We’re effectively run, in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. — VP candidate J.D. Vance, while running for the Senate in 2021

“Please don’t write about Vance again,” Swamp Rabbit said. “That phony populist ain’t worth the keystrokes it takes to delete his lame emails.”

I rejected his request. “Vance crossed a line by attacking cat ladies. As a proud cat gentleman, I find his remarks highly offensive.”

We were on the front porch of my swamp shack on a nice day, in between heat waves. Swamp Rabbit’s parole officer Victor Cortez was with us, checking up on his unreliable charge.

“Harris could have countered by complaining that cat-less ladies who have too many children are the real menace, but she’s not as mean as Vance,” Victor said. “Or as stupid.”

My cats Thoughts and Prayers licked their paws and nodded approvingly as they lazed on the front steps.

After Victor left, I walked to Vincenzo’s Pizza Jawn for a slice of Sicilian. Tommy Gravers, a former newspaper colleague of mine who later became a test subject for experimental drugs, was at the counter drinking diet soda and looking alarmingly thin. He told me that our time on Earth is like a 20^th century sitcom – a promising premise and some amusing initial episodes followed by stagnation, cancelation and many seasons of reruns, with characters so predictable, you know their lines even before they speak. Tommy’s prognosis is iffy, but watching sitcom characters confront the same problems again and again distracts him from thinking about mortality.

“Time has no meaning when I watch TV,” he explained. “Decades from now, Barney Fife’s handgun will still misfire. Arnold the Pig will still win at checkers. The Soup Nazi will never serve soup to George.”

I nodded. “Yes, but will Kamala Harris be the first woman president of the United States?”

“Possibly,” Tommy said, “but she’d better get off to a successful start. If her show gets canceled, there won’t be any reruns.”