Waffies or Duds

The other day I was with family and the subject of Cheese Waffies came up (don’t ask). If you don’t know, Cheese Waffies are, as the name implies, sandwich crackers in waffle form with a kind of Cheese-Wiz in between. Actually, my niece, who seems to remember everything, recalled that it was my favorite snack.

This launched me into a story about when, in college, I had stored away some Waffies in my room for later in the day and when I returned to enjoy them, I found them gone – they’d been stolen. Furious (maybe fueled by some form of stimulant), I sat down and wrote a letter to then President Nixon (the obvious thing to do). I congratulated him on his law and order policies (which I really detested), but implored him to step them up. I finished by declaring that I could not understand how one could live in a nation “where one’s Waffies are not one’s own.” I sent the letter off, but never heard anything back. The family seemed to enjoy the tale.

It was a few hours later, after I got home, that it dawned on me.  I didn’t tell the story right.  It wasn’t Waffies at all that were taken from me and that I’d written the letter about.  It was Milk Duds. 

Now, this may seem just as insignificant to most people as justice is to Mitch McConnell. To me, though, it struck a chord. I’m 71 years old. Younger than Joe Biden by a gap of a mere fraction of that between Donald and Melania. So, if I could screw up a story about my life, why are we so concerned about Biden mis-stating some of his? And it’s not as if mine was some long- forgotten memory. I’ve bored people with that story dozens of times.

Of course, I’m not asking anyone to make me President. Then again, neither do I consider myself mentally deficient. [Note: There may be those who would argue with that last assertion, but they are in a minority and, anyway, fuck them]. How could I mistake the Waffies for the Duds? And when I told the story the other night, there was no doubt in my mind that it was Waffies. 

Now, my snack food gaffe started no wars. It changed no lives. And that’s the point. Biden’s gaffes are the same. So what if he says he supported a strike at a Stop & Shop when it was really at a ShopRite, or if he stumbles over a phrase by saying “You can’t in fact, preach to the choir if you can’t sing.” These are his type of mistakes. They are “Stengelese” – typical of the twisted way that the famous baseball manager, Casey Stengel used to speak. And Casey Stengel won almost 2,000 games and is in the Hall of Fame.

Biden could very likely tell a story about Cheese Waffies when it should have been Milk Duds.  So what? It’s kind of like what a doctor once told me about senility. “Don’t worry if you can’t remember where you parked your car,” he said. “Worry if you can’t remember what your car is for.”

Now, you’ve noticed that I have mentioned only Biden. What about Trump’s mistakes?  No comparison. Our President is a man who told us all to drink bleach. Just as I am writing this, he announced that he was about to sign “bills” to remedy problems with the pandemic.  In fact, they were not “bills”, they were Executive Orders. This is not a picayune error, it is Constitutionally vital.  There will likely soon be lawsuits about the difference between the two.  That is the Presidential equivalent of not knowing what your car is for.

Trump doesn’t gaffe. He bullshits.

I often recommend a short book called, “On Bullshit,” by a Princeton Philosophy Professor named, Henry Frankfurt. He explains how bullshitters couldn’t care less about the truth. They just say whatever they need to say to make themselves sound right. The truth is irrelevant. They don’t even know, or care, whether what they are saying has any relationship to reality. If it does, then that’s fine. If it doesn’t, then that’s fine, too. That is Trump. That is as far from Biden as the picture your three-year-old puts on the fridge is from what  Michelangelo put on the Sistine Chapel.

So, next time you hear the Trumpsters calling out Biden for his lack of cognition, pick up a bag of Waffies. Or, buy box of Milk Duds.  Either one. It doesn’t matter.