CHARLES HAYES - WHAT A JOKE

​Charles Hayes, a multiple Pushcart Prize Nominee, is an American who lives part time in the Philippines and part time in Seattle with his wife. A product of the Appalachian Mountains, his writing has appeared in Ky Story’s Anthology Collection, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Fable Online, Unbroken Journal, CC&D Magazine, Random Sample Review, The Zodiac Review, eFiction Magazine, Saturday Night Reader, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Scarlet Leaf Publishing House, Burning Word Journal, eFiction India, and others.

​    What A Joke

My single mother was a republican. She followed the leanings of the family as did I when I became one upon entering the war in Vietnam and voting for Nixon. However, I got scrubbed of that leaning pronto. As soon as I could get the hell out of there I came back to the U.S. and later voted for McGovern. Nixon was re-elected by a landslide. Mom was happy to vote for him again. She loved to vote republican. As she was raising me while working full time as a substitute teacher and going to school to get her teaching certificate we would travel all around but always return to where we were from on election day so that she could cast her ballot. We had no money but we had family that would help us keep up the support for the Grand Old Party. It seems the family had always been that way after the Second World War and the loss of an only son and brother in the skies over Germany. 

I saw the hurt and confusion on mom's face when she realized that Nixon was a crook and that my liberal leanings had a better hold on the truth than she had thought. Nevertheless she and her kind took care of the mess, got rid of Nixon, and kept their honor in tact. I watched it all unfold with the abandon of one who had just survived a war and was not about to get involved again in something that could actually change lives. That was then.
     Today we have a republican party that is all about money while pretending that jobs, paid for by a huge tax cut, are not just a faster way for big business to acquire more wealth and consume resources. Just ask some of those who have had jobs, worked all of their lives, and now live check to check while those same republicans fantasize about gutting their sources of income. Any attempt to expose this is many times met with proclamations of patriotism, “the last refuge of the scoundrel.” Nixon should have been so lucky to have had such a milieu. Probably one of his offspring would be leading us now if he had been. Currently that might not be so bad. But, thank God, it wasn’t meant to be.
     I have little doubt that the souls of people like my mother, John McCain, Dwight Eisenhower, and many others are restless when it comes to amerika today. And yet, in another way, it’s good that those dear souls can avoid the psychological stench that plagues me and others. This, one also can be thankful for. 
     For those who deign to follow the current republican ways paved with lying rhetoric, you had better have lots of that wealth because what wealth you have now is going to decrease exponentially. And with little wealth only your values will be able to provide succor. What a joke.

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