My wife and I were traveling. Astonishment took me when I realized we were driving a light green 1978 Mercedes Benz 280 SEL. Solid, dependable, comfortable, the car was like a tank. “That’s the same car we had in Germany,” I told my wife.
She didn’t notice. We were rushing and had stopped for shopping at Costco. With dream time, we leaped from talking while entering the store to being at the checkout register. A male manager rang us up. We were still actually shopping as that happened, with my wife hustling up with last minute additions.
Medicine and food were being rung up. The manager was urging us to hurry because it was time to close. We were going to be the last ones. My wife put a bag of food our box of purchases. Picking it up, I told the guy that we wanted another one, so ring it up again, and I told my wife to get one more. As she carried that up, the manager rang up the final bill: $610.
The total shocked us. I suggested putting things back and wondered how the total had become so high. Nothing expensive was in the box and there wasn’t a lot.
But we ended up saying, “Okay, let’s just pay and go because time is running out. We need to get on the road.”
“That’s CNN,” I add for her. “I know why I’m fed up but I want to see if CNN knows why I’m fed up.”
This is an Analysis by Harry Enten. I don’t recall the name. Doesn’t mean much for me. I may have read Harry Enten’s work before but didn’t realize it. I’m often ignorant in that way.
Harry Enten began, ‘Americans just feel like they can’t catch a financial break. You know the feeling. You go to the grocery store, you look at the prices and you want to channel your inner Vince Lombardi: “What the (heck) is going on out here?”’
I read that to my wife and subject her to my opinion. “He’s a little wrong on that. I know what the heck is going on. It’s inflation, protecting profits, supply and demand, tariffs, among other things.” Yes, I’m in a quarrelsome mood. That often takes place as I read the news in 2025.
The analysis continues.
“Worst of all, it feels like it’s only going to get worse. There’s a very good reason for that: Americans may, in a way, get taxed more when they go to buy things – more than they have for a long period of time.
“No matter what some people will tell you, tariffs are, in fact, taxes. When you combine the potential tariff rates that the Trump administration could impose on us, the consumer, with the inflation that raged out of control coming out of the pandemic, it feels like things have gotten away from us.”
That earns an eye roll from me. “Yes, no kidding.”
“Take a look at a recent report from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. It estimates that under President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs, the effective tariff rate will be 8% in 2025. That’s so high that it would go off the page if you were charting tariff rates over the last 55 years.”
“Yes, but those are facts and history. Trump deals in prejudices and myths,” I tell my suffering wife.
She relates a story abut Wall Street. “This says that men working on Wall Street are happy with life under Trump because they’re free to sexualize women again.”
I grunt dismay and keep reading the CNN analysis. Prices are going to go up. Yes, no kidding. I read aloud, “Keep in mind that an estimated 25% to 30% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck.” Right, I know.
Of course, what I’m doing is validating my opinions. Experts tell us that’s one reason why politics are so divisive these days. While I’m reading this, people reading Red State read nothing about prices and tariffs. They’re busy writing up Trump’s glory, how great his cabinet is doing, and demonizing Democrats. Their targets these days are Fetterman, Pelosi, and Walz.
The cat was mad at us this morning. Papi the ginger blade made this clear in several way. One, he’d bang on the door to come in the house but then would refuse to come in. He would eventually, though, because it wasn’t his preferred weather outside, as the local weather gods ordered rain and wind. Also, inside is where the food is. Once inside, he’d sit ten feet away, giving us hard, judgemental stares.
“Butter Butt is mad at me because I refused to let him out,” my wife said. “He kept crying but I told him no and he shut up and went away.”
My wife and I have been sleeping in separate rooms because of her medical issues. “Butter Butt went away from your door but he came to me. I let him in and out a few times but finally also said no,” I answer.
“How does he let you know that he wants in?” my wife asked.
“He bangs on the bedroom door slider.”
“So I let him out the front door and he goes around and asks you to come in the back,” my wife said.
“That’s the gist.” It’s more involved, but why go there.
“You’re a demanding little animal,” my wife says to Papi in scolding tones
The orange floof lifts his chin, gives her one more long look, and walks away.
The week’s days have puddled together in a limpid pool of memory. I organize a flock of Neurons into enough intelligence to figure out that it’s Frieda. Part of the process is done using the Fitbit on my wrist. It tells me that it’s March 28, 2025. By going backward through the week’s blizzard of news and activities, I reach my conclusion.
Alexa tells me that it’s rainy in Ashland, forty rainy seven degrees with a high of fifty rainy two expected, and a chance of showers. Sunlight boils through my windows, mocking that weather forecast, further confusing my coffeeless Neurons. The weather likes teasing me, mystiying me about how to dress and challenging me to reconsider my plans. I think it’s mean of the weather but I don’t voice that thought. That would just make the weather mad.
A mystery has the household in a tizzy. My wife announced, “I found one of those little microfiber cloths for glass in a package when I was cleaning. I thought I’d put it in the office by my chair so I can clean off my glasses. I must clean them five times a day.”
I’m half listening, half reading, so I deploy supportive husband speak. “Good idea.”
“But it’s gone. I can’t find it.”
I remembered seeing it, too. We talk about our memories of seeing the cloth, when and where, like it’s a wake. We search the area where it was last seen, the laundry room counter used as the cat food service station. Nope, not there. Nor on the floor or behind the dryer. Things fall behind the dryer. I want to install a shelf across that space. I proposed that solution the year we moved into the house in 2006. I suggested it again last night. “Let me think about it,” my wife replies in throughful wife speak, the response first given in 2006. I mentally shrug. If the cloth is behind the dryer, I’m not getting it.
A cursory flashlight search behind the dryer shows nothing. We walk around, combing through other potential places, wondering, where did it go? It’ll turn up someday, we finally decide, quitting. Then a new mystery will start: how did it get there?
PINO Trusk’s number one component, Donald J. Trump, has inspired The Neurons again today. Thinking about how he’s wrecking the world through his prejudice and ignorance, Der Neurons cranked up the 1978 song, “Godzilla” by Blue Oyster Cult, in the morning mental music stream. The latest trigger about my irritation with the mango beast came from Trump targeting ‘improper ideology’ at the Smithsonian Institution. Avoiding laws, debate, popular opinion, etc., he’s using his favorite tool of destruction, an executive order.
Weirdly, Trump’s prejudice against the Federal government’s role in places like the Smithsonian Institution can be traced directly back to the Smithsonian Institutions origins in 1836.
Conservatives and champions of states’ rights, such as John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, argued the federal government did not have the right to establish a national institution, conduct scientific research, or promote knowledge. Federalists and northerners, led by the learned and well-traveled John Quincy Adams, maintained that it was in the nation’s best interest in many ways. Happily, they won out.
As many, including me, note about Trump, the Trusk Regime, Project 2025, and MAGAts, their idea of progress is by going back to the 1800s.
The Neurons created an alternate version of first lines, featuring Trumpzilla and what he’s doing. Did this while making breakfast, so, yes, as little thought as you can imagine was actually engaged.
With a golfer’s grimace and a terrible sound, he pulls the United States government down.
Helpless people around the nation curse his name as he looks in on them.
He picks up a club and throws it back down as he leaves the course and heads for lunch again.
Oh no, they say he’s got to go, go, go Trumpzilla.
If you’re familiar with the song, I naturally had to address the closing lyrics as well.
History shows again and again How politics points up the folly of man Trumpzilla!
Okay, off I go. Coffee and I met a match in each other once again. Hope your day brings you some good cheer and satisfaction. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 