Ah, yes. The goddamn television. Flickering, screaming, spewing out bile like a coked-up demon in a polyester suit. And here I am, barely holding onto reality, half a bottle of Wild Turkey down, nostrils raw and burning like the devil’s own furnace.
The screen flickers. Two women. Talking heads on the news. Sanctuary cities. Oversight committees. Felony convictions. Christ, what a farce. One of them is howling about hypocrisy, gesturing wildly like a Roman senator mid-orgy, and the other is nodding along, eager to sink her teeth into whatever raw, bloody piece of political theater is dangling in front of her.
“Have any of you been made aware of an immigrant with 34 felony convictions still roaming around?”
Thirty-four felonies? Jesus Christ. Who keeps track of that? You get past four, five at the most, and you’re either in prison or running for Congress. But here they are, parading around numbers like some kind of grim carnival game—step right up, count the convictions, win a free outrage session!
And then she drops the hammer—a 34-time convicted felon lives in the goddamn Oval Office! Now that’s a line. That’s the kind of bullet you put in the chamber and spin for dramatic effect. The kind of thing you scrawl on a bar napkin and cackle over before setting it on fire. But the truth is, nobody cares. The game is rigged, the rules were thrown out years ago, and we’re all just spectators watching a dumpster burn.
The other one, God help her, launches into some kind of Kafkaesque word salad about how entering the country illegally isn’t actually illegal. It’s not a crime, it’s crime, it’s not a crime. Jesus, the contradiction hangs in the air like a lead balloon, weighed down by all the white noise of modern political discourse.
“Google it,” she says, with the smug satisfaction of someone who just learned how to use a microwave.
And suddenly, I’m transported into the nightmare reality of 21st-century America, where facts are optional, outrage is currency, and a room full of overpaid clowns in tailored suits are screaming at each other about things they don’t even believe in. Nobody’s looking for answers. Nobody’s looking for truth. It’s all just a goddamn racket.
The screen flickers again. [Laughter.] Cold. Forced. Like hyenas on a carcass.
“Looks fine to me,” one of them cackles.
“Yeah, and you’re ugly.”
And there it is. The final, pathetic whimper of a conversation that never mattered in the first place. A playground insult wrapped in a cheap suit and delivered with the self-satisfaction of someone who thinks they just won a debate. Ugly.
Jesus Christ. We used to be a serious country. Now we’re just a screaming drunk at the end of the bar, spilling cheap whiskey on ourselves while the bartender quietly calls a cab.
I take another long pull from the bottle, wipe my nose, and turn off the television. I need a goddamn cigarette.
