One Week In...

One week into the 2020s, and it's already looking like this decade is going to be a bitch.

I'll forego the standard crack about how there are already over three billion dead New Year's resolutions. I liken New Year's resolutions to Groundhog Day. I can't believe we still bother with either.

I'm sure a lot of those resolutions were broken, in part, due to the recent back and forth between the United States and Iran. Once again, President Trump shows what a stable genius looks like by not only trying to start a war to distract from his latest impeachment woes, but by then doubling down and publicly threatening to violate the Geneva Convention (otherwise called war crimes). Just when I thought the height of chutzpah was publicly committing impeachable offenses on the south lawn of the White House.

Lost on far too many people is or will be the deafening silence from the Republican Party in yet another "should have been the straw that broke the back" moment. Not that each and every single one of the House or Senate Republicans should not already be ashamed of their petulant crying, yelling, screaming, whining, bitching, and moaning about "the process" in defense of their criminally incompetent leader. You know, that same "process" they were willing to defend to the death when the issue at hand was being lied to about a blowjob.

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It is perhaps this, and the sudden, knee-jerk decision to raise the smoking age to 21, that makes this an election season full of intrigue for me. The President who said he'd end the never-ending war is on the precipice of starting another war to keep people's minds off impeachment and try to bolster his reelection bid. And before the even got that far, he told a chunk of the population that while they are young and fit enough to be cannon fodder, just not young and fit enough to make their own minds up about smoking. And this is a guy who knows health. His dad got the best market rate in Manhattan for his son's bone spurs.

Then again, at least the youth of our nation can still watch R-rated movies and buy lottery tickets. For now. Can't wait to see how the youth vote swings this November.

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The 2020 presidential election season now in full swing, with primaries or caucuses coming up fast in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina, it will be interesting to see how the Democratic Party primary challengers take the latest Trumpian nonsense to the campaign trail as they also prepare for the eventuality that Mitch McConnell is forced to hold an actual Senate trial. None of us are buying into the notion that McConnell is all of a sudden going to find his pair and remember he is a United States Senator, rather than our criminally incompetent President's political wingman.

I would say it would be interesting to see what the Republican Party primary challengers strategy or talking points will be, in light of increasing U.S.-Iranian tension, but honestly, who the hell actually cares about either one? I mean, kudos to Joe Walsh for shouldering a bit of the blame when it came to creating the current overflowing toilet that is our political culture (plus, for full disclosure, we follow each other on Twitter), but Don Quixote had better odds against the windmill. As for Bill Weld, he can go crawl in a hollow log and die. Politically speaking, of course.

While deep down I know we are just going to see a shift in power from one side of the two-party duopoly to the other. In this environment, with the utter degradation of American political process from both sides of the mainstream coin, I yearn for a third-party uprising this year. Across the board. If not even some victory, at least widespread decent showings. Because very simply, if the public-at-large doesn't start gaining some awareness of the slowly tightening choke hold our government has and will continue to inflict on us, then sooner rather than later, your "binary choice" is only going to be between the screwing you're getting and the screwing you're taking.

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