Slang It to Me

The venerable, time-tested idioms and clichés are rusting out. They’re about to bite the dust. Acronyms and instagrams of verbal arcana now rule, the new Esperanto. I’ve dusted off and cobbled together a few old ones. They still tell it like it is.

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We live in a culture of idiomatic clichés. We’re comfortable with our favorites. You can belly up to the bar with such claptrap chatter as lol, yolo and omg, but you’ll never get the same respect as letting you ain’t just whistling Dixie, bubba, roll off your tongue. Amen?

Today, our Republic seems to be hanging by a thread. Cordiality is as scarce as hen’s teeth and protest rules the roost. Politics is business as usual. Congress keeps slamming the door in our face and we’re tired of having to go around the block with Hillary.

What’s happened to consensus? It fell off the wagon and got in the ditch. Everybody’s posturing, saving face. The wolf is knocking at the door demanding more hand-outs. We’re robbing Peter to pay Paul to keep anarchy and looters off the streets.

There’s enough blame to go around. But, misery loves company, and the fat’s in the fire when government can’t pay its bills. Our leaders keep kicking the can and assuring us we’ll dodge the bullet of disaster in spite of the eleventh hour. They’ve hung us out to dry while rewarding themselves with the fruits of our labors.

The moment of truth has arrived. The Treasury is broke. We’re running from pillar to post, taxing everything that moves, and searching for money to pay the piper. Our ‘leaders’ are impotent. These hot-dog, flash-in-the-pan fat cats are making off with billions and laughing all the way to the bank.

Loose screws are everywhere. Our Supreme Leader is running around like a chicken with his head cut off and competing with Kim Jong Un on weird haircuts. Neither can figure out who’s on first and neither is playing with a full deck.

POTUS is hounded by the press and is trying to get the monkey off his back by blaming fake news. He shoots from the hip with nuclear tweets while Putin, a short dog in tall grass, sucker-punches him silly on Syria. He’s all talk and no action on making America Great Again. We’ve heard his empty rhetoric until we’re blue in the face. We’re fed up. He’s obsessed with walls and is drawing lines in the sands of Mexico. The world hates us. We’re easy pickings now, saturated with egg on our face and left hanging out to dry.

Robert E. Lee is disappearing while glib gloaters rub salt in the collective wounds of the fading Confederacy. National heritage is being swept under the rug of history in the glare of a gilded Sherman in Central Park.

America is passing the buck on world leadership and riding on the merry-go-round of avoidance, living in a fool’s paradise. We’re down in the back, stooped like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. It’s high time we roll up our sleeves and stop equivocating. Then the world will be laughing out of the other side of their mouths.

Legalized duels will end political gridlock. No more endless beating around the bush of debate. Put your money where our mouth is I say. We’ll get to the bottom of it quickly when it becomes a matter of life and death. Such contests focus the mind. It’s a fair and square way of coming to grips with issues. It would be the final nail in the coffin of flawed concepts and idiotic ideology. It will truly separate the men from the boys.

Citizens keep getting the short end of the stick. We’re left leaning on the weak reed of one measly vote, unless we live in Chicago. Yet we still run off at the mouth while eating humble pie. Soon we’ll be forced to man up and face the music. The biased media’s grim handwriting on the wall throws fuel on the fire, while we sit on our hands and hope the sorry mess will run its course.

While we may be as clueless as the man in the moon as to what’s going on, we’re still hard nuts to crack. We tend to our own business and try to make hay while the sun still shines. We let no grass grow under our feet.

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It’s a dysfunctional, dystopian new world of instagrams, sexting and tweeting. Get used to it. If you don’t like today, tomorrow will be a real pain in the ass. So put your foot in the door, sign up for Twitter and throw your own hat into the ring.

Remember, the long and the short of it is still: You Only Live OnceYOLO, y’all, and bless your little hearts.

Bud Hearn
August 17, 2017