Turn Back the Clock, Turn Your Back on the Future

Port Angeles and Clallam County are pretty badly dysfunctional, yes?

I'm not hearing anyone disputing that fact - and therefore we'll treat it as a fact - so let me proceed.

One of the main features of this dysfunction is denial. This can take the form of trying to deny that the causes of problems are causing problems, or, it can be as simple as just denying there are problems at all. The first one is a combo of displace and deny, while the second is, again, simply deny, deny, deny. (Repeat as necessary!)

Denial, in its various forms, is also one of the things that unites many (many, many) of the people who are doing wrong by their community. It's a common thread between the chaotic idiocy of, say, Cherie Kidd, and the just plain vicious idiocy of, say, the "Our Town" clowns. Cherie denies the validity of her detractors; denies the many lies she has told ("Motivational Speaker"? Please.); and denies her own glaringly obvious inadequacies. The "Our Town" clowns, on the other hand, deny the real root causes of the drug abuse they so obviously hate; deny that idiotic politicians (like Cherie Kidd) are often one of those very root causes; and, of course, they deny that they have done the many vicious and illegal things they have in fact done.

They deny reality. They deny the world that surrounds them as it is, and try their mightiest to cling to some mythical past, to turn back the clock to a supposedly better, more innocent, purer time.



So, mush-mouthed Cherie the hypocrite can get herself all worked up over cussing. Jeepers! And the supposedly clean-living Christians who are all a-lather over drug users getting high, instead get their own twisted kicks from bullying and violence. Hallelujah! Never mind that Cherie cusses a fair amount when the mike isn't on. Never mind that some of the "Our Town" clowns have substance abuse issues of their own in the past (and probably the present). No, never mind all that hypocrisy. Just do as they say, and not as they do, and turn that clock back, damn...I mean darn it.

Are there problems with this approach to life? Uh, yeah, just a few.

For one thing, the past wasn't as pure and sweet and simple as it's often made out to be.



For another, you very much risk (as mentioned above) totally missing and/or ignoring the actual, causative factors driving whatever problem you are supposedly so concerned with. Drug abuse is a symptom, for example, not a cause of dysfunction. I just read a great new study showing how as unemployment goes up, so does drug abuse. Gee, got any unemployment problems in Clallam County? Hmmm...How often do the "Our Town" clowns focus their efforts to push for more sensible, local, accountable economic development? Hmmm...



Related to that last point, by trying to turn back to an unattainable past, you also risk missing out on a little thing called the future. Here's a line by the fake psychic Criswell, from the movie Plan 9 from Outer Space: "Future events such as these will affect us all in the future, for that is where we will all spend the rest of our lives!" Get it? If not, here's the title of my favorite Johnny Thunders song: You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory. Criswell was a charlatan and Johnny was a junkie, but even they knew that you can't live in the past.

Finally, by taking this approach, you risk opening yourself up to charges of being a hypocrite. Because in this dream world, 1950s Port Angeles that folks like Cherie and the "Our Town" clowns like to pretend they live in, how do you explain the existence of something like this?



Have the "Our Town" clowns protested this place? Has Cherie gotten in their face over their profane and juvenile sign? That would be "no" and "no." Because they're hypocrites. Because they're liars. And because, in their own ways, they're absolutely just as dysfunctional and fractured as the customers seeking beer, bongs and bullshit. That they pretend otherwise is the biggest load of bullshit of all.