These days I have strange dreams. They’re frequently different, but sometimes follow a similar theme: The world is challenged by some inexorable, unstoppable, relentless, vicious, callous, murderous alien/foreign force. They are unknowable to us. Communication and negotiation are pipe dreams of impossibility. Their engines of destruction and devastation slowly and patiently continue to churn up our cities, our countryside, and our people, leaving nothing but dust and devastation behind.
It’s probably because I tend to watch too much sci-fi. Too much Alien Nation, Independence Day, World War Z, War of the Worlds, Battlestar Galactica, Fallen Skies, The X-Files, Harry Potter, Edge of Tomorrow ,and Predator. It’s clearly just my imagination fed by these sources, going a little wild somewhere in my frontal lobe as I slumber. Only in my mind, in my dreams, the good guys don't find the secret cyber-virus or lethal common cold that brings our deadly enemies down. Earth and humanity aren’t going to survive the onslaught. There is no near-magic McGuffin that’s going to save the day.
Then I wake up and find I still feel exactly the same way about the future of America. I’ll bet some of you feel it, too.
I do not get these people. I probably never will. I probably just continue to find them unfathomable, on many levels. I don’t get the people who couldn’t and still can’t see through the obvious fraud, self-aggrandizing, grifting, and severe cognitive dysfunction of people like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, her ex-boyfriend Dinesh D’souza, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Alex Jones, James O’Keefe, Jason Miller, Dana Loesch, Kellyanne Conjob, Fox and Friends, Breitbart News, and Donald John Trump.
Don’t me get wrong, I’m not making a partisan argument—I’m making an argument about anti-partisanship. About the necessity of accepting and surrendering to facts rather than suffering in continued self-delusion. Democrats have their own degree of delusion as well, but they tend to be less ... dramatic.
The point is that for years, even decades, the people I listed above and many others have waged a war against facts, a war against reality, against anything that they find inconvenient to their vision of the world. Unfortunately for them and us reality isn’t optional. They may choose to ignore climate change and argue it needs more and more endless study, but it will still exist and the largest ever portion of the Larsen C antarctic ice shelf, comprising 2,240 square miles and over a trillion tons, will still have separated creating a super iceberg the size of Delaware.
They continue to claim there is some mystical “free market” magic key to providing low-cost, high-quality health care to the majority of the populace when in fact there is no example of anything approaching that in any country on earth and there never has been. Nobody has done it, nobody knows how to do it—but this past week they repeatedly tried to make it up on the fly and have still, so far, failed.
Their Orange Julius Messiah said he would be “the best” for the LGBTQ community and then without fanfare—or fact—decided to summarily kick all transgender persons out of our military.
He’s also viciously turned on Jeff Sessions, his first and most loyal supporter from the Senate, because once appointed attorney general he had the audacity to correctly follow DOJ guidelines and recuse himself from investigating—himself.
His grand efforts to “fix” immigration have simply unleashed a storm of cruelty on families and individuals who had spent years following all the rules and have inspired those who are seeking to flee rape, murder, economic, and human rights devastation in central American narco-states into using human smugglers and drug traffickers who will lock them into trucks and let them die of heat stroke.
They put their trust in pure unbridled corporate power to save them and give them good jobs while Trump’s henchmen cut jobs programs and worker safety protections.
Russia attacked our electoral cyber-infrastructure, voter registration systems, and waged a cyberbot and troll-powered disinformation campaign against both Democratic and Republican challengers specifically to benefit Trump, and even if he didn’t ask for it and endorse it—okay wait, yes actually he did endorse it—he was still the direct beneficiary of it and his strange sycophantic relationship with Vladimir Putin has to be looked at with extreme suspicion. Some Americans might have even helped them.
But they don’t care. They’ve bought the line that this is all “fake news.”
It seems obvious to me. It seem obvious to many of us. But it’s not to them. There are still far too many people who haven’t figured it out yet and still continue to think any of those people have their best interests at heart.
Voters from [northeastern Pennsylvania] who spoke to Newsweek expressed concerns about reports that Trump fired FBI director James Comey over the Russia probe, but they still trusted the president over the news media.
“I believe Trump is doing the right thing,” said Paul Visoky, a general contractor.
He admits it would be troubling if Trump had tried to stop the investigation of Mike Flynn,but he doesn’t trust Comey’s account because he considers his claims just sour grapes— although he would consider a video recording as proof.
“It’s all bullsh*t,” Visoky said. “I’m just tired of it. I wish they would just play well with each other instead of all this infighting.”
...
Mark Rabo, a heavy equipment operator, told Newsweek that he was disturbed by reports that Trump leaked classified information to senior Russian officials and would like to see an independent investigation into the president’s ties to the Kremlin.
But his support for Trump hasn’t waned.
Some of these people have in their frustration with the “fake news” that dares to criticize Trump already tried to kill Kurt Eichenwald, doxed the staff of CNN and their families, deliberately putting them all at risk, and issued death threats against reporters such as Jared Yates Sexton for daring to say something they refuse to believe.
And the idea that this unreconcilable schism might escalate to become a shooting war isn’t entirely far-fetched.
A friend writes, “For basically the past six months or so I’ve been trying to tell my lefty friends in so many words, ‘Hey, there are a bunch of people on the Internet who are waiting for someone to tell them it’s okay to start shooting at you.’” He became concerned when a thread at the non-political firearms-enthusiasts website he regularly follows became filled with comments in all caps referring to liberals as enemies who must be shot. Developments both online and off following Donald Trump’s election have caused me to share his concern.
I don’t know what the solution here is. I don’t know how to pull these people back from the brink. I do believe that the Trump regime will eventually self destruct from its own ignorant arrogance, and maybe that will be soon—or it might happen later depending on Mueller’s investigation and whether Congress grows a backbone as his various crimes against America continue to pile up.
Will the 35 percent of Americans who put their faith in his BS and lies realize their mistake, or will they angrily rage at those they feel brought about his demise and halted their restoration? Will they finally understand that they were always being conned, or will they finally wake up to the light of day and begin to think differently than they had before?
I really, honestly don’t know. And I can’t seem to wake up.