TV News LIES

From the election of Fucko the Clown to his inauguration, I’ve started … and stopped … seven “moments”. I can’t finish them. I’ll type out what I think is a pretty good sentence or paragraph, but when I read it again it just seems like so much junk. The stuff I write reads like the purple prose H.P. Lovecraft would crank out for Weird Tales magazine at a penny per word. But what the hell … we’re inside a Pulp Fiction world where every day is another issue of Amazing Stories. Just because something sounds like an article from Famous Monsters of Filmland doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

About a week ago, a friend of mine sent me an email with this subject line, “We are headed towards the demise of our Democracy.”

WASHINGTON — So now we’re getting the crazy straight up.

The Doomsday Clock is ticking faster, the resistance is growing, and teetotaler Donald Trump already seems drunk with power.

He’s got the role of his life and he’s casting his show: Steve Bannon is his Roy Cohn, the combative hammer and agitprop genius; Theresa May is Maggie to his Ronnie; Ivanka and Jared are his consiglieri, family to help him figure out who stays and who gets iced; Vladimir Putin echoes the role of Trump’s dad, Fred, who was supremely aggressive and calculating, cool where Donald was hot, someone who believed the world was divided into killers and losers. (But in Putin’s case, it’s literal.)

Here we go again.  After decades of non-stop war and death, the American public once again has fallen into the abyss of self delusion.  Tragically, just as we neared the brink of reversal under Barack Obama, we are about to abdicate any claim whatsoever to respect or honor anywhere.  We are now in the era of Donald Trump.

America consistently proclaims itself a nation of laws where justice is blind to privilege or class. And yet, as the world watches in disbelief, this country has once aagain become inextricably mired in debates about torture that defy reason.  And that is because we are being sucked into the mindless illogic and lies of Donald Trump.

We pretty much imagined life would change the minute we had seen Orange-Head's numbers tallying on the Electoral College board.  Not long after, we saw the popular vote's run-up, noted the disconnect -- once again -- shook our heads briskly, and were certain life had veered off course.  Having lived through the opening salvos of Post Election (and Electoral College) Stress Disorder, we are test-flying on a new era, no doubt about it.

This era's airplane, we keep noting, has no wings or engine, we keep noticing -- and the pilot-emperor has no clothes...

There's keeping an open and hopeful mindset, and there's ignoring the bus and truck which have leapt the curb and are coming straight at you.

Last week's shocked and jittery, anxious-for-good-reason, wait-and-see mindset has now disappeared, for solid reasons, not just anticipated-maybe-concerns.  The hand-wringing lasted four days.  We're now into Holy-Shit-Build-the-Bunker-Deeper Mode.  (Wait too long and we'll jump to the final phase, Ain't-that-Rocket-to-Mars-Done-Yet?!)

Thanks for coming by later in the day today than we've been meeting lately.  I'm sure that you, like me, just wanted to linger under the warm blankets until, oh, say -- the mid-terms.  I don't blame you there.

Getting up on any cold morning is tough to do:  You've spent all night warming up the spot.  And now, so soon after Tuesday of the Damned, seeing your breath in the room, perhaps you also feel like you're rising for your daily appointment with the firing squad.