The Bad With The Good

I've been wrestling with what bothers me about missing the good ole days. And it's been a real challenge to me to try to figure out why the necessarily regressive politics of "the way it used to be" bother me so extensively.

Today, though, I had an epiphany.

The good ole days weren't just good, actually. They were great. You could leave your door unlocked, you didn't have to worry about the artificial ingredients in your food, and the commute - if there was one - was almost certainly short unless you were a traveling salesman. Your wife could cook, and she did almost every single night.

These days, though, everything's bad for you. Name it, right? You can't eat it 'cause it's bad for you. Under no circumstances would you leave your home unlocked while you're away. And if you're walking alone at night, you've got your hand clenched around your keys just in case you need to jab some attacker in the ribs. Even if you're a man. Right guys?

Seriously, the good old days were great. Who wouldn't want the kind of security that justified leaving the door unlocked just in case the neighbor needed to borrow your shotgun?

My problem, however, is polio. White breeder males seem to have forgotten about polio. My father and mother and many people just a handful of years my senior bear those distinctive polio vaccination scars. It looks like it was probably a doozy of a wound. But white men seem to have forgotten about polio. Must be like childbirth, I guess.

See, polio struck white men. Plenty of them. And although they got to perform the lynchings while they kept their wives at home, they contracted polio just like everyone who wasn't a Caucasian male. So you'd think they might not be quite so nostalgic for the way things were. Because polio was a royal bitch. And that's just for starters.

So, I say give the old white heterosexual men what they want. They want the good old days back, and are willing to sell everything and anyone to get them. And why shouldn't they? The days they long for were kind to them.

We can segregate the schools and busses, bring back prayer in schools, prosecute gays for congregating, and forbid women from voting, just for good measure. 'Cause you know how uppity they can get.

But the dirty sons of bitches better take back polio, too. Cause there ain't nothing in this world that's free, boys.