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New Year Resolution What Fresh Hell

Happy New Year?

When the anger and turbulence you’ve stared down for the better part of four years subsides, it’s amazing how much more difficult it becomes to write.

I’m not sure it used to be this way for me, but I could not find the energy to write a post on the now three-year anniversary of this blog.

“Blog” might be the wrong word, honestly.

This place is a glorified virtual soapbox I step onto in order to scream into a void about whatever is bugging me at that particular moment.

The early impetus was easily Trump and all of the insane bullshit that surrounded him for the past four years. Other times, it was the Chicago sports teams, namely the ursine-named ones, that drove me up a wall with their futility and cliché cheapskate stupidity.

But eventually this past June, I surpassed 241 pounds on the scale and decided at that moment that my life needed to change. I was lethargic, angry, and diabetic. I was diagnosed in 2017 after clocking a 427 blood sugar from doing some house cleaning on a lazy Saturday. From that day until sometime in 2019 I was dedicated to reaching 195 pounds, the weight my doctor told me I’d have to be to no longer be considered a type-2 diabetic.

The stress of my previous job with an hour-long commute worsened by a steady diet of BBC News showing me the absolute worst atrocities and tragedies from around the globe put me in a dour and dark state of mind. I was absolutely miserable.

Ironically, my life got better in 2020.

For starters, I began working from home in January, over two months before the Utah Jazz and the rest of the NBA were hit by one of the very first outbreaks of COVID-19.

My employer permanently moved everyone home due to our costly office space, thus preparing us for a future we had no idea would become a necessity for the rest of the world. For the longest while, it felt like I wasn’t feeling the cost of the pandemic. I wasn’t lonely with my parents and our dog. Life was scary, but it was manageable.

Then the rest of the year happened.

And then the election.

Then, the events after said election.

By the time this day one year ago rolled around, I’d had it. I was done. Nothing more could be done in my mind to scare me into the reality of what was to come.

And once it came, I knew the Rubicon had been crossed and life, as we knew it in this country, was gone forever.

The most disappointing fact of this is just how predictable all of the actions of our so-called government have been.

Republicans continue to dismantle voting rights across swathes of swing states ahead of the midterms this coming November, but because a Maserati-driving scumbag in a yacht house doesn’t want to insult Robert C. Byrd’s racist-shitbag legacy, Democrats can’t pass an updated Voting Rights Act or John Lewis Act to combat the ridiculous amounts of gerrymandering by GOP statehouses. All because that rock-faced scoundrel wants Republicans, the party currently running misinformation campaigns about what happened on this day just one fucking year ago (DOCUMENTED BY PHOTOGRAPHIC AND VIDEO EVIDENCE MIND YOU), to do something they have not done since before the Obama presidency: acknowledge that Democrats have a right to govern and therefore agree with them on some sort of empty compromise or at least a pact to get things moving in the right direction.

Not even actual progress, just FEIGNING progress would be a step forward here. But alas, because the orange tyrant wants to do fascism so dang bad, they won’t come to the table.

And since they refuse to leave the little insurrectionists’ table, Joe Manchin won’t agree to change the filibuster.

And if the filibuster doesn’t change, neither does the state of our gerrymandered-to-shit country.

And thanks to all of that, the Democrats will best-case scenario lose the House of Representatives, the body of Congress that confirms the results of all presidential elections.

The very body that was attacked on this day one year ago for attempting to do that very job.

See where I’m going with this?

All of these facts being equal, I’m quite fearful that America is going to die a very loud and painful death. As in a Second Civil War kind of death. One that would put a target on my back.

And yet, I have so much going for me right now.

My job is so easy, it’s stupefying. I barely do any work. I have more time than ever to work out, which I do regularly, and prepare meals, which I do sparingly.

I’ve lost over 50 pounds and am poised to go for at least 50 more.

I can watch inane TV shows about a Wyoming sheriff or a doctor replacing her super famous heart surgeon father at their fictional Michigan hospital. I can escape into the sands of Tatooine and the karate-crazy “Valley” of real-world suburban Atlanta.

I have outlets and outlets of entertainment at my disposal.

And yet, in the back of my mind, I know that we are heading for an awful crossroads that will soon be too encompassing to ignore.

How does one function with that fear pressing upon them?

I guess I’ll let you know once I figure that out.

Categories
New Year Resolution

We Made It…For Now

What a difference a year makes, huh?

Who knew that when 2020 rolled around we’d be in for the worst 12 months the world has seen in quite some time?

No, I suppose it’s not the worst year in history per se, but one would be hard-pressed to argue that this past year was somehow not the worst in the modern era – and at the bare minimum, the worst of the 21st century.

A year ago, I proclaimed that I would not cower in fear of other people knowing where I stood. Then, like a true hypocrite, I created this blog under a pseudonym to protect my little corner of this here Internet from the prying eyes of my overseas bosses.

I’ve also shared some of these posts on my Facebook, so again, a little bit of cognitive dissonance is happening here.

But after the insanity we as a species endured over this past year, I think we are all allowed some participation in a little cognitive dissonance.

Maybe not to the extent that the denialist MAGA chodes are carrying on even as we enter 2021, but nonetheless some dissonance within the psyche.

Speaking of psyches, mine is shot.

I hoped that when I’d be ringing in 2020, I’d be a man with a heightened perspective. For one thing, I thought I was going to be a groomsman and a pilgrim on a Birthright trip to Israel.

Instead, I spent an entire year stuck at home in suburban Atlanta with my parents, dog, and our shithead Trump-loving neighbors.

I sat at my desk day in, day out watching the very worst of the COVID-19 pandemic from Italy to Spain to the UK and right here in the virus’ epicenter.

In my spare time, I howled at the moon with indignant rage over the colossal failure of the American government and its citizens to be good, honest, cautious human beings and instead act out in horrifyingly self-destructive fashion to the detriment of the now 350,000+ and counting victims of this fucking plague.

To our country’s credit, we did vote out that orange Nazi.

Then again, we failed to oust the likes of Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Jodi Ernst, Lindsey Graham, and the chief Trump accomplice Turtleman McFuckskull.

Thanks to Kentucky, this country’s tired and poor are getting crumbs for “relief” and watching Moscow Bitch doing what he does best: fucking us.

He’s fucked us for what feels like dozens of lifetimes during the whole of his “career” in D.C.

And because of our bullshit political system where each state gets two senators no matter how many cattle outnumber human beings within a given state, we face the more-than-real prospect of watching the new president and the House of Representatives be cockblocked by an intransigent and infantile Senate hellbent on ensuring nothing changes in order to blame the sitting president and the Democratic Party for being unable to negotiate with them, the terrorists, all in the hopes of accessing the proverbial bearer bonds within the Nakatomi Plaza of this long-winded and half-baked Die Hard analogy.

