Well, it certainly started off with a bang … or, strike that, a number of spectacular public tantrums on the part of people that ordinary humans might have expected to have cultivated a more mature approach when it came to coping with others in the public sphere. I speak of the Gamestop shop customer of indeterminate sex who went off on the cashier for addressing … ummm, the customer as a man, when on the thin basis of some eye makeup, the customer apparently hoped to pass as a woman and not a member of a 1980s tribute rock band. Let me break it to you gently, guy – as a woman myself, you’re doing the woman-thing all wrong. A little more care with the coiffure, a skirt and some nice stockings and low heels, and a soft-spoken Southern lady demeanor – even adorning a six-foot-something frame with shoulders like a football quarterback – would make it easier for those you encounter in public to go along with a pretense of you being a delicate little flower of womanhood.

Of the vape-store clerk (now a former vape-store clerk) feeling all righteous and entitled to go off on an abusive rant against a customer wearing items of clothing identifying him as a Trump fan … seriously, when did it become OK to be an abusive butthead in public? Or is it just that incidents like this are more likely to be documented in this age of practically everyone having a telephone capable of recording short video? Cannot we all agree on a new year resolution – to act like mature, well-adjusted adults in public?

Sigh – obviously, this resolution is a road not taken by new reps in the Dem Chamber and Senate, nor among certain state Dem lawmakers, who have basically outdone themselves in exposing their ignorance, bigotry and lack of collegial good manners in the last few days. Yes, of course – their various remarks were aimed at their own constituents – or perhaps at a lick-spittle press, eager to carry the next Golden Political Child to yet higher levels…

Ah yes, the new Golden Political Child – or as some in the right-leaning side of the blogosphere are calling her – Alexandra Occasional-Cortex, the It Girl on the current political scene. I think of her as a sort of political Lucy Ricardo; essaying adorable pratfalls, mugging elaborately for an indulgent audience, who think she is just so gosh-darned cute … she has yet to burst into tears over having mucked up one grand plan or another and beg Ricky to fix it all for her. That’s just about the way that every episode of I Love Lucy ended; in time I’m certain that Occasional-Cortex comedy appearances will start ending that way as well.

The big fight at the beginning of 2019? I don’t think it will be the impeachment of Trump, although the usual suspects are breathing heavily and talking big along those lines. Because, seriously, what have they got in the way of offenses against the laws of God and man to charge him with, other than winning an election and being as blunt and outspoken as most establishment GOPers have long forgotten how to do in the interests of being ‘collegial’ and fitting in with the Beltway cool kids? No, the big fight will be about “the wall”; staunching the flood of illegal immigrants across our national boarder. Too many regular American citizens are dead at the hands of repeat illegals, through criminality or mischance on the roads and byways; too many regular, law-abiding citizens have been affected by the burden that the sub-class of illegality places on the rest of us: identity theft, increased auto insurance rates, wrecked neighborhoods, wrecked schools, wrecked entry-level jobs, jammed emergency rooms – all of that which hits the middle- and working class, the working poor most of all. The ruling class, to include the intellectual sort and the national media – don’t see all of this as a problem at all. Just that the rest of us do, and at this point, our votes and dollars still count for something. Discuss as you wish and can bear it.