I must take a minute right at the outset, in this case a few words, to thank Mr. Vince Smith, a very perceptive The Voice reader who, besides paying a nice compliment in the “Reader’s Commentary” section of the September 30 issue, pointed out the ridiculous commentaries of some readers, including the dubious facts repeatedly penned by Mr. Bill Suhayda, who views the world through Trump-colored glasses. When I’m out in public, I wear a hard hat and a goalie mask because I’m dodging a barrage of rotten vegetables directed at my actual body, or when at home, I’m in the basement hiding from a gaggle of townspeople at my front door with a battering ram and flaming torches. It’s encouraging to hear a good word once in a while with no organic materials attached.
Congress is back doing its best to rate even lower in the public opinion polls. Besides some Republican Party crazies who’ve lost touch with reality, there’s Democrats Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, who seem to have lost touch with reality, not to the point of believing in Jewish space lasers or miniscule tracking devices in COVID vaccines, but with what the people they represent actually want. West Virginia ranks 50th in infrastructure, but Joe doesn’t want to vote on Joe Biden’s plan because, among other reasons, it would upset corporations in the fossil fuel industries and coal is where he gets nearly half-a-million dollars a year added to his bank account.
By the way, how long is United States going to be dragging around the dead cat of the coal industry? Coal should be used only in Christmas stockings of naughty children. Santa drops a lump in there because it’s nasty and it makes a point: If you have trouble putting on your shoe, remove the lump of coal. Although we have already mined enough coal to fill Christmas stockings to infinity and beyond, we’re still mining it, burning it, and sending its sooty nastiness into the atmosphere and the air we breathe. This is the 21st Century is in the past. Get over it.
That goes for the fat, orange-faced, guy who used to slink through the hallways of the White House. The election’s done. You lost. Get over it. He’s still holding rallies, whining, with no proof, about an election that was supposedly stolen from him. As each day dawns and more evidence emerges, it appears Donny Boy, the one-hit wonder, was the person trying to steal the election. Speaking of battering rams and flaming torches (I was earlier, remember?), the battering ram of the committee investigating the actions of the January 6 behaving-badly tourist crowd at the Capitol, is en route to the Mar-A-Lago front door. The authorities with the flaming torches will grab the creature holed up inside and drag him out into the street to face charges for all the evil he’d heaped upon the hapless masses.
I am constantly befuddled (hard to believe, isn’t it?) or maybe A-fuddled by the fact that there are a number of good, decent, G.O.P. leaders (yes, really), yet millions of the Party members are worshipping Trump as their savior. Anyone remember a few years back when he was mocking the G.O.P.? There are videos of him doing it. He couldn’t decide on a party with which to run, so he settled on Republican Party because that’s where the money was available.
But there is a bit of encouraging news. According to an Axios News survey, since March, interest in Trump and news about him has dropped by 50%. People aren’t clicking through to read anything with his name attached. So what that means for me, is that I’d better quit writing about Donny, or I’ll lose half my readers. Either Mr. Vince Smith or Mr. Bill Suhayda will be history.