The bottom line: America is fucked.

Mitch McConnell when asked if we should help people.

We have no real hope of a bipartisan government working on behalf of all of us as we scrounge up every last dime we’ve ever saved in the hopes of making it to the next pay period.

So, for my non-resolution resolution for the New Year, I proclaim that I will not give one iota of a semblance of a fuck for people who tell folks my age that we the people cannot afford a government that safeguards its own by providing co-pay-free health insurance, whether employed or on the street, white or Black, conservative or liberal.

We the people of the United States of America deserve a country that will actually employ a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Regardless of what happens in Georgia in four days, we must fight back. Demand equity. Protest injustice.

End the insanity.

If not, then we will 100% without a single doubt perish from this earth.

It’s do or die in 2021.

Let’s not waste any more precious time.

Categories
Blogs The Game of Life

Allow Me to Re-Introduce Myself…

Originally, when I wrote my first post, I had no intention of using a nom de plume.

I poured out a heartfelt anti-New-Year’s-Resolution-resolution to be unapologetically honest about my thoughts, beliefs, values, the whole shebang.

Before I posted it, my mentor gave me some feedback. They didn’t have anything to say other than one piece of advice:

“Don’t write it under your name.” Why, I asked incredulously? “Don’t close an open door. You can write what you want in the meantime, and if someone finds out who you are, then you can own it. But you don’t want to put yourself in a place where you can’t move out from.

“Keep your options open.”

And so, the two of you that read this on WordPress on the first day of the new decade saw the name Samuel Brody appear on your computer screen for the very first time.

It made sense. This way, I could get out my frustrations, throw the proverbial penny in the fountain of the World Wide Web while maintaining my privacy. Win-win.

Then March happened.

And then April.

May.

And so on…

This piece took so long to write that when I completed the first draft, Black Lives Matter was still some radical leftist movement yet to be deemed safe enough to be cosigned and co-opted by the likes of Hardee’s and Starbucks. We didn’t know about Putin’s bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan. Sarah Cooper and Mary Trump weren’t publicly-recognized household names. Michael Flynn was still going to jail. Carl Reiner, Ennio Morricone, Kelly Preston, Jerry Stiller, Little Richard, John Lewis AND Chadwick Boseman were all still alive. Confederate statues were still untouchable. The Redskins were still a thing. Trump’s Gestapo wasn’t wreaking havoc in Portland, or anywhere else for that matter.

Now, after months of virus, deaths, racist murders, fascism, and circular firing squads online and on network TV, we’re starting the cycle of insanity all over in the worst version of Groundhog Day. The “president” and an entire political party now in denial that the virus is a massive present-day crisis, infection rates skyrocketing thanks to moronic white trash protestors storming small towns in the name of liberty, and OH FUCKING LOOK! Yet ANOTHER unarmed BLACK MAN SHOT MULTIPLE FUCKING TIMES IN THE BACK for DOING NOTHING WHATSOEVER.

Sorry, that’s a lie.

Jacob Blake was being black while stopping two white women from fighting. So, for his troubles, he got harassed by an overzealous mangy racist piece of shit with a badge, tried to leave, then got his liver, kidney, and spinal cord pumped full of lead.

In front of his three kids and fiancée.

And the Thin Blue Line horde thinks he should have complied while effectively being stopped-and-searched out of his OWN FUCKING CAR.

Then, to no-one’s shock whatsoever, riots broke out in Kenosha once the local SS started shooting rubber bullets and tear gas at peaceful demonstrators. The next night, the racist Kenosha PD allowed a 17-year-old self-described militia man and aspiring cop with an AR-15 shoot and kill two demonstrators and then escape back to his home in Antioch, Illinois before he was eventually apprehended.

So, not only did they paralyze a 29-year-old black man with his whole life ahead of him, they let Hitler Youth come in from out of town and KILL the people they’re sworn to protect.

The same people they were gassing and beating.

This was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me.

I’ve dealt with depression, anxiety, and existential fear my whole life. Never have I been so consistently depressed, constantly anxious, and endlessly fearful for so long.

Aside from having my favorite distractions from the real world postponed and stuffed away in an attic for six months, nothing has quite terrified me more than the real chance that A) I can get sick and die due to my type-2 diabetes. B) I get sick, am put out of commission for weeks, pull through but not without possible life-altering lung scarring or heart damage. C) One or both of my parents contract the virus and die. Or D) we all sit in shelter for the entire summer, watch hundreds of thousands of people needlessly perish, see that incompetent sociopath tangerine lie his ass off into the hearts and minds of panic-stricken Americans, and watch as we not only lose every sense of normalcy we’ve known in this country, but then hand the next four years (read: decades) to QAnon all because the fascist and his enablers know that mail-in ballots will prevent them from suppressing the vote in order to hang on to their gerrymandered power. Pair that with naive dipshit super-liberals and equally infuriating “bOtH pArTiEs SuCk” non-participants who’ve duped themselves into thinking Democrats and Republicans are remotely the same right now, and you’ve got the perfect storm for yet another minority-rule electoral disaster.

On multiple fronts, the COVID-19 pandemic scares the ever-loving shit out of me and has ground my nerves down to nothing but frayed burnt ends.

I spent the first week and a half of the shutdown clashing on Twitter with #NeverBiden Bernie Bros, MAGA bots, anyone that tried to downplay President Fuck Nugget’s atrocious botching of our response to the virus, etc.

When I wasn’t rooting around for trolls, BBC’s coverage of the pandemic showed me the colossal scores of death and suffering around the planet. I learned about the crisis in Italy. I watched Indian day-workers walk hundreds of miles back to their villages with nothing in their pockets. I shuttered as more truck-loads of bodies were loaded up in refrigerated cabs in Queens, and later again in Phoenix, Miami, Oklahoma City, Atlanta.

I kept thinking why in the living hell did I not go out and see my friends more often before this whole Kobayashi Maru of a year erupted in our faces.

So, as some folks drowned their boredom in Animal Crossing memes and Tiger King marathons before moving on to endless TikToks and The Last Dance and a myriad of other mind-numbing content, I continued working as if everything was the same while being reminded every waking moment of my life that things were most definitely NOT the same, nor did it ever feel like we would get back to where we were pre-COVID. I finally got some sports back, but by then it was too late to bring me more than fleeting relief.

My long-term relief involved eating a steady diet of microwaved homemade nachos, pizza, burgers, any high-carb no-vegetable smorgasbord of foods listed under the “DO NOT EAT” section of diabetic starter guides your doctor hands you when you’re first diagnosed.

