By High Plains Grifter
Well, butter my cross buns and call me a pile of hopscotch chalk, folks. Since that last Phillips piece about the new White House ballroom and the demolished East Wing, the High Country Advocate has been catching more heat than a liberal at a gun show. And instead of muttering “huh, maybe the facts ain’t what I thought,” plenty of y’all marched straight to the comments and the coffee shop to declare: “I have every right, nay, every sacred responsibility, to stay furious about this! And I do NOT appreciate being corrected by something as trivial as facts!” Lord have mercy.
I swear, some of you have turned being wrong into a protected civil liberty. It’s like standing on the courthouse steps waving a sign that reads: “My Feelings Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Receipts.” So, let’s do this the Grifter way, no charts, no footnotes, just common sense with a generous side of sarcasm.
Y’all are still frothing over “Trump’s taxpayer-funded White House wing.” That’s the hill you’ve chosen? Never mind that the whole shebang is being paid for by private donors, the same ultra-wealthy tech barons and corporations the left keeps screaming should “pay their fair share.” Well, bless their hearts, they just did. Voluntarily. To the tune of roughly $400 million. No tax dollars. No congressional earmarks. Just rich folks writing big checks so the People’s House can finally host a proper state dinner without renting a circus tent and a fleet of porta-potties
For years, when they needed to seat more than 200 people, White House staff had to slap up those giant white tents on the South Lawn like they were hosting a shotgun wedding at the VFW. Rain? Wind? Drone buzzing overhead? Too bad. And the bathroom situation? Rows of lovely industrial-grade, government-blue porta-potties. For foreign dignitaries. Technically outside the People’s House. Call it the People’s Outhouse.
With all the global dissension these days, the last thing we need is the ambassador from Iran playing porta-potty bowling while the dignitaries from Israel who are trying to handle their business. And don’t get me started on that nineties state dinner where a game of hide-and-seek went horribly wrong. There are places even politicians shouldn’t hide, especially when the Secret Service has to start checking those blue plastic boxes for heads of state. Some bacteria-soaked dignitaries probably left wishing for a different kind of diplomatic immunity.
Attempts to create drone-proof porta-potties failed spectacularly, by the way. Though rumor has it the Chinese stole the plans, mistaking them for a new Lunar Landing Module on account of the half-moon on the door. True story. Or at least it ought to be. And with all these fresh lunar exploration plans, I’m gonna need a bumper crop of Tang next year. Meanwhile, HCA daring to allow truthful speech has apparently punctured the local media’s cozy stranglehold on narrative control. Suddenly it’s a crime against humanity. I’ve heard the howls loud and clear: “That High Country Advocate is ruining my self-righteous anger!”
This whole Freedom of Speech business is a real affront to liberals everywhere, who rely on crooked politicians and an unaccountable press to hide reality from the public and shield them from the consequences of their own bad policies. After all, the only way they can win a debate is by making sure the other side never gets to speak. Well folks, if your outrage requires you to ignore that the project is privately funded, that the old East Wing was a structural nightmare, and that tents plus porta-potties were the only other gold standard solution besides Colorado Elections, then maybe your anger ain’t all that righteous. Maybe it’s just indigestion from too many Lavender Soy Milk No-Foam Frappuccinos, and not enough reality.
Even old Master Mason Harry Truman, the man who actually gutted the White House in the late ‘40s, wrote his wife that the place felt haunted. Creaking floors, drafts, ghosts walking the halls. He knew a worn-out building when he saw one. But eighty-five years later, if you point that out, you’re accused of “carrying water for Trump.” It’s like clutching a security blanket made of Twilight Zone.
Look, I’m all for getting mad. I do it professionally. But at least get mad at something that actually happened. Being furious that rich people voluntarily paid for a bigger, safer ballroom, so we don’t have to host the Prime Minister of Japan next to a row of blue plastic toilets that smell nothing like cherry blossoms, that’s a choice, I suppose.But it sure ain’t the flex you think it is.
So, keep right on exercising your God-given constitutional right to stay mad at things that aren’t true. Just don’t get too bent out of shape when the rest of us point out that facts still exist, even if they’re Inconvenient Truths like Al Gore selling his TV network to Al Jazeera. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go check on my greenhouse. Little-known secret: Tang Trees must be fertilized with moondust, and I coincidentally just received a fresh batch.
Stay citrusy, my friends!
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