I am trying to cut down on political notions and noodling in this blog. It is like sugar to a humor writer. The easy laughs are sweet, but if you are diabetic, they will eventually build up and kill you.
But between Twitter-tweeting twit-wits and Facebook false-fact fools, I keep getting drawn back in. The gang of kids I grew up with in Iowa are seriously infected with Tea Party propaganda now that they are old coots like me, and continue to vote for Teabagger trolls (And I mean literal trolls. Steve King, Congressman from Iowa, has green skin and lives under a bridge… and maybe eats foolish children when they try to cross) for public office. And of course, I live now in Texas where gun-toting cowboys look at you intently to find any possible reason to shoot you and then thank Jesus if you are fool enough to give them one (like admitting to be mostly a Democrat in your political persuasion). They want to argue anything and everything I post on Facebook. Apparently even my bird pictures and cat videos politically offend them.
Oooh! This one really offends Teabaggers… especially the ones who make $25/hr or less.
Can you pick out the Trump voters in this line? All of them maybe?
And I am not suggesting that people who voted Republican in the last election aren’t as smart as my side. I waited until now in this essay to say that, because the childhood friends and family members in that group who read my blog will have all stopped reading by this point. I really don’t need to give them any more ammunition for Facebook and dinner table arguments.
But my side of the table are not wholly guilt free.
I regularly tweet or post things like these, innocently believing these heroes of the heart and mind have universal appeal because they champion truth and science and facts. But I become alarmed when I learn how much Bill Nye offends them. They tell me, “That guy is not a scientist! He has no right to argue for climate change issues or the non-existence of God. He’s just a TV guy.” And, I suppose they have a point. I mean, his extensive education and background in engineering, or his years in television promoting science to kids in research-based creative ways, doesn’t necessarily make him an expert on all science. And Neil DeGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist. He doesn’t have a degree in EVERYTHING. And when I point out that their so-called experts on climate-change denial from Fox News cannot even claim to be TV weathermen, they are further put out by my brain-bashing bullying way of using my superior knowledge of science to put them down. Okay, I get it. I am not being careful enough of your feelings. (Oh, I forgot, you stopped reading this a while back.)
But the point of this is, we have to stop listening to and electing stupid people, while at the same time being a bit nicer to each other. We have to approach the discussion with the notion that you yourself may not be totally right about everything, and you may actually learn something by talking about it. (Which is, of course, no problem for me since I really don’t know anything for certain and need to learn practically everything as if I were still four years old.)
Okay, Bill, I get it. I am probably wrong about that too.
You may not be able to rescue other people’s minds from being stupid. But what you can do and be artful about is… make them laugh.
Catch a Falling Star 
Facebooking and Birdwalking
This is my bird-walking illustration. I know that it is totally the wrong picture for the job, but it is a bird walking, isn’t it.
It is not a stretch to suggest that most of what you find on Facebook is not real. Especially when it comes to the endless posting and sharing of topical political memes. I had thought when Facebook came out with their reaction-emoji thingies, that there was at least one I would never find a use for.
Boy! Was I ever wrong about that. Now that the gold-plated pumpkinhead that got himself elected somehow is busy with his markers and crayons making executive orders, it is about the only one that really fits anywhere.
We made a big mistake allowing Trump to play Prexy and be the one in charge of making the rules of the game. You all knew he was gonna cheat before the game even started, didn’t you? And it won’t last long. He is making allies like Australia into offended enemies. He is banning burn victims, heroic Iraqi translators, doctors, and researchers from coming into the country with their entry visas and green cards and other proof that they have a right to be here. He is burning up any goodwill and patience and level-headedness that we have tried to afford him. He will be impeached, or worse, sooner rather than later. And then we will have to live with the irreparable damage he has done.
And we probably deserve it. We have made mistakes before, and if we live long enough, we will make more in the future. But this was a big one. And I don’t have to feel happy about it. No matter what my conservative friends on Facebook tell me… or what names they call me.
So that’s where the bird-walking comes in. The mind has to wander away down paths of lesser resistance. We need to go where the sandpiper would go, walking down the beach to look for new and interesting-looking seeds to eat.
You really should add this to your Bob Ross Bible if you haven’t already.
All of my illustrations in this article, except for the walking bird, which I drew myself, are clipped directly from Facebook. Facebook is sometimes the soul source of wisdom for Village Idiots, and I should probably make an effort to be one less of the time. But it is also an excellent source of bird-walking topics that get my mind off the terrible things and onto free-floating tangents that take me to places my mind would really rather be.
I would’ve liked to have attended Pillsbury’s funeral, but the meme only gave the time and length of the service, not the date. I fear that by now I have missed it. But I am sure the service was well done.
Nostalgia memes on Facebook are great. They make me feel all squishy and sad again about the times long gone and how terrifyingly horrible they were compared to how terrible they are now.
Remember John Wayne Gacy? Or reports on television about the Viet Nam War? With pictures? Full color pictures of the My Lai Massacre in living color on NBC, with all the blood in bright red. Yeah, that stuff on TV kept us outdoors quite a lot.
But Facebook bird-walking is a dangerous sport. If you let it, it will eat up your whole life, minute by minute, hour by hour. And I’m not sure it makes you smarter in any way. I know some pretty stupid people who are on Facebook quite a lot.
Bird-walking at its best, though, is to coddiwomple. And though you don’t know where you are going, you will get there sooner or later, so you might as well look at the scenery and appreciate the irony along the way. Life should be a leisurely stroll, not a rush to get away from gold-plated pumpinheads with executive orders in their tiny, tiny hands.
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Filed under angry rant, battling depression, clowns, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, foolishness, humor, irony, memes, Paffooney
Tagged as bird walking, Facebook, politics