"Air" Heads

   Two nights ago Tim and I stayed at an Air BnB in northern Palm Springs, and the experience revealed the sometimes looming minor shadow side of the “sharing economy.” Oh, nothing was horribly horrible. It's just that the adventure of travel sometimes offers up realities that don’t quite square with  fantasies or expectations, not that one has many of those left at this late date.  

   The stand-alone rooms were in a house owned by a gay couple in middle age--let's call them Davis and Stoolan--and situated in a slightly seedy neighborhood of one-story stucco affairs with parched front yards. The tiny bedroom had an uncomfortable twin bed and a desk. Beyond a nicely-appointed bathroom was a cozy kitchen with a fridge and stainless steel sink. 

   D & S had peppered about the place three separate page-long typed instruction notes, in laminated sleeves. The couple also had made an effort to decorate the place—Bette Midler and Liza Minelli posters suggest their aesthetic—and while there was nothing particularly wrong with it, it all felt a bit… off.

   So was our visit, from the very start. From the kitchen, a door led to the back patio and swimming pool. Venetian blinds covered it. When Tim pulled a string to open them, the blinds came crashing to the floor, making an impressive racket. “Oops,” Tim said. 

   Soon a balding man appeared on the patio. When I opened the kitchen door, he introduced himself as Davis. I said, "We had a little trouble with the blinds.” 

   “I heard,” he said, but he was friendly and forgiving  as he set about repairing them. 

   As it happened, they were affixed to the door by magnetized brackets. This made it inevitable, it seemed to me, that they'd come undone and fall to the floor. But, Davis explained, “We didn’t want to drill into the door."

   Davis presently excused himself, and Tim and I prepared to head downtown for dinner. 

   The door to our little place had a complex-seeming electronic lock. You pressed the keypad code and then a button marked with the image of a combination lock. Tim had operated it when we'd arrived. (Technological items and I long ago reached a truce: I won't use them; they, in turn, won't break.) 

   Now, on his way out to warm up the car, Tim said, "Just push the lock when you leave." I gathered my stuff and, at the door, turned the little mechanism on the inside door knob to lock it. Tim had said to "push the lock." I figured I knew what he meant. Tim is Taiwan-born; having lived in the U.S. for a decade, he speaks excellent English. Only occasionally does he muddle a word or a phrase. He had said, "Push the lock"; I assumed he'd meant, "Turn the doorknob lock mechanism." 

   After dinner, Tim dropped me back at our Air BnB so he could drive to a pharmacy. At the door, I punched in the code, pressed the "lock" button, and attempted to turn the knob. It didn't budge. And the keypad contraption didn't make the electronic wheezing sound I remembered from when Tim had used it. I tried several times, with similar results. Finally, dazed, I called Tim; he said he’d return. 

   While I waited, a white Mercedes drifted into the driveway, and a stocky man emerged. He offered a wide, bright smile and extended his hand, introducing himself as Stoolan. There was about him something of the excitable canine.
   I explained my predicament with the lock. 

   “No problem!” Stoolan chirped, enthusiastically. “We’re on the same team!” I wondered if he was in corporate Human Resources.

   He punched in the code, pressed the "lock" button, and tried the door handle. It didn't budge, and I felt momentarily vindicated.

   “Ah—that’s what it is,” he said. Evidently, by turning the inner doorknob's lock mechanism I'd shut us out. When Tim had said, "Push the lock," he'd meant, "Push the lock"--that is, the keypad button with the "lock" image on it. That's how I was supposed to lock the door.
   I apologized to Stoolan, muttering darkly about my technological illiteracy. 

   "Hey," he cried. "No big deal! We're on the same team! I'll go around and let you in." 

   A few hours later, Tim and I readied ourselves for bed.

   That’s when Tim discovered, to his horror, the ants.

   Tim doesn’t like bugs. He doesn’t like insects. He doesn’t like anything that crawls. Many times I’ve used a piece of paper towel to carry a wall-hanging spider out of our home and into the great out of doors. In extreme cases I’ve killed the things, but I don’t like to. As much as Tim loathes creepy-crawly creatures, I don’t like to end a life. Everybody lives—that’s my motto.

   We spent a moment considering what to do. Bailing seemed an option. "We could find a hotel downtown," I ventured. Tim demurred: "I’m too tired.” I agreed. So we were faced with the ants.

