One Small Voice: On lifting the lid of that scary pipe

by Lynn Mandaville

Riddle:  Why did the chicken cross the road?

Answer:  To prove to the ‘possum that it IS possible.

It was recently suggested to me by a friend that I possess a certain wit.

I disagreed.

Though I do possess a fairly well cultivated sense of humor (much of it begun by my Pop by way of the greats like Abbot and Costello, Ernie Kovacs, Burns and Allen, and Stan Freberg), I find very little that tickles my funny bone nowadays.

Life has become too chaotic to leave room for laughter.

Each morning, before I face the news – which is three hours old by the time I get it out here in Arizona – I begin to have feelings like those I felt as a little girl, when my older cousins, Billy and Freddie, dared me to lift the lid off the weird, dark, metal pipe buried in Grandma’s side yard.

I knew that when I lifted that lid from that dark hole that I’d find some kind of horrible insect in there.

What I didn’t know was, would it be a slow bug like the ones we called armadillo bugs, that would simply roll up into a defensive ball?  Would it be a centipede that would race out at a thousand miles an hour and be impossible to avoid without falling all over myself?  Would it be one of those pincer bugs that was slow-moving, but just too awful to even look at?

It was always a crap shoot as to what horror would be beneath the lid.

But my cousins dared me, and I always took the bait.  I never learned.

That’s how mornings feel when we turn on the news.

By letting the talking heads into our living room, I’m lifting the lid off that scary pipe of news bugs.

Will it be fire or flood?

Will it be accidental explosions or intentional bombing somewhere in the world?

Or will it be Trump?

And I never learn.  I take the bait.  I take off the metaphorical lid and watch the news.

Fire or flood, though usually accompanied by terrible human toll and unspeakable damage, are disasters we have become relatively adept at coping with.  The Red Cross and FEMA come to the aid of victims, and resilient people pick up and rebuild.  And I can cope with that terrible news, knowing that most folks will come out alive on the other side of whatever has been heaped upon them.

Likewise, international disasters, depending where they happen, are also met with assistance by the Red or White Cross and The World Kitchen, and other philanthropic groups.  (Unless they happen in countries with whom we’re at odds.  Then they’re on their own.)  But eventually, the strong come out on the other side with resolve to keep on keeping on.

If it’s Trump, however, well, it’s anybody’s guess who will be doing damage control.

And only time and the historians will tell us how we come out on the other side of a Trump administration.

I’d like to at least try to be fair here.

Not everything that is problematic in the United States now is Trump’s fault.  I mean, isn’t most of it, after all, Obama’s fault?  (That’s a joke, son.  A joke.  Imagine it being said by Foghorn Leghorn.)

Trump didn’t cause the racism that is running overtly rampant in the country right now.

Trump didn’t create the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is wreaking havoc in our country so much more than other places in the world.

Trump didn’t even create the financial crisis we’re experiencing because of the coronavirus, at least, not intentionally.

So why are we embroiled in such a – what’s the polite term? – sh*tstorm?

Because Trump, our would-be king, is the King of Chaos.

Before the riots in Charlottesville there were racists in America.  There were white supremacists, and KKK cells, and skin heads. (Remember the good old days when we were ashamed to be bigots?)

President Trump, however, with his careless rhetoric, lifted the lid off that scary metal pipe of racism and let out all the slow but very repulsive bugs of hatred and violence.  And he has continued to lift that lid whenever he feels he needs more chaos to distract us from other terrible issues.

When the COVID-19 virus first reared its ugly head, Trump brushed off the potential hazards with a depraved indifference, until he realized that this time the lid on the scary metal pipe of disease had been lifted by the scary “bugs” themselves.  Since he couldn’t corral the bugs and put them back, what remained was to create more chaos to distract us from his bunglings.

It isn’t necessary to go into the details of the mismanagement of COVID-19.

But it’s worth noting that, had Trump responded more like the wartime president he declared himself to be and not like the narcissistic blowhard he is, he’d likely not have facilitated the decline into rampant, widespread illness, or the resultant financial crisis that might have been avoided, or lessened, had he seen the writing on the wall about the consequences of pandemic shutdown.

So, as Trump opens the proverbial lid from Pandora’s Box each day, so am I dared to lift the lid off the morning news, to see how much chaos he has stirred up by noon on the east coast before I have my 9 AM coffee here in Arizona.

As I look back on those halcyon days at my Grandma’s house at the Jersey Shore, through the long lens of memory, those nasty little bugs from the scary, dark, metal pipe appear far less menacing in my mind’s eye than what greets me now, each morning.

I doubt that my cousins, Billy and Freddie, were trying to prepare me for the frightening aspects of adulthood.  They were just being kids, the way boys can be, getting their jollies out of scaring little girls.

Do you suppose that Trump, creating his daily chaos, is just getting his jollies by scaring the bejeezus out of us today?

And why do I keep lifting the lid and looking into the dark abyss?