Then, my family purchased an air fryer, and we began loading up on chicken tenders and mozzarella sticks, and one time some broccoli. I’ve gone from watching my weight and walking nonstop during my lunch breaks at my office two years ago to now working out of our guest bedroom-turned-my-permanent-office, my only periods of rest spent smashed under the covers on a recliner with a bowl of Chinese food watching Ghost Adventures, John Oliver, Desus and Mero, Trevor Noah or something in between.

I’m nowhere near where I want to be.

I wanted so desperately to be hired as the play-by-play guy for one of the infinite number of Minor League clubs currently facing impending doom after losing their entire 2020 season. Three years since my journey to that small-town Single-A club and I still can’t get the job I studied for throughout college. A career I saddled myself in thousands of dollars of debt trying to qualify for. The field for which I sacrificed a large chunk of my social life. A feckless pursuit of an unattainable dream that at the time felt more like an eventuality than a hope against hope.

But none of that matters now.

This may be the understatement of the decade, so forgive me for being Captain Obvious here. When you watch the world sputter to a grinding halt and see your country experiencing societal upheaval and fascist takeovers reserved for CNN special reports and PBS documentaries, your priorities change. You understand that things you thought were of the highest importance really weren’t, disaster movie mythos happens in reality all the time, and that above all, you merely inherit your life and your name.

Everything you truly desire, loathe, beseech, discard, hold dearest in your heart and contemplate raptly in your mind comprise your soul, guide your movements, deliver you to your ultimate purpose. Your environment shapes you into your ultimate true form. And while these things all make up who I am, they ultimately cannot replace the purpose of my name. It’s the first thing we learn about ourselves when we can hold memories of longer than two milliseconds. It’s how our parents, grandparents, teachers, adults, cousins, friends, enemies, all know us. It’s the most basic aspect of one’s life but one for which we’re remembered long after our actions.

And if you’re worth but a mere iota of that name, you use it to combat the ills of our world. You voice your objections to tyranny, stand in the face of angry oppressive mobs seeking to put you and everyone you love behind bars or in a mass grave for being born under a certain creed, religion, skin tone, what have you. If men like John Lewis put themselves in front of police batons only for their skulls to be caved in, why can’t we all have the balls to stand by what we believe?

I’m the only person I know on Earth with my specific name. I could share it with a long-lost 3rd cousin somewhere in Ukraine for all I know but as long as I’ve lived, it’s been mine, no other’s. The single-most important possession I own. The first thing that makes me unique.

So, with that in mind, allow me to re-introduce myself…

Hi, I’m [Harm to Ongoing Matter].

Yes, I know, weak sauce. I hooked you in and made you think you were gonna learn my “real name” right? This was all just an emotional ploy to get the currently zero readers of this blog to read 1,000 words of rage-fueled prose.

I wish this were an elaborate troll job. Sadly, it’s the reality of living in a world where corporations have so much power over their employees’ lives that said worker bee feels it’s too risky to openly voice their anger at fascists and their enablers, be they Republicans or Democrats or any other political party under the sun, to avoid being deemed “intolerant” of certain worldviews by HR.

So, in essence, your employer will be cool with you “joining the conversation” and writing about how scared you may be but will hope and expect that you conclude with some trite kumbaya-Why-Can’t-We-Be-Friends non-messages, nothing with any meaningful value or weight.

Though my current company is overseas in a different part of the world, I am too afraid to risk my 401(k) and steady low-paying full-time job in the middle of a pandemic which is not only causing waves of mini-genocides within our communities, but also an economic genocide of our job market.

So, now you know. I’m angry, wanting to tell you WHO I REALLY AM without hiding behind the fake name I came up with in about two seconds before launching this blog, but far too fearful to suffer the consequences of corporate respectability politics. You know, the same respectability politics that the current administration and its fiendish acolytes use to justify their incredible displays of racism they spew on the regular!

So, since I can’t tell you my name, I will tell you true facts about my life.

I was born 28 years ago in a Chicagoland suburb you’ve probably never heard of. I lived there for 9 years before moving to Atlanta. Heartbroken, I swore to myself that I would never be anything but a proud Chicagoan, the contrarian to all my redneck Georgia peers who had the nerve to be born in a state where slavery once existed (again, I was 9).

In somewhat militant fashion, I kept a contemptuous façade for my new home: puny, insignificant, a mere blip on the map that could never compare to my City of Broad Shoulders (and systemic racism, and eight-month Hoth winters).

By junior year of high school, I came to understand that my life was in Atlanta, my friends and loved ones only a few miles down the road and not whole states away.

Don’t get me wrong – culturally, I am SOOO damn Chicago to near parody, especially with sports and politics. But if you dropped me in the middle of Michigan Avenue with no phone and a map, I’d be as familiar with my hometown as a Trump doing actual work.

I spent four years at Georgia State University studying to be a journalist, landing a job at a radio station that laid off its whole workforce ten days after I received my diploma.

I went to the Carolina League to work for a team, developed a crush for a woman I convinced myself was my soulmate, watched her ultimately discover her actual soulmate, and navigated around a selfish, awkward, childish minefield of my own making. It was my true education, the one most get when they go out-of-state for school.

Thanks to the way things ended with the team, I missed the chance to see my Cubs win the World Series in person. Not a bad tradeoff in the end since I watched that surreal and now-ancient-feeling moment with my mother and father, the two people I love more than anything on this planet.

And then, well, you know…

That election crushed me. I’m not over it. I’ve been angry, FURIOUS, dispirited by the lack of accountability Trump is held to on a daily basis. Other people can live their daily lives without dwelling too much on the circus, but I can’t. I can thank the 2000 election for this political hypersensitivity.

The first winner-by-minority-rule contest of the modern day devastated my mom and dad. They’d lived through Nixon and Reagan just to see yet another GOP blowhard pandering to the religious right bumble into the Oval with calamitous, yet predictable results.

When Barack Obama became president, it truly felt like the dawn of a new day. Like we were going to be South Africa post-Mandela. Blinded by my upper-middle class childhood atop my privileged perch from the first-world, I quickly realized that Mandela’s victory didn’t fix South Africa. And by no means did Obama’s election deliver us to a post-racial utopia a la Star Trek and “I Have A Dream”.

Instead, we got 1985 with Biff as mayor – only our Biff is somehow more petulant, disgusting, and even less caring of the people he rules over.

And we’ve yet to find our Marty McFly.

Some still think Bernie Sanders, perhaps the Doc Brown of this metaphor, should be the nominee.

