Christmas Countdown: The Rising Oligarchy; Prop 36 Wake-Up; Forty Mike Mike And – Retail Joy?

We humans are a strange lot, capable of complex emotions, convoluted thinking and some genuinely strange behavior whilst engaged in ritual celebrations.

Take Christmas, for example, which this year seems to have the Rodney Dangerfield tagline “… please,” appended to any  mention.

To be clear – we love Christmas. Favorite time of year and all that with family dinners, pranks played on dozing uncles and the aunts clucking like hens around bubbling pots of deliciousness. It’s a time for small, meaningful gifts and big, uproarious laughs.

We know many share this sentiment and we have been hard at work to find some of it out there – but finding precious little. Sure, there are some lights strung up and those giant snowman inflatables on a few front lawns, but little of the good tidings and communal joy we feed off of this time of year.

Instead, we’re treated to the prospect of life under a dysfunctional government or – perhaps more appropriately – bickering billionaires, and we begin to see our countrymen accepting the prospect of life under a ruling oligarchy, grey-cloaked workers chiseling the words off the Statue of Liberty while others cheer the word “deportation.”

And as much as we miss the truly heroic ancestors who came before us we’re kind of glad they’re not around to see this gradual death spiral of a once-great nation. We know they’d be really, really *issed.

Soldiering on in the manner they always schooled us we ride the night, trying not to look at the digital number of available parking spaces flashing outside monolithic parking structures normally filled with the cars of jostling shoppers, on the lookout for a Christmas story amidst echoing ghost malls and glimpses of the unhoused trundling shopping bags of belongings as they move about under the cover of darkness.

Our Local America v. 2025 has been marked by bizarre scenes of a flag theft and desecration in Danville, people in the throes of pharmaceutically-induced bliss climbing various buildings and towers to – we guess – get closer to their God, some remarkable driving maneuvers and a few criminal stalwarts fending off capsicum spray, police tasers and non-lethal beanbag rounds during their attempt to resist police invitation to spend Christmas Day in the hoosegow.

What does it all mean, Binkie? Well, as far as we can determine it means more confusion among a concerned electorate, a lot less of that stranger-to-stranger “Ho Ho Ho!” we long for and more people looking up “hypocrite” and “mealy-mouthed” whenever we utter the name of a certain senator or congressional representative in polite conversation. Usually polite, that is.

Some folks who do appear to be celebrating arrival of an early Christmas present this year appear to be our hard-hit retail sector and the stalwart members of our various police departments who haven’t succumbed to the temptation of early retirement and hung on to see Prop 36 take hold – making things a whole lot tougher for serial shoplifters who have been bleeding retailers dry in recent months.

Word on the street is that word on the street is spreading about Prop 36 and practitioners of the grab-and-run are looking at a felony beef and time behind bars instead of the citation they learned to expect in the past. We’re watching closely to see what impact The Dirty Thirty Six has on the illicit shopping scene this year but initial indicators are that it will be profound.

As with most things, much still remains to be seen and our collective history written – but we remain focused on time with friends and family with gentle memories of our predecessors hovering over us as we seek direction and joy from those we know best and love most.