the book of revelations

Life is good.

Tuesday will be an interesting day. If I were a betting man, I would wager the Republicans will hold on to at least one of the two bastions of the legislative branch. This would mean that nothing much will change in Washington over the next two years.

Wait a minute! I am a betting man. And, Jimbo, you may be asking, why are you saying that life is good if you are convinced the election tomorrow isn’t going to change anything?

That is because tonight at dinner I had a revelation.

My visions were different than the ones recorded by some scribe in the court of St. James who got all doped up or drunked up and penned that surrealistic final book of the New Testament, and while doing it probably said something to his companions like:

“Egad, Sirs, doth thou perceive the colours?”

The primary difference was that I was only drinking tea, though I will admit I had more than one.

I live in one of the most conservative states in the nation. The county to the south of the one in which I reside is regarded as one of the most conservative in the most conservative state in the nation. That county is so conservative that a best seller was written a couple of years ago documenting the county’s conservatism.

As I looked around the restaurant in which we were dining, I made the comment to my girlfriend that the place reminded me of the many restaurants in that conservative southern county. I also made the comment that all of the other people in the place had probably come from that county to get a bite to eat and have a drink. They were talking on cell phones and drinking alcoholic beverages. They were paying for their meals and drinks with credit cards. They were watching images on flat-screen monitors.

So what, Jimbo, you may be asking? Then you may be adding, “It looks like Jimbo has finally slipped off into the deep end.”

We all lie to ourselves to some degree. And my point is that sometimes we have a different image of ourselves than what actually may be true. While true conservatives hold on to the old ways and resist progress, I’m convinced these “conservatives” may have slipped off the left hand side of the fence.

The primary tenant of progressive western thought is that the only constant is change and, as Americans we have pushed the envelope of change—and we have pushed it hard. When the true conservative legislators in the western three-fourths of our state said that we would never change our mores and enjoy an alcoholic beverage with our meals in public places, we first said, “Oh, yeah?” Later we went into the voting booths and interjected our opinion. After that, we sat down in public places and enjoyed a potent potable with our repast.

When the electorate put a school board into place that outlawed Darwin, it dawned on us that our kids would go into school dumb and come out dumb, too, if the school board stole knowledge from us. We kicked their asses off the school board a quick as you can say “natural selection.”

When we go to the polls tomorrow, somewhere close by there will be a pole with a rectangular piece of cloth on it. Up in the corner of that piece of cloth, there will be a blue rectangle with fifty white stars-- one for each of the states of the union—symbolic of a union as perfect as any that has ever existed. There will be thirteen horizontal alternating stripes of red and white, representing the original colonies from which this nation emerged. That piece of cloth represents the progression of western civilization, and as long as it stands, we will never, as a country, stand still. We will continue to move ahead. Just let anybody try to stop us.

Life is good.

And we’ll stand by that statement here in Jimbo’s world.