I Don't Got My Mind Right

Courtesy of Warner Bros

By Grant Davies



Surely, one of the greatest films made during my life was 1967's Cool Hand Luke.

Each time I watch it I get another piece of the symbolism and another piece of the message. And I've seen it more times than I can count. Literally.

Events happening right now have caused me to revisit a lot of those concepts and symbolism.

To a lot of us those current events are starting to look a lot like past events. Working age people of my parents generation endured the Great Depression. Working age people of my generation and even my children's generation endured the Great Recession. Now we must all go through what is being dubbed the Great Suppression.

As this plays out, the characters in this drama are starting to look a lot like the bosses in that movie. We have governors like Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer taking on the persona of several different characters.

One is "Carl the floor walker" who lays out the rules and the punishments for violating them near the beginning of the film. Another is the "Captain" and still another is the "Man with no eyes."

In Whitmer's most recent made for TV presentation, she doubled down on her edicts and ended the whole sorry affair with a threat to her chain gang prisoners. Like Carl, she laid out the rules and punishments.

"Any man buying grass seed, spends a night in the box. Any man riding in a motor boat, spends a night in the box. Any man visiting his summer cabin, spends a night in the box. And the biggest one (after the huge demonstration against her over-reach in Lansing Michigan) Any man playing political grab ass, spends a night in the box." I guess that violates the "loud talking'" rule as well.

Her version of a night in the box is actually another month in the box, with your house as the box. After blaming everyone but herself for the blowback - just like the two bosses in the movie blaming each other for Luke having dirt in the wrong hole - she threatened her constituents.

The prisoners watching out the windows of their hut as Luke is tortured by the authorities are like the people today who are "cowering in place." And like the boxing scene they keep exhorting him to "stay down, damn it!" One even says "someone should stop this."

Even though just about every ad you see on TV nowadays says "we are all in this together", we actually aren't. You see, when it comes to each other and especially Boss Governor, "What we have here is a failure to communicate."

At the end of the movie, after Luke is murdered by the man with no eyes, that boss gets what he has coming from one of the prisoners. I hope the same happens to her in the election that comes at the end of this, because she is the man with no brain.

When it comes to wearing gloves while shopping, washing our hands, wearing masks, and worst of all, not hugging my family, I'm all in. But when it comes to obeying the inane edicts of Boss Whitmer, I Don't Got My Mind Right, Boss.

And in the end, my question to the ultimate boss in the sky is the same as Luke's was: "And just where am I supposed to fit in?