Signs from last month appear after text.
We all see what we want to see...It seems like there should be a name for that. I mean something a little less sterile, and more mellifluous, than “confirmation bias.” It seems like there should’ve been some Greek myth or an old fable... at the very least a fairy tale somewhere featuring a magic mirror or a lens that shows each viewer the world as they wish to see it.
If you can think of one, let me know. I’ve felt a conspicuous absence of a proper metaphor ever since mid-September 2001. At first it seemed like we were all pretty much on the same page, but after a week or so people started splintering off. Where once we’d all seen airplanes some began seeing holograms because “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams.” (But apparently holograms make mincemeat out of ‘em...) The initial shock of 9/11 was so intense that for about a week and a half if you listened to newsradio you actually heard news. And even though the hijackers remained Islamic fundamentalists, somehow the blame started getting retroactively outsourced back to America’s “Liberals.” I forget exactly how conservative radio hosts managed to connect those particular dots, but figure the “why” of it was because liberals were as close as they were going to get to blaming the Jews for this one. Of course “Real” Americans (meaning white evangelical Christian ones) were completely united in terms of the culprit but divided mostly over issues of labeling. When they saw those planes hit the towers they knew exactly who was to blame: it was the people from other countries who spoke different languages and had different religions and different colored skin. The problem was whether to call them “lesbians” or “abortionists?” But at the end of the day we knew we were all Americans and Children of God so we put our disagreements aside and blamed the lesbians.
When I’m trying to figure out what makes us do the things we do I usually look for explanations in psychology. But even as a non-believer there are times when I crave the spiritual comfort that I can only get from the Bible. Just seeing it from across a room, so big and black and solid… and the singular sense of joy and gratitude just knowing that it’s there and that I will never, ever have to read it. In a complex world it’s good to know there’s still right and wrong and that the difference between them still matters. And that you can generally count on the church to say what’s right and always do what’s wrong.
The church is often described like a thing of nature - praised for it’s majesty, strength and its beauty. This may seem pompous now but give it time and it will reveal unto you it’s most awesome and breathtaking feature: once you’ve seen the yawning chasm between what they say and how they act. You’ll swear it dwarfs the Grand Canyon and one day may swallow both Heaven and Earth.
Now brace yourselves...
Proclaiming your love for, or some crypto-mystical pact with, a long dead Palestinian hippie does not make you or anyone else any more moral, trustworthy or good. That’s not how it works, nor has it ever been. Here’s how you do it: it’s easy to remember. In order to be moral, trustworthy and good, all you need to do is be moral, trustworthy and good. It’s not that hard. In fact it’s so easy you have to wonder what kind of people would need to sidestep it for the sake of essentially fake credentials? I mean, apart from the incorrigibly immoral, untrustworthy and/or bad.
So in keeping with my stated prejudices, here’s what I see as the problem with America as we slog onward into 2024: Over half of us are either abysmally stupid or lying To see if you’re one of them, here’s a fun and easy quiz...
58% of American adults claim to believe in hell. If you’re one of them, this fun and easy quiz will help you see if you’ve got what it takes to go the distance!
1. How long is eternity?
a) 3 to 5 business days b)Forever
c) Anywhere between 6 weeks & 1 year d) Other___________
2.) Please provide a rough estimate of the amount of time that you personally have spent being on fire. Please indicate if you were wholly or only partially engulfed in flames. (Never been on fire? Skip ahead to #4)
3.) Short Essay: Using the space provided, please describe your experience while on fire. Was it enjoyable? Uncomfortable? Would you recommend it to a friend? While you were on fire, where did “not being on fire anymore” appear on your hierarchy of priorities?
4.) Lab Challenge: Using the matches and candle provided, hold one or more of your fingers directly over an open flame while counting to infinity. Briefly describe your experience and how far you got. Can you think of ways you might improve?
If you believe in Hell and are not currently kneeling in a church desperately begging your Creator for forgiveness, and if you’re not helping the poor and/or healing the sick, you’d better be up to your ass in lepers. In other words, if you can’t even last five minutes with one finger in a goddam candle, you might think twice about playing quite so fast and loose with burning all over for eternity.
The point is that what you “believe” in terms of religion isn’t what you actually believe, just what you’re willing to claim you believe: just like transubstantiation, the claim magically becomes reality through that most time-honored, most-revered and least mysterious of all religious sacraments: Lying.
I was challenged by someone who should’ve known better who thought that by watching Fox News my eyes would open to the “truth.” So that’s what I did the next night, which happened to be January 7th 2021. Every one of their primetime hosts had the same message, and that’s that there are unconfirmed reports that agents of Antifa were sprinkled throughout the crowd, and that they were responsible for all the violence, and leading well-meaning Good-hearted Americans like Mom, Dad, Buddy and Sis down the road to perdition.
I called him the next day barely able to contain my excitement over Antifa: my newest and most righteously badass personal heroes. “Imagine, just imagine what it would’ve been like to be double agents at the tip of that spear! To keep your cool and lead a mob of thousands to places they didn’t want to go in order to do things they didn’t want to do. Knowing the whole time, if they found out who you really were, they wouldn’t have hesitated to literally tear you to pieces! The French call it sang-froid, I think it literally means “cold blood” — the ability to retain perfect composure in the midst of chaos and danger…”
From the silence on his end it was easy to tell he didn’t share my enthusiasm for these plucky agents-provocateurs. And that becoming a fanboy for Antifa wasn’t supposed to be my takeaway from watching Fox News.
