I See Dumb People

So for me, things haven’t been quite the same since November 8 and the presidential election of a game show host. Personally, I would have preferred Gene Rayburn but the Match Game host passed away back in 1999. Rayburn was way smarter than the president of the Electoral College, had better hair, and his contestants would have made up a far stronger cabinet than the collection of billionaires and semi-illiterates that now hold the quality and even the existence of our lives in their tiny hands.

Between November 8 and January 20, I experienced my share of sweaty palms, and night terrors; once I dreamed I was living in 1817 instead of 2017. And since Inauguration Day, the depression has sometimes been so bad that I've come close to leaving spin class early. But avoiding anxiety relieving spin class would have been a major mistake. As I’m writing, the chronic temporal headaches have finally abated and I’m fairly sure I still have some enamel left on the chewing/grinding surfaces of my way over-worked molars.

On Saturday, January 21st, I was seated in a roomful of stationary bikes and surrounded by mirrors expecting to hear the usual club music crap and maybe even, gulp, Justin Bieber when a miracle happened. We started out with the theme of From Russia with Love and followed up with You’re so Vain, Me Myself and I, Highway to Hell, and finally REM’s End of the World as we Know it, and then finally a cool-down with Stevie’s Heaven Help us All. I remained depressed after the cool-down but less so because I was among friends…who actually speak in complete sentences. And even though the instructor rarely pedals through the toughest parts of class (a pet peeve) I’ve been there every Saturday morning since at 7-freakin-30 AM...for the last seven looong months.

And then there’s the "seeing things thing" that’s been going on with me for the last seven months or so.

Just like the president, I see things; I hear things. But I see dumb people; really dumb people. And the president is lucky; he sees millions of people who aren’t really there. I see people who voted for him and even though Hillary won 70:30 around here, it seems like they’re everywhere. But I know for sure, among the really dumb people, my colleagues are a near microscopic minority; because I excommunicated almost all of 'em to social media purgatory on the morning of November 9.

But for a while now I've felt a little like Tom Joad in Grapes of Wrath. I’ve been there in the dark seeing way too much...every night on CNN. But unlike Joad, instead of righting a wrong, I’m mostly seeing way too many young and old dumb white guys…really dumb white guys now coming out of there little closets courtesy of encouragement offered up by a con man elected by a not-small-enough minority of the People.

Last weekend, the white guys invaded Charlottesville to celebrate their racism and hatred and the former leader of the Free World wound up comparing Robert E. Lee to George Washington.

The dumb old white guys I keep seeing don’t floss; they don’t brush. When they drive, they cut you off and flip you off; they take at least 5-seconds to react to a green light and suck at making left hand turns. They never could parallel park and they pull into compact parking spaces with SUVs sporting BS bumper stickers like “There wouldn’t be a FIRST amendment without the SECOND one.” They always take too long with transactions at the bank, the market, or the movies. They don’t have rhythm. I’ve never seen one reading a book. But then again, some of these people used to be my friends and colleagues...

Before January 20, 2017, I used to be Smilin’ Jack. But now it feels like I’m a hater; and maybe that’s what happens when you see…dumb people every day and every night...coming from the White House, Dog Patch, and social media threads coming your way from practically everywhere. But being a hater is the problem, not the solution.

And I know we all have blind spots and I've done a ton of training to find 'em when I can.

But I think we could all learn something by heeding the words of the late Maya Angelou, "When people show you who they are, believe them the first time."