I murdered the television long, long ago. I've tuned to it's bile laden vomitus from time to time when company housing came with the beast. My ears pricked up to hear a long lost (now a die-hard republicon) relative's directive to listen to George Carlin's "illusion of choice" routine: "It's a big club and you ain't in it"... and marvel magnanimously at how Faux Noize and his predisposition for racism has turned my childhood playmate into another of capitalism's puppets.
He laughed yet dismissed it as a comedic show.
My refuge from bullying under a freeway bridge became my perspective. A large, discarded cardboard box that temporarily housed a new refrigerator for a suburban household became my temporary home. The view of a family through their front window sitting down to thanksgiving dinner together made me wonder why my own had banished me to starvation and dumpster diving. On the bus I'd managed to slip in the back door to ride to the beach showers, one of the middle aged passengers who moved away from me asked me if I'd "had all my shots". I could only be astonished with disbelief as the U.S. public elected a cowboy actor to the highest office, and continue to scrounge for enough aluminum cans to afford a package of cheap hot dogs. Only the kindness of an elderly fellow gay American salvaged me from the choice of street cretin existence or the prospect of returning to uncaring, judgmental, abusive, pseudo-religious and murdersome parents.
Only after an uncle begrudgingly took me in two years later was I able to attend college and make something of myself.
My perspective remains. I cannot adopt the pretentiousness and snobbishness I came to loathe as a societal reject: for being honest with myself and others.
In Bernie I could see a glimmer of hope from an establishment politician. I can see a veneer of this with the Clintons, and certainly a far cry better chance of salvaging a retirement that hopefully won't resemble my latter teenage.
Yet I remain so far removed from the royalty our government has become I've never had a real "seat at the dinner table", aside from any conventional table to consume from. At least someone there has had a smattering of empathy, has acknowledged the disadvantaged aside from moral judgementalism, has brought into the national conversation the plight of those struggling to dig out from enormous student debts.
The Donald I can only see American pretentiousness, pernicious, exclusive, racist and judgemental, a shadow of my own father who attempted to trick me to an electrical death trap. I cringe at his $100,000 donation to those who would like to imprison me and other LGBT citizens into death camps. I cannot even begin to express this dismay at those who cannot evolve beyond their hatreds.
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