No foolin’, it’s April
Time to remind people to pay their taxes, get their shots, behave in public, to straighten up and fly right.
Well, the salt’s out of the sugar bowl and the Saran Wrap’s off the toilet seat. April Fools’ Day is over and the world is back to where it was.
Too bad, that…
Who doesn’t have the sense that we’ve been living an April Fools-worthy gag for the last two, four, six, eight…oh, hell, God knows how many months? It feels like the world has fallen prey to never ending frat house humor, but nobody’s laughing.
I often think we should be, but I know that, for so many of us, it hurts too much.
Even so, it’s hard not to see the White House turning into a fun house. Randomly mixed into issues of war and peace we find straight-faced presidential dicta banning the use of paper straws in federal facilities, decreeing the rechristening of international waters, establishing legal duality for human genomics, and hitting the reset button on several centuries of North American history. We see a Cabinet that could have been cast by Mel Brooks; foreign policy compliments of Monty Python; and taxes, tariffs and economic policy as a collaboration among National Lampoon, Mad Magazine, and Scrooge McDuck.
A barrel of laughs, unless Elon Musk just handed you a pink slip.
Or your Medicaid is being cut off.
Or your school’s special ed funding is in peril.
Yeah, April Fools is always more fun if you’re pulling the prank. Looking down at a bowlful of salted Cheerios…not so much.
It’s time to let the adults back into the room. Time to remind people to pay their taxes, get their shots, behave in public, to straighten up and fly right. We’ve had a damn good country here, never as good as it might have been or as good as it could become, but, compared with most, a pretty damn good country. Let’s keep it that way.