Popeye For President!

By G. E. Shuman

“I’ve had all I can stanz, and I can’t stanz no more!”  These famous words of one of my most beloved childhood cartoon characters, Popeye, still ring in my ears as I ponder the morals and madness of today.  If you are of my generation, you know the story well.  Popeye would say those words at the height of his ultimate dilemma in the cartoon, and, somehow, would work up the strength to open that old can of spinach, which would immediately provide the super power he needed to save the day.   My question is, where is Popeye when you need him now?
I’m not depressed or too distressed, and don’t intend to depress or distress you.  I am just fully aware that we are in the middle of a huge mess in our country, and are topping the mess off with the slung-mud of the grandest display of fibbing and finger-pointing possible, known as a U.S. presidential political season.  How fortunate we are.  We not only get to vote for a new or used president this year, but we also get to spend a day’s pay for the gas it takes to drive to the polls.  Depending on your pay, and your distance from downtown, that may be less of an exaggeration than it at first seems.  Still, it all might be worth it, if there was the slightest reason to believe what your, or my particular flavor of politician tells you, or me.  It is probably true that politicians have always been habitual liars, and skin-wasting windbags.  It’s just that, these days, they seem to be willing to say anything at all to get our vote.  Sitting presidents try desperately to defend indefensible records.  Primary candidates sling mud onto each other until one is chosen.   Then they immediately unite behind that exact person they were calling insincere and unworthy only yesterday.  It just proves that there is no longer honor among thieves.  Right now our country is in dire need of better treatment than that.

I do miss the old cartoons, with characters like Popeye.  Somehow, they really did embody the spirit of the America of their time.  It was an America that, I hope, can be revived in our time.  Those cartoon characters all had mottos, and they were all ‘American’ mottos.  Today’s Sponge Bob, Family Guy and others are hollow, shallow, flawed and foolish failures next to them.  Remember Yosemite Sam?  I recall a cartoon when he was riding, instead of a horse, a camel, across the plains.  He said: “Whoa camel!”  But the camel kept loping along.  Then he said: “Ah said WHOA Camel!”  And the camel still kept loping along.  In the next scene Yosemite was running along in front of that camel, and bellowing: “When ah sez whoa, ah means WHOA!”  With this he whacked the camel over the head with the butt of his rifle, and the camel definitely ‘whoa’d.   His next line was his famous motto:  “Ah sez what ah means, and ah MEANS what ah zez!”  We need a president with the guts to say Whoa, and to whack a few ’camels’ (translated: overspending bureaucrats.) on the head if they don‘t obey.  Thank you, Yosemite.
I could go on and on, reciting the mottos of the characters of my childhood.  Mighty Mouse, Under Dog, and many others instilled American values into the children of my day.  Just google them, and you’ll see what I mean.  Any one of those fictional entities would make a better presidential candidate than some people running today.  

The ultimate super-SUPER hero, to me, was Superman, himself.  His motto should be the war cry of us all.  He fought for things that even, in my opinion, our present president shuns:  “Truth, Justice, and the AMERICAN Way!”  Like all of the cartoon characters of my youth, and unlike our present-day leaders, there was no doubt at all where he stood.  He stood for right, and for truth, and for the things that defined America.  His word, like that of Popeye and Yosemite Sam, was his bond.  The Bible says: “Let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay;” James 5:12.  Our politicians could learn a lot from the Bible, (Talk about an understatement.) and even from Popeye, who simply said: “I am what I am and that’s all what I am.  I’m Popeye the Sailor Man.  Toot! Toot!  (Those were the days!)