A republic, if you can keep educating it

"When I was a kid, one time I had an old-maid teacher that used to tell me, "Buzz, you're the thickest-headed dunce in school."  But I noticed that she told me this a whole lot oftener than she used to tell the other kids how smart they were, and I came to be the most talked-about scholar in the whole township.  The United States Senate isn't so different, and I want to thank a lot of stuffed shirts for their remarks about Yours Truly."

 

- the villain from Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here

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"And your body is a temple
And the temple is a prison
And the prison's overcrowded
And the inmates know it's flooding
And the body politic is getting sicker by the minute
And the media's not fake
It's just very

...

   ... 

inconvenient"

 

Amanda Palmer - Drowning in the Sound

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"they could have disposed of you as quietly as flushing a dead mouse down a toilet. But they didn’t. Why not? Because they knew their boss didn’t really like for them to play that rough and if he became convinced that they had (whether in court or out), it would cost their jobs if not their necks.”
Jubal paused for a swig. “But consider. Those S.S. thugs are just a tool; they aren’t yet a Praetorian Guard that picks the new Caesar. Such being, whom do you really want for Caesar? Courthouse Joe whose basic indoctrination goes back to the days when this country was a nation and not just a satrapy in a polyglot empire of many traditions … Douglas, who really can’t stomach assassination? Or do you want to toss him out of office [...] and thereby put in a Secretary General from a land where life has always been cheap and political assassination a venerable tradition? If you do this, Ben - tell me what happens to the next snoopy newsman who is careless enough to walk down a dark alley?”

 

Robert A. Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land

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Funny how "Trump Derangement Syndrome" has fallen into disuse compared to his first term, as our news cycle and talk shows both are saturated more than ever with his sickening presence. Which, for a consummate narcissist, is very much a case of throwing Br'er Rabbit into the briar patch. You might say our reporters, pundits and comedians are not merely trying to spite him but bringing his crimes to public consciousness, as is their role in society. But even his actual crimes are rarely emphasized for their worst harm caused. Does he hate illegally imported Mexicans? Bad, but you'd still have a government if that were the only issue. Realistically, you could fire every wetback over Rio Grande again out of a circus cannon and, some messy hedges and a severe strawberry shortage aside, both countries would survive just fine. But the methods employed by the Republican Party, the random hooded street thugs driving around in unmarked vans disappearing random pedestrians off American streets? The paramilitary abduction of minors from their beds in the dead of night and zip-cuffing them as leverage against their parents? When the government throws due process and equal protections out the window, then you're into banana republic dictatorship tactics. But then, the last couple of Democratic administrations were already gleefully ignoring any process in declaring the entire male half of the population criminals by birth and promoting the racist rhetoric of identity politics, so let's not pretend you weren't always headed in this direction.

 

But the media have certainly sped up the process, haven't they? Diverting attention. Throwing a fit and obsessing for days or weeks over every single one of the Trumps' distractions like renaming everything after themselves, staging bum fights on the White House lawn or hammering down the walls of what is, in an objective summation, a building, a propagandistic symbol, a Versailles, Forbidden Palace or Sublime Porte to glitz yokels, and not in itself the functional institution it should represent. But the tax he wastes on every single triumphal arch in his own nonexistent honor is peanuts compared to the billions destroyed every day by the corruption running rampant with the destruction of protections against corporate fraud, of public services, plus multiple industries' subversion by and open bribery of government officials, especially the Trump crime family itself, plus the warring for military contractor profits, and for a cherry on top the proposed tax-funded bankrolling of insurrectionists against his own government. You think he's given up on that?

 

Tell me, instead of frothing at the mouth about Epstein, of every competent professional thrown out of a government position to be replaced with some subliterate hick whose only virtue is taking marching orders from the "republican" cartel. Or every department budgeted into nonexistence, and the myriad ways I'll be getting poisoned, run over and thrown out of my home as a result of the government no longer governing. That's the stuff that'll kill you. Literally. Like, a bullet through your head from a knuckledragging thug handed license to kill in the name of establishing a theocratic dictatorship. And that's if you're lucky enough to find them in too much a hurry to have their fun with you. Pointing out where the murderous thugs are lurking? That would be relevant information.

 

But it'd be boring. Everyone knows nothing gets social media channel hits (or sells rap albums) like starting a tribal identity feud, beef, inconsequential but highly visible slapfight. Preferably one that goes on forever, so both sides can keep posturing as heroes of their respective cause, rioting regardless of whether the home team wins or loses.

 

There was sudden moment of clarity back around 2017-18 when newscasters discovered, en masse, that the best way to mock Trump is to let him speak for himself and merely repeat his mindless gibbering with the same dignified, deadpan seriousness they'd adopt in reporting a bus crash. "The President issued an official statement declaring the terrorists having recently murdered scores of innocents are... bad dudes, very bad dudes." I had assumed, somewhat naively, that this approach would generalize to our entire political discourse and at last drive into full consciousness the monstrous gulf between what a statesman should be and this overgrown babbling infant pointing a gun at our heads.

 

But it was already too late. The tribal virtue-signaling outrage machine was already in full swing and every criticism could only be voiced if it doubled as championing the privileges of those self-appointed superior breeds among us, the rich in melanin or poor in testosterone. Thus the media, from YouTubers with thirty followers to the biggest names in television, settled into a cozy, mutualistic relationship based on the old comedians' running gag that even if the wrong candidate wins, their profession also wins by being fed more material. Once the public lost all standards, it's all advertising. Once the public stopped caring that they're putting subhuman cretins in charge, insults are no longer inconvenient to those selfsame empowered cretins. So long as they're facile, so long as they merely reinforce the major players' ability to bleed their fanatical followers.

 

So feed the newsies easy headlines to blurb. Knock down a monument, insult a war veteran, grope a debutante, and they'll ignore you looting the public coffers. After all, since the country started electing movie stars, the presidency has been more and more of an entertainment product, a freak show distracting from the depredations of corporate investors. And media's sole remaining purpose is to sell tickets to the show.

 

I did not declare the '24 election the end of the world merely for one incompetent and crooked house-flipper's rise to power, but because it demonstrated his brand of capitalism is how the voters choose to do business. Lie for the hell of it, cheat at every opportunity, mug grannies, take bribes, hire thugs to murder anyone who stands in your way, then rush to church to have all your crimes washed clean for declaring belief in a fairytale. What does one charlatan matter after he's installed a million just like him in every position of power? Except, perhaps, more competent in their villainy.