"Todd Blows Up! Volume 1"

We all see and hear things in our daily lives that astounds, amazes and more likely infuriates. Such is the case with today’s person of note, let’s call him “Jed”… it’ll make sense… just give me a minute.

WARNING: Rampant Liberalism is about to Ensue!!!

I was sitting in the smoking section (an open-air patio outside the bar) at Coaches listening to my iPod while working on a couple of drawings when I noticed that there was a big guy standing up and having a conversation with Nick that was making his face as red as his neck was. I took off my headphones and decided to take a minute to hear what was on this fellows mind.

Turns out that his mind was pretty puny… and when I say “puny”, I mean: smaller than the can of Skoal is his back pocket.

This guy was talking to an older regular of the bar, a fellow Liberal named Nick, who was sitting in the green plastic lawn chair closest to the exit, slightly reclined, with a smug grin on his face... for your information, Nick only smiles like that when he’s irritated.

This guy’s main source of irritation was the debate going on in the Congress and Senate about Illegal Immigration. He said, “I ripped up my ID card for the Republican Party and sent back their Donation Slip with a note saying, ‘I refuse to give you another donation until you guys fix the problem of Illegal Immigration in this country.’”

Now, there’s no problem with a guy stating his beliefs and taking a stand, so I kept listening to what he had to say. It turns out that his reasoning was that he somehow could affect some sort of change in a party so rife with corruption and scandal that it makes Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling of Enron look like Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi… some people just don’t get that supporting a flawed system doesn’t help anyone.

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I decide to ask him, “So, Illegal Immigration is the big problem for you?” He said, “Well, yeah… so?” I kinda giggled to myself and said, “So, Corporation Welfare, September 11th, the War in Iraq and its massive fuck-ups, Abu Ghraib, not finding Osama bin Laden, Tax cuts for the Rich, Hurricane Katrina, Cherry-Picking of WMD Intelligence to fit the Administration’s aims, the outing of Valerie Plame, Deregulation of California’s publicly-held energy companies to Enron and Reliant and their bilking millions of California’s citizens out of Billions of Dollars, Congressional rubber-stamping of whatever Bush wants to do, Congressional corruption, Domestic Wire-Tapping, Bribery Scandals and the utter lack of accountability for anything… none of that bothers you?” He stood there mute, “So when it comes down to you, ‘those damn dirty wetbacks’ are the problem, right? Give me a break, man… there’s bigger problems in this country than some sort of thinly-veiled xenophobic obsession that you have with people that speak Spanish. Having to learn a little of the languages of your neighboring countries is commonplace throughout Europe, so how are we so special?”

Rick and Jed looked over at me from across the room with a surprised look on his face.

I continued, “And you know what the big thing that really kills me is? All the ‘Big Guys’ in the Taliban and Al Qaeda are people trained by us to get the Russians out of the Middle East in the 70’s and 80’s… and everyone ignores that fact for the sake of some sort of faux ‘Patriotism’. The big thing that separated us from the Russians used to be the ability to Dissent when a leader in this country fucked up. Now, if someone like me or Nick here says anything against a Public Official and refuses to tow the Party Line, the crowd will boo us for having read books and paid attention to more than our own self-interest. You’re a Truck-Driver, right?” Jed nodded, “So why is it that you, a working man, with little hope of ever attaining the kind of wealth that the Republican leadership has, continues to vote for a party that has systematically shit on the Lower and Middle Class in this country for the last three decades?”

Jed said nothing… so I said, “That’s not a rhetorical question, man… do you have an answer?”

He nodded thoughtfully to himself, and asked me how old I am, so I told him. He said that he’s 38, and he’d never really thought of it that way. Nick said, “While you may not entirely agree with what Todd here said, he does make a good point that all that the Republicans in Congress are doing is Political Maneuvering to enflame the nationalistic tendencies of the average working man in this country, to ensure that they’ll be re-elected in the fall of this year. They don’t care about the borders… hell, they’ve had two or three years to do something about that, but they haven’t. It’s the same as Gay Marriage in this country… they don’t care about that either. All they want to do is play off the prejudices in this country to stay in office and do nothing about any of the real issues in this country. So, what do you think?”

Jed said, “I think I need to go to the bookstore or go online to check out the stuff you guys mentioned… it makes sense. I gotta go guys… you two have a great weekend.” And with that, Jed went out to his truck and drove off.

Nick looked over to me smiling and said, “Hey, did you write that as a speech or something, because that was really cool…” I smiled, picking up my headphones and said, “Hey, from time to time, everyone needs to be told something from a different perspective… I guess that today was his ‘time’, y’know?” Nick laughed out loud, took a deep gulp of beer and nodded, saying, “You may be right, Todd… you may be right…”