   They crawled in a line across the kitchen counter, down the wall, along the floor, and into the bathroom. I discovered a can of Cutter, an insect repellent, on a shelf, and sprayed the ant conga line into silence. (Here the motto “everybody lives” takes a back seat to the one saying “my life will be easier if Tim is happy.”) Tim still found random ants crawling in various areas, to his consternation, and urged me to get my suitcase off the floor.

   Finally, frustrated, I called Stoolan. He answered right away, to his credit. When I mentioned the ants, he said, “Oh, yes, if you’d read the note you’d have seen that we have them in the hotter weather. There’s a can of Cutter on the shelf in the kitchen, and if you spray…” I said I’d found the can, and was spraying. He said that should do the trick, and added, for good measure, “If you’d read the note you would have known about that.” He said it cheerfully, of course—we’re on the same team!—but he was plainly ensuring that I knew the error was mine.

   After we hung up, I picked up a note from a small front-room table. At the top it read, “THIS IS A NO-SMOKING HOUSEHOLD.” Below that was a short disquisition on ants and hot weather (“We’ve had everything sprayed!”) which ended by directing the reader to the can of Cutter.
   I am not much of a direction-follower—I do not say that proudly—and so I realized that when I’d seen the no-smoking message in capital letters at the top of the page, earlier in the evening, I’d declined to read the rest of the note. Who knew that informational treasures therein lay buried?

   After a rocky night's sleep, we were glad to put the place in our rearview mirror the next morning. We considered whether or not to write a review on the Air BnB site, but it struck us that even a gently mixed one—especially if it mentioned ants—might elicit a return review from Davis and Stoolan detailing the Venetian blinds fiasco and our evident inability to read notes and follow simple directions. We declared it a wash, and decided not to write anything a'tall.

   The challenging thing about travel, of course, is also what makes it exciting: you never know what’s going to happen. Yes, certain general expectations would seem to apply to something like an Air BnB room—for one, you’d reasonably presume you'll not encounter ants—but that’s the joy of travel; you never really know. 

   Best of all, on a trip like ours, is the fact that however uncomfortable a place turns out to be, you know you’ll leave it the next morning. 

Day 1: Into the (Violent?) Unknown

   It's 7:14am on the day Tim and I begin our cross-country drive en route to settling in central Florida, where Tim's attending a graduate-school program. He's on our sofa, tapping away at his laptop, and here I am on mine. It struck me that it might be a nice idea to keep a blog of the trip, though I don't know if I can commit to daily entries--or any at all, after this one.  

   The day outside is chilly, the sky pewter. We're due to leave in an hour or so, and so I'll just offer a couple of thoughts before we depart...

   I've been harboring some fear about the mad country we’re about to wade into. To the media-saturated, America appears to be shredded by violence, polarization, political insanity. Some of the states we’ll pass through have lax gun laws; in Florida itself, properly-licensed people can openly tote pistols in holsters. 

   Don't get me wrong: I grew up shooting a .22 rifle with my brother and my father. I've enjoyed target practice at shooting ranges. If you box me as "anti-gun," you'll miss the point. I'm not anti-gun. I'm anti-people-hurting-Tim-and/or-me. Some parts of the country continue to be violently homophobic;  I fear we'll face the kinds of nastiness one reads about but largely has avoided, living in the blessedly open-minded Bay Area. 

   The country currently seems to be in such cultural and civic tatters that I even fear driving with a California license plate--likely a silly fear, but perhaps not entirely. There are enough mentally unhinged people, some of them armed with firepower and dim ideas about humanity and love, that it’s not entirely out of the question to be concerned, at the least.

   It is strange to feel this way at all. It’s been ages since I’ve taken car trips around the country, and maybe it was mere naivete that kept me, back then, from fearing the armed and unstable. It's possible that I simply understand the world differently now than I did then. 

   Perhaps, however, it's something more than that. Tim and I are asailing out into Trump-roiled waters. The President has given tacit and explicit permission, for those who hear the dog-whistle (and the audible shouting after the whistle stops sounding), to attack the “other.” Violence appears to be on the rise across the land, though that may be a mere dystopian mirage. We’re about to drive into a country far more divided than it was twenty-five years ago, when I'd take two-week vacation drives around the back roads of the South.

   That said, I also know that for every person who makes the news for shooting someone, there are three hundred-plus million people in this country not shooting anyone. There are loads of so-called “silent”—read: decent—people going about their daily business without attacking each other. It’s those people we’re mostly going to see, I suspect. Americans are by nature cheerful and optimistic, and even the current Age of Rage can’t wholly wipe that out. 

