Fast Forward

Dr. Ben Carson, presidential candidate and amateur self-help motivational speaker, was re-explaining his positions to Andrea Mitchell. He always sounds so calm and measured, especially if you can’t hear his actual words. We were driving back from Marietta. We could clearly hear every word and had plenty of time to listen to the entire interview.

Dr. Carson’s leadership is purely speculative. It is all If OnlyIf Only he was in the room with the armed assailant. He would have led the charge against the gunman unlike those hapless victims who must have just waited for their turn to die. If Only the Jews and gypsies had had guns. The armies of the Third Reich which rolled through France, Poland, etc… would have been held off by tailors with pistols. If Only

Dr. Carson’s odd fixation with slavery, guns, and Hitler have ceased to be amusing. I reached for Joe Jackson’s new CD, Fast Forward.

I’m hitting fast forward

Seems like we’ve gotten kind of stuck

Time to get out of town and try to

Set the controls for sometime in the future

When people will be happy instead of

 

Getting dumber and getting scareder all the time

Scared of their own shadows and scared to take a fall

Either miserable with millions or dying for a dime

Desperate to live forever or lucky to live at all

 

Oh to hit fast forward. But how far in the future do we need to go? If we skip ahead two weeks, will we find that the Republicans have decided that the Speaker of the House, the second in line to succeed the President after the Vice-president, should be a strong leader who actually believes in government? If we skip ahead thirteen months, will we find that the election results are as clear as 2008 or will we be facing the turmoil of 2000?

How far is far enough? While some of us pine for an idealized future, others dream of an impossible return to the 1950’s and a past that never existed.

But today we have Ben Carson and Donald Trump. And for a moment of sanity, Joe Jackson.