Daily Archives: March 1, 2016

Winning

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Anna and I are losers.

And we don’t want to be losers.

We want to be winners.

And you can’t be a winner if you don’t play the game.

So last night we took up Safeway Monopoly.

We bought 24 cans of Friskies cat food for our dying cat.

And we got 48 Safeway Monopoly tickets.  Safeway tells me that if I just buy enough Friskies and Poptarts, we’re going to be winners.  We’re going to win a million dollars.  And a big TV.  And lots of other stuff.

Last night we spent one hour tearing and sorting and pasting.  Now the Lewis family is running the table.

Because in the end we won 6 more tickets.  And so we’re going back to Safeway to buy some more stuff and get even more tickets.  And it’s just going to get better.

We’re going to be winners.  And you can be a winner, too.  You and all of our country will no longer be losers and the rest of the world will stop laughing at us.

In a few more days, I’m nailing Park Place.  And I’ll have my Dawn Dishwashing Soap.

And you just wait and watch as I build me my Trump Towers.

Super. Tuesday.

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 A reminder on the cusp of a perhaps grave and auspicious day.

85 years ago, they were a silly and disregarded minority.  People chuckled at the circus antics, the self-infatuation, narcissism, and obscenely transparent self-glorification.

The beset people who first joined on to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) believed in a united country, promotion of nativist values, and the expulsion of minority populations who posed a perceived threat.

But for years, the vast majority of the country paid little attention.  Initially these small crowds of cheering admirers were nobodies.  Routinely arrested for civic disturbances, laughed at for their absurd fanaticism, they would amount to nothing.  And then Goebbels discovered that spectacles and calls to violence brought them attention.  And the attention brought them more crowds.  And the crowds brought them power.

And then one day, that silly minority became a grudging, then an accepting, and then an excited plurality.  More respectable ones joined because it would help them get what they wanted. And it would help them retain power.  They couldn’t stop it. And so they joined it.

And then no one was laughing any more.