Question

I’m noticing this something or other a few times lately among a few close and not-so-close homies in various compartments of my life. It has to do with our president. In what I like to call Operation I Can’t Take This Shit Anymore, an epic and mass defection has taken place in which, very specifically, several previous MAGA stalwarts have checked out. Packed their sea bags. I gave a whole list of these in a prior post. They’re not the focus here. The homies I briefly referred to at the beginning are. For their noble part, Joes Kent and Rogan and company have ballsily, commendably and publicly professed their dissatisfaction. These aren’t enough to budge these homies slash hangers-on, however, despite the fact that one, a dear friend of mine, listens to a lot of these same mouthpieces aka influencers. He still refuses to say anything negative about POTUS. In stark contrast, he posted almost daily photos of gas pumps when Slurry Joe was at the helm. And spoke positively of Candace and others.

Then there’s an old crush whose as MAGA as it gets not posting anything critical of POTUS. Just ones that support the notion all lefties wear blue hair. She just can’t give the blue hair a rest, despite my left-leaning, black coif.

Fine–salt and pepper.

I’m no head shrink, but these dumbasses have a head problem. They either have an impossible time admitting they were wrong (if a narcissist like Tucker Carlson can do it, so can you) or they really are in true allegiance to the idea we’re heading down the right path. Either way, they have a problem. A mental one. One that requires medication. I don’t ever advocate for medication, either. But whatever’s out there, let’s start handing it out.

Because we are not headed down the right path.

The strongest meds, however, go to the following group:

I’m sailing with an old sea dog in Alaska. He’s pushing 80. A staunch Baptist. Can’t hear any of the alarms that go off, but I digress. He loves his wife of over 60 years who’s recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. It’s busting him up because he finds this out while we’re at sea. He thought it was just a bad case of dementia. It’s not. He wants to go home. He can’t hear any of the alarms; he needs to go home.

I overhear him on the phone with his brother, applauding the White House ball room and the UFC fight that’s to take place there this 4th of July. I’m not surprised. He’s the kind of homie who I read and hear about made flesh before my very eyes and ears.

There’s a tsunami of YouTube videos about prophecies he feeds to me. This English guy or that one spouting off about the second coming or some other treatment of the rapture. I really just want to sit in the wheelhouse and stare out the window, maybe scroll through some porn in mute (it’s the best signal up there) and make sure old timey doesn’t fall asleep. On top of he can’t hear the alarms, he falls asleep. Hell, I could rub one out and the old bastard won’t even know.

It’s all I need to make this last dance complete: running aground on the beach. That’s actually a good scenario. That we could probably survive. Striking a rock in the middle of the Gulf of Alaska–not so good. I’d already taken a pry bar to the side of the head at this point; thank God for my beanie.

Anyway, this old salt loves his bible and is solidly convinced we are headed toward the end of time. We could be if he’s left alone in the wheelhouse.

There comes a point when I just can’t take this English asshole going on and on about how everything that’s going on right now is in accordance with the Bible. He’s flashy with his knowledge, plucking this verse and that, probably out of context, to illustrate a point. He refers to Iran as Persia, which is accurate, but between the lines suggests that Muslims aren’t going to be saved. That’s if he’s not hinting Persia just ought to be atomized, which I’m not sure he’s not.

So I interrupt old timey’s sleep and pose the following: “So Cap, do you think Trump is a vessel in all of this end-of-time stuff?”

“A what?”

“A vessel?”

“What’s that?”

There’s half the problem right there. Man’s got to know a few things: A suit he can afford (Men’s Warehouse) and one that he can’t (Boss). The difference between a lag bolt and a regular bolt. Coarse or fine. Players on least his hometown football, baseball and basketball teams. And the goddamn word vessel, and what it means in the context in which I used it. You’re 76, man, and you don’t–it’s where I wanted to go.

I think of a few synonyms, but if “vessel” doesn’t register, catalyst and conduit are likely to spin his head clean off. Old timey can drive the boat; I’ll give him that. Finally, he says, “Yeah, I think he’s involved.”

Hmm.

“And he’s the right man for the job, is he?”

“It’s in the Bible.” He repeats this over and over and over whenever I go down this path many do of Trump’s character.

“But shouldn’t whoever is the vessel–I mean shouldn’t whoever is involved–be of a certain character?” I say.

“It’s in the Bible.”

Old Cappy here is about the third homie in recent memory to look at all of this in Biblical terms. All three are Trump supporters. All three have not a single negative, cancerous, even critical word to say about POTUS. Not even when he praises Allah on Easter Sunday.

“Whatcha think of that beauty, Cap?”

“It’s in the Bible.”

Is it, Father?

(This one took longer than usual. I was busy taking a blow to the head by an errant pry bar, fearing for my life a few times that the boat might sink, dewatering that same boat; shit, I even at one point stood in a cashier line in Po Dunk AK, debating whether or not to purchase a handgun for the last leg home. I’m getting my CDL, fuck boats. I’m done).

-tmc