There’s a saying in Jamaica that goes something like this: “What is joke to you is death to me.” The “old people’s” words popped into my memory yesterday as I watched Reince Priebus on TV waving a check and offering to pay to keep the World War II memorial open. He was grinning from ear to ear of course.
How clever the Republican national chairman must have felt.
What a PR coup! Reince was sure that every World War II vet would now vote for the GOP. After all, who loves them? Who was keeping their memorial open when those mean old Democrats shut it down?
I don’t know how many World War II vets are left. The war ended when I was 11 years old, and I will be 80 in a few months, so surviving vets must be well into their nineties. Judging from the way I feel this morning, I wouldn’t count on them being alive and voting come next November.
Even so, I can’t imagine the old guys would fall for Reince’s ruse.
I imagine they will be insulted. I know I am.
The House Republicans are picking up where Reince left off. They’re sending bills to the Senate proposing to fund bits and pieces of the federal budget – the bits they consider most popular, like keeping national parks open.
Do these gibbering idiots think American voters are so gullible? Do they think their goofy stunts will make us forget who really shut down the World War II monument – and the rest of the federal government?
They must be joking.
I often feel that’s what the Republicans are doing. Surely, for example, Rush Limbaugh can’t be serious?
I suspect that they’re saying and doing absurd things just to amuse their base and drive us “liberals” crazy.
They know nothing they say or do will make us vote for them – or make their base vote for us.
So they pass the time playing mean-spirited games.
They remind me of those bullies in the schoolyard who used to make “monkey faces” at us and shove us about during recess.
It was a “joke” to them, I’m sure. But it was misery for the rest of us.
And that’s what I suspect the Republicans are doing – having a great old time laughing at our discomfort as children go hungry and mothers wonder where they’ll get formula for their babies now that the WIC offices are closed.
