May 8, 2018 Mayor Dean Trantalis

May 8, 2018

Mayor Dean Trantalis

City Hall

100 North Andrews Avenue

Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301

Mr. Mayor,

I am a disabled, cancer-ridden senior citizen who voted for you for Mayor. My reason was simple: Ft. Lauderdale and Broward County are ground zero for modern American Liberalism. I asked myself why have a half-assed modern American Liberal when you can have the real thing; that is to say, a full blown, card carrying, fire breathing modern American Liberal who comes with the serendipitous bonus of being familiar with balance sheets. Ergo, I voted for you.

Let me digress.

The only vote – so far – I have ever regretted casting was my first vote in1964. I voted for Lyndon Johnson because my betters convinced me that if Goldwater had been elected we would have had more than 2,000,000 men in Vietnam followed shortly thereafter by race riots and decades of racial tensions and animus. [Wasn’t Obama supposed to stop that? Whatever.] Whodathunk what happened coulda happened?

I went to the main library today for the first time since 2012.

Have you ever read “Camp of the Saints” by Jean Respail? Interesting book. I read it in 1973. Funny how novels tell the truth.

I saw at least 100 pitched tents, none of which qualified as Boy Scout pup variety. There may have been uni-sex pissoirs and portable shvitzes but I didn’t see them.

I am not sure if 3 distinct ordures could fit etymologically into the envelope marked  cacophony. Maybe plethora or myriad should be forced back into service. Either way, it sure as Gehenna stunk.

The entrance I used 6 years ago was locked. To get to the next one would have required me to run a gauntlet that I was prepared neither physically nor mentally to do.

As a septuagenarian White male who was born and raised in Bayonne, NJ, who boxed in the Golden Gloves, who was a bouncer,  who worked in Manhattan – NY, not Kansas – for 20 years, and whose last gun fight was June 3,1993, I have a gimlet eye and a 6^th sense for “sticky” situations. The feral teenagers were gathering for what I thought was a shakedown leading to a possible mugging. I did not let this happen.

There was a police car parked across the street, running but empty. So much for reducing our collective municipal carbon foot print!

My library goal today was to get some non-Google tactile info on a variety of White Privilege diseases. Alas, it was not to be. I grew up in the Carnegie-built library in Bayonne, NJ. My parents were quite comfortable with me walking to and from there and spending hours there. That simply would not be the case here.  

Edmund Burke, one of my favorite Irishmen, said the conflict in any society is always between order and freedom.

Your call.

Kevin Smith

PS - Did I mention my failing kidney,  my bi-lateral pre-glaucoma, my 4 dry strokes, and my 3 titanium joints? Also, if you are not renewing the Gun Show lease would not Logic dictate that the Air & Sea show should be disinvited also? Ships with big guns. Some years submarines with nuclear armed missiles. Military jets that break things and kill people. Don’t we owe it to the Parkland-Douglas victims and survivors to just say no to things bellicose? As long as there are more dogs than bones when the bell sounds there will always be a scrape at dinner time. We have to start somewhere and sometime to undo, remake, and transform human nature. As a modern American Liberal that’s what it’s all about, right? Why not here? Why not now?