Pulling Your Lever

Satires, Sarcasms, and Musings

By: Doc Jeffurious

I recall a time in my life when I was a proud participant of the sacred civic appointment to cast a ballot during election season. I haven’t missed a vote in my thirty years of being registered to do so. In my young and more formative years. I, like many of us, was mildly naive for so long to the true source of the fetid miasma of the sludge that greases the wheels and holds the entire putrefying national political scene in its somewhat wobbly place.  

From where I sit now it’s like watching passengers of a capsizing luxury ship run from starboard to port, and then from stern to bow. All the while hoping they can shift and adjust their weight displacement around enough to keep their lard asses afloat for just a little longer. Morbidly, believing in the notion of an “unsinkable” ship and the idea of a heroic captain coming to save them. Concurrently, that captain caught the first lifeboat out and is miles away. Literally and figuratively. Back on the deck, the passengers began beating and biting each other for spots on the last few lifeboats. There are those who feel like they hold precedent to be alive as opposed to those who can simply be lost without understanding that everyone is going down. But, you know, that’s just my view. 

Throughout the brief duration of my time here on the world, I discovered early in my life that choosing my side of things has always worked best for any ongoing situation. You can relief yourself of all the dark drama that encases it. I have never been partial to clubs, nor groupthink. I despise politics, especially identity politics. I have no time for stale, overwashed platitudes. It is that “worn-out note card” approach to discussion that has stunted the average person’s ability to evolve beyond their tightly clutched talking points when someone else challenges their respective viewpoint. Mob rules, the absurd idea that the loudest and the most violent makes a person correct; all seems like a weak institution for cowards and morons. Violence is a last-ditch effort for the intellectually bereft. Have you ever challenged your high school bully to a jaunty spelling bee? They don’t want to do that.   

We are all part of this circus, and it is difficult not to laugh when the clowns are funny. I love a good laugh. I especially like to laugh at the costumes most egos wear to the spectacle parade. Even though the idea of the Primary Attraction has changed immensely over the years. One noticeable changing aspect is that elections have taken on characteristics of an MMA fight and a hockey game. It’s the concept unification of the story. The main event in the center ring is akin to watching the Democrats running around a tiny car trying to patch up the tires while the battery is on fire. Meanwhile, the Republicans are the ones going around siphoning the gas tank and slashing the tires.  

Admittedly, part of my slanted point-of-view stems from the sardonic, tangy, zip of late term “Gen X” apathy; the other half is as of late a sort of sympathy.  Especially when you have friends and families that have devoted themselves to the more misanthropic part of the scene. All one can see in their eyes is psychosis, the sickness as it were. Much like losing someone you care about to substance abuse, it is a helpless feeling. One must wonder if the families of the people lost to Jonestown felt this way during some point of their ordeal. That moment when it went from just “being weird” to “who the Hell is this person”?  

The formula seems to fit, the cult mentality, the brainwashing, doing outlandish things to appease a leader, then quickly hopping behind “Christ,” the isolating social media “compounds,” the gratuitous exploitation of followers, and then queue the whole Kool Aid scenario. The gruesome result of some people’s drive to go all the way just to be correct. That or simply having guns put in their faces just after they realize the whole construct isn’t on the level. The bottom-line is, have you ever argued with the crazed? I have. I am talking clinically certified. They will take it with them. It is an exercise that is indeed futile, I can assure you.  

Now take wacky, good old-fashioned, belligerent Uncle Wolfie that visits during the holidays. We all have one. Lots to say about different things. Their commonality is usually wanting you to get them stoned out by the old treehouse. The conversation with Uncle Wolfie is always memorable and revealing. One Uncle Wolfie might blather on about how mainstream media’s interest in the Epstein files is just the “Woke” movement’s way of selling more granola to fund Antifa to make us all “tranny” socialists and because of that he now lives with firearms and a tiny meth lab in a campervan in Grandma’s backyard.  

The other Uncle Wolfie will go over which tenets of fascism that have been running parallel to the current administration’s active agenda and will remark heavily on each point in parables of gloom. He will tell you that he rejects those dastardly principles, so he primarily focuses on his organic farming blog, the chicken coop that he just built, and living off the land, because of all of this he now lives with a bunny and a ponytail in a campervan in Grandma’s backyard. Left or right, Uncle Wolfie keeps pulling “note card” retorts out of the seat of his trousers. Constructing that symbolic mound that Uncle Wolfie intends to expire upon. Many of us have reached a stage of curiosity through a psychological filter. Instead of asking “what the hell are you saying?”  We are asking “how the hell could you say that?” and “why the hell would you say that?’ 

