In "The Emperor's New Clothes," the emperor strides through the streets naked. He'd been duped by his tailors--you know the story--and his subjects are wary of letting him know the truth for fear of reprisals. Finally, a little kid--I can just see him giggling--shouts out, "The emperor has no clothes on!" and probably all the stuffy adults try to look surprised.
Late night comics and satirists, like Trevor Noah and John Oliver, mix news and commentary to announce that POTUS is naked. The news sources I read and watch are doing the same. Fox News, I hear, is not.
Under the orange hair is no truth-o-meter: Yes, I said that thing about groping women, and I'm sorry. No I didn't say it; It's fake news. Obama wasn't born here. My rich friends and I won't benefit from this tax plan. I have a great memory, the greatest memory. I don't remember that meeting at all. I have so many words, the best words.
If our kids at 10 or 11 behaved and spoke like Trump, we'd be seriously worried about their intelligence, their limited vocabulary, and their mental health. But when I hear kids of those ages mocking him, it gives me hope: they know that this king is seriously stark raving naked, not a dud of honest garb in his closet.
Now that Flynn has been convicted of lying to the FBI, other dominoes will surely fall, or the other shoes will drop--whichever analogy you prefer. (Maybe the gray clouds we now see will soon release so many high-dollar shoes that we'll think it's raining shoes!)
While it's unlikely that many who voted for the tax cuts for the rich have even read the bill, what those who have read it tell us is seriously scary:
In the House version of the bill, churches are being granted freedom to endorse political candidates AND fetuses are being granted the status of personhood. In other words, the line separating church and state is being erased AND all these self-righteous white men get to dictate what women do with their own reproductive rights!
Those who hold up their little pro-life flags are not likely all that concerned with fetuses, but they know that it's a bright shiny topic that will get them votes in some circles. If they were concerned with life, not just birth, would they work so hard to kill health care for pregnant women and children?
We live in dangerous times--when truth is slippery, when the wealthiest are rewarded for being rich and the poor and middle class punished for not being so, when a president can tweet lies and threats and insults every single day, and when that same guy--having misbehaved exactly like the sexual predators who are now being named and fired--can keep his chair in the oval office with impunity.
Flannery O'Connor, the Georgia writer whose stories featured grotesque characters, would have had a field day this year! When asked why she so often exaggerated human weirdness, she said, "For the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures; To the hard of hearing you shout."
Maybe Flannery sent us Trump and his guys, with all the large and startling screaming and exaggerated lying to wake us all up?
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