All-You-Can-Eat Politics

There’s an old joke that a man goes to an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet, loads his plate, goes to his table and eats everything, then comes back for more. The manager stops him and points to the “All You Can Eat Sign.” The man, perplexed, says “But that’s what the sign says. All you can eat.” “No,” responds the manager. “You ate everything you took. And that is all you can eat.”

Life in the Boomer Lane has been aware that, more and more, life is becoming an all-you-can-eat buffet. It looks pretty good, and the sign seems to say “Take as much as you want.” But signs, like laws, mean different things, depending on which side you are on. And news, like signs and the US Constitution and the meaning of “presidential”, is open to interpretation.

A friend of LBL’s had out-of-town family members visiting DC. The friend took them into Washington in order to do the mandated tour of the White House, Capitol, Lincoln Monument, Washington Monument, etc. The couple were astonished that 1. the streets were driveable 2. there were not piles of trash all over the place 3. buildings were in good repair 4. criminals weren’t running through the streets, accosting and murdering hapless tourists. LBL’s friend simply said, “It always looks like this.” She didn’t ask them what their primary news source was.

Another friend visited his sister on Long Island. They went to the pool in her condo complex. The friend struck up a conversation with a neighbor at the pool. The neighbor quickly started talking about the awful economy, gross unemployment, ever-escalating crime, and illegal immigration run amok. Each time a topic was mentioned, LBL’s friend said that the topics she mentioned were actually quite favorable now. The neighbor, getting increasingly more agitated, demanded to know what his sources were. Being a career State Department employee and a policy wonk, LBL’s friend listed the US Bureau of Labor statistics, the Bureau of Justice, and the Office of Homeland Security. The neighbor’s response was to clamp her hands over her ears and repeat “No! No! No! No! Not true! Not true! Not true! Not true!” LBL’s friend didn’t ask her what sources she consulted for her own information.

A word about buffets in general. They can be enticing, presenting one with an endless variety of choices. Most of us sort of know that a pile of vegetables is better for us than a pile of cream chipped beef. But our mothers aren’t there to point us to the vegetables. We can choose a bathtub-sized helping of the cream chipped beef, if that’s what we want. Or, as LBL’s usually super healthy eating Now Husband did, seven desserts at the Golden Corral Breakfast Buffet.

Politics can be like that: an endless barrage of words coming at us, 24/7. A lot of it isn’t sexy or easy to understand (the steamed broccoli). A lot of it makes us doubt that we can really get something for nothing (even worse, the kale salad) . For that reason, many of us go right to the comforting food, the words that tell us that we are better than others (mac and cheese), that whatever we lack is no fault of ours (chicken tenders), that whoever we don’t like are losers but we, ourselves, are always winners (French toast). We load our plates high with empty calories and empty words and totter back to our tables, precariously balancing the food/word Jenga we have created. We consume the calories and the words with no thought as to what they really are or the price we are paying for the easy feel-good experience.

If the GOP had held their convention at some Golden Corral Breakfast Buffet, all those speeches would have been unnecessary. The only message would have been to eat your full, whether guns or cheesy grits, bibles or bacon, and the flag or French fries. If you get sick afterward, it’s not because you ate too much. It’s the fault of the immigrants in the kitchen. And if you don’t have enough to pay the bill, it’s because those same immigrants took your wallet while you were eating.

Shit happens, right? But if it’s not your fault (like climate change or cornbread), just keep eating.