Man! Dude! Session #118

(D)ude: Man! What was the crucial ingredient that propelled the Ravens to win?

(M)an: Dude! A sense of connection that transcended brotherhood and enmeshed the footballers in a sense of purpose propelled that team to win.

D: Man! You sound like you’ve gotten yourself reengaged in reading The Federalist Papers again. Tell me if I’ve got the names right… Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay?

M: Dude! Right on! And, yes, James Madison turned out presidential, although his two revels were just as, if not even more so, sharp as he.

D: Man! Sibling revelry? That’s a positive force of nature, is it not? Otherwise, you would have said sibling rivalry, no?

M: Dude! If I did not have so many skeletons in my closet, I would be running my mouth off at the Tea Party Republicans as a contender for the House of Representatives from this state, The Republic of Texas.

D: Man! You’re fortunate to have skeletons in your closets, but mine are shaking with live people trying to break down the doors to make a skeletal mess out of me!

M: Dude! That’s a perspective deserving serious consideration! Who are the folks trying to break down your closet doors?

D: Man! Do you want me to begin alphabetically? There’s Aunt Olive and Uncle Stevie, the Reverend Jake Glances and his wife Mrs. Petunia, the entire dodge ball team from fifth grade, the entire drama club from eighth grade, and the entire enrollment of students at our high school the year we finally graduated.

M: Dude! You’re never going to forgive the people you attended school with? You know, neither do I! The Reverend Glances and Mrs. Petunia? Huh! I totally forgot about them until just now. I did not appreciate traveling in their Oldsmobile, with all those air fresheners and the scent of that cologne… What was it?

D: Man! Fahrenheit 451!

M: Dude! Christian Dior’s Fahrenheit!

D: Man! Looks like you’re coming to an end of the book! Are you reading the closing credits or annotated bibliography?

M: Dude! Listen to this… from The Declaration of Independence… “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and-“

D: Man! The United States Government hath better change right now! Eric Cantor and John Boehner are not budging and neither is Texas District 12 US House Representative Kay Granger from the Paul Ryan Budget proposal that the American people rejected by reelecting President Obama and Vice President Biden!

M: Dude! “…and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But-“

D: Man! Like I was trying to say before your continual interruption, rebuilding the lives affected by Hurricane Sandy and the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary are not light and transient causes. Rather, the Hurricane Sandy and Sandy Hook Elementary tragedies are literally grave and embedded in our souls and mustn’t be allocated to the corners of our collective conscience.

M: Dude! “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object that envinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” 

D: Man!  Regarding whose right?

M: Dude! “The Right of the People to alter or abolish it; and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

D: Man! Despotism? Hmm… Isn’t that what Representatives Eric Cantor from Virginia, and John Boehner from Ohio, and Paul Ryan from Wisconsin, and Kay Granger from Texas are practicing by not even hearing out any of the opposition to The Path To Prosperity, the Paul Ryan Budget that clearly cuts the safety net with which our own mothers and fathers raised US and we will, thanks to President Obama and Vice President Biden, perhaps be able to live with the dignity and integrity our troops representing US abroad and at home embody? Oh! Man! Did you know that the Pentagon hasn’t released a list of military casualties for two weeks now?

M: Dude! Here is the list of grievances against the then-King George of Great Britain. “He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.”     

D: Man! House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor are clearly going against the wholesome and necessary, not wanting to raise revenue and clear the loopholes with which George W. and Dick Cheney made their personal fortunes and what-have-you. Did you know that the George W. Cheney and Condi Rice oversaw the killing of endless US troops in some of the most bogus interventions convened like the surge in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan? And, Paul Ryan and Rand Paul admit that they support more defense and more so-termed “interventions”… Ugh!

M: Dude! “He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.”

D: Man! Senator Mitch McConnell and the Boehner-Cantor-Ryan trio of Representatives from the House secretively meet all the time behind closed doors as to how to wreck havoc upon the constituents and get gerrymandering adopted on the national presidential level so that, essentially, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden would have lost the election and the voters of the United States disenfranchised and divided up even less than the “Three Fifths Compromise” granted to slaves.

M: Dude! “He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.”

D: Man! Michael Isikoff’s investigative journalism is trying to make a case against President Obama’s drone program? I think the guy’s unaware of the facts of just how many of our sons and daughters have sacrificed in the name of our nation. Does he know that there have been two weeks without any reports from the Pentagon of soldiers killed? Does he have the courage to demand that Newsweek and NBC cover the faces of the men and women who have sacrificed? And I don’t mean approximate numbers either! I mean actual faces of the wars fought! Talk about the convulsions within!