An American Funeral?
Are our American ideals dead? Plus, the magical mystery of fishing superstitions
Editor’s Note: Have a question about when, exactly, democracy will die in darkness? Don’t ask Matt. He’s been watching it on its sickbed for years, so has no idea on which day, precisely, someone will finally kick the plug on the life-support machine. Maybe ask Lord Bezos, who seems to be killing it off one organ at a time, when he’s not busy taking his lady friend to get her lips inflated and/or doing his nerd workouts. (Nice pecs, Jeff!) For all other questions, ask Matt Labash at askmattlabash@gmail.com.
Second Editor’s Note: This piece was going to press immediately after Donald Trump and JD Vance’s unprovoked Oval Office tag-team attack on Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Matt’s very quick’n’dirty take here.
Dear Matt,
Should we have a funeral for what we believed America used to be?
Zen Mizu
Well, if we were to have one of those, we’re probably about nine years late. Because the America I knew and love passed in 2016 — when Chick-fil-A pulled their matchless coleslaw off the menu to make way for a “super side” of kale and broccolini. Which I’m pretty sure was a Chicom plot to destroy morale. (Good thinking, Xi, it worked!)
Otherwise, I’d say go ahead and have a funeral for our American ideals if you’re a committed pessimist/think you look fetching in slimming black. But as long as roughly half the country knows that the nutjobs have taken over the asylum – the former of which is a number I suspect will compound, the more erratically and irrationally the current regime governs – I believe our American ideals are very much alive. We were a country founded by extremely sane revolutionaries, trying to cast off the yoke of bad ideas. (Taxation without representation, overpriced tea, monarchy.)
In some ways, we’re back to square one, trying to cast off the yoke of bad ideas (tax breaks for the billionaire broligarchy, stupid tariffs that will hurt us all, monarchy.)
Try as they might to the contrary, the vandals of our republic are returning us to first principles, forcing us to remember everything we once held dear, but had the luxury for too many years of forgetting. Stability often breeds complacency.
Are roughly half of our countrymen willing to sell out their liberty/free press to a sociopath with a bleached-strawberry-blonde combover and his autistic baby-daddy sidekick, who seems to enjoy humiliating The People (by indiscriminately firing large swaths of them who work for the government that they pretend to want to make better)? The very same people that their faux-populist movement pledges phony allegiance to? Sure! All’s fair, so the thinking goes, in culture war. Which is all this is really about. I’m for eliminating government waste, too. But if you have a cancerous mole on your nose, you cut off the mole, not your entire nose. And you definitely wouldn’t want your nose/mole surgeon to be a 19-year-old named “Big Balls.”
And I’m forever disappointed in those – plenty of whom I know personally – who are such easy marks, when all of their cult-leader overlords are clearly in it to reward themselves and/or each other. Along with a lot of other rich guys, who don’t even truly believe in what the regime is doing (see Bezos, Mark Fuckerberg, etc.), who are now going along for the ride.
But there are still enough of us to make their ride a rough one. And we should. Every chance we get. I’ve never been anything close to a political activist. The only protests I’ve ever attended are as a journalist, usually to make sport of the protesters. But these days, I protest in some way, shape, or form just about every time I set pen to paper, like now. And I will do so again and again. Not because I’m spoiling for a fight. (I’d rather not fight at all – I’m a lover, not a fighter.) But because these jackasses need figuratively punched in the throat, every time we get a free shot. (Violence is an answer, but not The Answer.) Not because I hate them, personally. But because they are trying to undo this beautiful thing of ours — the American Experiment — for their own personal gain. I don’t consider too many sins unforgivable ones. (Maybe cutting in on a fishing hole while I’m standing in it. Maybe backing your truck into a parking space while I’m waiting to pass.) But that’s one of them.
So don’t put on your pallbearer’s suit just yet, when you can still don your fighting trunks. I suggest something tasteful and understated from the Hector “Macho” Camacho line:
Dear Matt,
Are you a superstitious fisherman? If so, how?
Nathan T.
You presumably know I’m an obsessive fly fisherman, and yet you ask me if I’m superstitious? Is a bear Catholic? Does a pope shit in the woods? Of course I’m superstitious. It’s practically in the job description. Nearly my entire fishing life is governed by superstitions, irrational though they may be. Anyone who spends as much time fishing as I do, hoping to pull unseen mysteries from the deep, can hardly afford not to believe in superstition. Fishermen might tend to be drunks, laggards, and ne’er-do-wells, but all of them tend to believe in the unseen.