   Anyway, the truth of travel lies in the spirit of adventure, and part of that spirit lives in the joys--and fears--of anticipation. Tim and are leaving what we've known and where we've lived; it's natural we'd be, in some ways at least, circumspect about what we'll encounter.
   But we begin this trip with eyes and hearts open, willing to let the adventure teach us what it will.

   With that--off we go...

Steve Bannon, Button-Down Man

   Of all the strange news dribbling out of the White House this week--North Korea tensions ratcheting; chocolate cake and improved relations with China; Syrian missiles; a massive bomb dropped on an ISIS stronghold--perhaps the saddest, for the fashion-aware, is the diminished power and decided sidelining of ethno-nationalist troll Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump's Chief Strategist.
   Who cares about Steve's populist, nativist, apocalyptic, racist, democracy-loathing views? This is a man who can rock a button-down shirt!
   Yes, all males in Washington, D.C. wear button-down shirts, the de rigueur armor of the political man. But no one quite has the button-down panache of Steve Bannon, as the following images illustrate:
 
Young Steve, buttoned down but unafraid to reveal a little skin, the tease! 


Modern-day Steve flaunts a cool lavender button-down: 


Steve likes button-downs so much, sometimes he appears to wear two! 

(Don't be fooled: it's trompe--Trump?--l'oeil. In reality, it's a polo shirt under a button-down one. Fashion forward and winter-friendly! Who says Steve's not a genius?)

Steve often pairs the perennial button-down with a sort of faux-military great coat (Steve was in the Navy, so he's earned it!): 


Relaxing during down-time? Hey--Stay-At-Home-Steve knows there's no more comfortable garment than the good ol' button down shirt (work it, Daddy!): 


   The jury is out about whether Steve will be fired from his White House perch for fighting with Jared Kushner, the President's son-in-law. Our President is loyal to no one but his own shadow image of himself as a success, yet is possessed of an immeasurable capacity for unpredictability. So who knows what he'll do with Steve?
   Some commentators suggest that if Steve is pushed out of the White House, he'll return to Breibart.com, the sooper-dooper-right-wing website where he was an editor and stakeholder, and go after the Trump Administration. Again--who knows?
   All we know is this: wherever he goes, Steve Bannon is the button-down man with a button-down plan, and we can't wait to see him rock those button-downs till the day the Grim Reaper pulls him into the swamp.
   Go get 'em, Stevie!
 

An American Prayer for America and Americans

   Donald J. Trump is set to be sworn in as the forty-fifth president of the United States of America a mere four hours from when this is being written, and one is moved to offer some Good Thoughts for this (in)auspicious day:

   *May the new President lead with dignity, integrity, thoughtfulness, wisdom, and the betterment of all in mind.

   *May the new President come to understand that he is the President of all Americans, and our trusted servant, too, and may he therefore lead with a decent measure of humility.

   *May the President understand the weight and gravity of the office he is about to inhabit, and may he thus undertake his duties with modesty and grace.

   *May we Americans support and uphold the dignity of the office of the President, while, if guided to do so, mightily disagreeing with he who holds it.

   *May each of us Americans pledge to continue deepening our knowledge of this country's founding principles; may we thus better understand their purposes, respect their fragility, and fight to strengthen them.

   *May all of us who culturally and/or politically disagree with others nevertheless respect their right to voice their ideas as we would voice ours, never taking for granted the preciousness of the right to freedom of speech, thought, and assembly.

   *May each of us lean toward sanity, reason, common sense and clear-eyed critical thinking, always with the goals in mind of our nation's betterment and its peoples' elevation in prospects and spirit.

   *May all of us practice courtesy, kindness, compassion, empathy, comity--radical notions, and acts, in the face of rising vulgarity and simple-minded coarseness.

   *May America, as a nation of peoples, find its place in the world as a beacon of light among many such beacons; welcome the tired, poor, and huddled masses, yearning to be free; stand for nobleness of spirit and hope for humankind; exist as an equal among many nations, humbled by its own and others' power; and continue its sometimes raucous and roiling experiment in democracy, an experiment that has both dazzled and challenged citizens for more than two centuries.

   *May any among us who detect rising authoritarianism and/or creeping tyranny stand against it with all the power of our hearts and spirits, preserving and protecting the rights to freedom and individual liberty endemic to America and key to the true happiness of humankind.

