If drinkin’ don’t kill you our politics might
If drinkin’ don’t kill you our politics might
Cartoon by Jack Ohman
If it ain’t one thing it’s another: prostate cancer (it’s the best cancer) with a shot of hot-flash ho
rmone, macular degeneration, an enlarged aorta and a wobbly, cracked lower molar. If none of that kills me, Donald Trump might.
My heart went aflutter when he weaved on stage with Kristi Noem, the South Dakota dog hunter, doing the “YMCA” and other classics for 38 minutes in Pennsylvania. It was just last week. I had received notice that my heart could explode if not tended to, and spent the week waiting for a phone call from a cardiologist who can prescribe my fate. Still waiting, as of Monday. Oh, he just called! He would refer me to a vascular surgeon. I wait. Thump thump. Did I miss a beat? I can hear the “Ave Maria” from here with Trump directing Pavarotti.
Deranged Derelict Donald declared that he will take out “the enemy within” using whatever force is at his disposal if elected. Scum like you. Maybe me. What the hell. Come and get me. Take me off the surgery gurney and noose me up. My supplemental policy probably won’t cover it but Mexico will pay for it like they did the wall.
My biopsies are in transit, my scans are on their way out there in the universe, and that will be $375 cash, please, for an X-ray to tell me that this dental specialist can’t really help me but another one might. No candidate would dare suggest that Medicare would cover dental or the eye doctor, where the charts are fuzzy. Not when your teacher is doing a sex-change operation on eighth-grade Johnny like Trump says. You send them off to school a girl and they come home a boy.
“If the drinkin’ don’t kill me, her memory will,” George Jones cried.
“These old bones, they move slow
But so sure of their footsteps
As I trip on the floor
And I lightly touch down”
It’s hard to describe the fright on your way to the floor. The dentist knows. He’s had five bypass surgeries. Cancer nurses call it “scanxiety” — that period of awaiting bad news. The New York Times says, oh yeah, our poll says Trump will return. Probably. I feel dizzy and distraught. Where am I?
Trump is fixing to arrest the scum like Bob Woodward of The Washington Post, or Kamala Harris, for sure Jack Smith, and have the military take care of them. You know. Take care of them.
That is what has become of too-close-to-call America. Half the country wants a dictator on Day One. Somebody who will take care of the enemy within. It’s not Putin who threatens us. Trump has people hunting FEMA agents up in the hills. Hello, dystopia. The banjo plays for you. People are so crazy they believe what Trump says, and then they bear arms.
Iowa is plowing headlong into the past. We’re already banning books. We are declaring that gays are second-class, abnormal. Doctors are fleeing over the Mississippi for Illinois where they may do no harm. State revenues are on track to be $1 billion short of expenses over the next couple years. Move over, Kansas, here we come!
Who wants to hang around for this circus?
So I can get thrown in jail on a whim. Give me liberty or a quick heart attack.
This isn’t the America I was told about at St. Mary’s School in 1968, the year racism shot Martin Luther King Jr. dead. King’s dream is dying when half the country supports an avowed despot.
Cease the lung darts, the doctors say. I have cut down from 20 (a pack of Marlboro Reds) to three cigarettes a day. Three puffs at a time. If Trump wins, I might just ramp back up and play the odds. Move up into the hills with those FEMA hunters and wait for the chill to set in or the next great flood to come.
The thought of it is enough to eat at your heart and head.
Trump says he will deport you even if you are legal.
I don’t know what crazy thing he said today. Last week was enough to nearly go meet Mom and Dad and all the others (I pray) sitting around the heavenly lounge. He is a hazard to my health and a direct threat to your and my safety. He promises to dispatch with the Constitution. It would be listening to “YMCA” interminably in the doctor’s office while your tooth wobbles, your heart palpitates and he weaves.
Here’s to hoping that touching the floor goes lightly on the way down.
Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.
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I hit the heart button only because I want you to know that there are a whole lot of us who care about what happens to Art Cullen. Take care of yourself, be good to yourself, and for heaven's sake, keep laughing! For now, that is the best defense we have.
Best wishes on getting Dr Waterbury, as Bill did in Sioux Falls. Let’s all pray for a Kamala win or all our hearts will need attention !