Welcome To The Land Of Make Believe

So now we must pretend that Donald J. Trump is somehow qualified to be President.

That he isn't a traitor.

That he isn't a rapist.

That he isn't a tax cheat.

That he isn't a total fraud.

That he isn't a lifetime grifter, who would steal the pennies off a dead man's eyes. 

That he doesn't really admire Hitler.

That the incoherent garbage that come out of his mouth is somehow wise state craft.

That he doesn't lie about EVERYTHING.

That he isn't just a collection of ugly, insatiable, appetites, with the intellectual capabilities of a very dull child.

That he isn't in Putin's pocket.

That Melania isn't a mid level underwear model from Eastern Europe. That she really deserved her "Einstein" visa. That she will somehow restore "class" to the White House. That she isn't just another grifter like everyone else in Trump's orbit.

That the media isn't ignoring Trump's slide into dementia.

That the Trump administration won't be full of criminals, fools, crooks, amoral billionaires, Putin stooges, and assorted sycophants.

That they won't hurt the majority of Americans. 

That they won't care that they're hurting the majority of Americans.

That Elon Musk is a genius, and not a drug addled freak, with a deep fondness for Nazis.

That the Republicans in the House and Senate aren't happily shitting on the Constitution 24/7/365.

That the majority of the Supreme Court isn't comfortably in the bag for our descent into Christo-fascism.

That the media hasn't been complicit, (for the sake of ratings, for fuck's sake), in this entire sordid charade.

That this is all perfectly normal. 

Gore Vidal called our country The United States of Amnesia. He was right.

Santayana said "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." He was right, too.

Welcome to the Land of Make Believe.

The United States of Amnesia

OK, I admit to borrowing the title from Gore Vidal...who is sorely missed.

But that's the way it goes. Great people die off and we're left to shuffle on without them...hopefully having learned something from them.

Anyway, Vidal's point was that we Americans, as a people, tend to forget things in an incredibly rapid fashion. Forget or perhaps never know in the first place.

The Republicans understand this, and act accordingly. Already there's a concerted effort to make us believe that the presidency of Bush/Cheney wasn't the soul destroying, mind numbing, complete disaster that it was.

And so, naturally, it follows, for reasons that have no basis in reason, that we now have a great number of voters longing for a Congress controlled by Republicans come the 2014 midterms. And maybe even a Republican president in 2016.

Coupled with a Supreme Court ruled by 5 sorry, old, corporatist white men, that would leave the Republicans in charge of all 3 branches of government.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, let me tell you:

How 'bout another war? Pick one; Iran, Syria, North Korea. Russia! What about all at once?  That would be soooo good for the defense industries! Really pump up their bottom lines.

How 'bout completely unregulated industries? Imagine the oil spills! Wow! Imagine the water and air pollution! Get rid of the EPA and unleash the beauty of unfettered American capitalism.

Climate change, slimate change. Just another liberal lie. Besides, Al Gore is fat! Drill baby drill! Frack baby frack! Burn baby burn!

While we're at it, let's do away with the Department of Education and all public schools, too. Charters are the way to go! That's where the money is...

And speaking of big money, Wall Street would do a great job with Social Security. Sure, there would be winners and losers, but, hey, that's life!

Oh, and by the way, this ain't Europe, so health care is only for people who can afford it. Remember, makers not takers.

Fuck it, let's undo all of the social progress of the last 80 years! Women belong pregnant and in the kitchen, blacks were probably better off as slaves, and gays should just turn straight--or disappear.

Finally, only white men and women with property should be allowed to vote.

The philosopher Santayana famously remarked, "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

But, what the hell? There's an old Russian proverb that translates to "repetition is the mother of learning." Let's go for it!

And so it goes...

The Only Thing You Need To Know

The only thing you need to know about the Republican Party as it is currently constituted:

When you are crazy, you don't get better.

You don't get saner all of a sudden.

You may, however, at any given moment, get crazier. Much crazier.

And that's when the fun begins!

Once upon a time, there was only one political party, "the property party", as Gore Vidal memorably described it. Oh, the Democratic wing was a little more liberal and the Republican wing a little more conservative, but they both had essentially the same vision of and for America.

Now...? Well, now one "wing" has been taken over by a bunch of anti-government, anti-tax, anti-minority, anti-union, anti-science, anti-education, anti-progressive, antediluvians.

That's a lot to be against. Most of the 20th Century, in fact.

What are they "for"? They are definitely pro-gun and pro-Bible. Oh, they claim to be pro-life, too, but what they really mean is pro-patriarchy/anti-women. You know, "Barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen."

They accept no "facts" except their own. They accept no history except their own. And, because of this, they believe all sorts crazy things.

But, as I was reminded while watching The Who in concert last night, you shouldn't try to go backwards. It can be very painful.  More importantly, it is, ultimately, pointless.

The world moves in one direction. And nostalgia can be deadly. Especially when the things you are so nostalgic for never really happened--at least not in the ways you imagined they did.

"Listen my children and you shall hear...Oh, never mind."

It should be obvious by now to everyone that Sarah Palin graduated, with honors, from the Michele Bachmann School of American History.

Yes, she's just that ignorant.

Of course, ignorance can sometimes be overcome. There are these things called "books", see...

However, Sister Sarah is apparently surrounded by enablers who encourage her, for reasons of their own, to stay just the way she is: an amiable dunce, to reuse Gore Vidal's memorable description of Ronald Reagan. And so she constantly doubles down on her ignorance, to the evident delight of her supporters.

The scariest thing about amiable dunces is, once in power (and heaven help us all should that day ever come), they can be easily manipulated into doing whatever it is the people controlling them want.

It's All Show Biz

In the theatre, where I happily misspent much of my youth, there's a thing called the "willing suspension of disbelief." What this means is, that while you're watching a play, you accept its particular conceits. So, even though you're not actually in an English country home, for instance, for the duration of that particular play, you 'accept' that you are. That really isn't Burnham woods, Cordelia didn't just die, etc etc etc. But for those two hours or so, what you are watching must be 'real' to you. Those are not actors acting, they are in fact the characters they're pretending to be.

I mention this because we just witnessed a 'willing suspension of disbelief' of a different nature.

A good number of our fellow citizens were convinced that the world was going to end May 21st. They based this on the word of a radio evangelist. Not an astrophysicist, not an epidemiologist, not even Kreskin. No, a guy on the radio who asks them to send him money so that he can do the Lord's work...Some of them quit their jobs, packed up the kids and drove cross country to be closer to their oracle when the big day came. And what happened? Nothing, of course.

"He must have misread the Bible" is the explanation one of his followers gave. Uh huh.

Well, no harm no foul, right?

Not exactly. You see, the difference is that after a theatrical performance, no matter how engrossing it might be, we return instantly to reality. But after a religious performance, no matter how ridiculous it might be, some people continue to believe, and indeed live their lives based on these beliefs.

Now you might think that that sort of lunacy is their business and I'd be willing to agree with you except that many of these religious zealots seem determined to make the rest of us live by their rules--rules found in, to use Gore Vidal's memorable description, "the holy book of a Bronze Age nomadic tribe as re-interpreted by a group of world weary Greeks" 1900 years ago.

So, until the Rapture hits, and takes them to that Great Big Afterparty in the Sky, they want to make sure that we're all living by whatever nonsensical guidelines they can find in 'their' book. And since you can find justification for almost anything in 'their' book, that puts the rest of us, the reasonably sane if you will, at a disadvantage.