   *On this day of celebration for some and mourning for others, may we Americans remember that we are one people, indivisible except by our own small egoic fears and needs, and  that, during times of unsettling historical disruptions, it is especially important to meet new conditions with a wide-open, daring and loving heart.

   *Finally, divided though we may seem politically, as a people may we Americans stand together for the higher principles upon which this country was founded, and which, imperfectly, have guided us thus far.

   Have a good, if not necessarily happy, Inauguration Day.
   And, as they say, stay safe out there.
 

Remembrances of Chants Past

   There is something particularly pathetic about the specter of president-elect Donald J. Trump’s recent “Thank  You” rallies, including the one he gave in Orlando, Fla., Dec. 16.

   With vanity unbound, Trump seems to prefer the adrenalin jolt of appearing before charged-up crowds to the dull day-to-day details of preparatory governance. 

   It is hardly surprising that a man with a hummingbird attention span and a bottomless need for adoration should want to appear before worshipping throngs. What's especially troubling is the nature of his free-form asides in his otherwise prepared speeches. The man simply cannot seem to let go of the campaign and election. He revisits them incessantly, suggesting a twisted nostalgia for glories past. 

   In Orlando, he spent fifteen minutes of his fifty-minute speech criticizing the “dishonest” media’s campaign coverage. Then, like all small men, he gloated about his victory. 

   Underneath Trump's braggadocio, however, one detects the stench of fear. Trump loved the rough and tumble of the campaign: the crowds, the “movement,” the energy, the constant attention (including from the “dishonest” media). He now seems desperate to capture the glories of his crusade and his conquest, but there’s no sense of joy in the work ahead.

   He’s like the half-drunk guy at the end of the bar, retailing the same tired story about some now-fading moment of distinction. “That last week was magic,” he said in Orlando, referring to the days before the Nov. 8 election. “Everywhere we went, we had crowds like this.” The only thing more important to Trump than the size of his hands is that of his crowds. He suggested that the Orlando gathering numbered “twenty-two thousand,” with more waiting outside. (Trump has proved himself bereft of fealty to truth, fact, and evidence, so one takes his estimate with a pillar of salt.)

   He also seems incapable of praising his supporters without applauding himself. In Orlando, he referred to recently being named Time’s “Person of the Year.” To the crowd, he said, “They should give it to you, because this is a movement, folks." He quickly added, "Although I have been a very good messenger, do we agree?” Classic Trump: flatter the flock, then pull focus back to yourself and take credit. (Earlier, he’d said that “the movement… is not about me.” Uh huh.)

   Trump’s supporters, of course, play their symbiotic part in fanning his peculiar nostalgia. It doesn’t take much for them to chant, “Lock her up!,” evidently unmindful that Hillary Clinton has long since conceded defeat and found her way to (mostly) private life. It’s as if tens of thousands of Chicago Cubs fans gathered at Wrigley Field a month and a half after the World Series to cheer, one last time, as the team replayed key moments from all seven games.

   The president-elect does seem to sense a change in the tenor of his post-election crowds, and in Orlando, this drew from him something of a rebuke: “Here’s what I noticed. Four weeks ago, just prior to—and always prior to—[the election], you people were vicious, violent, screaming, ‘Where’s the wall? We want the wall!’ Screaming, ‘Prison! Prison! Lock her up!’ I mean, you were going crazy. I mean, you were nasty and mean and vicious, and you wanted to win, right?” He meant these things, alas, as compliments. “But now,” he went on, “you’re mellow, and you’re cool, and you’re not nearly as vicious or violent. Because we won.” Under the bluster, one detected a hint of melancholy. He who feeds off violent energy dies a little when violent energy abates.

   Trump is not conflicted only about about the multitudes from whom he seeks worship. He also decries the “dishonest” media at the very same moment that he craves, demands, and crows about their attention. After pointing to the crush of cameras in Orlando, and denouncing them, he added, “That is a lot of [camera] people. Man! I’ll tell you—that is a lot of people back there!” In other words: we hate the media—but look how many are covering me!

   And yet, typical of a petty tyrant’s squabbling dissatisfaction with those whom he thinks should fawn, even the putatively elevating media coverage Trump receives is never quite to his liking.

   In Orlando, he offered a bizarre disquisition on the “Person of the Year” honor: “Time magazine, and the Financial Times, a very big deal, just gave me ‘Person of the Year’.” He purports to hate the media—until he's offered plaudits by outlets that, in his view, rate. Then, they’re “a very big deal.”

