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Arm yourself carefully for the next political season

October 1, 2017

It's not often that I bring up politics, even though this is a hotly contested political party year. People today are so passionate and emotional about their informed political views, which they have mostly deduced from reading the backs of cereal boxes and the tabloids. To even bring up your political preference for a particular party, well, it's like being in a crowded saloon in the old Wild West, surrounded by a bunch of drunken cowboys and announcing you are from New York City and yelling, “Chardonnay for everyone!”

You may have noticed that during a political season, nothing in your house will work right. I know I shouldn't be so quick to blame, but it has to be a political thing. My computer went down, and once that was fixed, the printer went off; after that was hooked up, the cable went out, and finally by the end of the day, the garage door was stuck halfway down on top of my car. The only reasonable thing left to do was obvious - just go out and buy a new toilet seat.

Now, I'm not saying it was a political party’s fault, but it has to be someone's fault, at least according to the talking heads on the media. Everything is under investigation. Someone did it. However let's not lose our minds and for heaven's sake, don’t actually do anything about it. Turn it over to the Department of Justice where it will sit untouched until aliens from outer space in the next century find it in an archeological dig.

Now, you can learn a lot by watching television, which is why I didn't tune in to the evening news. Instead I watched one of those scientific shows on NOVA about the migration of the zebra in the Kalahari Desert to find water. These zebras travel hundreds of miles and endure extreme hardships along the way. They have to escape prey and still soldier on. You know this is true because it is always narrated by someone with a deep, authoritative voice. These are facts you can learn during a political free-for-all, unless you think you are better than the zebras in the Kalahari Desert.

Sure, there are interesting facts to come out during these discussions. The networks intersperse advertisements with announcements about the most intimate parts of your body and what to do when something goes radically wrong - and it always goes wrong when it involves the intimate parts of your body. Anyway, at some point, it is difficult to decide whether you need a plumber or a cork from a bottle. Don't even bother consulting your physician, since most physicians are now working for NOVA.

Now one of the issues politicians seem to ignore is just how difficult it is to get a bill through Congress. You can make all the promises you want, but achieving the intricacies of wheeling and dealing to make it happen are, well, just that, wheeling and dealing. For instance, suppose you wanted to enact a law whereby every parking meter in the country would be banned. This is just a hypothetical question and has nothing to do with me personally, even though the meter man threatened me with a 10:13.

Anyway, as I understand it, once a bill is introduced, Congress immediately calls for a recess so they may go out and hold press conferences nonstop to explain their positions. The most exciting part of the press conferences is the pants that catch on fire. I'm not suggesting that Congress doesn't get anything done, because in the end they all agree to pass a bill that would demand fire extinguishers be available for every press conference and the parking meters will not be banned unless another bridge to nowhere is included in the bill.

Now my advice would be to stay informed about politics as much as possible. Know a candidate and a party's position; bone up on the current laws and put your own agenda first, like installing water fountains for the zebras. Buckle up, people; the blame game is just beginning.

  • Nancy Katz has a degree in creative writing and is the author of the book, "Notes from the Beach." She has written the column Around Town for the Cape Gazette for twenty years. Her style is satirical and deals with all aspects of living in a resort area on Delmarva.

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