oligarchies assure us it’s all part of God’s plan

Why should we buy your overpriced, elitist organics when factory snack foods are so tasty & so cheap

Why should we have to listen to your fat slob pickups & pathetically-lame Harleys 24x7x365

Why should we worry about clean water since we guzzle all ours from bottles that we quickly toss out

Why should we vote against the 1%ers who call us moochers & just offshore us for more fat bonuses

Why should we believe in security since today it only means more surveillance with greater secrecy

Why should we mess around with that useless recycling just because you nannies think it’s so great

Why should we allow more mass shootings & let Fox & the NRA further stir your infantile paranoia

Why should we eat that disgusting kale when doublemeat-bacon cheeseburgers taste so damn good

Why should we subsidize your wanton obesity and scornful disdain for any non-gas powered activity

Why should we waste our money on that clean energy fraud just because it makes you feel less guilty

Why should we bomb hell out of places you cannot even locate on a globe with names in big print

Why should we let Washington bureaucrats tell us what our kids are supposed to learn in their school

Why should we respect your spoonfed opinions - Fed to you as catchy soundbites by paid spin doctors

Why should we bother reading when that liberal media is all just big lies, junk science & bad math

Why should we try to get the lead & mercury out of your kid’s brains since you obviously don’t care

Why should we stress over your increasing ignorance - After all, it makes you even easier to control

Why should we give a damn about whatever keystoned species so long as football is on 80 hrs a week

Why should we hypermile in our hybrids as you pretend it’s NASCAR in your clumsy, bellowing pickups

Why should we turn in assault rifles so you can give over our precious national sovereignty to that UN

Why should we respect your implanted view that the market will bring healthcare to the sick or poor

Why should we pay our water bills, even though you do, since clean water is a universal human right

Why should we accept your judgments regarding fuzzy math when you can’t even count out change

Why should we be denied ATV access to our federal lands just because we don’t want to stupid hike

Why should we clean up after your beloved frackers who profitably export our Energy Independence

Why should we ever dialog with those who condone that sinful murdering of babies called abortion

Why should we not smoke bud after witnessing millennia of your alcohol-induced violence & stupidity

Why should we forsake our secure black & white faith for your fool & frightening rational uncertainty

Why should we support you when your own initiatives always boil down to just loudly shouting ‘NO!’

Why should we permit the government to over-regulate us on down into that old-Europe style decay

Why should we all have to bray in unison to support increases to an already-bloated dEfense budget

Why should we lower our divine moral standards by compromising with you godless NewAge heathens

Not So Happy Trails

The homely gas clerk loved donuts with Big Gulps and smoked 2 cigarettes during each short break

She had no benefits but did get diabetes at 35, already 70 pounds overweight

She was dismissed for missing shifts too often…to sit in line for hours down at the local ER

The Righteously Conservative Evangelical developed a hungry colon cancer

He sold off his plumbing company and moved into a brand new Florida condo

He still talks to his Personal Savior and listens to The Fox there, bedridden on the third floor

The Engineer worked as if it really meant something for way too many years

He is summarily dismissed early one hot and bright July morning

He shuffles out with his treasured technical books and detailed, but fantasy plans for retribution

Mother nurtures her manchild who comes quite handsomely of age

That son is then very suddenly conscripted to join a war a world away

Mother grows old in a hurry, just waiting for a word

The Soldier trains diligently with his unit such that all will kill and not be killed together

He dies wincing in pain without ever seeing his enemy

His comrades resolve that, no matter what their cause, he must not die in vain

The Farmer toils quietly in the Spring and throughout a long, hot Summer

The army comes with guns and takes away his harvest

In a late December darkness, the farmer must sadly eat the seeds for next year’s planting

The Programmer worked under constant pressure, always behind on some artificial deadline

He off-shored mind still racing, he sits too quietly and alone in his empty room

He realizes shortly that, for all his feverish work, he is left him less than nothing

The old career Politician retires with all the due honor of his peers

He goes back to the place he called home, where he hasn’t really lived for 30 years

He finds he has no more deals to cut, statements to make or favors to repay

An aging Salesman is kicked to the curb when he no longer meets his quota

He still shaves and dresses nattily with a new joke every morning

But there will be no more responses to his numerous inquiries for positions

That senile Doctor made foolish errors that others had to cover up

The medical society quiets the furor and drafts his retirement letter

Now the people merely smile when he gruffly orders them around

The Captain of Industry is dismissed from his lofty penthouse suite following a financial scandal

His golden parachute floats him down into a wondrous sunset

Now, he lies awake in his locked compound avenging the imagined slights of former suck-ups

A common day Laborer cannot keep up the grinding pace in the terrible heat

He is no longer chosen from the long line of illegales seeking work

His dreams of returning home to buy a little hacienda must now be forgotten

A Lawyer grows disgusted with the person he has become

He is sickened by his greed and the alcohol-laced emptiness of his work

Comically, his mind seeks a judicial remedy for the self-loathing that has filled him

The former bomber Pilot flying cushily for the airlines faces a mandatory retirement

He looks forward to his well-earned, very generous pension and expensive travel perqs

Villages he bombed so long ago from far above without even seeing still remain in the stone age

The dissipated Real Estate Agent finally loses her last listing

She no longer has any glamour left with which to con them like she used to

Yet she cannot forego her lifestyle and quickly falls hopelessly into foolish credit card debt

A once razor-sharp Professor has his class load reduced to nothing

His agile mind was the envy of both faculty and students

Now he quizzes his patient wife many times a day regarding what they’ll have for dinner

The one-time all-star Athlete hung on until he was unceremoniously released

He misses the adulation and has no other interests, skills or savings

So, he drinks and gambles and sells some autographs, until his liver simply quits

That Man of God who, for years, led us down the righteous path is gone

He is but the shrunken, almost comic, image of his once-imposing figure

Now his children quarrel nastily over the estate and the income his name still produces

Though he was a Handsome Leading Man, now he is even denied a grandfather’s bit part

His loyal agent left him when he broke his hip and had to get a wheelchair

His young wife spends time with her gigolo as others manicure her tiny, snow white poodle

A Teacher for almost 40 years she still lectures anyone who happens by

She is active in the church and volunteers at election polling places

Occupied by the young for so long, now she strives to comprehend new lessons of her own

A happy-to-grovel Middle Manager, he was despised by both his direct reports and his bosses

They downsized him cleanly off their crisp and tidy new Org Chart, without a second thought

Those at the top reaped bonuses and he did finally get a part-time Temp job in Interior Lighting

The Office Bitch who terrorized us for 20 years but worked her ass off has finally gone to pasture

Her aggressive honesty a spiny affront to the false political correctness which we all hid behind

But, as it finally turned out, she did have something better to do than to simply irritate us