   He went on: “So, in the past it was called ‘Man of the Year.’ Now it’s called ‘Person of the Year.’ What do you like better? Do you like ‘Person of the Year’?” Boos. “Do you like ‘Man of the Year’?” Cheers. “Well, they wanna be politically correct. But I had an idea… If it’s a man, you go, ‘Man of the Year’—Trump. If it’s a woman…, maybe you go, ‘Woman of the Year,’ or ‘Person of the Year.’ Right? … Shall we speak to the people at Time magazine and say, ‘We want it again next year, but we want “Man of the Year”?’”

   Thus the president-elect of the United States of America, still the most powerful nation on Earth, is peppering his public speeches with corrections to media outlets who insufficiently aggrandize his endlessly needy ego. 

   The true pathos of Trump's post-election rallies lies in the mutually dependent and deluding relationship he and his supporters inhabit. Rally attendees wanted an authoritarian, and they got one. Yet they seem to reanimate good-old-days chants (“Lock her up!”) as though brandishing a crucifix against the looming vampire of Trump’s inevitable betrayal of them, even as he pines for fast-vanishing days of simple, violent rallies.

   Trump has filled his Cabinet with Wall Streeters, oil executives, anti-labor crusaders, and billionaires. These people do not represent nor care about the interests of Trump's core supporters.

   In Orlando, Trump said, “The American worker is finally going to have a champion in the White House.” The crowd howled. But it was possible that behind the throaty cheers lurked an as yet unspoken sense that those ordinary Americans will be let down, once again, by those who run the show behind Trump's deflect-and-distract "reality" show.
   Those supporters elected Trump believing they were in on the con. Soon enough, it will dawn on them that they’re the ones being conned, after all.

Game of Thrones

   My partner, Tim, and I drove to San Francisco this morning to get haircuts by a stylist who works in the Kabuki Center, in Japantown.

   Once we arrived I was seized, as one occasionally is, with a pressing need to use the gentlemen’s facilities, so I peeled off into a men’s room. 

   Inside, a man occupied one of the three stalls; another  washed his hands at the sink. I found my way to the end stall, locked myself in, and sat down to rid myself of unnecessary waste. (Fittingly, I did so while reading news stories, on my phone, about Donald Trump.)

   Some time passed. People came and went. My attention was suddenly gripped by the sound of a loud voice, speaking as if making an important announcement to the assembled masses.

   “A white boy, a Chinese guy and a black dude walk into a bathroom,” the voice said, as its owner locked himself into the stall next to mine.

   I was given pause. Was he talking to me? To the other assembled men? Were there still other men in the bathroom? The voice sounded like it belonged to an African-American man, which would account for one-third of the joke setup’s population. Had he passed an Asian man on his way in? Did he know I’m a “white boy,” and if so, how?

   I had little time to muse. The joke, retailed for an audience of no one, continued.
   “The white guy says, ‘Look at that plane, up there in the sky,’” the voice boomed.

   You know that thing where you’re in public—on the bus or the subway, at a movie theater or, indeed, in a men’s room--and someone starts talking to no one in particular, in a voice too loud to be a self-involved mumble, and you do that thing where you don’t make eye contact, and you shrink your body so as to disappear from the vista of the talker’s perspective? Let me put it this way: I was grateful for the stall wall separating the jokester and me. (To be clear: I am not a “white boy” who fears “black dudes.” I am a reasonably sane person who goes on alert when crazy might have walked into the room.)

   “The black dude,” my neighbor continued, “goes, ‘Yeah—look at that plane.’ And the Chinese dude goes…”

   Here I flashed that perhaps the man was indeed telling this story for the dubious benefit of Asian men still occupying themselves in the men’s room. Uh oh, I thought.

   “And the Chinese dude goes, ‘Look at that plane—way up there in the sky.”

   What followed was silence.

   It was not the silence of no applause; one wouldn’t expect clapping in a men’s room. Rather, it was, at least on my part, the silence of utter bewilderment. Was that the punch line? If so, just what did it mean? Was it a slight based on the perception that Asian men are shorter than others? Was the “Chinese dude” in the joke so tiny that the plane appeared especially far away to him?

   Again my ruminations were short-circuited, this time when my neighbor made what was to be his final declaration.

   “It’s kind of a shit joke,” he said.

   Well, I thought but did not say, better a shit joke than a shitty joke.

