Redtree Times

One Path Ends and Another Begins— At West End Gallery

Sun is hangin’ in the sky
sinkin’ low and so am I
Just for the love of someone
and a big red sun
How’m I gonna lose
these big red sun blues

–Lucinda Williams, Big Red Sun Blues (1988)

I have things that have to be done this morning so this will be short. That’s difficult for me since what is taking place in the world as a result of the actions of the idjit-in-charge here begs for comment. Okay, I can’t resist. Here one quick comment:

The situation seems like a spoiled toddler who, left alone and unaware of unintended consequences, wants a cookie in a kitchen cabinet high above his head. All he can see before him is his want of that cookie. Nothing else matters. In attempting to get the cookie, this spoiled brat clumsily sets off a series of events– the aforementioned unintended consequences— that starts a raging fire that eventually burns down the whole house.

And then the whole neighborhood goes up in flames, including a school filled with children, hospital, and nursing home. Firefighters are injured and some die in the chaos of the blaze. As a reward, his parent, who have always let their little cretin do whatever his tiny black heart desires and never really liked their neighbors, reward him with new box of cookies, telling him that it all bad things that happen to him, are the fault of someone else.

The End. Well, except that this miscreant goes on to become President, mishandle a pandemic, start a war, crash the economy of his country and many others, create a personal army to carry out his whims in his own country, build concentration camps, kill his own citizens, steal and fill his own pockets with the money of his country, demand bribes from companies and countries, spout lies and hatred endlessly, glorify his ugly face and name on anything including a memorial to another president, vilify and deport immigrants, hire perhaps the greatest group of criminal ass-kissing toadies ever assembled to be in his cabinet, use his power to push for the prosecution of his opponents, threaten to cancel elections and reinstate the draft to fight the war he started, and on and on. Oh, wait let’s not forget play golf, strongarm a worthy recipient to give him their Nobel Prize, and desecrate the ceremony for the return of fallen soldiers who died because this creepy manchild wanted a cookie.

But, as some folks I know have told me, he has some good policies they like. I don’t know what they could possibly be, but they’d have to be pretty goddamned good to justify this.

I am sure he will change course soon and things in America will once again be great in, what, about two weeks?

As Foghorn Leghorn might say, “That’s a joke, son!”

Just my take. Okay, that’s not a short comment. But that’s the way it will have to be this morning. At least I was able to use an analogy, a laundry list, and a Looney Tunes cartoon reference.

The Holy Trinity of my existence.

Okay, I really do have things that need doing. Here’s an early song, Big Red Sun Blues, from Lucinda Williams that matches up well with the painting at the top and my own big red sun blues as the neighborhood goes up in flames.