I’d have rather seen Elizabeth Warren head the ticket as opposed to the old white guy best known for being friends with our first black president (and also his VP I guess). But having been in politics since 1973, Vice President Joe Biden is also famous for lending a hand in the passing of some problematic criminal justice bills, overseeing the Anita Hill fiasco, weirdly massaging women or smelling their hair…

Then again, Bernie – the other old white guy left in the Democratic field – refused to walk back his over simplistic analysis of Fidel Castro’s “universal education program” (A.K.A. government-mandated propaganda) at the beginning of the Cuban Revolution for some idiotic reason because 2020. So, while remaining ideologically more palatable with far less of a demerit-filled legislative record, Bernie immediately scared away any sane DNC party officials wanting to win back Florida. Unfortunately, it’s now down to an old out-of-touch despot-in-waiting egomaniacal orange man or a well-meaning less out-of-touch old white man with 99.9% less fascist intentions.

To Joe’s credit, his platform is the most progressive since FDR’s, and he’s managed to convince a swathe of conservatives and right-leaning moderates that the greasy Kentucky-fried trust-fund-baby-in-chief indeed does not, nor will he ever, care about them, their well-being or even if they’re still breathing or taking corona-dirt naps.

He’s proven that he can give a presidential address, and with his softening stances on bankruptcy laws and marijuana over time, Biden has shown the capacity to at least hear the progressive movement out. Will he budge on healthcare? Probably not, and even if he does, he sure as hell won’t say so publicly until after he takes the oath of office (G-d willing).

So now, on the precipice of the destruction of everything I hold dear in chaotically desperate hope of something to save our souls, I’m mostly tense. My back is killing me. My shoulders are rounded, my neck knotted worse than a giant ballpark pretzel.

I’m struggling to find my purpose, a captive viewer to an unyielding and catastrophic news cycle, no light shining a path towards more than sheltered existence. The election will either be the worst day of my life, or the day the sun rises for the first time since we had a black president. Until then, I can only ruminate and obsessively worry about the outcome.

As a rule, I’m not claustrophobic. The last however goddamn months it’s been might have changed that. So, as long as I’m still on this planet drawing breath, I choose to be myself, TRULY unapologetically…but in a guarded manner from a safe distance.

In my earlier draft, I originally promised to write something slightly more uplifting after this post. But let’s be real here. There’s next to nothing positive enough to outweigh the thick and heavy blackness enveloping our societal psyche at the moment. It’s all dark as fuck.

Instead, let’s just play it by ear. Stay safe, and for the love of G-d wear a mask.

Categories
Blogs Coronavirus Politics

No Justice, No Peace

When will this scene go away? (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

G-d damn it.

G-d damn all of it.

It’s not enough that the country faces a highly infectious respiratory virus without effective treatments or a vaccine.

It’s not enough that the unemployment figures continue to skyrocket in spite of callous state governors re-opening businesses against all recommendations from infectious disease experts.

It’s not enough to have COVID-19 be an everyday killer within minority communities.

It’s not enough that George Floyd died at the hands of a racist.

It’s not enough that the sack of pompous shit in the Oval Office laughs at American journalists being laid off, or that he accuses a man of murder to the dismay of the alleged murder victim’s widower.

It’s not enough. Any of it. And it’s fucking infuriating beyond belief.

When scores of white people march the streets protesting the tyranny of state governments protecting their communities from being obliterated by the coronavirus, they’re met peacefully by health care workers standing stoically in the face of batshit conspiratorial charges and insanity, and state capitol police officers taking up-close-and-personal vitriol by men with assault rifles without moving so much as an inch.

When unarmed black people protest the unlawful murder of a black man at the hands of the police, as has happened time and again over the past 10 years, they’re shot with rubber bullets and tear gas. They’re forced to not only disperse, but are violently assaulted by the same cabal of murderers that started this whole fucking nightmare.

Meanwhile, senators caught profiting off of insider information are essentially set free before a charge can be laid by the President’s new law firm, the Justice Department. An organization run by a man who openly admitted that the victors can rewrite history to gloss over the acquittal of a friend to the President even after said friend plead guilty to charges of lying to the FBI. A man who believes that the President can apparently do fuck all without so much as facing a congressional committee.

A man who can tweet utter bullshit at will because Twitter is too chickenshit to exercise its right as a private company to consign Orange Hitler’s Twitter account to the same fate as the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos and Alex Jones.

Tara Reade can lie about Joe Biden assaulting her and make him look like a potentially unfit candidate for the White House. Donald Trump can lie about hydroxychloroquine’s super-effective treatment of COVID-19 and receive one little “this is actual fake news” warning label after lying on Twitter for a decade and be given credibility when the press constantly asks if Trump has a point when sharing his crackpot musings because, you know, “objectivity”.

There comes a time when the needs of the many has to outweigh the needs of the few.

In America, the needs of the few have consistently outweighed the needs of everyday citizens seeking the preposterous and antiquated American Dream.

Now, it’s only a question of if this decades-old ailment will kill the country before COVID does.

Categories
Blogs

Is There Anybody Out There?

Remember outside?

Hey.

Are you alive out there?

No, really, did you make it? Are you on the other side or are you still on this plain of existence?

Am I alive?

I don’t really know.

Does simmering hatred-fueled rage over current affairs conjoined with the lack of professional sports count as “living”?

I guess in the biological sense, I’m alive. Breathing. Creating living cells and discarding dead ones.

My mitochondria should be all good.

Who the fuck knows, honestly?

Working from home differs greatly from being around your coworkers every day, seeing their faces, pining lustfully after the ones you think are cute, would make fun sleepover buddies…

Fuck, that was gross. Sorry. It’s this quarantine. Porn is basically an every-other-week ritual at this point.

In fact, so many people on Twitter have broadcast their thirst through their biggest platforms. Look no further than self-styled flower child/advanced being Caroline Calloway. Who? Exactly.

Don’t get me wrong, Calloway makes for fun following on social media. But like every other “star” that superficially invented their fame out of thin air using Instagram, Twitter, Vine (R.I.P.) or YouTube, she peskily, if not chaotically, commands your attention – you MUST know who she is.

That’s one lesson I’ve re-learned during this pandemic.

People don’t seem to give a shit about substance as long as you’re engaging The Consumer. It’s the inane drivel marketing aficionados and P.R. jagoffs blithely blurt out like second nature, easier than breathing, more effortless than sleeping. It’s corporate doublespeak elucidating how the world really works to Future Big Deals, be they influencer or necromancer, politician or celebrity (sometimes both), saint or Satan.

Why else does the world’s saddest self-pity tour continue pile driving our zombified corpse of a nation into our latest death spiral? Americans bore easier than any other industrial nation. Years of malnutrition, underpayment, under education, and celebrification metastasized into the living breathing cancer of Trumpism.

This new Astro-Turf Populism with heavy shades of Fascism infiltrated the U.S. through bullshit Fox “News” attack ads—I mean news reports, conservative-talk noise pollution, and of course Citizens United rendering political finance laws into mere words on a yellowed scrap of parchment.

