The Longest Long Con

     I ran across this graphic only a few minutes ago:

     It’s at the center of my thoughts for a reason upon which I’ll rant a bit later in this piece. For now, I’d like to remind you about an old song, and an old practice far too many of us followed in our younger years. The song:

Every time I think that I’m the only one who’s lonely
Someone calls on me
And every now and then I spend my time in rhyme and verse
And curse those faults in me
And then along comes Mary
And does she want to give me kicks, and be my steady chick
And give me pick of memories
Or maybe rather gather tales of all the fails and tribulations
No one ever sees

When we met I was sure out to lunch
Now my empty cup tastes as sweet as the punch

When vague desire is the fire in the eyes of chicks
Whose sickness is the games they play
And when the masquerade is played and neighbor folks make jokes
As who is most to blame today
And then along comes Mary
And does she want to set them free, and let them see reality
From where she got her name
And will they struggle much when told that such a tender touch as hers
Will make them not the same

When we met I was sure out to lunch
Now my empty cup tastes as sweet as the punch

And when the morning of the warning’s passed, the gassed
And flaccid kids are flung across the stars
The psychodramas and the traumas gone
The songs are left unsung and hung upon the scars
And then along comes Mary
And does she want to see the stains, the dead remains of all the pains
She left the night before
Or will their waking eyes reflect the lies, and make them
Realize their urgent cry for sight no more

When we met I was sure out to lunch
Now my empty cup tastes as sweet as the punch

(Tandyn Almer)

***

     There was a “game” we young folks played, when I was a younger man, single and desirous of…well…we sometimes called it nookie, alright? It went like this:

HE: Get her high and chat her up sophisticatedly, and maybe you’ll get her into bed.
SHE: Pretend to listen and let him think he might get me into bed so I can get high on his dime.

     If you “matured” in the Sixties and Seventies, you may have been a “player” in this game yourself. It was a con, of course. He wasn’t at all interested in her mind; she wasn’t at all interested in his body. But both sides were willing to pretend for the sake of what they really sought, and yes: every now and then she would give him what he really wanted from her. (After getting higher than Icarus ever got, of course.) Tandyn Almer’s lyric above recounts this con game in Ferlinghetti-esque fashion…regardless of whether you can recite the whole thing from memory alone.

     “Along Comes Mary” was a warning…but the young have always been dismissive of such cautions. Our glands spoke in a voice that would not be denied. Our heedlessness got us into no end of trouble. That’s the way it goes when you keep playing a con game.

***

     The graphic at the start of this jeremiad tells a central truth, one which recent events have made plain…yet few are willing to accept it. There are reasons for that, most prominent among them being the continuing media emphasis on Left vs. Right, and the contemporary phenomenon of the Never-Ending Campaign.

     If the media megaphone can get you charged up about a notionally two-sided contest — with the help of the contestants, of course — it can keep your attention on what’s being said and away from what’s being done. That is the pattern of the last forty years at least. It keeps the political parties fat and happy, the media moguls dancing in dollars…and you and I bereft of the thing this nation was founded to protect and preserve: FREEDOM.

     It’s a con game, Gentle Reader. It’s been nothing else since Ronald Reagan left office — and do you want to know what the Big Giveaway is, the one that everyone in this country should reflect on? It’s right out there in front of God and everybody, but only a handful of commentators have even brushed their microphones against it:

     It’s the swindling of Donald Trump.

     Trump was a genuine Outsider, a maverick determined to do right as he saw it. That made him an unacceptable, permanently “outside the tent” figure to the master croupiers of the Con Game, they who pour the Very Best Butter over the cams of the Big Rake-Off Machine we call party politics. They labor ceaselessly to keep We the People in Us vs. Them mode, that the oceans of campaign dollars might continue to flow uninterrupted into their coffers. Despite their best efforts, Trump gained the White House and set about doing as he said he would do. Unthinkable! the masters of the Establishment said to one another. No one keeps campaign promises! That’s why we let our puppets make them!!

     So Trump had to go. The theft of the 2020 presidential election was the plainest imaginable revelation about the essential phoniness of contemporary political “conflict.” But despite Election 2020 and subsequent developments – Ukraine, anyone? — only a few have caught on.

     Disaffiliate yourselves from the farce. Stop paying it any attention. Stop expecting political mechanisms to solve any of your problems. Concentrate on doing the best you can for your family, your friends, your neighbors, and your community, however defined. The game is rigged — so completely that even though “it’s the only game in town,” there’s absolutely no point in playing it any longer.

     Be free. Freedom is not granted; it is taken: by you or from you. And the longer you focus on the con game called politics, the longer it will be withheld from you — by your own stubborn inanition.

     It’s time for Mass. Perhaps I’ll be back later.

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  1. Ronald Reagan, 1964

    …there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream — the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order –or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.

    • Vicki Bryant on February 26, 2023 at 8:08 AM

    I screen shot part and posted elsewhere suggesting those readers go to your site for more. I admit my thievery freely; I am not a creator of content, only a thief trying to spread the best that folks create. Ban me if you must: others have but there is always someone else doing excellent work. I do not mind having to move on.

    • George Mckay on February 26, 2023 at 11:21 AM

    Perhaps due to too much loud music as a youngun I had no idea what the lyrics of this really were.  We are and have been – slowly at first – pushed into a corner that none of us wants to be in. 
    I love women – hell married one and I am the lucky one.  She treats me so sweetly it makes me weep at times.   I truly do not deserve it but, she loves me anyway.  I am the luckiest man alive and I know it. 
    Love – TRUE LOVE, Agape love is the only thing that can and could save our Republic.  Love our fellow man and be willing to lay it all down for THEM without any consideration of what will happen to ones self is the only way we can survive the onslaught of evil only now becoming apparent to others,
    I would do anything for my wife and she would for me as well.  Would any of our readers do the same?   Love others – do so unceasing.   
    One other small thing – buy ammo 0f LOTS of it!!!
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

  2. I love it when someone actually LOOKS at the lyrics that I barely paid attention to when I was young. It gives me a whole new interpretation of how the influencers of that time wanted me to think, to feel, and to do.
    Good thing I wasn’t really listening.

    • Bear Claw Chris Lapp on February 28, 2023 at 1:56 PM

    Damn, that first pic and truth just means we are old.

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