With a low-brow audience in mind, the banter of our current incarnation of the ongoing nightmare of the national political landscape, there are some blemishes surfacing. Large nicks in the paint that have been painted over are obvious. There, observationally, appears to be a growing sinkhole, a true glitch in the works. Congruently, the populace is getting stranger by the minute. Across the vastness of the spectrum, the possibility that some have swapped out their individual souls to become replaceable, sludged-up cogs within their respective machine is a real idea. Each rubbish heaped party is looking for their version of the damned and have been drawing them in and just like a free bacon buffet they arrived fast and now the faceless have since been standing in line. Another reason to avoid “clubbing up,” to dodge being pushed to trading one’s humanity for a group’s shallow ideals and ruthless, selfish ambitions.  

Now, returning to voting. Perhaps it’s the embittered or realistic aspects of age? But as the years have passed since I became eligible to vote, the process has seemingly gotten increasingly gross…moreover, greasy and disgusting. The feeling of pride has diminished exponentially. The decals are falling off. Approaching the ballot can set pangs off from within your very core. You pull the curtain closed; I invariably and instinctively feel the need to pee at that point. I don’t know. It may be just me. Any letters, questions or note cards should be addressed to Gonzo Today Editor-In-Chief, Kidman J. Williams. Anyways, you grab the felt pen and slash out your answers in an indescribable kind of haste. But. Even through my earlier years of being a young voter, even as the foul stench grew, I diligently made my way to the polling place near me and felt so cheap afterwards.   

In recent years, after leaving the clubhouse polls at the county golf course, I have had a strange compulsion to find a hot shower, a Brillo pad, and a bar of Lava just to cleanse the awfulness off me. Why is that? Being brought up during a time when we were taught that voting was a steadfast, and intricate part of being an American citizen, we later learned that maybe a little under half of that concept was real. It is something that many of us have wondered about for years. Don’t get me wrong; I am no frothing, political scholar. What I learned in Political Science classes was enough to show me that politics is a sick deal. In many cases, being junked up on politics employs the same compulsions and motives most drug addicts exert. Even as the addiction drains them of all their nutrients, and ‘deranges” their mind, they still buy the cheap shit. Why do some of us feel poorly during that election time of year? Is it because cynicism that has been built up to the level where being cynical is a wonderful form of realism? Expect the lower form of a result and never be disappointed? Waiting for a heavy-handed response to a situation that could have been handled more diplomatically? Or God forbid applying some rational thought? 

Maybe the answer could be a trepidation that some voters face as to whether they are making the right choice? It happens. The phenomenon could be compared to stage fright. “Don’t fuck up, don’t fuck up, don’t fuck up.” Then invariably as they leave, they are thinking, “Oh God, I fucked up.” Sometimes their horse does not place, and those with most of the bets collapse in the parking lot. Their identities dispersed. 

The circus is coming back around this year. Some of us have backstage passes. We know where the handlers of the donkeys and the elephants stack their excrement. Mostly in the places where a percentage of voters decide to lay their blankets down for a picnic. The Big Top is now also the “freakshow.” On one side we have the Human Pile of Goo, The Iron Box Former Attorney General, OOH RAH!, Fuzzy Boo the Master of Furniture Frottage, and the Ku Klux Klowns. On the other side, Schumer The Ugh, The Living Dork Newsome, and a collective of liberal fire spitters, they don’t swallow the flame. It’s too hot. Then they all halt the show to implore parts of the audience to come “fill in” for a few minutes and then charge them all admittance back into their seats. Folks love insipid participation.  

That could be a new way of looking at the entire process. Realizing that it is all a show, and they’ll put it on as long as there is an audience. Elections can dazzle and enthrall. Much like the circus, there are many kinds of animals doing tricks. In this Democracy, we still vote for our animals and then are presented with another prize pig wearing makeup. This isn’t so much of a lecture as it is an observation. An observation that accounts for accepting our own reflection and why it may hurt our tummies. – Doc.