The incessant word games playing out on network news and media outlets ad nauseum asking us whether a serial liar indeed did lie today distract us from actual issues. All of the environmental regulatory rollbacks undoing decades of the E.P.A.’s work. The Justice Department quietly seizing the power to determine whether naturalized immigrants, a.k.a. citizens, are actually citizens. Meaningful, consequential, society-altering decisions impacting each and every one of us right this minute.

So, I ask you once again, are you alive?

Is anybody truly out there?

I’m sending out an S.O.S.

Categories
Blogs Politics The Game of Life

Talk Is Cheap

A mass grave for unclaimed victims of COVID-19 on Hart Island in the Bronx. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

It’s happening again. Have you noticed? It’s the same as always, rote for all disasters of the last 20-25 years. Ordinary people being lauded for their courage and strength, their grace under fire, their cool-headedness, bravery, and grit.

The Heroes.

When a beautiful Tuesday morning in September turned into the single-worst act of brutality in American history, news anchors and politicians alike glorified the brave men and women who answered the call in New York and DC that day. Always, without fail, President Bush praised the first responders of 9/11 like mythic gods, patron saints of the dedicated worker, willing to put their lives on the line to ensure the safety of our great nation, amongst other flowery designations to comfort the masses.

For all the praise they were given, these first responders spent the following years dying of terrifying cancers with next to no assistance from the same government officials who shamelessly rode the memories of their deaths to re-election. The Heroes were great as political props, just not priority enough to cover their chemo, bills, and funerals.

The victims on the planes received the same lionization. Heroes, all of them, simply because terrorists hijacked their flights and plowed them into three buildings. The deification of these ordinary travelers only grew as time moved forward to the point where now one is simply un-American if they dare mention 9/11 without first mentioning those brave Heroes or their families.

For the past three weeks, we’ve heard pundits, celebrities, experts, senators, house reps, the President praise the doctors and nurses on the front lines, highlighting their heroism with vaunted vigor and wonder.

Included on this list of titans are the “essential workers” – grocery store clerks, garbage collectors, postal workers, restaurant staff, the WWE, Florida lifeguards, moronic protestors fighting for the right to die of COVID-19…

OK, not so much the latter group but if you’re paying attention, you understand the ongoing theme.

It’s all words and no action.

In Canada, people out of work receive $2,000 a month from the government. In the United Kingdom, employers are providing 80% of furloughed workers’ salaries.

Here, we’re waiting for the dipshit in charge to sign his fucking name on the memo lines of our one-time $1,200 “stimulus” checks. While Canadians and Britons have state-covered health insurance and some sort of access to testing, we’re routinely lied to by our governors, various Trump apologists, and the asshole himself that the worst is behind us and we’re near ready to re-open the country.

Of course, this is because talk is cheap. One can say whatever they please without need to bend over and lift up the downtrodden from their knees.

Give the Democrats some credit. At least they fought the jackals in the Senate over guarantees that Americans would at least get their pittance checks while also preventing the Banana Republicans from throwing money into the bank accounts of Fortune 500 firms without congressional oversight. Ultimately, this fight was for naught since Trump fired the person put in charge to oversee said congressional oversight mechanism, but then again would you expect anything less from Moscow Mitch and his gaggle of merry con-men?

My mother works at an organic grocery store. She’s due back in about a week where she will face the general public in a state where there are more unemployment claims than anywhere else in the country. People like my mother will put themselves before single parents devoid of any other choices but to drag around their petri-dish toddlers with them while scoping the aisles for colloidal silver and vitamin C. Thankfully, the store gives each employee masks and gloves for protection. But they won’t give them hazard pay or a raise, nor will they limit the number of shoppers allowed within the store. Combine these listless precautions with the utter stupidity of Americans blocking hospital entrances to protest safety measures enacted by their respective governors, and you see the cracks within the system exposed.

In a land where we pay more money for health insurance than any other nation by an astronomical margin, businesses refuse to bump up salaries for the people keeping their lights on, forcing their underlings to risk life and limb for the benefit of the economy. Never mind that economies don’t function when consumers are sick or dead, it’s crucial – nay, chief to saving us and our way of life. Send the cannon fodder to the front of the regiment as a mighty shield against the destruction of capitalism.

In a perfect world, we’d be more concerned about the wellbeing of our families and neighbors. We’d cast aside our smocks, lay down our tools, remove our hands from keyboards, keep ourselves in isolation until such point that the experts agree life can resume as before.

Instead, we the people are asked by the wealthy few who live not in fear of missing meals or mortgage payments to work without guaranteed sick leave, medical coverage, wage hikes, or rent freezes.

After all, a working-class Hero is something to be – in name only, but not in treatment. Hell, if you’re lucky, they’ll thank you for the sacrifice you’ll make.

Immortality awaits, future brave souls of yesteryear.

Categories
Baseball Blogs Sports

2020 Chicago Cubs Preview: Will They Or Won’t They (Suck)?

HOLY SHIT, it’s NOT POLITICS!
AND, a Marquee that WORKS!

Are the Cubs going to be good this year?

Honestly, I’m asking all six of you, dear readers. I’m perplexed as to where the floor and ceiling sits for this 2020 iteration.

If you’d told me that the Ricketts were gonna cry living-on-the-street poor exactly one year after doing literally the same goddamn thing the previous winter, I’d have naively told you “Nuh-uh, these guys?! They’re a bit cheap lately, but they’re not Tribune cheap AND stupid!”

That statement would have aged so well – like a fine wine in a rotten cask surrounded by cow shit in the middle of an Indiana landfill.

Where was I? Ah, right, does this team suck or not?

Welp, let’s look at the “moves” they made this offseason.

Gone are Pedro Strop, Brandon Kintzler, Steve Cishek, Cole Hamels, five weeks of Derek Holland, two minutes of David Phelps, a literal cup of tea with Tony Barnette, Ben Zobrist’s reanimated corpse, and a wife-beating bag of stale toenail clippings in Addison Russell, whom the Cubs inexplicably paid $3.4 million for a grand total of 82 games, a whopping .237/.308/.391 line, 9 home runs, and 23 RBI. Oh, but at least he had a .995 fielding percentage in 63 games at second base. Useful!

Did I mention that they also let Nick Castellanos, their best trade-deadline pickup since arguably Aramis Ramirez, sign with a division rival despite said pickup dragging out his free agency in the hopes that the team would magically clear enough payroll to re-sign him? Because that happened, too.

How did the Cubs combat these significant losses in the lineup and bullpen, you ask?

They didn’t.

