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.
Whoa Mr. 24/680,
I see the world thru a complete different lens.
Here’s the other narative:
Sure, Trump is a blowhard, but many of his policies make sense. How about the European countries pay their fair share of NATO expenses, how about respecting the laws that are on our books like immigration laws, some must be sent home to apply and I hope they get their papers. How about China playing by fair rules, why are are companies forced to have Chinese partners (usually the military).
On to law enforcement, do you really think our liberal Bay Area DA’s will really prosecute shoplifters for a felony? NO CHANCE. They still don’t want to increase
the jail and prison population. As per fending off pepper spray, tasers and bean bags, I suggest the police go back to good old beatings, that what I used to do.
And, I’m looking forward to spending XMas day with many families member who I cherish. So, Ho Ho Ho. Oh, and watching my favorite Christmas movie….. Die Hard.
Firestone 11R
Jeff –
We have no doubt many people out there don’t see things as we do.
Being in this business a fair bit of time now we have seen a few of those beatings you mention and say you’ve inflicted. We don’t think a return to that style of policing is either wise or necessary. And, yes, we’ve been in situations where we’ve had to take people down physically and, yes, we know that such arrests are rarely “pretty.”
Enjoy your Christmas…
Jeff, lot of people- even in the Bay Area believe as you do! And I am one! And five out of the six Neighbors on my court are also! We’ve seen how all the liberal policies have brought nothing but bad results. And for all you people out there that say you want Unity- please give the new Administration a chance! I, personally am glad that we’re out of the dystopia the last 4 years! But I fully expect the naysayers to blame the incoming Trump administration of everything that went bad in the last 4 years and any leftovers still happening bad in the coming year. Actually the Salvatore’s are already at work because they don’t want good things to happen. But I think your average person is waking up quite a bit… and we’re not going to be so easily talked down to or fooled like they tried to do to us for 4 years now.
Proposition 47 was passed 10 years ago. So it has been 10 years! of misery for retailers, not several months. Proofread, much?
Our point being that the problem has only heightened and gained attention as a business killer in recent months – when several Bay Area businesses shuttered their windows and ceased to operate, lending impetus to passage of Prop 36.
….. and I have to add to this: anyone with a brain / even 10 years ago knew that the outcome would not be good. It just reached a ridiculous level in the last year. This is just another example of failed liberal social policies. The trouble is liberals don’t realize it fails they want instead go further and deeper into the wrong direction and still wonder why things don’t work. I used to be a liberal but I had an Enlightenment! I see most of them is foolish now. I’ve also realized that most of the Liberals -if exampled by my friends -live in fear all the time, they’re really not happy, they’re down on everything. A good portion of them are still wearing their face masks even outside in the fresh air in fear. I refuse to live that way! I’m actually doing the “Trump dance” every day!
Between the random caps and the trotting out of warmed-over early COVID tropes about living in fear, I’m having a hard time following.
Staying close to home and not spending too much but very much in the spirit of the season!
Cool chopper!
Hey, man, you don’t talk to the Colonel. You listen to him. The man’s enlarged my mind. He’s a poet warrior in the classic sense. I mean sometimes he’ll… uh… well, you’ll say “hello” to him, right? And he’ll just walk right by you. He won’t even notice you. And suddenly he’ll grab you, and he’ll throw you in a corner, and he’ll say, “Do you know that ‘if’ is the middle word in life? If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you”… I mean I’m… no, I can’t… I’m a little man, I’m a little man, he’s… he’s a great man! I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas…
This is a quote from Dennis Hopper’s character in Apocalypse Now about a charismatic madman with absolute power in a very small universe. It could just as well be a Truth on Truth Social today.
Took a midnight wire transmission (Old School Tweet) from Hunter S. Thompson that read a lot like this…
I’m more of a Kilgore guy. Used to say, “if I say it’s safe to surf this beach it’s safe to surf this beach” when I worked the Malibu Beach Team
Malibu 108RS
Yeah, but, Charlie don’t surf…
Kilgore said that as artillery rounds were occasionally impacting the surfing area, which by any definition was not “safe”. He was bullying surfer-dude Lance, and no amount of self-aggrandizing machismo was going to stop the shells from falling. “Do what I say or suffer the consequences, dude!”
So, yes, you are “more of a Kilgore guy”.
The cult followers have absolute clarity. Absolute conviction. That may be the essence of it. The relief and peace of it. There may be heads on pikes as in Apocalypse Now, but “knowing” that that was required at the moment is reassuring not troubling. It had to be done.
Similarly, upon discovering the horror of a pile of severed arms of children who had been inoculated for polio, the cult leader explains what he learned from the tribal leaders who had executed it.
“I never want to forget it… I never want to forget. And then I realized… like I was shot… like I was shot with a diamond… a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God… the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that. These were not monsters, these were men… trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love… but they had the strength… the strength… to do that.”