Endless Jackassery

Have you ever had one of those bad dreams where you show up late for class, but forgot to wear pants, and everyone else is ready for a test you didn’t know about? You know you’ve all had those dreams.

But as much as we all hate those dreams it is far worse when ridiculous circumstances in real life are brought on by the ridiculous inability of others to cope, act or lead.  That my friends, is where we have been for the past four years.

An endless loop of Jackassery foisted on us by people who cannot cope, act or lead. An endless loop of jackassery.

It reminds me of a trip my wife and I took in our first few years of marriage.

We were the epitome of poor young newlyweds. We never got to go anywhere so the chance to fly to a staff conference in Colorado felt very grown-up. In those days before digital-everything the national office made our flight arrangements and sent us our tickets.

So, as we made the drive to Hartsfield International Airport my lovely young bride pulled out the tickets and slowly turned to me asking, “Mark Air? What is Mark Air? And there’s no seat numbers. What kind of jackleg flight do you have us on?”. Well, I didn’t know. I told her it would be fine. Thus began the endless loop of jackassery.

As neophyte travelers we arrived at the vastness of Hartsfield and of course Mark Air had the last possible baggage check-in location. Since we were now running late, I asked the zombie at the ticket desk if a meal would be served in-flight. She stared benignly like a cow chewing cud and said, “You’ve never flown Mark Air before have you?” The odyssey was underway.

 We exhaustedly trekked half a mile, to a ten-minute train ride, to another half mile walk to the last gate in the last terminal. Upon arrival we saw over one hundred people standing morosely in line at the gate. I asked another victim about the standing. In a defeated tone he grumbled “Oh, you’ve never flown Mark Air before”. Seating was first come first serve!

My ever-sweet wife was glaring at me. I assured her we would get on the plane at which point the guy next to me said, “Oh you’ve never flown Mark Air before”. It was like some strange mantra being chanted over and over by the depressed masses of Mark Air captives.

To make it more fun the flight was oversold. “Oversold?” I asked out loud. At which a lady turned to me with pitiful understanding and said “oh, you’ve never flown Mark Air before”.

Lo and behold we got the last two seats on the back row by the toilets. You know, that seat pressed against the lavatory wall so you can’t lean back. The same seat bearing the fragrance of chemical blue-water that can only come from an airplane toilet. The ultimate in NOT first class. But if you’ve ever been stuck in airport purgatory and all they have left is a seat on the back row by the toilet, you jump on it like a spider monkey on a doughnut.

Neither of us had eaten because we couldn’t risk getting out of the boarding line. I heroically commented to my disheveled bride that I’d ask for extra peanuts from the stewardess. I kid you not, the guy to our left on the back row by the toilets said “oh, you’ve never flown Mark Air before”. In the Mark Air jackassery loop you had to pay separately for peanuts, cokes, coffee, water, and all in cash. Ten bucks later we had two soft drinks and some underwhelming pretzels.

Nothing made sense in that bad dream. Everything was more painful than it should have been. Weren’t we the paying customers? A jackassery loop to be sure.

The epilogue is that Mark Air went into Bankruptcy and soon thereafter became an afterthought in US aviation history. The failure of Mark Air was the ostentatious and completely insensitive manner in which they made every aspect of the traveling experience more painful than it had to be.

Therein, lies my point…..

These past four years people in authority have made everything about our lives more painful than it had to be. We have been passengers on the most awful left wing travel service with every one of us in the back row by the toilets.

Government intrusion into our daily lives accelerated to levels never seen before yet seemed increasingly bloated and ridiculously inefficient. The progressive left was empowered to treat our very culture as one big laboratory for their experiments.

Gender fluidity? Sure!

Soft on crime? Why not!

Retooling the private sector auto industry? Of course!

Open borders? Thank you sir, may I have another?!

The economy is great! Iran is our friend! Riots are largely peaceful protests!

Four long years of an anything goes, nothing is off limits left wing smorgasbord. And if you asked questions, you were among the unclean barely worthy of the government assigning you a seat in the back by the toilets.

But we took it back. As surely as Mark Air went bankrupt due to awful service the people of America spoke up on election day and said “stop the madness!”

Mark Air was a failed airline because it punished its passengers for daring to buy a ticket on their flights. The progressive left just lost the election because at every turn they seemed determined to punish the American people for simply being….American.

For the past quadrennium every seat on Left Wing Airlines was a back row by the toilets. An endless dreamlike loop of jackassery. Now, just like good ol’ Mark Air they’re out of business too.