A Raging River

(You are who you are.)

I woke up this morning at 6 a.m. and drank a cup of freshly brewed coffee. Then I read the headlines on my smartphone while taking a shit. A man from Nigeria moved with his family to Korea in order to open an import-export business. Unfortunately, the Covid shutdowns all but bankrupted them, and they were forced to inhabit a slum in a city called Ansan. A fire broke out in the middle of the night due to faulty wiring, and four of his children died in the flames. His daughters were aged 4 and 11, and his sons were only 6 and 7. My heart sincerely goes out to the poor son of a bitch. How does a person recover from that?

I ate hash browns for breakfast as I watched Fox news. Young people in America are no longer patriotic. And here's the weird thing. I might be an old geezer, but I don't blame them a bit. The ultra-rich assholes who rule our nation have moved all the jobs to Asia. The only things left are service gigs and sales positions. To make matters worse, these children are loaded down with crushing debt by the age of 22. And if that weren't enough, our government is constantly feeding the war machine with the blood of service men who are usually from poor and working-class families. Fuck those elite scumbags, and fuck the horses they rode in on. Am I right, or am I whistling dixie? I truly don’t know.

I called my mom using Facebook Messenger.

I said, “I’m officially off Trump.

She’s a huge fan of Orange Donald, and the news disappointed her.

Mom said, “He’s the best president ever. Why are you so bitter?”

“What he said about Stormy Daniels put me off my dinner.”

“I’m at a loss here. Clue me in.”

“He called her a horse-faced liar.”

She cackled like a witch. “Take it from an old woman. Stormy is nothing but a worthless slut looking for another handout.”

“That might be true. But you know deep down in your twisted heart that he had sex with her.”

“I don’t know any such thing. I take the president at his word.”

“C’mon, for Christ’s sake. Donald is lying. He was all over that pussy like flies on poop.”

She cringed at my bad language. “First of all, I’m your mother. So please try to curtail your profanities for the love of God. Secondly, were you in the room when they were bumping uglies?”

“No.”

“Well, there you go. It’s a case of he said, she said,”

“I’m with Meatball Ron all the way in 2024.”

“Nurse Ken is hoping that Kanye West will be our next president.”

“Kanye West? Talk about a crazy black man. Why in the world would Ken vote for such a lunatic?”

“You know how your son is. He’s obsessed with the issue of Zionist aggression.”

I shook my head disdainfully. “I told him a million times that the blood of The Tribe gushes through our veins like a raging river. So being an anti-Semite seems a bit suicidal to me. At least in his case. It’s sort of like an African American joining the KKK.”

She shrugged and sighed heavily. “Ken’s a strange man. But what can I do?”

I had no answer to give her.

On the bright side, my day at work went well. I’m currently reading The Tell-Tale Heart with my high school students. They grimaced and let out a collective moan when the psychotic protagonist murdered the old man and dismembered his body. Nevertheless, they got a real kick out of the story. Good for them.