Their most noteworthy additions of the offseason were a cadre of camp invitations for mostly minor league fodder. Included in this group are an over-the-hill and so far uninspiring Jason Kipnis, and Brandon Morrow – the team’s former closer who has battled seemingly every ailment but the coronavirus.

Their official acquisitions this year include free agent signees the likes of formerly-reliable-Brewers-reliever-turned-walking-fucksplosion Jeremy Jeffress, a formerly well-established light-hitting backup outfielder who sat out all of 2019 recovering from a catastrophic knee injury in Steven Souza Jr., a career meh guy consigned to the Canadian dustbin of forgotten baseball in Ryan Tepera, and the 2019 Braves’ worst reliever with a minimum of 25 appearances, Dan Winkler.

While the Yankees snagged Gerrit Cole, the Angels landed Anthony Rendon, and the Dodgers acquired Mookie Betts, the Cubs traded for a guy who hasn’t pitched in the Majors for three years.

The main storyline for the Cubs this offseason concerned their apparently fractured relationship with former MVP Kris Bryant, inspiring numerous think pieces about the Cubs’ wish to shed his contract before attempting to negotiate with his agent, part-time player rep and full-time hijacker of free agency Scott Boras. Also, the team was allegedly looking to ship out Willson Contreras for reasons probably involving some analytical bullshit about pitch framing or G-d knows what.

Add first-time manager, 2016 folk hero, and former Dancing With The Stars’ contestant David Ross to the mix, paired with the team’s shiny brandy-dandy new specially-dedicated and unviewable TV network, and voila!
*chef kisses*

If I had to summarize my thoughts in one GIF, it’d be this;

After a season in which the team failed to make the playoffs for the first time in 5 years due to injuries and inconsistency from veterans and rookies alike, culminating in an insultingly atrocious, fate-sealing 9-game losing streak in the final week of play, you’d like to see a little bit more effort out of the front office than just some failed trade negotiations, confused shrugs, and a bunch of show-me deals to guys with next to no proven track record of being anything useful for a playoff-caliber team.

For all the confidence the Cubs are exuding with their “core” of guys from 2016 (some of whom haven’t performed at acceptable standards since that magical season), the physical makeup of this group elicits more panicked reservation than joyful spring-time optimism.

Call me fairweather, but this team ceased being enjoyable when Joe Maddon began mailing in each season starting in the first half of 2017. In the meantime, we’ve watched the Dodgers own/waste the NL Pennant two years in a row, and our former bench coach outfox the trashcan-banging scoundrels from Houston for DC’s first world title in 95 years and whatever the fuck this was:

“A WHOLE NEW WORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRLD” (Sorry, politics, I know but seriously, da fuq Kurt Suzuki?)

And yet, the team is in great spirits and on a “Yes We Can” kick that admittedly has me feeling somewhat…confident? Maybe confident isn’t the word. Upbeat-ish, fanciful, eager even…?

I can’t at all explain why on Earth I have anything but a semblance of utterly ball-breaking pessimism. Perhaps it’s Rossy’s confidence in his guys. Maybe it’s Yu Darvish looking like the dude we shelled out $126 million for two years ago. I haven’t the faintest idea why I want to see this team after the past three clusterfucks of lost seasons.

If I’m being honest, maybe it’s my love of this stupid old game. Brushing aside the insufferable legion of REAL AMURICANS tersely enforcing their unwritten rules and purist proclivities upon young, mostly non-white players for allegedly “disrespecting the game”, baseball remains my sun, moon, and stars.

I’ve been hooked since the home run derby of 1998. The Steroid Era was a blast (ba-dum tssssss), and I frankly believe McGwire, Clemens, and my all-time favorite Cub Sammy Sosa deserve enshrinement in Cooperstown. But thanks to the standard-bearers of the BBWAA, only the most deserving men of conviction can be graced with a plaque at the museum in a town no-one would otherwise remember.

And though the current out-of-touch corporate attorney running MLB continues treating the sport, its fans, and players like simpletons oblivious to the grander scheme of Making Baseball Great Again or whatever the hell, I remain firmly invested, ready to drudge through the full marathon of the regular season.

Plus, I’m ultra-competitive, obnoxiously clutching to the chip on my shoulder forged through years of futility and pure suckage. I’m watching this team no matter how frustrating and detestable the season.

If the 2020 Cubs have anything going for them, they sit in a division without a clear-cut frontrunner. Sure, the defending-champion Cardinals feature a mostly-returning group of talented young pitching and Paul Goldschmidt at first, but Yadier Molina is another year older, Paul DeJong remains somewhat of an unknown in terms of what to expect from him production-wise, and if not for an utter collapse from the Cubs, they may not have won the division at all. Meanwhile, the Brewers have virtually no starting rotation, not much of a bullpen to write home about, and a team that will heavily rely on the success and/or failure of Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain, the latter of whom played most of 2019 on a bum knee and ankle. And the Pirates are…well, really bad.

The power vacuum atop the NL Central culls the field down to a team of upstarts in the Cincinnati Reds boasting a stacked lineup and interesting group of starters and relievers, and the 2016 World Champion Chicago Cubs.

Looking at both rosters, the Cubs look like the clear favorite. 9 players from that 2016 group remain key contributors, not to mention a Craig Kimbrel who will have a full spring training under his belt, a possibly improved Yu Darvish, and some young arms, like Rowan Wick and Kyle Ryan, whom made a decent impression on former skipper Joe Maddon last year to earn late-game appearances in set-up roles.

However, this is also the same Cubs team that self-destructed down the stretch. Plus, their dud of an offseason leaves them with little to no depth behind key positions in the event of injuries or subpar play.

Long story short, the Cubs could foreseeably win the division. Given recent history though, this team doesn’t look like it has what it takes to survive for 162 games and then push through the potential likes of Washington, Atlanta, or L.A. not to mention the wide-open American League.

As always, the future isn’t written. No evidence suggests that the Cubs face a cataclysmic season, but you won’t see me planning ticker-tape parades down Michigan Avenue anytime soon.

Categories
Blogs The Game of Life

Well, fuck.

I figured I’d be at least 63 before I’d be writing about the passing of this man. Un-fucking-real.

This is bizarre. I mean, this is fucking surreal.

There’s certain moments in the course of history that stop you dead in your tracks, when you just don’t know exactly how to react. Usually, it’s monumental tragedies. I can recall only one time I was stunned by something joyful – 2010 Stanley Cup Final, Patrick Kane’s game-winning goal in double overtime in Philadelphia. And that was honestly one of the last times I was sent into jaw-dropping silence. That was 10 years ago.

I wish that I was stunned into happiness instead of what I felt yesterday.

I was watching a YouTube video on my phone when my best friend called. I pick up the phone, say hello (as you do), and the conversation goes like this:

“Kobe’s dead.”

“What?”

