by John Walters

The Week We’ll Never Forget

It’s rare to enter a week at any point in history and know that so much of the future will emanate from it. Maybe you’d have to go back to the Monday after Kennedy was assassinated or the day after Pearl Harbor.

But here we are.

May you live in interesting times… yeah, sure.

Here’s our advice, and we take it directly from William Wallace. No matter what happens tomorrow or the day after that…Hold…Hold…HOLD!!!!

Rail To Whale*

*The judges will also accept “Breach of Contact” and “Fluke Occurrence” but not “Moby Dyke”

In Rotterdam, the Netherlands, a metro train overshot its final stop but a whale sculpture was in the right place at the right time, probably saving a few lives.

The East Coast Sequels To La La Land Look Pretty Lame

Back in New Jersey, parts of the Garden State Parkway were shut down on Sunday due to a Trump caravan. Same thing happened on the Gov. (Maria) Cuomo Bridge, which we old-timers know as the Tappan Zee Bridge (spanning the Hudson, north of New York City about 10 miles).

As for the former, that’s Bruce Springsteen country and as the Boss once wrote, “It’s a town full of losers/I’m pullin’ outta here to wi-i-iiin!“

You may wonder, Where are the police? Why aren’t they pepper-spraying these folks the way they do black people who are simply marching to a polling station? That’s a very good question.

A better question is, What has possessed so many Americans to work themselves into a quasi-terroristic froth over a presidential election? Hmm. I have to go back to that Barry Hussein Obama dude. Seems his election stirred up a lot of murder hornet nests, particularly in rural U.S. of Damn A!

For a whole bunch of Americans, presidents are supposed to look like Mike Pence and talk like Donald Trump. The patriarchal white man in a suit equals stability and security. For them. Don Draper knew his audience. So does Don Trump.

Meet The New Trump, Same As The Old Trump

Speaking of bosses and 45, we’ve read in the past week as to how those stranded rally-goers were a result of bus lines not being paid by the Trump campaign. And we’ve also read how, even before election day, Trump’s plan is to flood battleground states with lawsuits and lawyers and tie the election up in the courts.

A) Not paying bills and B) Stalling via litigation. Does this sound like any Donald Trump you know? Oh, yeah. It sounds much like the same Donald Trump New Yorkers have been familiar with for roughly 40 years.

There are some folks, decent-minded folks, who seem to believe (and I don’t know why) that if Biden wins by a decisive number of electoral votes (and/or the popular vote) on Tuesday that Trump will just concede defeat. Their thinking is that only if the election is close will Trump contest it. I don’t know what rock these people have been living under, but they may want to listen to New Yorkers who’ve known Trump’s playbook for four decades.

It’s kinda like this: Some dude grabs your wife in public and starts playing tongue hockey with her. Are you really not going to do anything because you think, Well, it’s not as if he’s going to try and sleep with her? What part of his behavior leads you to believe that this aggressor has any sense of moral boundaries?

A Great, Big, Beautiful Wall (And Once Again, Mexico’s Not Gonna Pay For It)

Reports out of some outlets are that the White House is erecting a non-scaleable fence around its perimeter. Supposedly to protect itself from election protesters.

Even though all of the pre-election demonstrations that are festooned with para-military gear and threats belong to, you know, Donald Trump’s followers. Interesting.

Jock To The Future

We were ruminating last night about what the populace could do in the event that Joe Biden handily wins the vote and yet Donald Trump refuses to vacate. Ah, the irony: a slumlord who’s evicted so many in the past will fight his own lawful eviction.

Anyway, we began to think about sports and America’s highly unhealthy addiction to it. And we thought about the age of social media and how much easier it is for athletes to communicate and to mobilize because of it. And so here is our wish/suggestion for big-time athletes: if Biden wins and Trump attempts to remain in office, DO NOT PLAY.

That’s right: simply refuse to take the field. That is, of course, if these athletes are fans of justice and democracy and all those things we were taught in school that makes America great.

If NFL players simply refused to take the field next Sunday… if college football players followed suit… well, the outcry from the public would be enormous. And without the opiate of sports to distract the nation from its ills—particularly football—that would cause plenty of unrest.

I’d never expect every NFL player to follow through on this. But you don’t need every NFL player. You simply need enough high-profile players (let’s begin with quarterbacks) who would do this. It would be a game-changer. Do I expect this to happen? No. But it would be the greatest sports moment in terms of social justice since Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the Army.