A nation under threat, a man incapable of action

The Column: 05.31.24

I live in a New York doorman building where, I hear, a doorman has been asked by a resident to change the battery in her cell phone and by another resident to unscrew a peanut butter jar lid; both women were college graduates, both married, the first to an author, the second to a man who lectures on leadership to business groups. What this tells me, people, is that we are being overtaken by China in basic skills, and one day we’ll discover that crucial highly specialized technicians have abandoned their careers and gone into songwriting and storytelling or have opened summer camps for gifted children and that the maintenance of our nuclear arsenal has been put out for bids and that Chinese restaurants in Nebraska have been getting enormous orders for Szechuan takeout from the United States Strategic Command.

I don’t know that Joe Biden can deal with this. The Oval Office is assisted living at its utmost: the Army Signal Corps maintains the cell phones, the Secret Service unscrews tight lids, and the memo warning of the level of Chinese cable TV viewership in and around U.S. missile installations is probably on the desk of an attaché in the basement of the West Wing Annex. The ubiquity of chopsticks, the Chinese ornamentation on the Golden Arches, the addition of McWontons and McNoodles to the menu: all have gone without comment by the President.

This is the problem with a free society, which ours is: people are allowed to pursue their own whims and wishes regardless of the national interest. I, for example, pursued a career in comic fiction when America had twice as many humorists as it needed and we ridiculed national leaders, the military, law enforcement, all forms of authority, the very idea of patriotism, even the sacred institution of marriage. Our nation is under threat from insidious forces and here I am writing humorously about it. This is not good.

But one fact leaps out: Republicans won by a landslide in 2020 only to have the election stolen from them, and which totalitarian nation has the wherewithal to fill out millions of fake ballots and ship them from Shanghai to stuff ballot boxes and elect Joe? It’s the first time a foreign country has elected a President. They did it because they know the Republicans are more likely to go after Chinese agents who’ve undergone eyelid surgery and who carry the AI backpacks with headphones that provide aliens with appropriate American slang, e.g., “that dog don’t hunt” or “let’s run it up the flagpole and see who salutes” or “phony as a three-dollar bill.”

Joe Biden is a good guy but he has not defended our borders. Everywhere I look I see un-American activities. Soccer, for example. In many communities, football is being driven out by a chaotic sport of players in shorts running around in circles, kicking a ball, not carrying it. And rock climbing — where did this come from? Young people forsaking the fine structure of baseball and basketball for the pointless exercise of ascending a precipice. Our churches have been corrupted by pop music and creeping romanticism. I go into cafes and see tart instead of apple pie, no Jell-O, no tuna hotdish or mac and cheese. I know teenagers who don’t know the words to our national anthem, have never sung “My country, ’tis of thee” or “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.”

Joe would make a good mayor of Wilmington but maybe the nation needs a Great Leader. We haven’t had one since FDR. Today’s Democrats are not into Greatness, they piddle around with programs. I keep thinking, “What if Hillary back in 2016 had said she liked to grab men by the crotch and broken through her image as a 7^th grade civics teacher? She would’ve won, even against the shiploads of votes from China.”

I love my building and its doormen. I pull up in a cab and a doorman grabs my suitcase and wheels it in, another doorman calls the elevator. I order Chinese food to be delivered and a doorman brings it to my door. I really need to break out of this comfortable life and walk out the door without a phone or billfold or my medications and stick out my thumb and try to make it back to Minnesota, sleeping in ditches, knocking on doors and begging for food, shoplifting in grocery stores. I’m an old man and I’ve missed out on this basic survival experience. I keep telling myself, “You’ve got to do this,” but for some reason I don’t listen.

Garrison Keillor brings his solo show to Loveland, Colorado, with poetry, limericks, sing-alongs and the News from Lake Wobegon on Thursday, June 6! Seats are limited. 

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