   And with shitty jokes on my mind, I returned to my reading about Donald Trump.

Total "Cuck"heads

   Voters and members of the American white supremacist right, otherwise known as the Republican party, have two vivid terms of derision for those they perceive as being soft 'n squishy liberals: we are "snowflakes" and "cucks." The former slight ridicules hyper-sensitivity; the latter one mocks a (symbolically) castrated man.
   As a soft 'n squishy liberal, I hereby happily adopt the terms as my own. I am proud to be a snowflake. (I am unique!)
   In return, I offer this term for the white supremacist right, in all its arrogant ignorance: "Dumb Fucks."  
   I'm having a T-shirt made up: "Better a Hot Cuck Than a Dumb Fuck."
   Look--I'm a gay man, and I've lived a long time. (I turned sixty this week. Gifts gladly welcomed.) Since puberty, I've studied the "straight" American male--especially of the Dumb Fuck variety--in all his glory and folly. Early on I studied them for signs of danger: they are an unpredictable and violent sort, especially when it comes to those they perceive as weak. (To the Dumb Fucks, gay males are ipso facto weak, a confusion of "gay" and "effeminate"--and "effeminate" and "weak"--that has no basis in reality, not that reality matters a whit to those imbeciles.) Later I studied them because... well, because I just couldn't believe how fucking dumb they were. (I am excepting and exempting, here, all non-Dumb-Fuck heterosexual men, many of whom comprise a swath of my friends 'n family circle.)
   After a teeny-tiny majority of Americans elected the Dumb-Fuck-in-Chief on Nov. 8, some of the country's Dumb Fucks cheerily made their presence known. They spray-painted swastikas about the place, screamed racially charged epithets from truck windows, and generally comported themselves like ill-behaved morons. (Hate-watch groups tracked nearly a thousand instances of hate speech and hate crimes in the fortnight after the election.) No sportsmanship, here; gloating is the order of the day, and attack is the new black. (Attacking blacks is the new new black.)
   Of course, Dumb Fucks that they are, some got caught and prosecuted, the fucking Dumb Fucks. Poor things: they saw the Dumb-Fuck-in-Chief livin' large during the campaign, breaking rules with impunity. (Taxes? What taxes?) So they tried the same--and quickly learned that the long arm of the law applies itself more liberally to non-billionaire rebels.
   But this is of little surprise. American Dumb Fucks proudly parade their ignorance. Autodidactic self-betterment? Courageous self-examination and amended behavior when necessary? That's for the snowflake "elites." Better to be unlettered, unlearned, superciliously stupid. Dumb Fucks wear cluelessness as a badge of honor, and a sorry badge it is. Unable to parse the simplest concepts, incapable of applying even rudimentary critical thinking, they're dupes for phony news, snake-oil conspiracy peddlers, and long cons like the Dumb-Fuck-in-Chief-elect. (If the Dumb Fucks think he has their back--oh, the pain they're gonna feel.)
      The great secret of the American Dumb-Fuck "straight" male is the terrible shame he harbors about what how little he is. I'm talking not about appendage size (though he is, often), but about his presence in the world. He beats his chest and shouts vulgarities, all the while knowing he is nothing. The more the bluster, the smaller the man.
   During the campaign, a videotape from twelve years ago showed the Republican Dumb Fuck candidate bragging about grabbing women's hoo-has. In doing so, he appeared breathtakingly puny. That he made this gloat to a man two decades his junior just made the whole seamy thing seem that much more pathetic.
   And this is the man the Dumb Fucks elevate as their role model.
   Hey--wanna make a Dumb Fuck mad? If he flips you off on the road--laugh. It drive 'em insane. I had to stop doing it years ago. It so enraged the raging men that they became truly dangerous. Flip 'em off? Sure. That's just chest-beating across the lanes. But laugh? It pokes the raw spot of their terrible secret shame. Laugh at a Dumb Fuck, he's liable to kill you. (Dumb Fucks, of course, carry guns, because why have a fair fight? Powerless men need powerful weapons.)
   So, yeah. Call me a "snowflake." Whatever. Call me a "cuck." It's water off this duck's back.
   Because here's the thing. The Dumb Fucks will have a moment when they'll feel they're in the driver's seat: Jan. 20, 2017, when the Dumb-Fuck-elect is sworn in. Soon enough, however, it will penetrate the fog of their thick brains that, like the rest of us, they've been taken for a good, long ride.
   Who's the fuckin' cuck then?