“Vote Trump!”

This from a middle-aged man in a Seahawks jersey, the same who moments earlier struck a boo-hoo symphony in the supermarket checkout line over the inflated cost of beer.

The man’s directive is aimed at a pair of younger guys, twenty-somethings by the look of them, who enter the store at the time I and the boo-hoo beer lover are leaving. The younger guys seem not to notice his words, or they pretend not to.

I should know by the way things often go, that I myself will be the man’s next target. I’m an easy one, as it turns out we’re parked ten feet from one another.

“Vote Trump!” he says with finger steered my direction. He eyes me up and down before adding, “You didn’t vote Trump, did you?”

He must know by my attire—ill-fitting sweatpants topped by mismatched hoodie—that I’m not a get out and vote kind of person. I’m much more of a mail my ballot if I’m in a decent mood type. In other words, my vote has already been cast. If there was any hope of scoring a notch in the Trump column, it’s too late in my case.
After determining the man is not likely armed, I come clean.

“No, I didn’t vote Trump. I voted Doug the Pug.”

“Who?”

I see the thought bubble materialize above the man’s head:
Doug the Pug…I don’t recall seeing him on the ballot?

“He’s an Independent,” I explain.

I’m rewarded with a respectful gaze, the sort a Red Sox lover might give an Orioles fan, a look that says, at least you’re not a Yankee!

The man proceeds with a political backstory I didn’t ask for, how he’s a lifelong democrat who couldn’t bring himself to vote Blue, in no small part because he just paid $11.00 for his beer.
“So I went RED all the way down,” he tells me.

The red all the way down part, I don’t doubt. I do question whether he’s always voted for the dems. If he has and is now flipped 100% the other way, it’s further indication to me that our society has fallen into a whirlpool of cynicism.

And why not? In a time when beer costs 11 bucks, you can still pick up a case of cynicism for cheap. Walmart sells low and makes it up in volume, but most of their stuff comes from China or Mexico, which is no bueno. Cynicism is harvested right here in the good ole’ USA. We make more than enough to supply ourselves and the entire world.

I’m in no position to judge the boo-hoo beer man. I may not have voted “red all the way down”, but I did write-in a celebrity pug, one who’s greatest accomplishment is that of being an industry leader in wall calendar sales. If that’s not cynical, I don’t know what is.

Times like this often make me think of video games. I grew up on Nintendo. When Mario kept falling off ledges or getting creamed by Bowser, I did what a lot of kids do—I screamed. I accused the computer of cheating. If I was feeling particularly salty, I chucked the controller at the television.

What if life was always like that? It feels like it is—like we’re all stuck in a game that cheats and kicks our asses over and over and when we try to make ourselves feel better with a nice cold beer, we’re charged eleven dollars for it.

There’s a solution. It’s the same one I recommend to my teenager, whenever he feels like the fate of his existence relies on whether or not he beats the final boss on a video game: put down the controller. Walk away. Take a break.

There’s a reason Jesus says that, to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, we must become like little children. A little child has yet to learn the rules of the bloody game we’ve made of this world. A child is less confused over the boundaries between real and imagined. They do not see red states and blue states. They don’t see states at all, nor countries. They see sunsets and trees and a world dancing with Life.

Cynicism may be a cheap drug these days, but it has side effects, the worst being the way it makes us forget. We’d do well to lay off the stuff and remember that Life does not begin or end with what happens on an imaginary day in November, in an imaginary place called America.