“Kobe is dead”

**long pause**

“Kobe BRYANT?!”

“Dude, what other Kobe is there?!”

Growing up a rabid Chicago-sports partisan, I was sort of raised to look down on certain players and teams. Michael Jordan was the greatest player of all time. Anyone who acted like or maybe even claimed they were better was automatically on my parents’ shit-list. And in turn, they were on mine.

Kobe was one such player.

Of course, there were the other issues. The so-called diva personality, the purported me-first attitude, the cockiness, brashness…

And then of course the victories. All of those championships. Never ever losing. Seemingly always on SportsCenter celebrating another title.

In American sports, and perhaps this is the same across the globe, if you see someone’s face too often and they’re not on “your team”, you begin to resent the prick. See? Not “the guy,” “the dude…” It’s immediately more hostile: “prick”, “fuckhead”, “asshat”, “asshole”, “bag of diseased dicks…” OK, that last one may just be me. But nonetheless, that’s the type of visceral reaction you tend to have towards famous people you don’t like. And then heaven forbid something happens off the field/court/ice/the arena to make said person look like a genuine piece of shit, and then your contempt can turn into straight-up hatred.

Of course, that was the infamous rape story back in the early 2000’s. And yes, it was never proven 100% for sure that Kobe did such a thing.

But tell that to my 12-year-old self. And the teenager/young adult in the years following.

If I’m being completely honest, I don’t know how much I really like him even now.

But hearing other people laud and praise him, grieve his loss, remember him so fondly, coupled with distant footage of a burning helicopter and bunches of first responders wearing an eerily similar shade of yellow Bryant sported as a Laker for 20 years…

The sadness begins to consume you. The emotion overtakes you, immersing you in grief not so much for the man himself but for the people who adore him.

Maybe it’s just my empathy. I’ve always been pretty empathetic.

When tragedy strikes, I tend to drown in dread, especially with truly upsetting moments in history the likes of 9/11, the Challenger disaster, Hurricane Katrina, etc.

I hate suffering. And really, who enjoys suffering? Like watching people be wiped out of existence, or being subjected to the harshest of humanity’s darkness. Perhaps a sociopath.

In particular, I hate tragedy. I hate when bad things happen to undeserving people. Kobe Bryant was no saint, but to die right after the birth of his fourth daughter at only 41, merely beginning his post-sports life, it’s just tragic. Men like Trump can continue their miserable existences doing nothing but ruining the lives of countless millions, but a guy like Kobe can’t fly his kid to her basketball game in his helicopter without it falling out of the damn sky.

At 41.

I could look like a massive douche for writing about a guy who I honestly didn’t like all that much.

But I only truly disliked Kobe the player. I didn’t know enough about Kobe the man, the father, the mortal flesh-and-blood human being to have an actual facts-based opinion on him.

I do know that no one should have their life cut so violently short. Certainly not along with his 13-year-old daughter, leaving his wife and three other children behind while ALSO devastating two other families that we know of.

As of this writing, three of the nine total victims are yet to be identified. I pray to G-d those others weren’t Gianna Bryant’s teammates.

No matter how you look at it, this is devastating.

I only hope that in some way, any possible way, some good will come out of this. I don’t have a single idea what type of good you could get from such heartbreak, but hopefully it’s anything.

Even if it’s something as simple as for one day at least, everyone appreciates their loved ones a little bit more, hugs their kids and spouses tighter, spends time with the people that matter.

In the end, that’s what we all want.

Rest in peace, Kobe and Gianna Bryant, Christine Mauser, John, Keri, and Alyssa Altobelli, and the yet-to-be-named others lost. And condolences to their families, friends, fans, really everyone who’s been touched by this horrifying final chapter for the lives ended far too soon.

Categories
Baseball Blogs Politics

Cheater’s Proof

Former Astros’ Manager A.J. Hinch, likely saying how much his team is TOTALLY not cheating right now…

Reading Bernie Twitter is like trying to pass a kidney stone simultaneously through your dick and asshole. It’s the equivalent of being diagnosed with lung cancer, liver cancer, anal cancer, and brain cancer all at once.

It’s the lone reason I will not vote for Bernie Sanders unless I am compelled to do so in the general election.

The Democratic debates have been annoying to watch, but not for the reasons the pundits will tell you, things along the lines of “tHeY dOnT HaVe A mEsSaGe” or “ThEy CaNt cOnNeCt wItH tHe PeOpLe” or whatever bullshit double-standard nonsense they’ll say about the people who are acknowledging reality right now.

It’s because literally every question asked is a GOP talking point designed seemingly to make every answer disappointing, out-of-touch, or trivial. I mean, they literally asked Bernie how he could carry out his Medicare For All plan “without bankrupting America”.

AS IF THE CURRENT $23,169,812,958,839 NATIONAL DEBT ISN’T BANKRUPTING AMERICA RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

If you ask some folks, this is the face of evil.
A former Republican, turned into a progressive after actually, you know, reading insurance cases. PURE EVIL.

It’s this type of questioning that discredits every word a Democrat can say. While Orange Hitler is braying about flushing toilets and discussing light bulbs for some reason to his mouth-breathing fan base at his Nazi Cosplay Rallies, the media is holding Dems to the fire as if they’re the REAL arsonists. They’re treating the Democrats like they were the fucks who spent us into the recession, gutted our social services, and took a fat shit on the working class of this country. Because, you know, Democrats had soooo much control over State legislatures over the past 10 years. It’s not like the 2018 election was historic for the amount of State houses the Dems flipped or whatever derrrr MEDICARE FOR ALL IS SOCIALISMSISMS YOU FUCKIN SNOWFLAKE COMMIE FUX!!!

It’s this type of serious line of questioning for the sake of “being responsible” that makes Trump able to do whatever he fucking wants.

These moderators on these tone-deaf networks refuse to flat out call the piece of shit out on his shitbaggery, and thus make the Dems look like hapless children tripping all over their own feet.

Meanwhile, the Senate is holding a trial over whether Donald Trump withheld congressionally-approved military aid from a key ally in exchange for alleged proof of crimes committed by his “likely” opponent, Joe Biden. Something that has been confirmed by the unending amount of evidence piling up by the day.

None of this actually matters in our current society, of course. The Republicans dearly want to hang on to their power in the Senate and White House so that they can continue to litter the judicial system with pro-corporation, pro-worker suppression, pro-life, gay-hating sycophants with lifetime appointments and ruin people’s lives long after these pre-historic mudfuckers finally shit out their last breaths. They will tell you that this is all to help save America from the liberals, but it’s really to just kill off those who would use their voting rights to send these craven, corrupt vultures packing.

Behold, what really happens when a turtle interacts with toxic waste.
Cowabunga, dudes.

