Surreality Check
The Oval Office is occupied by someone who spent the preceding four years blatantly lying about winning the 2020 election.
Does anything else need to be said about the feckless nature of The President- does anything else need to be TRUE about him-to argue that the American soul is desperately ill? I refuse to list any more of the literally thousands of blatant lies, frauds, insults, and the degradation of all that he touches.
His opposition shakes its head asking how it could have happened, all the while blind to its own naive overestimation of people. I’m not running for anything so I’m free to tell the truth: the problem is the voters. So many have been unable to simply take him at face value, especially ironic for someone whose external life is so clearly the only thing he experiences. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on people: few individuals, let alone societies, are particularly willing to grapple with ugly truths. I know I don’t always.
He’s a textbook case of totalitarian fascism, and that’s part of the problem. Most Americans think the role of textbooks is to tell them what they want to hear, after all.
And The President isn’t an aberration, he’s a culmination. From the use and acceptance of “The Southern Strategy” and the use of racial animus to win elections, to the creation of the Supply Side Cult as a cover for the dismantling of the social contract that kept some kind of wealth equilibrium between capital and labor, to the farce running up to the war crime that was Iraqi Freedom, through a growing retreat into religious fundamentalism over the past 40 years, the public has trained itself to be led by someone who confidently looks them in the eyes and smirks out the words, “Up is Down.”
The USA has accomplished a miracle of stability in its federal government, warts and all. As it disintegrates and more and more of his supporters start to experience true instability, I expect they’ll blame the same scapegoats: minorities, liberals, non-Christians, etc. Some people will never let go of their illusions, no matter where their choices lead them. I remember in my teens, overhearing two older men I worked with on a summer job. One of them was born in Italy, and even in the 1980’s, he still spoke fondly about how great things were under Mussolini. I think often of the response of the man he was speaking to: “Yea? Didn’t look so great hanging upside down.”