“If what they’re saying is true,” I went on, “Can you think of any subversive or diversionary operation that accomplished so much with so little? Closest I could come up with was Entebbe — but that was like D-Day compared to this...”
But then I reminded him that when Bill Barr first mentioned antifa in a press conference after the George Floyd protests, he said they were responsible for EVERY one of thousands of violent acts that occurred all over the country for over a month. And yet of the 17,000 people arrested at the time, not one of them belonged to Antifa. To have accomplished this would’ve required instantly acquiring total command over hundreds of protests occurring in all 50 states which would’ve taken no fewer than 140,000 highly trained and disciplined ninja-like supersoldiers. A dramatic increase from the 200 or so active during the Obama administration and an agenda expanded from the removal of disruptive people in otherwise peaceful protests to the destruction of America
The key phrase being “If what they’re saying is true...” I’ve found there’s no better argument against Republican propaganda than to take it at face value and simply extrapolate.
Because if what they’re saying is true, Donald Trump either chose or was helpless to do anything about the founder of ISIS living freely with his family in the United States. With taxpayer-funded Secret Service protection no less!
And if what they’re saying is true Donald Trump spent four years in the most powerful position on the planet, all the while impotently yelling for the detention of a private citizen while lacking the strength, courage or political will to so much as have her questioned.
And if what they’re saying is true last Thanksgiving your brother-in-law seemed to know for certain that Hollywood’s riddled with tunnels filled with children soon to be sacrificed to Satan in unspeakable rituals by movie stars and even though he could just hop in his F-150 and be there in three hours, buy one of those maps to the movie stars’ homes and if nothing else do a little reconnaissance, poke around a little, put an ear to the ground… well, normally he’d be righnt there… Hell, you couldn’t stop him, and if he didn’t have to return that rug shampooer back to Costco...
If what they’re saying is true, there is no reason to believe Republicans won’t declare victory in November no matter what the votes are. Because there’s no such thing as lying when you’re on God’s side
If what they’re saying is true we have absolutely no reason to believe the nominee of the Republican Party will accept a loss in the next presidential election
If what they’re saying is true, we will be facing a future where over a hundred strong and mutually beneficial alliances around the globe will be replaced by a security pact with Russia, Hungary and Belarus
And if what they’re saying is true, the fanatical devotion of Trump’s base, having easily weathered scandals erupting over the summer concerning the sale of state secrets, human trafficking and even the ugly details of Bible-Desecration-Gate will show little concern when it’s revealed that in 2018 and 2019 Trump surreptitiously pardoned two dozen high-profile serial killers to act as consultants on judicial reform, healthcare and his reelection. Most disturbing was the disclosure that nineteen of them had simply left after just one or two meetings, re-entering the population with no requirements to check in with authorities or receive any counseling, nor were there any means of tracking them. The reasons cited for their early departure were busy schedules, having “lots to catch up on” and that Mr. Trump “had given them the creeps.”
One of the few to stay behind was David Berkowitz, aka “The Son of Sam.” He said that he and Trump had bonded primarily over their shared enthusiasm for ketchup and misogyny, He’d also been revealed as the primary architect of the events on January 6th 2021. I was listening to him being interviewed on Morning Edition when he bashfully declined credit for the attack, and asked if he could play a tape of his mentor discussing the original outline of the plan.
I looked at my phone: October 1st, 2024… Another day, another debacle. All those serial killers running around loose I figured that’d hurt him at least in the suburbs. Looking around for my shoes reminded me that Biden had problems of his own. Apparently light gray was too close to white for shoes being worn after Labor Day, And this was a controversy they’d managed to drag out almost as long now as Cannibalismgate. How they manage to do it I have no idea. But I suspect it’s got something to do with having a giant propaganda network of that dominates the national conversation by flooding the airwaves 24/7 with a never ending river of ugliness, hypocrisy, fearmongering, provocation and lies.
A dog starts barking on the radio, and it sounds exactly like the one outside. I say “Oh my God!” And then “That’s Coco!” just as the Son of Sam says “That’s Coco!” too.
Then the reporter asks “Coco?” and I start wondering how the Son of Sam knows my neighbors for the second or two it takes to realize I don’t want to know. The duet between the Coco outside and the one on the radio is going long when it occurs to me the reporter probably thinks the mentor’s some guy that’s going to come on once the dog stops barking…
And that’s pretty goddam funny, but it makes me feel a little old. Kid’s got no idea The Son of Sam used to get his instructions from barking dogs. Not really what you’d expect from a Presidential advisor either.
Although the Democrats had the killer political instinct to recognize that all those serial killers running off might be a political vulnerability. But I bet they could’ve gotten some mileage out of the ones that stayed behind. I know I’m not a pro at this stuff, and yeah it’s gonna sound a little harsh, but dammit I’m just gonna come out and say it— I don’t think the Son of Sam is an appropriate choice to be a presidential advisor! I mean… didn’t he say something about getting “all the best people?” Well I don’t think the Son of Sam is really such a great guy!
Or did that sound rude.? It sounded rude didn’t it…
But come on! Here we are and it’s like Day 3 of bullshit about the color of Biden’s shoes when… let’s face it, we just rolled right over — just completely surrendered on the whole cannibalism thing…
I mean seriously...“Locker-room cannibalism?” What the hell does that even mean?