We had a most interesting coda (a concluding remark, event, or section), to this year’s Biketoberfest this afternoon. I heard a series of motorcycle and car horns blaring and went out to investigate.  I found a guy standing on the sidewalk next to my driveway waving a large Trump flag to passing traffic.  Being a strong advocate of free speech I used some of my own, and encouraged him, in explicit anglo-saxon he could understand, and eschewing compound sentences, to please move on, this being, as the residence of the Governor of Skinny Island, a politics-free zone, and retreated into The Little Hacienda.  Giving it some thought, and continuing to hear the honking, I realized this was a rare opportunity for dialogue, so I went back out and engaged him in a friendly debate.  I sincerely wanted to know his reasoning for feeling as he did.  He told me he was a practicing Roman Catholic, and Trump supported everything he believed, among other talk radio nonsense.  In the brief theological discussion that ensued, during which he revealed a woeful misunderstanding of the New Testament to someone who knows it inside out, we agreed to disagree.

He then fell into patriotism, claiming he was a veteran of the Iraq incursion, and was a former Green Beret.  Now, as a veteran myself, I have developed a rather infallible way of telling whether someone is, or is not a veteran.  He was not.  It’s in their eyes. I’ve experienced this on several other occasions, and the telling clue is that they all claim, the ones who bring it up, to have either been a Navy Seal, or a Green Beret.  They never admit to being in the motor pool, or a company clerk, or a medic, like me, all worthy service.  It’s like people who claim past lives; they were always King Ferdinand, or Queen Latifa, or someone grand, never a poor working stiff, or slave, or artisan.  Insecurity is rampant.

It ended when, though he was fifteen years younger, he realized that, while I had accurately read the depths of his capability, he was unsure of mine– again, it’s in the eyes– and he moved on, even while throwing out the last pathetic threat that he had a license to carry.  A fitting coda.

Should there be any question, we would have insisted the same of someone waving a Che Guevara flag on our sidewalk.