Conservatism once used to allegedly mean more than just propping up the status quo and sucking the life out of the many to sustain the vampiric few. But those days are ancient history. We now live in a world where human beings can inflict maximum carnage on the most amount of people without even using a lethal weapon. They just need to purge voting rolls, pass a couple poison pills disguised as legislation, and cut every welfare program humanly possible, and an entire generation gets pummeled out of existence.

No accountability, no repercussions, no problem.

This is unless you happen to be a GM or manager connected to the Houston Astros right now.

Ironically, Major League Baseball seems to have the moral high ground on our politicians (stop laughing it’s actually true). The league that has in the past tacitly approved of gambling, whoring around and the occasional performance-enhancing  drug (steroids and cocaine among a litany of others) dropped the sports equivalent of an atomic bomb on Houston for using surprisingly brilliant technologies to steal signs – mostly pitch calls – over the course of their 2017 World Series championship season and beyond. Everything from wearing buttons that would buzz if the opposing pitcher was throwing a fastball, etc, to using cameras to look at the catcher’s hands and then either whistle or bang on trash cans to communicate what pitch was coming.

Not bad for a bunch of dumbass jocks, if you ask me. But it’s also very much cheating and very much wrong. I’ve seen a lot of Twitter experts profess their outrage over the fact that baseball is punishing something allegedly everyone does, with one Philadelphia sports radio caller to go so far as to say we would all be speaking Japanese if we didn’t steal signs in WWII.

Because knowing if Yu Darvish is going slider or changeup is apparently as important as defeating fascism.

So, yes, that comment would likely draw the statement, “Then WHY do you care if they cheat?!”

I mean, I’d like to have my baseball be a little more than just one team figuring out stupidly complex ways of stealing another team’s signs and therefore knowing everything that’s coming. If the other team tips their signs, then fair play. And if you steal signs from say the opposing dugout or third-base coach, that’s literally what I tried to do with my rec league teams. That’s gamesmanship. That’s trying to gain an upper hand, but it’s definitely within the rules of engagement.

Covering your body in bandages with little buzzers or whatever the fuck requires no skill, no patience, and is proof that your guys are so insecure about their skills that they have to game the system just to know if Sonny Gray is throwing a goddamn two-seamer.

Does this make me a crotchety old man? I don’t honestly give a single fuck if it does. But if you can’t play ball without needing to go all 007 on everyone’s unsuspecting asses, forgive me if I’m not impressed.

The same goes for that monstrosity staining the Oval Office with Cheeto dust and chicken grease.

If you can’t win an election without literally breaking the fucking law, maybe you shouldn’t be President in the first place.

Categories
New Year Resolution

New Year, New Decade, New Blog… Same Ol’ Me

This isn’t really supposed to mean anything but I guess this is prescient? Cogent? I don’t know…

I’m unsure how to begin this post, to be honest.

I’m trying to come off as philosophical yet impatient, to convey that I’m still stuck in neutral. Still trying to find my footing. It’s a little more than slightly obnoxious that at this point I’m still nowhere closer to achieving my goals than I was coming out of high school ten years ago.

If it were my choice, I would be writing a throwaway press release for one of the 160-odd MiLB franchises sprinkled across America. Instead, I’m writing to myself and the three or four people who’ll read this.

We’re facing a really tough time as a country. We resemble less the United States of America and more the not-so-long-dead fallen regimes of Franco’s Spain, Mussolini’s New Roman Empire, or Hitler’s Thousand-Year Reich.

All fascists, all dead.

And yet, 70 years since the first full year of the bloody conflict that resulted in the deaths of millions of men, women, and children – whole generations wiped out in little more than half a decade – we find multiple hosts of fascism scattered around the globe. If not fully fascist, they certainly don’t mind toeing the line between democracy and authoritative autocracy. The most agreed-upon culprits lie in Russia, Turkey, Brazil, and North Korea. But as more children are jailed on the southern border in remote tent cities awaiting a trial that is never coming, all for daring to flee their homelands riddled with their own caudillos, duces and führers, you can safely add the land of the free and home of the brave to the list.

Don’t be fooled. If it weren’t for the Constitution, America would be a theocratic hellhole with Donald Trump as its chief imbecile in charge. The man is goaded on by his cultist fan base and spineless corporate shills in suits and ties, braying about the ills of taxing their overlords to pay for socialized healthcare while allowing this tangerine republic to play G-d with the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans in need of help. Stacking the courts with rigid right-wing jurists seeking to put their puritan stamp on a nation designed to be immune to such short-sighted idiocy.

We are ten months away from the nexus point of American history. We’ll be voting whether to let a man who attempted to strong-arm the president of an ally into forking over non-existent dirt on a potential political opponent back into the White House. The implications meaning essentially that if he wins, the one tool the Constitution gives us to throw out a lying, self-serving scumbag from the White House will be rendered irrelevant. And all because too many Americans are willing to buy into a reality that never affords Republicans to be wrong, that Democrats are godless, angry socialists seeking to destroy America from within, that emaciated migrants are actually blood-thirsty invaders seeking to kill white Christian America with extreme prejudice. And the majority of Americans who can do something about it have been so disillusioned by years of do-nothing doorknobs in the capitol wasting their times in office consolidating the power of the ultra-rich at the expense of the people that actually keep America afloat.

And, in short, this constantly weighs on my mind. It’s no wonder I can’t get a job in baseball. Especially if it means that I once again wade into the middle of Trump Country for at least seven months of what will be the longest, angriest, foulest campaign cycle in American history. I just don’t think I can stomach another year surrounded by people I cannot stand with.

In private, I’ve said this a thousand times, but I’m laying it bare now. If at this point, the first of January in the year 2020, you are still a supporter of Trump, the GOP, and what they stand for, you either aren’t paying attention to what they’re doing or you simply don’t care.

That is a line in the sand I’m willing to draw for the next 12 months and beyond. It’s too important to stick with the party you’ve been told lobbies for “real Americans” over the course of your life. It’s time to put these lemmings into cages, lock them into prisons for poisoning the environment: natural and political alike.

If this sentiment leaves me stuck in neutral in terms of my career aspirations, so be it.

I recently heard on a news report that setting unrealistic New Year’s resolutions can be damaging to one’s psyche. So, instead of making a goal to lose 50 pounds by the time of one of my dearest friend’s wedding in May, I decided my resolution would be to not have a resolution. To live each day for that day. No, I’m not going kayaking in Yellowstone or traversing across the Himalayas anytime soon. But I’m not going to sit silent and watch bad people continue to do terrible things in the name of me and my family. If that means writing a blog that intersects between sports and politics, then that’s my battleground.

This is who I’ve been for the last decade anyhow.

Why should I change?

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