This crime
can’t be solved

 

I n another life, I would like to have been a detective. Not a regular detective who has to play by the rules and follow “the law” and kiss all the asses of all the powers-that-be. No, thank you! I’m thinking of something more like a movie detective, the kind of guy whose boss gives him 48 hours to solve a sordid high-profile murder case and he solves it in like 47:59:59. Suck on it, boss!

In such a scenario, I would carry a very distinctive firearm. Not a long-barreled Smith & Wesson .44 caliber Model 29 — that’s already been done. No, I would be even more old-school: maybe a Wogdon dueling pistol, recently popularized by the musical “Hamilton.” One shot, and if you throw away that shot, you are well and truly screwed. Much like Hamilton himself. If there were no Wogdon dueling pistols available, I would have to go with the Model 1892 Winchester Chuck Connors made so famous in “The Rifleman.” 

Mark McCain: “Pa, you just killed eleven men! In like two seconds! Is that a Model 92 or an AR-15?”

Lucas McCain: “I told you to stay in the house!”

Just riffing here. I recently received my bill for web hosting: $250 for a site I haven’t used since, let’s see: November 2018. Since I never use the site, I probably should just let it go. Send it back to the ether from which it came.

It’s the same quandary I face every year about this time. I gnash my teeth, and curse and agonize but finally I end up paying for another year.  Two-hundred and fifty Samolians. The thing is: if the site goes away, so do the hundreds of ingenious posts (That’s gold, Jerry! Gold!) I’ve written since 2007. I know it’s possible to archive them offline, and I think I’ve done that, but I have no confidence the procedure actually worked.

So here’s another post. No one will read it, nor should they. It’s about weapons: lever-action Winchesters and dueling pistols. It’s about classic TV: Chuck Connors mowing down outlaws like he’s cutting the grass. Or Steve McQueen with his Mare’s Leg — possibly the stupidest weapon ever popularized on American television, while still true to the ethos of postwar America.  (What have we learned kids? Justifiable homicide is fun! And it’s justified!)

But really, this is about Trump. Again. Sorry. Since November 2016, they’re all about Trump. The man is killing us, trampling our old best dreams into reddish mud.

You wouldn’t think a stupid person would have that kind of power. But he does, haunting every dream like Freddy Krueger. You can’t even laugh about ’60s TV now without considering how it pertains to the fat man in orange, how that sensibility empowers him and all the mute Republican golems who shield him from consequence.  

My problem is, there’s nothing left to say about this guy. Every thinking person has already said it; most with more force and more eloquence than I ever could.  And since I have a a blog that nobody reads, and it’s even worse!

Trump thinks he’s Chuck Connors or Steve McQueen. He doesn’t know he’s Don Knotts — if you can envision an evil, chaotic Barney Fife motivated only by the dim fire of his basest instincts. 

I’m not a detective, and would make a poor one. But I love the fantasy of it. Until I relate it to the crime at hand. You assemble everyone in the drawing room, you late out the sequence of events, you point a finger at the murderer. The proof is undeniable. And in 2019 America, everyone just shrugs.