If your neighbor came knocking
Wearing no shoes
While snowing outside
What would you do?
And your neighbor's neighbor?
And that neighbor's friend?
Would you bring them inside
Or let the neighborhood end?
When the masses are huddled
And their feet are cold
Would you lend them your shoes
Or send them back to the fold?
Imagine nuclear weapons existed in Westeros. Now think about King Joffrey Lannister. Now think about President Donald Trump. Yea... it's that bad.
Suppose an abusive co-worker got a promotion and became your boss. And let's say your former boss was a mentor you greatly admired. That's how people like me felt last Friday.
It was like watching Scar and his council of hyenas take over Pride Rock from Mufasa. It's demoralizing to witness some one so undeserving achieve power. We can only hope that Simba is out there in the wilderness.
My friends on the other side likely felt the same way watching President Obama's second inauguration. I didn't dismiss their sentiments then. In fact, I understand them now more than ever. But they don't get to dismiss mine now. So guess what...this hurts. Bigly.
The good news is I sleep well knowing that pink-hat-wearing people like me stand for compassion. These days, red-hat-wearing people only seem to stand for walls, internet trolling and a rejection of facts. And they can thank Vladimir Putin for his role in delivering their messenger.
Political discussions abound since Friday. For those attempting to talk sense to right of center friends, here are my answers to frequently asked questions from Trump supporters.
I have a hard time describing my feelings while I watch the Bachelor. They are similar to watching a Donald Trump speech... a mixture of anger, disappointment in our culture and genuine disbelief. Both involve yelling at the TV followed by a sudden onset of shame that I might be part of the problem. But my eyes cannot turn away. After an hour, I am thoroughly entertained.
If I was looking for a destructive way of detaching from reality, I suppose I could use meth. Instead, I watch the Bachelor. It is the best show on TV.
You may ask why I have spent entire hours of my life participating in this spectacle. It's a fair question. The reason is that I have a sworn duty to empathize with the complex needs and emotions of my wife. With that, I join her in consuming ABC's focus-group tested, ratings-driven interpretation of true love. Every Monday. For the past four years.
I assume Roman peasants felt the same way watching enslaved gladiators slaughter each other in the Coliseum. In the end, the emperor decided who lived and died and the audience always wanted blood. In those days, they positioned their thumbs. In the Bachelor, they hand out roses. At least ABC could throw us free bread every once and a while.
So with that, here are three questions that I would like to ask producers of the Bachelor.
Santa Claus is a lie. Call me a grinch, but the holidays are over and its time to come to grips with the hard truth. If you're a kid, he's the paragon of all that is good until reality smashes your confidence like a ginger bread house in the garbage.
At 10 years old, I was in denial about the reality of Santa even after I had accepted the truth about similar shams like the Easter Bunny. Even though I noticed the obvious inconsistencies -- like the fact that he could simultaneously appear at the Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Westchester Mall -- I chose to ignore them. All of the adults in my life fed me validation of his existence like a candy cane of lies. I was happy to eat it.
The reindeer came home to roost one day in school. My fifth grade self sat cross-legged on the floor and listened to a square-headed librarian read a story about a boy and his baby brother at Christmas. At the end of the story, the mother instructs the older brother not to tell the younger that Mommy and Daddy -- not Santa -- leave gifts under the tree. This was my red pill moment. I finally came face to face with confirmed proof of the truth. It was heady stuff for a fifth grader.
There was a tense silence in the classroom. One kid cried and was sent to the nurse. Some were visibly shocked, others looked like they had known all along. The librarian stood wide-eyed as if she'd accidentally melted the North Pole. Some day, I'd love to pull the NSA wiretap of the inevitable phone conversation that occurred between her and the parents of the kid who cried.
