Ammo Grrrll eschews PALE IMITATIONS. She writes:
One time I wanted to make multiple keys to our home to hand out to visiting relatives so that they could let themselves into the casita at any time of the day or night. I went to my trusty Ace Hardware Store. The key I gave them was – stupidly – not an original but already a copy. The new youngster in the lock department then made a copy from my copy and then used THAT copy to make several more.
Alas, only the first copy worked at all. I had to locate the original key and go back again, wasting my valuable retirement time and possibly as much as $5.00, if memory serves me. I will expand this metaphor presently. Patience.
My husband, the famous novelist Max Cossack, has almost zero tolerance for any snack food or general food item which is NOT “original.” (He is also a big devotee of “original thought” in his writing, most recently boldly declaring that the Hamlet character so admired by virtually all previous critics was, in fact, a “twerp.”)
He wants ORIGINAL Cheetos, not “Bold Spicy”; he wants ORIGINAL Doritos, not “Cinnamon Toast Crunch” or even “Ranch.” He wants ORIGINAL Oreos, not “Mint” or “Lemon,” although he will tolerate the original one being dipped in Chocolate. He wants ORIGINAL Oscar Mayer Bologna, not, God forbid, full of repulsive sliced olives like some sort of Meat Fruitcake from Hell! Were it up to him, the snack food industry would not have introduced a single new twist since 1953, give or take.
Rarely is an innovation an improvement on the original. Most, like the multiple incarnations of key copies, do not work. I thought about that the other day when one of the “bad” keys turned up again, like the proverbial “bad” penny, soon to be extinct. The key had ONE JOB – which was to open the dang door. And it was a failure.
In different realms we have now had several generations that proved to be inferior incarnations of the original. The freefall from the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Teddy Roosevelt to Barack Hussein Obama, Joe Biden and, Heaven forfend, Kamala Harris, comes to mind. Heck, even the fall from either Bush president to Obama and Biden was a steep one, in seriousness, in patriotism, in having the slightest concern for the country that made both obscenely rich.
We have had serious advocates for badly needed social change, for fairness and justice, who were willing to put their lives on the line – and lost those lives – including The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King and even, in my opinion, Malcolm X. To go from them to Al “Never Met A Camera He Didn’t Love” Sharpton, anti-Semite agitator, and tax scofflaw or loudmouth advocate of “get in their faces” violence Maxine Waters, who doesn’t even live in the district she allegedly “represents,” is yet another disgraceful drop.
And a few weeks ago, Michael Moore tasked himself with a rewrite of The Pledge of Allegiance. It is almost, but not quite, too stupid and infantile to parody. But I will give it my best shot. Here is his prodigious effort on which he no doubt spent several seconds between meals and snacks.
“I pledge allegiance to the people of the United States of America. And to the democracy for which we all stand: One person, one vote, one nation, part of one world, everyone! A seat at the table! Everyone! A slice of the pie! With liberty and justice, equality, and kindness and the pursuit of happiness for all.”
Now we can certainly understand Mr. Moore’s concern for “a seat at the table,” any table. And especially for “a slice of the pie.” As the late, great Orson Welles said so succinctly, “Gluttony is not a secret vice.” But apart from his permanently unkempt appearance and morbid obesity, his ideas are not even up to what would turn up in a Pledge re-write assignment from a 6th grader.
Gone, of course, is “the Republic”, which is what our genius forefathers came up with, “if you can keep it.” It was not intended to be a pure democracy, wherein two wolves and a lamb vote on what to have for dinner. Gone as well is the Flag itself. Nope, we aren’t pledging allegiance to it, but to “the people of the United States.” I will do no such thing, in part because MANY of those “people” despise me and do not stand for any sort of democracy, but for socialism, tribalism, and nihilism.
One person, one vote is a laughable pretext coming from him and his ilk who were all just fine and dandy with such travesties as unsupervised mail-in votes sent through a Post Office whose employees had endorsed a Democrat candidate and non-citizens not just sneakily voting but actually ENCOURAGED to vote.
And, oh, this moronic drivel I have heard about for onto half a century now about the mythical “seat at the table.” You know the table, right? The one where all the really important stuff is decided. Not only do I not have a seat at this table, but I don’t even know anybody who has a seat at this table or even knows where it is. And I know some pretty wealthy and important people! Think about it. Obviously, he means key decisionmakers, not the electorate.
Let’s just ballpark the size of this “table” at which EVERYONE is supposed to sit!
There are maybe 300 mayors of major cities; maybe 1000 very top honchos in government, including the President, the Cabinet, Governors and the bigwigs in the Pentagon; let’s give him another ballpark of 10,000 CEOs of major companies. That’s 11,300 humans at that Big Deal Table out of 330 MILLION humans in this country who have any control over anything. It’s too big to be an actual table but certainly not representative of any kind of sharing of power, is it?
We peons permanently seated at the kids’ card table? – 330,000,000-11,300 total 329,088,700. Sure, your figures may vary – more or fewer real decisionmakers – but it’s painfully clear that most of us have control only over ourselves and our immediate families and even precious little of that if the government decides we have dead-named one of our children or are singing too enthusiastically in church during COVID.
As for the “slice of the pie,” here’s a sad secret – there ISN’T ONE. Especially not one for “everyone” in the whole wide world to nibble off of with no effort of their own. Michael Moore means that a slice of the pie to which everyone is automatically entitled is The Good Life. But the only real pie that exists, is the one each individual makes with a partner, with a family.
Indeed, every single American citizen has the opportunity to have a slice and here’s how it’s done: stay in school and try to learn something while you are there; do not do drugs or abuse alcohol; do not commit crimes trying to get somebody else’s pie; ideally, get married and stay married, but for sure do not have children without benefit of marriage; and, oh, yeah, WORK. At anything. (I would add a 6th thing for people in every social class who are addicted to debt: practice saying “We can’t afford that.” Say it often to your spoiled children.)
If you do these 5 simple things, essential things, you will not only have a “slice” of the pie, you will make your own Big Beautiful Pie and discover that that old raggedy Pledge of Allegiance was pretty good after all. No Commie-lite inferior copies necessary.
Happy 4th of July. God Bless The U.S.A.
